by Brett Lott
Lately he had tried to make the feeling come back. He would sit still in remote spots and wait, but nothing happened. Once, as he stood in the cedar grove at the far end of the farthest trail, Meg Holloway walked by. She came out of a part of the forest where there wasn't a path, and she said, "Hey," as if they were on a sidewalk and not at the loneliest spot in the wilderness. Pete couldn't think how to answer, and Meg shrugged and kept walking.
Meg Holloway made that summer different to Pete from any summer before. He tried to sit at her table whenever he could, and since she wouldn't eat, he didn't like to eat in front of her. He became thinner. Even his hands and feet got thinner, and he could see his own tendons and bones. Because she'd come one week late to camp, Meg was the new girl all summer. Word was that her parents were atheist psychology professors who had sent her to Loud Lake to observe Christianity in the field. She had a lot of curly hair and wore silver rings on all her fingers and some of her toes. She looked permanently bored, and her dense, baggy clothing concealed her shape. The other campers regarded her as a spy. Her counselor, Gravity, was forever hunting her down during activity periods, finding her in the empty kitchen with a paperback, or lying on a boulder by the lake. Pete's father had tried several times to talk to her.
One day she had turned up missing from leather bracelet-making, and Gravity was just going off to search, when Pete saw his father motion to her to stay put, and he went instead. On the back porch after dinner that night, Pete's father asked his mother if she knew who Meg was. Pete was upstairs in his room, almost getting a station on the ancient radio. He'd made extensions of aluminum foil for the antennae. The reception was best when he held one antenna, touched the wall with his other hand, and stood absolutely still. There were voices, a man's and a woman's, impossibly muffled by static. He let go and adjusted the dial. He heard abrupt fractions of words, a blare of music, then a white hiss.
When he heard his dad say Meg's name below on the deck, he turned off the radio and the light. The back deck was built on stilts over the water, directly below his window. "The one with the army boots," his mom said.
"The faculty kid," said his dad.
"They do mean well."
They were both quiet for a moment. "She seems special," his dad said. "Important to reach. There's something about the way she looks at you that's . . . Does she seem special to you?"
Pete went to the window. His parents stood close together in the half-dark below. "I don't know, honey. She seems like a normal kid, an outsider, but there's nothing odd about that. She's one of those people who need space." His mom's voice was whispery again. "You know people like that."
"I've been trying to get her to talk to me, but she's not having it," he said.
"Really?" She set her coffee cup on the rail and put her arm around him. Above, Pete drew back from the window.
"I've practically been stalking her."
"If you're starting to make her uncomfortable, you'd better leave her alone. I know you, but she doesn't know you. There's no telling what she thinks you want."
"Geez, I wasn't—" Something small and wooden clattered on the deck and rolled away. His father had dropped a napkin ring. "I hate it when you say stuff like that." Pete laid his folded arms on the sill. His arms had turned harder since he'd quit eating. Skipping meals made his whole body feel sharper and more adult. Meg still wasn't eating either.
"I'm just pointing out how it might look," his mom said.
"I don't like that you can even think that way."
"It's how most people think, Vicar," she said softly. Waves gently lapped the wooden pilings below the deck. "You should be glad you don't," she said. They were both upset. When his dad said Meg was important to reach, Pete knew he meant saving her.
A day or two later, coming back from the boat shed in the afternoon, he met Meg walking toward the south trail with Mike. Since they were two and he was one, Pete stepped off of the path to make way and stood under some low fir branches. Though they passed only five feet from him, they never looked his way. Mike never took his eyes from Meg, who looked straight ahead, unsmiling. This was the first time Pete had seen her alone with anyone, and he remembered that she'd called Mike's scar stupid on her first day at camp. He hoped she still thought so. As the pair stepped into the thicker trees, Meg tucked an invisible strand of hair behind her ear and glanced at Mike, and Pete saw a quarter view of her face. Her smile was nervous, and he'd thought she breathed in excitedly.
That evening Pete made his plan to go out on the lake. He would go to the other side to sit and think and pray and watch the sun come up over the camp, and then come back while his dad was still on the dock. He knew that his dad would have to punish him for breaking the rule about being on the water before breakfast, and he knew that the punishment would probably be helping wash up. He liked working in the steaming industrial kitchen, slamming racks of dishes around, splashing water and listening to the cook's R & B. And his dad would not actually be angry. His dad said often that when you broke men's rules you had to take men's consequences, but better men's consequences than God's. Pete imagined what his dad might say at breakfast. He would boast by pretending to complain about how stubborn Pete was, and how committed, and he would think, just like me at his age. Pete wanted people to say that he was a spiritual boy, just like his father was a spiritual man.
Pete also imagined he'd have to hear his dad's praise and look stupidly into his oatmeal. He wasn't good with comebacks. At times like that, he knew he was letting his dad down. If only he could make a good story of his trip, the way Mike had with the bird scar on his wrist, everybody would like him. Pete's own scars, his congenital knee patches, seemed bland and incoherent by comparison. They weren't even scars really, just flat, blotchy discolorations.They had no story and no meaning, but there they shone on his brown legs, a stupefying pair of peeling white spots.
Pete was at the middle of the lake when the wind became stronger and the boat began to lift. He started scanning the opposite shore for a place to land. The sun wasn't up yet. He wanted to stay clear of the spot where a stretch of road was visible, where there was a restaurant, the only other building on the lake. He saw another boat ahead and glanced automatically at his watch, disappointed that anyone else was awake. It was quarter to five, still long before breakfast. He gained on the boat, which was also heading away from camp. It was a camp canoe paddled by one person, a girl. She had seen him and kept glancing back, but didn't call out or wave. She was paddling too fast, not taking the glide, and the waves rocked her. She seemed not to want anything to do with him, but the lake was big and empty, and it would be civil to see how she was getting along. Civil was his mom's word. Maybe the girl hadn't expected the wind. Rescuing someone when he had gone out to pray could be better than going out to pray by itself.
As he approached, he pulled in the sail. The girl's hair was tucked inside the hood of her sweatshirt, and he could see flashing silver rings on the back of her hand. Meg Holloway. She held the paddle too close to the blade, and half her sleeve was black with wet. She must have known he was alongside, but she didn't look. "Coming alongside," he said.
She turned. "He speaks." She'd been crying, and her face was wind-chapped. He pulled the sail in and coasted. In the bottom of the canoe were a large army duffel bag and a small backpack covered in black beads. He tried to think of something to say. "You're Bonds's kid," she said. He nodded. "You're out awfully early."
"Are you doing okay?"
She shrugged. "You have a camp name, don't you? Salt."
He picked at some splinters in the tiller. "My real name is Pete."
"You don't like your camp name?"
This was going all wrong. They were supposed to be talking about her.
"You should tell people if you want to be called Pete."
"That's the point of camp names though," he said lamely. He felt ashamed for letting people call him by the wrong name all those summers. "Where are you going?"
She be
gan to paddle halfheartedly, and the wind pushed her off course. Pete offered to show her how to adjust her stroke, and when he reached for her paddle, she looked at him suspiciously and tightened her grip, and it occurred to him that she shouldn't have been running away from camp, and that if he took her paddle away he could grab her painter and tow her home. His dad wouldn't do it that way. His dad would convince her.
"I hate camp," she said.
Pete did not love his father's camp. He liked school better than summer vacation. His mom seemed more alive at the house in town. She talked more at dinner and smiled at his father more often. But Pete had spent every summer he could remember at camp. It wasn't something he hated or liked. It was home.
Meg went on. "I hate the singing, the praying, people going batty and crying all over the place, the skits. I'm not staying two more weeks. And my cabin. Nice o f them to pray for me, but it's not like I need extra cosmic forces in my life."
Pete could see that Meg had Issues of Faith. His dad talked about how to help people with this. He would practice on his wife, and upstairs Pete would listen, with the radio off. His dad would prove loudly and articulately that there was a God whose very existence demanded praise, and then Pete's mom would cross-examine him. All Pete could ever hear of his mother's argument was a low murmur. He looked back toward camp and thought he saw his father on the end of the dock, starting his morning prayer. He tried to think of what his dad would say to help someone like Meg. He remembered something he'd once overheard. "How could the world be so beautiful if there's no God?" he said.
Meg looked at him as if he'd just appeared. "I never said I don't believe in God. And do you really think this world is beautiful?" She didn't miss a stroke.
His ears got hot, and they were both quiet. They had passed the center of the lake by now, and were nearing the other shore. Pete looked at Meg's left shoulder and inhaled deeply. "Still, Jesus Christ died for you on the cross, and you need to—"
"—accept him as my personal Lord and Savior." She paddled faster, tearing the water. "Listen, you're a very nice kid, and I appreciate your concern, but I know about it already. I've taken it under advisory." Pete felt crushed, and he must have looked it, because when she spoke next her voice was kinder. "But you're much nicer than some people. Nicer than everyone, actually, and if I were in the mood to listen, I'd much rather listen to you than any of them. But do me a favor and go home now, and when you get there, keep your mouth shut."
He continued to scull the Laser alongside the canoe. "Sorry," he said.
She pushed out her lower lip and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "I'm sorry too. It's becoming a sore spot. I know you're just doing your job." She paddled in silence for nearly a minute. Then she said, "Do you actually like living here?"
"We live in town during school. Mom likes that better." He wanted her to know all about his mom. They would have liked each other. "She's a teacher. Seventh grade."
"I've met her."
Pete wondered how Meg had met his mom, but this seemed private. His mom was a private person. "What are you going to do when you get across?" he asked.
"Going to stash the canoe at the restaurant, hitch to town, then back to the city."
Pete was impressed. "Are your parents there?"
"Yes."
Dark lines swept across the surface of the water ahead. The wind was beginning to dance and shift. Pete tried to imagine what atheists were like. "Won't they be mad you left?"
"They'll probably ground me, but my dad will brag about me to his friends."
Pete nodded. "My dad would do that too."
"He'd like it if you ran away?" Her voice was dull, unbelieving.
"He likes for me to break rules. I know it's weird." She studied him more closely than before. "I'll have to do punishment for being out here, but I won't really be in trouble," he said. He cinched the boom down a little farther and tried to think of what his dad would say to Meg next. Probably he'd keep asking questions.
"Your dad will be impressed," Meg said. "He'll be glad you had this experience."
"I guess so. Are your parents really psychology professors?"
"My dad is. My mom teaches at the same school as yours."
She was short of breath, and her teeth chattered. She must have been on the water much longer than he had. "They both wanted me to have this experience."
"Like an experiment?"
"No, not so perverse. They just wanted me to see it, in case I might like it." She let the canoe coast. "Except if I did like it, I think they'd be embarrassed." Pete didn't see why, but he wished he could help her feel better. She looked cold and miserable in the canoe.
"My dad gets embarrassed when I'm too quiet," he said.
She smiled a shivery, white-lipped smile. "Mine too. And my mom. They want me to be more of a tomboy. You know, no Barbies." She laid her oar across the gunnels. "I'll tell you something. I'm not leaving because of your dad. He's okay. I don't really hate camp. I'm leaving because of this guy Mike."
"I don't like him either," said Pete.
She smiled her shivery smile again. "I thought I was the only one."
"Mike is how my dad wants me to be."
"Mike's a fake." She looked as if she were weighing whether to say more. The canoe had stopped. He watched the water. She pushed her sleeve back and began to paddle again, slowly now. "I got tricked," she said, and that was all. Pete thought of his parents' talk on the deck, the vague, unmentioned things that upset them both. "That's all you need to know," she added. He realized he'd been staring.
The distant figure on the camp dock behind them seemed to be standing now, hands on hips, scanning the water. Pete wanted to stay out on the lake a little longer just talking with Meg, but he knew he wouldn't be able to say the right things before they got to the other shore. Only his dad could say the right things to her. "Just let me show you something before you go," he said.
She rolled her eyes and handed him the paddle. He'd known she would. She trusted him. Sadly, he released the sheet and shoved the boom leeward. The sail snapped full, and he began to overtake the canoe. "What are you doing?" she said.
The Laser swept forward. As he passed her he leaned out, and without meeting her eye, picked up the canoe's painter. "You absolute rat," Meg said. She looked up at the sky. "I am so flawlessly naïve that there is no hope for me." Pete cleated the painter to the Laser, watching the wind patterns on the lake's surface. When the line was taut, he came about hard toward camp and yanked in the sail. The canoe followed the turn and almost capsized. Meg clenched the gunnels. She didn't shout, but he could hear every word across the span of water. "I thought you were like your mom. Did you know she let me hide in your kitchen during bonfire? I bet your dad didn't know that either." But she was wrong. Pete was not surprised at his mom. She was that way.
Air roared across the side of the boat, cutting through his wet clothes. Meg crouched in the canoe's bow, trying to untie the painter's weathered knot. He could just hear her voice. "I should have known he sent you. You're just like him. You and Mike both." Pete felt like nothing, like a dry twist of lakeweed on a docked hull, light enough for the wind to blow away. Towing the canoe, the Laser moved sluggishly. He wanted to tell her all the ways he wasn't like his dad, how hard he had to work to be even a little bit like him, that the difference between him and his dad was way, down deep inside, that really he was like her. He couldn't drag her back. He didn't care whether it was right or wrong.
He released the sheet and let the air spill from the sail. Both boats glided to a stop. They rocked and drifted, bumping against each other gently, blown backward by the wind. Their hulls made a deep thudding sound. Pete looked at his ash-colored knees, and at Meg, who tore at the painter knot with white-cold fingers, her face hidden by her hood. He watched until she looked up. "I'm not like anyone," he said. The fierceness went out of her face. She let go of the knot and sat back down in the canoe. Her shivering had stopped, and she breathed hard, her mouth open. They
were exactly in the middle of the lake.
Crows flew overhead in a long, noisy line, wheeling and rising on the wind, falling out and reforming, flying east toward the day. There were so many that their procession began and ended beyond the horizons, spanning the whole sky like radio waves. They kept coming and coming out of the west. Pete tilted his head back until he saw only sky and crows. Something was moving over the water around them, like the wind but not wind, and not crows, something he could nearly feel. It was right alongside their boats, some shape or shadow beyond the periphery of his senses. He wanted to look, and he felt sure that if he tried, whatever it was would disappear like a faraway radio station when he let go of the antenna. He kept looking up, hearing the crows and the hollow tapping of the boats. The cold air went right through his sweater. Meg was quiet, her breath calm. He remembered his dad saying that God is relentless, that he is always with us.
He looked. Nothing was there except boats and air. "It's a strange lake," Meg said. She put her hood back. Whatever it was had already begun to seep away. God would always be shy with him, forcing nothing. He uncleated her painter and threw it back into the canoe.
"It's real," he said. The thing was gone.
"A really strange place. Beautiful, though," Meg whispered, hugging herself and looking at the sky around them. She took the paddle and began to push the canoe away. Pete drifted, watching. She moved awkwardly, still not taking the glide, but the wind had shifted and was no longer interfering. The line of crows ended. The last of them crossed the sky and disappeared over the dawn horizon, circling and dodging each other in flight, rising on an updraft like bits of ash. At breakfast, he'd eat. He felt hungrier than he'd been in his life.
The wind came from the east, from camp, and the Laser keeled hard as Pete cut his oblique path home, heading first to the right of it, then to the left. He braced his feet under the strap and hiked his weight far outside. Without the canoe, the Laser rode high. As he neared the dock, he saw the outlines of three people hugging themselves in the cold morning. Mike and his father stood side by side, dressed and ready, as if they'd known this would happen. His mom was in her bathrobe. He cleated off the main sheet and leaned back, feeling the spray soak his clothes. He had nothing to tell any of them.