by Stan Morris
Desi had her own ideas about how to survive in this new world. One night, after the meeting had ended, Yuie was about to leave and she called for Desi.
“I’ll come down later,” said Desi, and she gave Yuie a significant smile.
Yuie looked troubled, but she nodded and left. As Yuie left, Mike, John and Desi were standing outside under a cloudy sky. It was the twentieth of June, and the days were warmer although the nights were still chilly.
Mike and John were used to spending a few minutes each night chatting together, before John went to his bunk and Mike retired to his cabin. The presence of Desi seemed unusual but not terribly awkward. Each thought that she would soon head down to the girls’ area.
“Can I see the Admin’s cabin, Mike?” Desi asked.
“Uh, all right,” replied Mike, who had not anticipated this request but saw no harm in it.
John looked at Desi. Then he looked at Mike. He frowned. “I’m going to bed now, Mike,” he said quietly. “See you in the morning.” He stole one last glance at Desi.
“Night,” Mike replied.
John left, and together Mike and Desi walked up to the A-frame. Mike unlocked the door, and they went inside.
“Wow, this is nice,” Desi exclaimed. “I guess this is your place now, Mike. Yuie calls it, ‘Chief’s Headquarters’.”
Mike laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good name for it,” he agreed.
Desi sat down on the bed.
“Mmmm…, this is soft.”
She lay back on the bed, and then she clasped her hands behind her head, and she smiled up at Mike with her supple brown eyes. Mike thought that the room suddenly seemed much warmer.
“Would it be okay if I stayed here tonight, Mike?” Desi asked in a voice that was soft and sultry.
Mike gulped. “Yeah…sure…okay,” he replied with a squeak in his voice.
The next morning, Mike left the cabin while Desi was still sleeping. He felt like he was older and much more experienced, and he felt wonderful. He found John in the dining hall.
“Morning,” he said to John. John looked at him, then he looked past Mike for a second as if he were looking for someone, and then he looked back down at his cereal and grunted.
“It’s a really good morning. I feel very, very good, if you know what I mean,” said Mike happily and a little slyly.
“Well, I’m so happy for you!” John snarled. He got up and stalked out of the room. Mike stared after him, mystified.
“You idiot!”
Mike turned to see Yuie staring angrily at him.
“What’s your problem?” he asked, annoyed at her. First John and now Yuie was acting weird this morning.
“You dummy! He likes Desi. Didn’t you know?” Yuie demanded.
Mike was thunderstruck. “Oh, shit,” he said.
But now that Yuie had told him this, he realized that he should have known. John was always mentioning Desi to him. Mike realized that he was not the swiftest boy when it came to girl-boy relationships. But he should have seen this.
John avoided Mike the rest of the day, and Mike avoided Desi. Both John and Desi were at the meeting that night. After the meeting, before John could leave, Mike asked John to accompany him to his cabin for a private talk. Desi came with them.
In the cabin, Mike showed John the radio phone, and he told John that the battery was dead. He asked if John knew any way to recharge it. John shook his head and grunted impatiently. Mike tried a few other subjects. He didn’t quite know how to proceed. John was plainly not interested in conversation or even being in the cabin.
Suddenly Mike blurted, “Why don’t you sleep here tonight, John? I miss my bunk. I think I’ll sleep in my bunk. Desi won’t mind sharing the cabin, will you Desi?”
Mike looked hopefully at Desi. She and John were clearly startled at Mike’s outburst. Desi gave Mike a surprised frown, and then she looked at John. The boys held their breath.
Then she sighed and said calmly with a small rueful smile, “No, I won’t mind sharing with John.” Mike quickly left the cabin and escaped to his old bunk bed.
Dumbfounded, John stared at the door for a moment, and then he turned to look at Desi. Outwardly, she seemed calm. Oh, oh, he thought. She is royally pissed.
“Uh, sorry about this, Desi,” he said sheepishly. “You know, Mike’s still just a kid. He…I guess…”
“So you guys didn’t plan this?” she asked stonily.
“No!” John exclaimed. “I swear I didn’t know that he was going to do this.”
Desi was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Some of the guys say stuff about me.”
“I don’t,” responded John. “At least, I don’t say that kind of stuff.”
“So you don’t have a line you would like to tell me? Like, maybe, what’s your sign?” she asked sarcastically.
It was John’s turn to be silent for a moment, and then he said thoughtfully, “Yeah, I do have a line.”
“So let’s hear it,” she replied indifferently.
John smiled at her. “I like you, Desi. I really like you, and I would like to spend some time with you. But not like this. If you want, I’ll walk you to your cabin, or I’ll just leave.”
Desi stared at him for a while, and then she looked down. She pondered his words.
“Well,” she began slowly. “I really like this mattress. It’s a lot more comfortable than mine. I guess we could share it.” She looked up at John. “But just to sleep on,” she warned.
“Okay,” he answered quickly.
The next day, John was much friendlier to Mike. He and Desi shared Mike’s cabin for four days. By that time they were publicly holding hands and stealing an occasional public kiss. The fifth night, Mike kicked them out of his cabin. He thought that he had sacrificed enough.
“You guy’s take the counselors’ cabin,” he said. So John and Desi moved into the vacant counselors’ cabin.
Sometime later, Yuie cautiously asked Desi about the incident.
“I thought that Mike needed someone to talk to,” Desi explained. “And I thought he that he needed a girlfriend to help him relax at night. I thought that it would be good for all of us. I didn’t know that his best friend liked me. At first, I was kind of pissed that Mike wanted me to be with John. But Mike is too immature for me, right now. And I like John.”
While John and Desi were sharing Mike’s cabin, Jackie finally made an appearance. Mike found her, one morning, having breakfast in the dining hall. Mike was very glad to see Jackie. Even though she was not much of an adult, she was, officially at least, still in charge. But as he looked around, he realized that the other kids, especially the girls, did not seem so happy to see Jackie up and about. Cautiously, he sat down across from the young woman.
“Hey, Jackie,” he greeted her. She looked up at him from her breakfast.
“Hey, yourself,” she replied, looking back down at her breakfast. “I hear you’ve taken over the Admin’s cabin.”
“Uh, well..,” Mike sputtered.
Jackie shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s just another reason why we have been dumped.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked.
“Don’t you see? We’ve been abandoned. We caused our parents grief, and so they abandoned us.”
“Huh?” asked Mike, very confused by her words.
A girl standing nearby asked timidly, “What about the fog?”
Jackie shrugged again. “That’s just their way of making sure that we can’t get out of the mountains and bother them again.”
“My parents wouldn’t abandon me,” the girl protested. “They love me!”
Jackie looked at her with pity. “Sure they do. Then why did they abandon you? Probably, they blame you for their divorce. And now they’re gone.”
The girl was clearly shocked. “My parents aren’t divorced!” she said angrily. Mike looked at her, and he gave a shake of his head, unnoticed by Jackie.
“Where do you think our parents have gone?”
he asked the counselor.
Jackie scrunched up her face and thought for a moment. “Probably to heaven,” she replied.
Other kids had gathered around. They looked at one another. Some were shocked, some were bemused, and some were just sad. Clearly, Jackie had become mentally disturbed. Seeing no point in staying, Mike left. He felt more alone and more scared than ever. Secretly, he had always hoped that Jackie would collect herself and reestablish order. Now he realized that Jackie was barely able to take care of herself.
Still, Mike was determined to survive. He started requiring the kids who wanted to join the Spears to run several laps around the track before practice. He explained the danger of the winter situation to the kids at a night meeting, and he got them to agree to gather rocks to build the wall in front of the cave so that they could move the cabins. He asked Jacob to try to make snares to capture birds. Mike thought that they could eat the birds, and possibly get them to lay eggs. He did a dozen other things to try to prepare for the winter. And he made the Spears practice, and practice, and practice.
One day it came to him that of all the boys, the girls seemed to trust Ralph the most. He did not understand this until he realized that it was because Ralph was always trying to help Jackie to recover. Ralph liked Jackie, the way that John liked Desi. He would talk to Jackie calmly and gently. He did not badger her for advice like some of the other kids.
Mike thought about that, and then he acted. One morning, as Ralph was leaving the dining hall, he was surrounded by the Spears.
“What’s up, Chief?” Ralph grunted. He didn’t like Mike, and Mike didn’t like him, but they had reached a sort of truce at least.
“Come with us, Ralph,” Mike commanded.
“Why should I?” Ralph demanded truculently.
“Because if you don’t, I’ll hurt you,” answered Mike coldly.
“You mean that you’ll have your gang hurt me, don’t you,” Ralph replied angrily. “You’re too chicken to do it yourself.”
“Let’s go,” Mike said, ignoring his taunt.
Ralph was furious, but he knew that he had no choice except to obey Mike. Most of the kids now accepted Mike as their boss, and even the ones that didn’t follow the younger boy knew that the Spears would back him. Seething and surrounded by the Spears, he followed Mike down to the practice field. There, Mike handed him a spear and then pointed at a target on a hay bale.
“Throw,” Mike said.
Ralph gave the spear a half hearted toss that barely reached the bottom of the bale. Mike handed him another spear.
“Listen to me, Ralph,” he said very seriously. “You’re going to practice with us an hour a day, every day, until you can beat me in ten throws.”
Ralph was astounded. “You can’t make me do that!” he exclaimed.
“I can’t make you get better,” Mike answered grimly. “But I can make you come down here with us. Better get used to it. And if you want to stop practicing with us, you better be able to beat me. Now throw.”
At first, Ralph tried to sabotage the practice. Then he tried to avoid the Spears. But he found that if he wanted to eat, he had to come to the dining hall, and when he did they would find him. Finally, he started practicing for real, determined to best Mike and be left in peace. He started practicing more than the others, spending long hours throwing the spears. Mike also practiced more than the others, and sometimes in the afternoon it would be just the two of them, grimly throwing the spears again and again, trying to outdo one another.
One afternoon, two weeks after he began practicing for real, he and Mike were throwing the spears. The boys were matching each other target for target when Mike missed on the seventh throw. Ralph could barely contain his elation. He took aim, and when he threw, his spear hit the bull’s eye. Then Mike hit the eighth target. Carefully Ralph threw and hit the target. Then they each hit the ninth target. Ralph knew that if he hit the last target he would win regardless of what Mike did. Mike drew back, and then he threw at the tenth target. It missed. Ralph could barely contain himself. He had won. Confidently, he tossed his last spear. It was another bull’s eye.
“Good enough for you, Chief?” he asked, smirking at Mike.
“Good throw, Ralph,” Mike responded.
“So, can I go now and not come back?” Ralph asked sarcastically.
“Yes, but one thing, Ralph,” Mike replied.
“What’s that?” Ralph asked, eying Mike suspiciously.
“Keep your spear. Keep it with you always, especially when you’re down in the girl’s camp.”
Ralph gave a noncommittal shrug and walked away. Ralph was annoyed that he had to keep the spear with him. But he obeyed Mike’s command. He kept the spear, and sometimes when the other boys were not around, he snuck down to the practice field by himself. All of the boys became good at throwing spears. In early July, the teenagers discovered that this skill would save their lives.
It happened one morning. Later, someone said that it was about half past ten. The air was crisp, and the sky was slightly overcast. The faces of the blue bell flowers were wilting in the meadow. The Spears were down by the practice field. Some of the girls were in the meadow, some were hanging around their cabins, and some were over on the boys’ side of the river.
The sound of a motorcycle was heard and then the sound of more than one. There were four of them, all large black bikes, and they came roaring over the rise on the gravel road leading to the camp. The men on the bikes seemed huge after all of the time that the kids had spent together without adults around. The man on the lead bike was bearded, but he was not wearing a helmet, so they could see his face which they would remember, later.
Just over the hill he paused, looking around, and then he motored down toward the girls’ cabins. Jackie, hearing the noise, was struck by a sudden surge of hope, and she came rushing out of her cabin. She ran toward the cyclist hailing him loudly. He rode over to her. She was trying to hug him, when he took a pistol from his right pocket and slammed it against her head. Blood spurted from the side of her head, and she slumped to the ground. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the girls closest to the violence began screaming. Ignoring them, the man reached down and hefted Jackie’s barely conscious form onto the cycle. He maneuvered her leg over the barrel of his ride, so that she was slumped in front of him.
At that moment Pete, who had not been down at the practice field with the other Spears, came running towards them screaming at the man to let Jackie go. The man raised his pistol, and he shot Pete in the face, killing the boy instantly. Then he turned his cycle, gunned it, and quickly disappeared over the hill.
While this was happening, another of the cyclists had slowly cruised though the frightened crowd of girls who had gathered. He picked out a girl named Maria, and he gunned his bike toward her. She fled. When the man caught her, he grabbed her around the neck, and then he punched Maria in the face. He maneuvered the stunned and crying girl onto his bike, and he too quickly left the scene.
The third and fourth bikers were also scanning the crowd of terrified girls. The third biker picked out a girl, and then he began to chase her; but not to catch her so much as to tease and to taunt her. And that was when Mike finally arrived on the stage.
He had heard the screams, and he had shouted for the others to follow. There was a moment when they stood and gawked before hurrying after Mike. And so it happened that the other boys were a few seconds behind Mike when he arrived at the cabins and saw the third biker chasing the terrified girl. Mike stopped, planted his feet, and threw his spear.
It was at that moment that the legend of ‘Mike’s Throw’ began. In later times, people on either side of the river that day claimed to have seen him make the throw. But the truth is that there were only a few kids who actually saw the man on the moving bike, the spear flying through the air, and the way it sliced perfectly through the biker’s neck and severed his jugular vein.
For his part, Mike always claimed that it was a lucky
throw.
The man gasped once, and then he grabbed his neck with both hands. His motorcycle traveled on for several yards until it hit a large rock and flipped over, causing the man to hit the ground hard and break his neck. But by the time the man hit the ground, he was already dead.
The fourth biker, seeing his fellow fall, cursed loudly, and he raised his own pistol. But Ralph, who had come running down from the boy’s camp, threw his spear wildly, and it struck the man in his aiming arm. The man cried out and the gun flew away. Without trying to retrieve his weapon, the brutal coward turned his motorcycle, and fled over the hill.
“They took Jackie, Ralph,” a girl sobbed. “They took her.”
“What do you mean? Where’s Jackie?” Ralph demanded.
“They took her,” another girl cried.
In a shaky voice, through her tears, she told Ralph what had happened. Ralph let out an anguished yell. He turned to Mike.
“They got Jackie, Chief! They got Jackie!” cried Ralph wide eyed. “Please, Chief, please help me go and get her back!”
“I will, Ralph, I will,” replied a shaken Mike. He turned to the other Spears. “We’re going to chase those guys. We’re going to get the girls back. Get some water and some granola bars. All of the granola bars.”
He turned to Howard. “You’re staying here. That’s final,” he ordered roughly as Howard was about to protest. “Get everyone across the river. Do whatever you have to do to make them go. Then get a lot of wood, and put it on the bridge. Get ready with the camp fuel, but don’t put it on the wood unless they come back. If they do, then put all the camp fuel on the wood and light it. Try to burn the bridge down.”
“Chief, how will you find them?” Howard protested.
“There’s fog all around us,” replied Mike. “They can’t be far.”
At that time, Mike did not realize just how large an area was above the fog, but in any case he was determine to follow the kidnappers.
He looked around, and then he spied the fallen pistol. He ran to it, grabbed the pistol, and shouted, “Anyone know how to use one of these?”