The Clover Girls

by Viola Shipman

  I laugh.

  “Do you have time right now?” he asks.

  “I was just heading to the country store for some supplies. I have no idea where the girls are, or how much longer we’re staying...”

  “I hope for a while longer,” he says, looking at the ground. “We just got started.”

  I blush and continue. “...but I thought we might need a few things.” I stop. “You know, to survive.”

  Billy glances at the base of the bunk, which is lined with bottles. “You mean, other than wine?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Are you up for some fun?”

  I look at Billy, raising an eyebrow dramatically.

  “I have an hour,” he continues.

  I raise the other eyebrow even higher.

  “What exactly are we talking about here?” I ask.

  He laughs. “Oh, that didn’t come out right! I can tell by your Groucho Marx brows.”

  I smile. A witty man who uses old-school references.

  “Capture the Flag,” he says. “I’m talking about playing a game of Capture the Flag.”

  “Is that a euphemism?” I ask.

  He laughs even harder.

  “Me and you?” I continue. “Don’t we need teams? And must I remind you I’m not a kid anymore?”

  “We’re all kids at heart, Liz. Isn’t that why you’re still here?”

  I cock my head at him, just like that blue jay.

  Is he a good egg, or a bad egg? I wonder. A nester?

  “Look, you don’t need to go to the store if you play this game...” He hesitates. “...well.”

  I raise my eyebrows again.

  “After you said you needed help the other night, I had an idea. So I planned something I thought you and The Clover Girls would like. I planned something I thought Emily would like. Sort of a memorial service in the form of a game.” Billy stares at me, his hair fluttering in the breeze. He ducks his head and then smiles at me. “Summer camp is about playing games and having fun, but it’s also about discovering our inner strengths and those of our friends. It’s about believing that we’re more than others think us to be. It’s about the fact that we’re better together. Em knew that, so I wanted to celebrate that.” He stops. “Gather Rachel and V and meet me at the base of The Lookout in a half hour. If you don’t show, I’ll understand. If I don’t show, I’ll be in traction.” He rubs his back dramatically and a hurt look covers his face.

  “Okay,” I say.

  A half hour later, after tracking down the girls, who were lost in their own worlds—both wanting to tell me about their “big plans,” “transformational ideas” and “epiphanies”—I am dragging them again in the direction of Camp Taneycomo.

  “What’s going on?” Rach asks. “Last time you dragged us somewhere, we were dressed like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”

  “And you kissed a boy on the dance floor,” V adds.

  “I don’t even know what’s going on,” I say. “Billy said it’s sort of a memorial service disguised as a game. I’m just playing along...”

  I don’t even get a chance to finish because the yells of boys drown out my words. I suddenly realize that nearly fifty Taneycomo campers are cheering our arrival.

  “What the...?” V asks.

  “Welcome, Clover Girls!”

  Billy is shouting through a bullhorn. He is standing about ten feet up the giant dune, his feet wedged in the sand.

  “What the...?” I repeat.

  We approach the group warily, and they stop cheering when Billy raises a green flag. There is a white four-leaf clover painted on it.

  “What the...?” Rach says.

  “On behalf of the men of Taneycomo, welcome, and thank you for joining us!”

  The boys cheer.

  “Today is...” Billy shouts, before waving his hand in the air.

  “CAPTURE THE FLAG!” the boys yell.

  Billy beams as brightly as the sun. He is smiling, his white teeth juxtaposed against his tanned face. I now notice there is a series of smaller green flags dotted up the sand dune. Billy half scrambles, half slides down the dune toward us.

  “What the...” the three of us say at the same time. We look at each other and then the boys surrounding us before finishing. “...heck is going on?”

  Billy looks at us and then just at me. His blue eyes seem to cut through my steely exterior like the flame of a cutting torch. “I’ve been quite moved by your friend Emily’s death and the reason you’re all back here again,” he says, his voice now as soft as the breeze off the lake. “I remember her reading under that stand of birch in the woods just outside camp. She told me once that books and smart girls were like generators: they could power the world.” He stops. “I came back here, to this camp and this place, because I was lost. The lessons I learned here I’d forgotten. The lessons we all learned here are our compass.” He hesitates again. “Emily was a bright, kind, sweet, humble soul. She knew, even in her last days, what too few of us ever realize: the simplest of things are the most important.” Billy takes a deep breath. “Laughing. Having fun. Swimming in the lake. Warming your face in the sun.” He turns and looks around at his campers. “Being a kid. Having a best friend. Going to summer camp.”

  Billy scans the dune. “I thought I’d honor Emily’s memory—and her mission for all of you that Liz has told me about—by having you play Capture the Flag today. Well, a new version of Capture the Flag.”

  Billy points up the mountain of sand, and we start to protest. “Hold on, hold on! Just hear me out. See the series of flags going up the dune? Each one is numbered. And at each flag, I’ve placed a special object. Some are things you need, like more wine...”

  “I’m ready!” V yells.

  “...more food, water, soap, shampoo, sweatshirts, and even the names and numbers of the most trustworthy contractor, roofer, electrician and plumber around.”

  Rach and V look at me and then each other, but neither says a word. I shrug as if I don’t know what Billy is talking about.

  “And there are also a few items that you might want more than any of those,” he continues.

  “How do we play?” Rach asks, rubbing her hands together.

  “Always the competitor,” I say.

  “This is not about capturing each other’s flags,” Billy says, “like we used to do. You’re all playing on the same team and for the same goal, right?”

  We look at each other and nod.

  “The object is for each of you to gather as many numbered flags as you can and reach the top of The Lookout together in under five minutes.”

  “Five minutes?” I yell.

  Billy laughs. “You must reach the top with your own Clover flag intact, and raise it to signal you’ve gotten there as one. I’ll have boys at each flag, and at the top, to make sure you’re all playing fair. If you drop or lose your big flag, you’re out. You win together, or you lose together. Make sense?”

  “You’re an evil genius,” Rach calls.

  “Takes one to know one,” Billy replies. “Ready?”

  We look at each other for the longest time and, finally, nod.

  “Boys!” Billy yells through the bullhorn. “Take your places!”

  A group of campers scramble up the insanely tall dune as if they’re ants scrambling up a small mound of dirt. Billy hands us each a Clover flag, and we raise them in the air.

  “On your mark, get set, GO!” Billy yells.

  I head toward the dune and begin to run up it. Run is a generous verb, I suddenly realize. I am moving, but moving as if I’m caught in quicksand. I look up. V is having just as much trouble as I am. Rach is already nearing the first flag.

  I desperately want to scream a bad word at her, but I channel my mother and yell what she used to yell when she wanted to curse but couldn’t b
ecause children were present. “YAHTZEE!” I scream.

  The campers laugh. “You don’t even know what that is!” I yell at them, already drenched in sweat.

  “Water!” Rach yells. I look up, and she’s waving a tiny flag along with her big one. “We have enough bottled water for a week!”

  “YAHTZEE!” I yell up the dune at her.

  Before I’ve even made it to the flag Rachel has already captured, I hear V scream, “Soap!”

  I stop on the dune. I look up. V and Rach are going to capture all the flags, and I am going to cost us the victory. I am deadweight.

  What’s the point? I think. I’m stuck. In the sand. In my career. In life. In everything.

  “Come on! Don’t give up!”

  Boys are cheering for me, their voices—some deep, some high, some cracking—echoing across the dune. I look around, studying their youthful faces. They are blissfully unaware of what awaits after summer camp: loss of loved ones, loss of dreams, loss of ideals, loss of self. The wind kicks up the sand, and the world looks as if I’m viewing it through a gritty, gauzy curtain. Just as quickly, the breeze dies, and the world is clear.

  Why do I continue to view my life through the wrong lens?

  “You can do it, Liz!”

  I hear Billy’s voice. I look, and he is standing just below me.

  “It’s not about who captures the flag,” Billy says. “Never was.”

  He continues: “It’s about teamwork. It’s about fighting for yourself and your friends. It’s about making people think differently about you. It’s about finishing a battle you start.”

  Billy nods at me, and then at the bright ensemble of clothing I am sporting. I nod back.

  “You have two more minutes,” he says. “Go!”

  I take one step and another, my feet churning. I turn my body sideways and climb uphill on an angle, like when I was young and used to go skiing in Boyne City, a northern Michigan resort. I step and grunt, step and grunt, and I don’t actually look around until I hear, “We’re here for you.”

  V and Rach are beside me. They take me by the arms, and we go up the dune.

  Together.

  When I look down, I am standing by a flag. I am near the top of the dune. Their hands are filled with flags. Mine are empty.

  “Last flag is for you,” V says.

  I lean down and grab the final flag. Attached to it are the names and numbers of a local contractor, plumber, electrician and roofer, along with a note:

  Our wives, sisters and mothers went to Birchwood.

  It would be an honor to help you fix it up

  in memory of your friend.

  All labor: 50 percent off.

  I wave the flag at Billy, who is shouting at the top of his lungs.

  It’s about finishing the battle you start, I think.

  And then three friends climb to the top of the dune.

  The three of us lean down and pluck from the top of the dune the final, fluttering green flag emblazoned with a four-leaf clover.

  We look at Billy.

  “Four minutes and fifty-five seconds!” he yells.

  We lift the final flag over our heads and shout in victory.

  “THE CLOVER GIRLS!” we scream. “FOUR-ever!”

  No one won, I think, looking at my friends, their faces red, arms and legs covered in sand. We all did.

  We played Capture the Flag perfectly, just like Em would have wanted.

  PART SEVEN

  Sing-Along

  Summer 1989

  A deep, wide covered porch surrounds The Lodge on all four sides. An old railing designed with crisscrossed birch logs hugs the porch, and whenever a camper puts her hands on it, even now, she says she can feel the power and history in it.

  More than anything, she swears she can feel it vibrate and hum, because it retains all the songs and memories the girls created over the decades at camp.

  The Birchwood campers call this The Singing Porch. Every day, the girls take turns singing before and after dinner. Sometimes, they sing songs to help speed along the hoppers—which is what the dining room helpers are called—to get their meals finished a bit more quickly. Sometimes, after dinner—before the sun sets and they head down to the campfire to roast marshmallows and sing campfire songs—two bunkhouses each choose a side of The Singing Porch, and the campers sing songs in the round: “This Land Is Your Land,” “Oh! Susanna,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “Frère Jacques,” “Wheels on the Bus,” “Fish and Chips” and “Rain Storm” when it is pouring cats and dogs. Most of the songs include snapping, clapping, rubbing hands together or slapping thighs, but they all have one thing in common: they bring the campers together and make them remember they are one.

  The first song The Clover Girls actually sang at camp was “Land of the Silver Birch,” the official camp song.

  The second song they sang at camp was “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

  But they remember it very differently.

  If you were to ask any of The Clover Girls what song was the first they sang together, they would all reply, “That’s What Friends Are For.”

  They would not remember the transistor radio that played it, nor would they remember that anyone else was present. They believe they began singing it together, out of the blue, at the same time.

  Every Sunday at camp, after dinner concludes and the campers gather on The Singing Porch, The Clover Girls start singing “That’s What Friends Are For.” For years, it became as much the camp song as “Land of the Silver Birch.” All of the campers, no matter their age, would hold hands and sway like the clover in the field.

  That song came to represent not just The Clover Girls but the friendships every girl made at camp.

  And if you ask The Clover Girls what the last song they sang together at camp was, you would already know the answer.

  They sang it for the last time—just the four of them—on The Singing Porch before they left to start their adult lives. They sang it to overcome the hurt they had caused one another and to remember why they became friends in the first place.

  Because they made each other whole, in good times and bad times.

  In the immediate years after The Clover Girls had disappeared from Birchwood, unbeknownst to them, campers would still sing “That’s What Friends Are For” on Sunday nights. They would sway like the clover.

  And when they would head back to their cabins and lay their hands on the railing, you could hear the youngest of campers whisper to one another, “I can still hear and feel The Clover Girls here.”

  Summer 2021

  Veronica

  “I feel like I’m at the Ritz!”

  “Hot water never felt sooo good!” Liz yells.

  The shower house is filled with steam, and our happy chattering across the stall walls makes me feel as if I am at Birchwood as a girl once again. I scrub my body hard with our hard-won soap, as if I’m trying to wash away all the sand, dirt, husband drama and hurt we have caused one another.

  But mostly the sand.

  As a kid, you can play in sand all day long, jump in the lake, and it all seems to wash away.

  As an adult, sand gets caught in every crevice and pothole, the puffy places and hidden spots that didn’t exist decades ago. And then it follows you everywhere, into your clothes, your bed, finally your subconscious.

  Just like resentment, I think, scrubbing even harder.

  Get in a fight as a little kid, and you forget why you were mad the next day. Get in a fight as an adult, and it finds a place to bury itself and hide. Just when you think you’ve forgotten, it surfaces again.

  Little did we know that while we were playing Capture the Flag, and then celebrating with a cookout at Taneycomo, Billy had already arranged for a plumber—assisted by a group of Billy’s campers—to get the old shower house run
ning like new.

  Well, new is a rather optimistic word.

  In a miraculously short amount of time, they were able to install a new hot water heater, repair some pipes and add insulation around them. Miraculously, things worked.

  I wash the soap out of my eyes and look around my stall.

  With a lot more work to go.

  There are gaps in the logs, and a few in the roof, so big I have a clear view of the trees outside. The floor tiles are, let’s just say, stacked directly atop the ground, and buckled where tree roots have thrust them this way and that. The earth is exposed, and mud flows freely in the stall along with all my sand. The showerhead is mostly rust. I’m wearing flip-flops because I don’t want to die of tetanus. But Billy made a minor miracle happen: we can now enjoy running water the last few days we’re here, and that’s worth more to me right now than a million dollars and a case of Veuve.

  Billy said it was his gift to us, but I wonder if it was his gift to Liz, or maybe Em. Perhaps even himself. Billy radiates kindness. He is a good guy.

  I think of David, and feel more sand.

  Based on what I’d just yelled about the Ritz, Rach starts singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and Liz yells, “Five bucks if anyone can name who sang that in the ’80s?”

  “Taco!” Rach and I yell at the same time.

  We laugh.

  “I was just asking myself on the drive up here how I can forget to buy milk at the store, or the name of one of my clients, but I never forget the lyrics to an ’80s song,” Liz says.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I say, before humming the opening bars to “That’s What Friends Are For.” In seconds, the showers are filled with happy singing.

  I turn off the water, grab my towel from a hook, dry off and head to the enormous mirror hanging over a row of little sinks. I turn on the faucet, which chugs and spews for a second. Dirt and rust spill forth.

  Not everything is fixed, I see.

  I turn it off and rub my hand over the foggy mirror. I stare at my face. For a moment, I can see myself as a girl. It is the face of a happy camper staring back, a face of pure joy, sunburned nose and freckled cheeks.