"We're not leaving," Cap said. "We've only been here ten days."
"Right," Lenny said.
"Are you OK?" Cap stepped closer and stood toe to toe, surveying Lenny's feet. "You find your shoes? Your shoes were your mission."
Lenny let her head drop forward and pressed her brow to Cap's. Sometimes they played at staring each other down until they both saw spots, but now Lenny closed her eyes. "Does it look like I found my shoes?"
"Well, no. But you can have those. The length is OK. You'll just tie them up tight."
"So where are the counselors? No wonder it's so quiet." She moved past Cap to lie down. The squeak of her cot always sounded midway between a whine and a sigh, and if she turned or bounced she imagined the springs cried out in some limited, anxious language. "My cot is talking again," Lenny said.
"Don't pay any attention." Cap sat on the edge of the metal frame. "What's wrong with you, Lenny? You're all sweaty. Close your eyes and I'll tell you a bedtime story."
"Really? A real story? Or another one of your plans?" It wasn't even a question, Lenny thought, because Cap didn't tell stories. Not like Audrey. Audrey was full of stories to be fended off. The stories surrounded her, next to her skin, as though she were wrapped in yards and yards of stories, like bandages. Lenny thought of her mother, standing in the kitchen in Gaither, wrapped like a mummy in her complaints. Only her eyes peering out. Audrey couldn't seem to plan at all. Cap was always planning and her plans were about the world. How to do this or that. How to navigate.
"I can hypnotize you," Cap said now. And she began moving her fingertips lightly across Lenny's forehead, harder up to her hairline, down again, across. "Your eyes are growing heavy and you're listening carefully. This is the plan. Tonight we'll skip the mob scene at campfire and have an adventure."
"Not sure I want to," Lenny said.
"Yes," Cap whispered in her Natasha accent, "you vant to, you can't resist."
"Ve must resist," Lenny whispered back, "resist ze mysterious water, ze call of ze wild..." She was laughing but she felt so tired, as though closing her eyes brought back what had happened near the shack at Turtle Hole. Everything had changed; she couldn't say how, she couldn't catch hold. "I'm going to see Alma tonight," Lenny said slowly. "Later, after singing and campfire." She thought she might go to sleep, and sleeping would be perfect. She could talk to Alma in her sleep, find out what she wanted to say. She could see Alma and watch Alma. She tried to focus on Alma's face but the image slipped and Cap's face intervened, so naturally, the features of one melding into the other and back again, both of them watchful, listening or waiting, both of them still.
"We will see Alma," Cap said, "I'm sure of it."
"How do you know?" Lenny felt Cap's fingers flicker and change direction. She opened her eyes.
Cap shrugged. "We'll see them. But first we'll go swimming."
Lenny sat up and hugged her knees. "Let me guess where."
"That's right. And who knows. Anything could happen." Cap smiled her slow, secret-pact smile. "You know," she added then, "it doesn't work with you. You're one of those people who can't be hypnotized."
Lenny stared at her. There was no way to tell her about Turtle Hole. The man with the snake and the flowering vine. A sense of him washed over her. Hypnotize. That's what he'd done, like a magician, but with no tricks or stories. What was he? Lenny thought she'd fallen through him, long spaces full of pictures. He was big, bigger than his body. In confirmation classes, years ago, she and Cap had studied little books with color pictures, with choral readings of Scripture, and there was a color plate of an angel holding a rod that became a flowering branch. Rod to branch to serpent. Serpent to rod to branch. It was only a picture. Someone's powerful hand, skin that glowed. An angel, mesmerized. But no one could have made up the pictures Lenny had seen: the window in her parents' room, the shape of the window, the view of the yard. Again she saw the yard behind the house, the way it was then: she held it still and looked. No fence at the field, and the clothes were on the line, not summer but spring, a little season, short and cold, and her mother wasn't there. Where was she, why didn't she come, and where was Alma, always there, always underfoot. Alma, who knew too much and stayed awake at night with Audrey's stories, and if those weren't enough there were other stories, whole books of them to read with a flashlight, Alma dragged out of bed on school mornings, Audrey going on about books hidden in the pillows, about shadows under Alma's eyes.
"Hello?" Cap said. "You're not hypnotized. Don't pretend."
"What do you think about Alma?"
Cap let her expression loosen and paused to consider. "There's Alma. And there's Delia. I don't know. They're like two brown mice. Delia is the mouse with curls, and Alma has no curls at all. Right?"
"That's not what I mean. There's Delia's father."
Cap shrugged. "I barely knew him. I mean, I saw him around. There was that party your mother had last summer, that birthday."
"My dad's birthday," said Lenny, impatient.
"Yeah. Your mom seemed to know him. Delia's father, I mean. Did she know him?"
Lenny blinked. Of course Audrey knew him. Or they might have kissed on impulse, that time in the kitchen. Lenny couldn't imagine anyone kissing her mother, taking that kind of chance.
"They were standing down by the fence, like this." Cap folded her arms in a defensive wait-and-see. "Looking across the field, at the airstrip or something."
"So what?" Lenny said, irritated. "It doesn't matter. I'm talking about the accident."
"Oh," Cap said. Her green eyes shifted and clouded. "The river and the bridge."
Outside they heard shouting, and the hand-held bell began to ring.
"Well?" Lenny said.
"Well," Cap repeated. "Alma and Delia are two brown mice, and suddenly Delia has this big, big story, like some big cheese full of holes the two of them crawl around in."
"And what do you think about us?" Lenny said softly.
"Us?" Cap glanced toward the opening of the tent. "We don't like cheese. We're spies, not mice."
The others had begun to gather around the rough picnic tables to divvy up chores. The sun had set and they had lit lanterns, but the light was still a dark, informed gold. The tent flaps drooped. Through them the camp seemed a picture whose burnished, faraway movements the girls glimpsed through shadowy bunting.
"Lenny," Cap said, "I want you to come to school with me."
"What do you mean?"
"My dad will pay for it."
"Your mom would never—"
"She won't know until it's too late. My dad will pay for you, to spite her. And because I want him to. My grandparents pay for my schooling, it's in the custody agreement. He's getting off easy."
"I don't know," Lenny said.
"Your mom would let you, if it's paid for. She'd love it."
"Why should the school take me?"
Cap moved to sit in front of her, fill up her vision. "Your grades are good. You were in accelerated math too, remember? And you'll have your own scholarship."
"The sidekick scholarship," Lenny said.
"So what? No one would know unless you told them. Anyway, what does it matter how we get things." She grabbed Lenny's hand. "Do you really want to stay in Gaither, after camp, forever?"
Lenny made a move to pull away.
"I have to go," Cap said. "My mom tied it all up. Even my dad says I have to, or he'd be in trouble with the court. He would never agree to let me live with her, but he says I have to go to school, as long as it's no closer to her than to him. So she's got it all fixed."
Lenny heard tears in Cap's voice and looked past her, through the drooped opening of the tent. "I don't know," she said again.
Cap let go and moved away. She kicked the metal frame of her cot once and the bed skittered across the board floor with a jangle of springs. Then she folded her arms and took a deep breath. "It's just a plan," she said softly. Then she said, "We're not alone here, you know."
"What?"
"Here in Highest, Lenny. We're not just here on our own. The troop deputies are in charge."
"Who are the troop deputies?"
"They're those two girls from Winfield, the big city creatures. Just appointed." Cap arched her brows, Natasha-like, and stood to indicate the darkening campground beyond with a sweeping gesture. "I believe I can bend them to my will."
"Oh, Natasha," Lenny said, "you nasty Russian. You Communist."
"Boris, don't try to flatter me. Just rise"—she made a minister's mock "all rise" with both hands—"and follow me."
"Take up your pallets and walk," Lenny murmured, standing.
"We're not washing dishes in a cold stream tonight. Know how that happens?" Cap bent down to pick up a shopping bag full of snacks. Lenny saw she'd gone through both their trunks and taken out all the bags of chips and popcorn and cookies, and there seemed to be a whole new contingent of dark salamis and butter crackers.
"So that's what I smelled." Suddenly Lenny was so hungry she nearly gasped. She thought she might burst into tears. "God," she said, "give me some. I'm starving."
"My grandparents," Cap said. "A whole box from some mail-order cocktail party. Cornichons and olives and pâté in tubs, and four, uh, tubes of meat." She turned and headed for the tables, shouting she'd brought dinner.
Lenny stepped out of the tent behind her. There was a circle of light around the tables, the part lit by lanterns, and there was the darker light, the light of the clearing pitched with tents. There was the light that seemed to hover above the dark of the trees, the trees that stood sentinel, ragged and big, at the border of their country, and there were the trees and the woods beyond, so dark they seemed to disappear, as though nothing really existed but this island.
Confusion of voices. "We're in charge here," said a voice off to the right. "We're making spaghetti," said someone else.
"Right," Cap said, "with that dehydrated tomato powder."
"Forget it," Lenny said loudly.
Cap snapped off a salute. "Please, my captain, permission requested to feed the masses. Why make food? Food is here."
"And you've all got more in your trunks," Lenny said, "attracting mice. Bears, even. Who knows?"
"Bats," Cap said.
"Exactly," Lenny said. "And there's more where this came from. You'll all get stuff this weekend in the mail. And if you don't—"
"I'll give you some of mine," Cap finished.
"Now go get your contribution," Lenny ordered. "Dinner is served. And put away the mess kits. All you need is your paws."
"Stop it!" someone said. "That's not what—"
"Overruled!" Cap shouted, and the others took it up as a slogan, yelling and laughing.
Lenny picked up the bell and began to ring it as girls moved back and forth between the tents. A table was soon covered with cellophane bags of popcorn and chips and crackers, piles of fruit and packages of Twinkies and cupcakes, tins of homemade cookies and bags of Oreos. Someone got a knife and slit open all the packaging, and Cap cut the meat into hunks. They all began to mill around, eating and singing, but not the usual camp songs. Someone began a raucous chorus of in the jungle, the mighty jungle, Gill Guides never sleep, but the words soon gave way to high-pitched, melodic howls. Someone else imitated an ambulance siren and then several sirens emerged, keeping time to the banging of the unused mess kits. The girls from Winfield gave up all pretense of uninvolvement and began to bark, imitating aroused guard dogs. Anyone who wasn't doing a specific sound in time simply yelled or screamed, and Lenny stood on top of a table to conduct the various parts. They found that short, sharp screams were effective as a kind of base line, and Lenny designated a group of screamers to keep the beat. They were amazingly shrill and they kept it going maybe fifteen minutes, everyone else cooperatively eating and banging pans and barking and singing siren sounds, when a group of adults streamed into camp from Highest trail. Camp was a celebratory cluster of girls, raucous and fierce, and suddenly the adults were there, the four Highest counselors and three others from lower sites, all carrying lanterns and flashlights and backpacks full of first-aid supplies. They'd obviously run all the way up Highest trail and stood panting, playing the beams of their lights over the group of girls, who abruptly fell silent. There was a stupefied instant in which no one spoke.
Lenny jumped to the ground from the end of the table, grabbed a handful of potato chips, and began to eat.
"Hello," Cap said to the counselors. "Care to join us?"
"Do you know how you all sounded from down below?"
"We didn't know what was going on up here—"
"Is this the way you handle responsibility, by shrieking—"
"It sounded like you were being attacked."
"By what?" Lenny asked.
"Gee," Cap said quickly, "we're really sorry. It was just, well, a spontaneous thing. Didn't realize you'd hear us all the way down at the quad."
Their own counselors stepped forward. "We did hear you," one of them said. "Now you can hear us. I want all this snack food thrown away, sealed up in garbage bags and brought down the trail to the Dumpster behind the dining hall. Any food you receive from home will be held at Great Hall until further notice. As soon as you finish cleaning up, you will go down to the quad and lay the campfire. We'll discuss this further tomorrow morning. Everyone is required. to participate in that discussion."
There was some groaning and sighing, but in fact they'd all eaten voraciously, stuffing their mouths, and couldn't have consumed the rest; the meat was gone and the ground crunched with trampled crackers and apple cores. They held open gigantic green garbage bags and swept the refuse in with brooms. It was full dark as they negotiated the trail, dragging lumpy bags fastened in knots. Lenny and Cap, in the rear of the jostling line, were careful not to carry anything. They dropped back and slipped away, following the silver line of the stream to the river and Turtle Hole.
ALMA: WISE WORLD
There were wieners and sauerkraut and mashed potatoes swimming in butter, and baskets of warm rolls heaped in piles. The beets made a wine-red soup around themselves in their deep bowl; Alma thought they were like bulbous Christmas ornaments with tails, swollen with juice and smell. The girls' plates were full and Delia proceeded to spear her wiener with her fork and eat it vertically, bite by bite.
"Dear," Mrs. Thompson-Warner said, "put your food back on your plate. You are not at the races. And even if you were, knockwurst is not finger food. You have a knife—please pick it up and use it appropriately."
Mrs. T. demonstrated by slicing her wiener neatly down the middle, then carving it across into remarkably matched, narrow slices. The girls began to titter in reference to various jokes about wieners, but their covert laughter was swallowed up in the noise of supper in the dining hall. Alma sighed into her hand, aware that everyone was on seconds and very soon they would begin to clear for dessert. She knew it wasn't actually their turn to have Mrs. T. at their table for dinner. Her presence indicated interest in Alma's supper speech, and a form of moral support difficult to ignore. The other girls suspected as much and responded by passing the onion relish, an item no one would touch, back and forth under Alma's nose repeatedly. Finally Mrs. T. secured the relish and sprinkled her mound of beets with a ladylike portion.
"This relish is a specialty of Mrs. Carmody's," Mrs. T. said reprovingly, "and it's delicious. It's made with Vidalia onions, locally grown—those are sweet onions, not at all bitter. You really must try it. I myself don't normally eat onions"—she wiped her mouth with her paper napkin—"but tonight I make an exception. You know, girls, you may not realize just what an excellent cook our Mrs. Carmody is. To cook for so many, so richly, with such variety—"
"It isn't just her cooking, though, is it?" Delia took another bite of her upheld wiener, but her wrist began to wilt and lower in the glare of Mrs. Thompson-Warner's direct gaze. "I mean, she has two other women helping her."
"Yes, of course, but she is responsible for organi
zing and planning every detail. In addition, she must supervise and direct the help. No small task. And much of what we are fortunate to receive is made by Mrs. Carmody herself—the relish, for instance, and the wonderful breads. Her breads are the equal of any served in the best restaurants of London or Paris, I assure you." Mrs. T. nodded emphatically.
Delia leaned close to Alma and whispered hurriedly, "Listen to her. She's here for the food!"
"What was that, dear?" asked Mrs. T. "In private, we speak to each other. At table, we speak to the group. Would you like to repeat your remark to all of us?"
"No," Delia said.
Alma sighed audibly.
"Pardon me?" Mrs. T. sat up straighter and raised her penciled brows.
"No, ma'am," Delia said, "I would not like to repeat my remark for the group."
"Then you'd best not make further remarks. Silence is always preferable to rude behavior." Mrs. T. took a sip of water. "As I was saying, one day some of you girls will find yourselves supervising others"—she looked specifically at Alma—"whether in business or academia, or in family life. You will then appreciate your experience here in a new and larger way." She looked pointedly at everyone in turn. "You know, when things are done efficiently and well, we often benefit rather unthinkingly. For instance, we've come to expect Mrs. Carmody's delicious, bountiful meals. Of course, there is plenty of fresh, inexpensive produce available from the local farmers, and they're eager to sell to the camp in bulk, but not every cook would know how to take such productive advantage of her resources." The other tables were clearing, and Mrs. T. reached for the job jar. She screwed off the lid and passed it without a break in rhythm. "When things are badly done, we notice immediately. If our food were bad or tasteless, we would wish for better food, though few of us would have the expertise or talent to provide it. Even if we've never experienced an environment that is well organized and productive, we wish for that environment."
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