by Jack Hunt
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Where have you been keeping them?”
“What?”
“The cigarettes.”
“I don’t have any.”
We all looked on with morbid curiosity. It wasn’t like when we first got here. Back then every few hours someone in our group took over the reins of playing the clown. Now the honeymoon period had worn off and we just wanted to go home. But that wasn’t going to happen under Murphy’s watch.
Murphy was an ex-Navy SEAL. A patriot you might say. He knew how to whip someone into shape and had a built-in bullshit detector that worked like magic. Regardless of why each of us was here, I think we all respected him to some degree. The guy knew his stuff. He’d already shown us that when we thought we had reached our breaking point, we could go further. That’s why most days we hiked for miles upon miles. He said it allowed us to think about where we had come from and the choices that had led us to being here. Initially we all just thought he was full of shit and was trying to punish us.
Within a matter of minutes, all of Luke’s stuff was scattered on the ground. Murphy began fishing through the sealed-up bags of dry food.
“He has it up his ass,” Billy said.
Luke frowned. “Screw you, Manning.”
“No, I’m telling you that’s where these guys like to store it. I knew a dealer a few towns over that kept his gear inside a tied baggie and then shoved it up his rectum, leaving just a small amount of the bag hanging out. That way if the cops ever raided his place he wouldn’t get caught.”
“And you know this because?” someone in the group asked.
“Everyone knows it. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
“Whatever, man,” I replied.
“Alright, get up and head over to the bushes,” Murphy said.
“You can’t be serious?” Luke protested.
Murphy didn’t even need to reply. We had all become accustomed to Murphy’s stare. Come to think of it, we had become accustomed to a lot of things that he, Dan and Officer Shaw didn’t like. Unlike the people who ran some other correctional camps, these guys didn’t get angry or upset at us. They wore us down by not giving in.
We watched Luke trudge off into a thick set of bushes. Billy laid back on his sleeping bag and chuckled to himself. “What a guy.”
A few minutes later Murphy reappeared from behind the bush. Using twigs like BBQ tongs, he held out in front of him a small plastic bag full of tobacco and papers. Murphy tossed it on the ground and proceeded to make a fire to burn Luke’s private stash. When Luke emerged, he was red in the face and downcast.
“I told you,” Billy crossed his arms behind his head and breathed deeply. Truth be told, both of us had used the same dealer. I’d passed by Billy on numerous occasions. Back then we never said a word to each other. That’s how I knew there was truth to what he had said. The dealer was pretty straight up about it. Almost boasting that he hadn’t been caught because it was an old method used by criminals and no cop in a small town was going to go through the trouble of doing a cavity search. The county didn’t pay them enough, he would say.
We all spent the next twenty minutes constructing our makeshift tents out of branches and tarp. They weren’t ideal and there had been a few nights it had dropped below zero but they kept the rain off our heads. The only thing I worried about were rattlesnakes. I hated them. The thought of waking up in the night with one of them inside my sleeping bag was disconcerting.
We had set up camp close to the Kootenay River. All of us were involved in gathering wood, cooking and whatever else they wanted us to do.
“So Murphy, you ever had any runners?” Corey asked.
He gazed into fire and prodded glowing embers with the end of his stick. “A couple.”
“Did they get far?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Look around you, guys. You want to hike out of here, be my guest. You won’t get far.”
He was right. After all the walking we had done, by the time we dropped our gear none of us had the strength to try and escape. And there would have been no point. The local cops would have picked us up and brought us right back. Every single one of us was here because the court had ordered it. Murphy and Officer Shaw knew Judge Wickins. They had made some agreement with him to send troubled teens to their camp. So, it wasn’t just a case of our parents saying that we were out of control and two months in the wilderness would solve all our problems. We had ruffled the wrong feathers, and even the judge wanted to wash his hands of us.
I stared around at the others. Some of them I had got to know, most kept to themselves and just seemed as if they wanted to get through the program. Corey, Billy and Luke were the only ones that came from the same area as me. The other eight were from surrounding towns.
Before my arrival, I’d head about the place. Camp Zero had earned a name for itself as the location parents sent their kids if they wanted to see real change. I’d seen Murphy around town picking up supplies or having breakfast with Dan. I just never imagined I would end up here.
“So what’s the deal with the women? Why aren’t there any babes in this place? No offense, Kate,” Billy said.
“None taken.”
Kate was rolling out a sleeping bag. I eyed her from across the fire. To us, she was Officer Shaw. However, Billy liked to call her by her first name. The few times I had seen her outside of the station were when she was patrolling our sleepy little town. She was a single mother who had lived her entire life in Mount Pleasant. Her daughter Kiera was one of those sporty cheerleader types who tended to spend more time cheering the jocks on and wiggling her tush more than anything else. I often wondered if it was just a front. With her mother as a cop and all, I imagined she had to keep up appearances, say all the right things and look as if she was excelling. The community of Mount Pleasant was big on keeping up appearances. Town hall meetings every Wednesday usually got quite a turnout, signs up and down the streets were cleaned on a weekly basis, and people mowed their yards to keep up with the joneses. It was sad to think that at one time all those adults had been like us in one way or another.
“There are usually girls here but this last intake we had more guys. We rolled the girls over into the next program.”
“Just my luck,” Billy said before taking his pot down to the water to rinse out.
“Try not to fall in this time, Billy,” Dan said.
“Fuck you,” Billy replied.
“That’s one more stone.”
Billy picked one up. That was another rule. If you swore out here you had to pick up a stone and put it in your bag. Of course this would make it heavier and in turn cause untold frustration, which usually led to more cursing. So far it had turned into a bit of a competition as to who had collected the most stones. Billy currently had taken the lead.
Dan Adams wore a coonskin hat and a checkered shirt. He had one of these odd-looking mustaches that drooped down the sides of his mouth and off the edge of his chin. He looked every bit at home in the wilderness as would a squirrel. A longtime friend of Murphy’s, Dan had been a medic in the military; he usually would recount stories of his time in the war. Some of the crazy things he had seen. Guys with arms and legs blown off weren’t the worst, according to him. It was seeing toddlers sent out towards a convoy of troops with C4 attached to them. When he wasn’t making us want to chuck up what we had for dinner, he was cracking jokes.
“So listen, guys. You’ve been out here a month now. I know for most of you it has been probably the hardest thing you have ever done but I want to tell you that we are proud of you.”
“Oh great. Does that mean we can go home now?” Corey asked in a joking manner.
“Sorry, Corey. Not for a long while. We have you for another month and believe me a lot is going to happen in that time. We like to ease you guys into this. That’s what the first month is about. Getting you adjusted to taking responsibility. For some of you this is the first
time in your life you haven’t been filled up with drugs or tobacco and I want to hear from you what that feels like.”
“Shit. Yeah, that’s about it,” someone muttered.
“Well, I doubt Luke here is going to have much to say,” Billy remarked before laughing.
“Screw you, Billy.”
“Luke, give your mouth a rest,” Dan said.
“Who wants to go first?” Shaw asked.
No hands went up. There was near silence. All that could be heard was the lapping of water against the shore. In the darkness of the forest, wood crackled and popped as ash floated up into the air.
“I’ll go,” a guy by the name of Zach replied.
“Right on,” Dan replied.
“Well.” I cleared my throat. “For a program that I thought would have been like military boot camp it’s far different than I expected. I’m not saying it’s easy but it’s definitely allowed me to reflect on some of my decisions.”
“Are you sure you’re not high?” someone asked. “As this place sucks.”
Billy and a few of the others chuckled.
“Quiet down. Who else wants to go?”
Everyone’s eyes looked at each other.
“Sure. I’ll go,” I said.
“Okay good. Sam, what has meant the most to you about this time?”
Luke smirked and tapped a stick against a rock waiting for me to speak.
“I don’t know. Maybe a sense of being part of something bigger than myself.”
“In what way?”
I breathed in deeply and gazed into the orange flames. The smell of burnt wood carried on the air brought with it the scent of the forest.
“I’ve been bounced around foster homes my entire life. You always think the next one is going to be the one.”
“And is it?” Murphy asked. “I mean, the one you are in now?”
“I think I stopped asking that question a long time ago.”
“Do you think your foster parents don’t care about you?” Shaw asked.
“Well, I mean they sent me here, didn’t they?”
“Right. But doesn’t that mean something to you?”
“It means something to me. My father’s an asshole,” Billy said.
“Billy, if you are not being asked to speak, kindly refrain from opening your pie hole,” Murphy said.
“Go on, Sam,” Dan urged.
I sucked air in between my teeth. “I don’t know.” I tossed a twig into the fire and watched it burn up.
“What about that swastika tattoo on your wrist? What does that mean to you?”
I glanced up at Murphy but didn’t answer. He knew what it meant but he wanted to hear it from me. The others looked on with curiosity. It wasn’t that I was a neo-Nazi sympathizer or anything that someone might have assumed. It was that I had found a sense of belonging among a group that had welcomed me in. Hell, it could have been anyone. It just happened to be them.
“Yeah, are you racist?” One of the black kids in the group spoke up.
“No.”
“Then why are you wearing that dumb tattoo?”
“Fuck you, man.”
“Oh yeah? You want to go?”
The guy jumped up and before either one of us could throw a punch, Murphy and Dan got in the middle.
“Settle down. I think we are getting away from the main point here.”
“I’m not racist.”
“No?” Luke asked. “Then why the tattoo?”
I shook my head and pushed a sleeve down to cover it. “I’m done talking.”
“We’re just trying to find out where all that hate stems from,” Luke added before smiling.
“Well, why don’t you come over and I’ll show you.”
Luke scoffed. “I wouldn’t waste my breath on you, skinhead.”
“Enough!” Dan pointed at Luke.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Murphy said. “Who else would like to share?”
I heard the murmurs among the others. Ever since I had shown up at the program with a skinhead and the tattoo there was clear animosity. I ran a hand over my head. It had changed a lot over a month. It wasn’t as short, but in their eyes I was still a skinhead. I couldn’t blame them really, for before this, that’s what I had portrayed myself as. A green bomber jacket, tight jeans, tattoos, hair buzzed off and a mouth and attitude to go with it.
I ran with the skinheads, just as each of the others chose their group. I was no different than them. I carried the same hate as they did for authority. But I was no racist.
In all honesty I didn’t know why I got that tattoo, other than I wanted to fit in. And, for a time I had. I scoffed now as I thought back to the day I was busted. The very people I had called my brothers were the ones that left me in the dust.
As the fire burned low and each of us shared something about our time at Camp Zero, I reflected on what Murphy had said about my foster family. Had they sent me here because they cared? Or was it a last resort before they sent me back to child services to be placed with another family? I wasn’t sure.
I watched the flames flicker.
“Brotherhood.”
“What?” Murphy said as he lay on his sleeping bag across from me.
“You asked me what it meant. Brotherhood.”
“Are you sure about that?” Murphy replied.
BLACKOUT
Dawn began like any other and yet it wasn’t any other morning. Unbeknownst to us, today would be remembered in history as the greatest terror attack that the United States had experienced. It would overshadow 9/11 and throw the United States back to a way of living reminiscent of the 1800s.
We awoke at a little after six, just in time to see a deep orange sun rising over the tops of the mountains. A heavy mist lingered in the air making its rays look even more hypnotic. I breathed in the smell of pine and stared at the bubbling river. There was something very serene to being in the wilderness. Whether we knew it or not, it worked away at the noise in our heads. All the voices that told us we needed to be this or that, or had to be doing something more. It asked for nothing except respect. It was peaceful but that peace would be short-lived.
After having breakfast, we packed up and headed back towards Naples, Idaho, which was where the main office for the camp was. The goal was to collect mail that had been sent to us by our parents and then head back out into the wilderness.
That morning I had tried to pen a letter to my foster parents, Jodi and Brett. They were the eighth set of foster parents that I had since I was four. I never knew my birth father or mother. I only remember being handed off from one family to the next. Each time it was the same. I ran away, caused problems at home or was expelled from school. None of them were ready to deal with my antics and I wasn’t really sure how to behave. One doctor said it was a chemical disorder, another a mental illness. Others said it wasn’t any of those things. They notched it up to drugs and running with the wrong crowd.
I don’t know what it was. I gave up a long time ago figuring it out. It was easier to agree with child services and hope that the next home was better than the last. The fact was, most of the families were just taking kids in to make some extra money. I was meant to be seen and not heard. Eventually I just decided not to be seen.
Jodi and Brett were different in more ways than one. They were African Americans. They didn’t have a son or daughter like previous families. They had tried to have kids and for whatever reason couldn’t. Fostering wasn’t something they did for the check. At least that’s the impression I got. They honestly seemed to care. Maybe that’s what freaked me out. I had become so used to being beaten with a belt, sexually abused or cursed at, that any degree of care caused me to question motive. I still wasn’t sure what theirs was.
Murphy was the only one who didn’t try to label me. Instead, he listened and posed questions. He was the first, along with Dan and Shaw that attempted to help me see them as family.
Once a week we picked up letters. There was always one there fr
om Brett. I never read it. I stashed the letters inside my bag. Instead I would watch the others react to the letters they received from the same people who put them here. Well, it wasn’t the parents, it was the court but the parents approved of it. So in my books, it was Brett and Jodi who sent me here. At first I took offense to that decision. But slowly I was beginning to see that maybe it was for the best.
Those I ran with weren’t die-hard supremacists. At least I didn’t think so. More like wannabes hoping to impress an older generation who were more committed. I had met the group through a local martial arts dojo. The head honcho, or guy that was in charge, was using the place as a means to recruit younger kids. I was fifteen when I was introduced to them. Two years later I earned my red laces. It’s hard to say at what point I stepped over the line. The indoctrination was subtle. We’d meet every week in the basement of the dojo, listen to punk music, get drunk and they would talk about having a pure race.
To be honest, most of what was said went in one ear and out the other. I didn’t agree with them. I couldn’t wrap my head around why being a Jew, black, or whatever, mattered. It was immaterial to me. No, I was there because they welcomed me in. That was it. Hell, I was pretty sure if a local religious group in town had befriended me I would have walked down a very different path to the one I was on. But that never happened. I fell in with the wrong crowd, the judge said. And for that I was here to a pay a price.
We hiked from seven in the morning until one in the afternoon. By the time we arrived at Camp Zero’s headquarters, the sun was beating down on us. All of us were exhausted and ready to call it a day. But we knew it was just the beginning of another long hike out into the harsh wilderness.
Murphy unlocked the door and instinctively hit the light switch. A generator kicked in and fluorescent lights flickered before turning on.
“That’s odd.”
“What?”
“The generator kicked in.”
“Maybe it’s blown a fuse,” Shaw replied.
Dan had gone off to collect the mail from the box while Officer Shaw tried to keep us quiet. Everyone was grumbling about having to hike any further.