Horse Camp

by Nicole Helget

  “Sure,” I say, springing to my feet.

  “Go get the ball and pass it to me after I make it.”

  “Okay!”

  He shoots it—smack, thud. I pick it up, and it looks like it’s from about 1901. The leather is brown and all slippery and worn away except for one part where it’s peeling off. “Where’d you get this thing, World War Two?” I say, laughing at my own joke.

  “Be quiet and pass it,” says the kid. “I don’t like to talk while I shoot.”

  He shoots. Smack, thud. He does this forever, and we don’t say anything. Only two or three times does the ball hit the rim. The rest of the time, it goes straight through.

  After about a half hour, I say, “So what’s your name?”

  “Jimmy.”

  He just keeps shooting, moving around here and there occasionally, and I keep passing until my arms hurt. I could really go for a hamburger or something, so to avoid thinking about my hunger, I pretend I’m giving Jimmy passes in real games, and he’s scoring every time. The fans are cheering. The scoreboard numbers are going up, up, up. We’re killing the other team. I’m the best passer there is, and Jimmy’s the best shooter. Trying to fire up the crowd, I go for a behind-the-back pass. The ball flies off into the grass and Jimmy has to walk after it. When he gets to it and picks it up, he squints his eyes at me.

  He swears and says, “Showboating’s for girls.”

  “Sorry,” I say. I fetch and pass for another long while. Jimmy misses four shots that whole time.

  Finally, I say, “I’m getting kind of tired.”

  “Wanna quit?” says Jimmy.

  “Only if you do,” I say.

  “A hundred more,” he says, and shoots a hundred more, missing only three. I count in my head, and I know he does, too, because he stops after the last one and kicks the ball out into some open grass where you can barely see it.

  “I’m thirsty,” he says. “Wanna go buy me a Gatorade?”

  “Sure,” I say. “What color?”

  “Red,” he says. He gives me a five-dollar bill.

  I run back into the main part of the fair and go up to a concession stand and order a red Gatorade. The lady gives me some change, and I run the Gatorade to Jimmy. He’s sitting with his back against the barn wall.

  “Where’s yours?” he says, taking the drink and the change.

  “I didn’t have any money,” I say.

  Jimmy cracks open his Gatorade and guzzles it. He’s sweating a little, and he puts the bottle against his head. I watch him drink it all the way gone. He chucks the bottle out in the grass by the ball, and we just sit there, staring. The sun’s starting to set, and I probably better get back. But I don’t want to leave Jimmy.

  “I’m hungry now,” he says. “You?”

  I’m starving, but I say, “Nah. I had a big lunch.”

  “Let’s go get a couple corn dogs,” he says. “I’ll buy you one for the rebounding.”

  “All right,” I say.

  Jimmy buys himself three corn dogs and me one. He buys two red Gatorades and gives me one. We sit down on a bench and chow. It tastes so good.

  “I see you’re eating that thing sideways,” says Jimmy. “What happened to your tooth?”

  “Got in a fight,” I say.

  “Must’ve tangled with a tiger.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Where you live?”

  “With my Uncle Stretch.” I take a long, delicious swig of Gatorade.

  Jimmy looks up from his corn dogs for the first time. “No kidding? Your uncle is Stretch?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But I don’t like him that much. He’s sort of a jerk.”

  “Stretch ain’t a jerk,” says Jimmy. “You know he played college football at the U of M, and some people said he could’ve made the pros?”

  “No. How do you know that?”

  “Everybody knows Stretch,” says Jimmy. “My brother Jorry was good friends with Roland, Stretch’s boy. They were killed in the same car crash.”

  “Really?” I say. “Weird.”

  Jimmy goes back to one of his corn dogs.

  “Was Roland cool?”

  “Yes,” says Jimmy. “He and Jorry were both studs.”

  “How’d they crash their car?” I say.

  “They were drinkin’, probably,” says Jimmy. “Nobody found out for sure. They rolled it and went in a ditch. It had just rained and the ditch was full up with rainwater. They were trapped in the vehicle, and it had landed flip-turned upside down. They didn’t die from the crash, but from drownin’ in the rainwater.”

  “Ew.”

  “Ew? That’s what you got to say to that story?”

  I shrug my shoulders. I don’t know what else to say.

  “What’s your name, kid?” asks Jimmy.

  “Percy.”

  “What?”

  “Percy. My full name is Perseus. Named after the Greek warrior.”

  “That’s weird. You’re an oddball, kid.”

  I shrug again.

  “I gotta get goin’,” says Jimmy. He clears his last corn dog off its stick with a big bite, gets up, and walks away. I’d like to follow this guy around some more, but he probably wouldn’t be too cool with that. I look around and wander off. I can go wherever I want.

  Chapter 16

  Penny Considers Womanhood

  Dear Mom,

  I would like to officially report to you that I am now a woman, even though I am still a couple of weeks from my thirteenth birthday. As fate would have it, all of us were watching the adult talent show (I got fourth prize for my presentation on African sleeping sickness in the youth talent show) at the county fair when it happened. I was sitting with Sheryl and June Bug, and just a few rows away was this boy Wesley, whom I met in the horse barn a couple of days ago. Wesley is supernice, and has the most amazing horse ever, this black stallion named Mick.

  For some dumb reason (that reason being that June Bug loaned them to me and told me how cute I looked), I chose to wear white shorts that day, and Sheryl was the one to notice when we stood up to clap for this really old farmer who was doing a yodeling thing. I got my predicament publicly announced by Sheryl (whose voice could carry through peat-bog mud, I swear) when she yelled out, “Oh, honey! You’ve started your period.” Her voice bounced off the metal machine shed and probably carried into the next barns, so that all the kids showing cattle, horses, ducks, geese, rabbits, and canned goods were duly informed, as well. She wrapped her sweatshirt around my waist (I’m sure she was more than happy to take it off and display her low-cut tank top!) and hustled me off to the ladies’ room. I was too mortified to look over to see Wesley’s reaction. I was so ashamed. It was horrid.

  To be honest, I didn’t react very well. I started breathing really fast and nearly fainted. Sheryl’s never said anything mean to me before, but at that moment, she grabbed my arm hard and told me to snap out of it, which I did fairly quickly.

  Right there, before we were anywhere near the bathroom, she pulled out supplies and told me to go and clean myself up. When I came back out of the bathroom, she was waiting for me. She dug around in her purse for a while (Her purse has an enormous unicorn head on it and is the size of a normal person’s suitcase, so you can imagine what a production it is for her to find anything in there. One time I saw her produce a pair of Rollerblades, a helmet, and knee pads for Pauly out of that thing!) and finally pulled out a bottle of Midol. She tapped out two pills and gave me a drink of her Dr Pepper. Then we sat on a curb outside the 4-H building for a while. She smoked a cigarette (right in my face!) and rubbed my back and told me to relax. Then she asked me how it felt to be officially a woman. I felt better then, because I did feel kind of special even if it was really embarrassing for a little bit.

  When we joined the rest of the family, Sheryl told everyone to leave me alone and be nice and not say or do one annoying thing toward me. The strange thing is that they all listened. They sort of looked at me as a person to be feared or
respected. June Bug was very concerned for me, but I couldn’t tell if it was real concern, fake concern, or just masked jealousy. She may know more about horses and chickens, but I think it’s obvious to her now that I’m the more mature one.

  Do you think my breasts will blossom now?

  You probably would like to hear some more about Wesley. Wesley Calvin Richter goes to the school we’re going to attend if you have to stay in jail and can’t come and get us off this farm. He’s so nice. He’s a whiz with animals. He’s also really good with computers and technology, and he told me he could help me with my homework whenever I wanted once school starts. I told him thanks, and I didn’t mention that I probably wouldn’t need help because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He’s really gentle with his horse, Mick (short for Michelob, he said, but don’t worry, because Wesley said he’s not a drinker). He doesn’t mind sending me things in the regular snail mail, due to the fact that Stretch’s farm is in some sort of technological black hole and doesn’t get cell phone reception or Internet. I know he’s older than me, but I don’t think it’s a big deal because I’m so mature for my age and will probably always end up attracting older guys because of that.

  Stretch said that Wesley is a good kid, whose dad used to play football with Stretch back in the day. His dad’s name is Willy, and Stretch said that you’d remember him because he used to pester you about going out constantly when you all were in high school a million years ago.

  I hope you’re not considering going on a date with Wesley’s dad. I have a number of good reasons.

  1. That’d be weird because I like his son. And mothers and daughters should not date men from the same family.

  2. The relationships of young people should take precedence over the relationships of old people, because old people have already had their chances to have romantic relationships and messed them up.

  3. It’s way too soon after the divorce for you to start dating. I wouldn’t mind if you went on a date in like a year or two maybe, but not yet. I mean, you just wrecked one nuclear family, and I think you need a break.

  4. You’ll be very busy finding a place for all of us to live once you get out (if you get out) and won’t have time to date.

  5. I really, really like Wesley and don’t want you hanging around all the time embarrassing me with all your talk about the poor and health care and service to the community. I like all that stuff, too, Mom, but sometimes you do go on and on.

  Maybe you need to lighten up a little bit. One thing I would recommend is looking into the eye of a horse. That seems to put everything in perspective for me.

  Well, that’s the update. Hope things are going okay in jail.

  Love,

  Penny

  Dear Diary,

  I’ve been in my room for three straight days, which apparently is Pauly’s threshold for giving me peace and quiet. All day long, he’s been coming up to my bedroom door and peeking in the keyhole. Sometimes he sits down out there and sticks his little brown fingers underneath the door. A couple of times, Sheryl has hollered at him to scat, and he has. But he always comes back up the stairs, clomping like a maniac in his cowboy boots.

  I know he’s just curious about what I’m doing in here, but the truth is I’m not quite sure myself. I’ve put myself into a kind of self-imposed exile, like the Dalai Lama or something. I just want to be alone. I want to clear my head. I want to lie here, folded over this pillow, and rest. Sheryl brought me a heating pad, some bubble bath, an outdated People magazine with Angelina Jolie on the cover with about a thousand babies and apparently expecting two more (who do these people who have four, five, six kids think they are? Don’t they know that the earth’s already overcrowded?), and two extra-strength Midols.

  My brain’s firing away with all sorts of random thoughts. Things I’d forgotten, like science lessons and social studies homework from two years ago, are coming back to me and making more sense. I’m remembering Mom sitting all three of us kids at the little tables in all of our different homes to teach us math or taking us on nature walks or to science and art museums or to look at star constellations. I think Mom was a really good teacher. I wonder if she could become a real teacher once she gets out, since her nursing license has been revoked. I’m thinking a lot about Dad and Mom and God and religion.

  I remember studying entrainment, which is the synchronization of rhythms. For instance, a roomful of grandfather clocks will coordinate the swing of their pendulums, no matter how unevenly they may have begun swinging. Fireflies trapped in a glass will coordinate their flashing. I remember studying vocabulary words, too. Taboo, a word often associated with discussion about womanly things, actually gets its origin from the Polynesian culture and their word tapua, which means “sacred.”

  Then I started thinking about Dad. I wonder if he’s missing us or if he’s happy to be rid of us. I think about all his sermons on women’s and men’s and children’s roles in the family. I think he was probably right about a lot of things, like being nice and sharing with the poor, but he was misguided about a lot of other things, like men being the head of the household. I think Dad is flawed, which is okay. I guess all humans are. But I’m having a hard time figuring out if he was always flawed and I just didn’t notice or if he became flawed suddenly because Mom drove him to it. Or did he become flawed suddenly all on his own or because of something I did wrong? I worry sometimes that I drove my parents to make bad mistakes. I wonder if I could have been a better daughter. I worry that my parents wish they had never had me. Maybe they think having us kids was a big mistake. I worry that I or my brothers ruined my parents’ lives.

  I thought about talking to June Bug about all this stuff because she might understand how I feel, especially since she was practically conceived at a rock concert by two people who didn’t even know each other that well. I decided not to, though.

  Last night, I snuck downstairs and took a cigarette and lighter out of Sheryl’s purse. I’m not sure why I did that exactly, but I think it has to do with accepting flaws. I know it’s a bad flaw to smoke, but having that flaw doesn’t make the smoker a bad person. I just wanted to see what smoking felt like and why people do it. So I went upstairs to the attic and lit up the cigarette. I put it to my lips and tried to breathe like I’d seen Sheryl do. The cigarette tasted like rotten coffee and tea all mixed together with dirty horse feed and nail polish remover, so I stopped. But I think a little of the smoke went into my lungs because I got this weird, calm feeling. The attic was really hot and flooded with eerie moonlight coming through the tiny window. I didn’t smoke the cigarette anymore, but I let it burn. The only moving particles in the attic were the floating dust specks and the curling smoke off the red ember as it burned down to the filter. I snuffed it onto the floor and made sure it was completely out. I spit on the butt and kicked it aside.

  I didn’t dare turn on any lights because Percy would have seen it from his granary room and come to investigate. All around me were trunks and boxes of stuff, but I didn’t open them. The attic wasn’t bright enough to see very well, and some of the boxes didn’t have tops. I could see into them without snooping. Mostly, they were full of regular things like old baby blankets, sleeping bags, some toys like trucks and a train set, someone’s old football uniform, a pile of women’s Levi’s jeans and cowboy boots. All the stuff told me that Stretch once had a regular nuclear family, too, and that his nuclear family disintegrated just like mine.

  Maybe it’s just none of my business what happened to it. Maybe he’ll tell me when he’s ready, or maybe it’s okay to leave some things in the past.

  Today, outside, Percy and June Bug are spraying down the horses with the hose. Even the mean one. Pauly’s back. He’s sliding a piece of paper under my door with a drawing of a big, black, stick-legged horse on it. He’s sweet. I may be ready to come out of my room now.

  Dear Dad,

  You might be interested to know that I am a woman now and have a different, more mature perspective of
many things.

  How’s the new church looking? How’s the new accountant working out? Is she good with numbers?

  I am pretty disappointed in you, Dad. But it’s probably not entirely your fault. I may not have previously noticed that you have flaws like all other human beings. I may have looked past them. But since I’ve become a woman, I see things a lot more clearly. I can see that Mom had some really good points about your being a hypocrite. When I think about all those sermons and men’s conferences you gave about the Family First! movement and then compare those words to how you’ve abandoned and ignored Percy, Pauly, and me, I get really, really disappointed in you. But you are my father no matter what, so I still love you.

  Penny

  DEAR OKONKWO,

  HOW IS EVERYTHING IN AFRICA? LIFE’S PRETTY HECTIC HERE, BUT I STILL FIND TIME TO WRITE YOU. I THINK YOU SHOULD TAKE MORE CARE TO RESPOND TO MY LETTERS. I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE PROBABLY PRETTY BUSY, TOO, BUT ONE OF THE REASONS I AGREED TO SEND MONEY TO YOU WAS BECAUSE I THOUGHT I WOULD RECEIVE REGULAR UPDATES FROM MY ADOPTED CHILD. I THINK IT WOULD SHOW SOME MATURITY AND GRATITUDE ON YOUR PART TO WRITE MORE REGULARLY TO ME SO THAT I WOULD FEEL LIKE I’M GETTING SOMETHING OUT OF SPONSORING YOU. RIGHT NOW IT FEELS LIKE A ONE-SIDED RELATIONSHIP WITH ME GIVING EVERYTHING AND YOU TAKING EVERYTHING.

  MAYBE THAT’S HOW THINGS WORK IN YOUR WORLD. MAYBE IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT YOU’RE BEING SO SELFISH AND YOU CAN’T EVEN HELP IT. MAYBE NO ONE EVER TAUGHT YOU HOW TO BE POLITE. I KNOW YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT CHRISTIANITY BECAUSE YOU PROBABLY PRACTICE SOME OTHER KIND OF RELIGION, BUT SOME PEOPLE DON’T EVEN NEED TO KNOW ONE THING ABOUT ANY RELIGION TO BE NICE AND HAVE MANNERS. THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO DON’T BELIEVE IN JESUS WHO DO LOTS OF GREAT WORKS. THERE’S THIS GUY NAMED GANDHI, FOR INSTANCE, WHO LAY AROUND WITH THE POOR AND UNTOUCHABLE PEOPLE IN INDIA ALL DAY, NEVER EVEN WORRYING ONE BIT ABOUT HOW DIRTY AND FULL OF GERMS THEY WERE. THERE IS THIS OTHER GUY, TOO, CALLED THE DALAI LAMA, WHO JUST SITS AND MEDITATES FOR THE FREEDOM OF A WHOLE COUNTRY CALLED TIBET. THOSE TWO GUYS DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT JESUS, BUT THEY STILL CARE ABOUT THEIR FELLOW MAN. YOU SHOULD THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT THAT, OKONKWO.