“Come on, move on over to Jenna’s station, kids. We need to get this moving along.” Marcie clapped, but her smile was big and Adam knew she loved the kids, every single one of them.
He watched as they painted and she walked behind them, talking to them, hugging them, sharing stories about herself and the days when she’d been young enough to paint macaroni necklaces. One boy asked her if he had to wear it. She told him that he didn’t have to, but he could give it to someone, to a younger child and tell them what he’d learned. She hoped they would all go home and tell what they’d learned to younger children who couldn’t attend.
“Why aren’t there younger kids here?” Adam whispered to Jenna.
She stood and poured more paint into her container. “They don’t want to get kids too young in here with the teens. I think this group ranges in ages from ten to fourteen. They have a senior high class they’d like to bring later.”
“Oh.” Adam handed a younger girl a few wipes to clean her messy hands. “Wipe them up good, so you don’t ruin your clothes.”
She looked down at her knee-length shorts and T-shirt and then smiled up at him. “It’s okay. I don’t think I can hurt these.”
The hole in his heart grew. He’d never gone without, not once in his life. He wondered how many of these kids went without decent meals, or woke up cold in the winter. He knew that it happened, but facing it, seeing it for himself, was shifting the part of his life that had been all about him.
This had changed Billy. He had seen kids like these and wanted to do something about it. He had just gotten sidetracked along the way. Billy had had a good heart.
“More paint.” Jenna sat back down, but she nodded toward his paint. It was nearly empty and three children remained. A girl with a thin face and long brown hair moved up to the table. Her clothes were threadbare and her smile was weak. Her hands shook when she reached for the brush.
“Are you okay?” Adam lowered his voice, so it didn’t boom and scare her to death.
She looked up, big gray eyes averted, not looking at him. She nodded but he didn’t believe a kid could look like that, with a face that pale, and be okay. He glanced down at Jenna. She was already on her feet.
“Honey, can I do something for you?”
The child shook her head. The paintbrush was in her hand and she swiped red over her macaroni. She sniffled and wiped at her nose and eyes with her arm.
Where was Marcie? Adam looked behind him. She had just been there, but she mentioned cleaning supplies for when they finished. Jenna stood and started around the table.
“Let me help. Are you hungry?”
The girl nodded.
“Didn’t you get lunch?” Jenna asked, her voice tender, gentle.
The girl shook her head. Chuck, at the end of the painting table, came back to them, his freckled little face a mask of seriousness. Adam really liked that kid.
“She didn’t get any lunch ’cause that bully, Danny, took her sandwich and chips. She just got milk.”
“Well, now, that isn’t going to work.” Adam knew his voice probably rattled the poles that held up the tent. The girl cowered against Jenna, her gray eyes wide.
“Calm down, Goliath.” Jenna’s lips pursed and she scrunched her nose at him.
The girl giggled a little. “He does kind of look like Goliath.”
“Yeah, well, we can take him down with a single stone and a little faith, so we won’t worry about him. He’s just loud and doesn’t know any better.”
“We need to get her some lunch and have a talk with Danny.” Adam kept his voice a little quieter, and he hoped a little less frightening.
“We’ll do that. But how about if we let Pastor Todd or John talk to Danny.” Jenna winked at the girl and then smiled a silly smile at him. With her arm around the girl, she moved away from the tent. “We’ll go see if we can get her something to eat.”
“Okay.” And leave him with the kids? He did have another helper or two, but they’d kept pretty quiet at their end of the table, casting curious glances his way, but not speaking.
“Can we still play basketball?” Chuck, not about to give up.
“Yeah, we can play.”
“Cool. I’m going to play basketball with Adam Mackenzie.”
Adam laughed, because he couldn’t believe that was all it took for this kid. He glanced behind him, watching as Jenna walked across the lawn with the little girl. And he wondered who Danny was that he’d take food from another child.
Jenna watched the little girl Cara eat the sandwich and chips that they’d found with the leftovers in the fridge. The child barely chewed the food and then she licked her fingers, not caring that she was being watched. When she finished she wiped her hands and looked up.
“That was good.” Cara smiled again, the gesture transforming her pixie face. “Can I go play now?”
“You can. I think it’s free time for an hour or so.” Jenna nearly fell over with the force of Cara’s hug. And then the girl was out the door and running across the lawn.
Slower than earlier in the day, Jenna walked out the door and watched as Adam shot the basketball, making it into the basket and then catching it, tossing it to Chuck. The boy aimed, but the ball hit the rim of the net and bounced away. He ran after it and when he returned, Adam stood next to him, showing him how to throw, how to make the shot.
He was a hero. Her boys had seen that in him from the beginning. He knew how to stop, how to just give what the kids needed. And he didn’t even know that about himself. He didn’t know that part of Adam Mackenzie that made people feel good.
Jenna sat down on the bench a short distance from the court. Timmy and David ran out of the back part of the kitchen where there were classrooms. They were carrying crosses made from sticks and yarn.
“You guys ready to go?”
“Do we have to?” Timmy hugged her tight and she leaned back, sitting hard on the bench that she’d vacated. He plopped down next to her. “We like the camp.”
“I know you do, but the camp is for older kids. You got to come today because I was working. And now we need to go home, clean house and feed the horses.”
“Couldn’t Uncle Clint feed?” David sat down next to her, his curious gaze lingering on her face, because he was always the one who noticed. “We could watch a movie together.”
“No, Uncle Clint can’t feed. He took a load of bulls to Tulsa today. We’ll be fine together. Come on, guys, cheer up.”
“We’ll get to come back?” Timmy asked as he stood and reached for her hand, thinking he was big enough to pull her to her feet. He did a pretty good job of it.
“Yeah, we’ll come back.” She followed them across the lawn, past the trailer that Adam lived in, and past the row of cars the workers had parked next to it. Her truck was at the end of that line of cars.
Today it was a really long walk.
“Hey, where are you going?” Adam’s voice, and she could hear his feet pounding the ground. She turned and he was running after them, his long legs in shorts, no jeans this time.
“I’m taking the boys home. They’re exhausted.” She was exhausted. “And I need to get things caught up at home.”
“Do you need help?”
“Of course I don’t.” Her eyes stung with tears she wouldn’t let fall, because maybe she was the only person that got it, that he was this kind. The boys ran on to the truck and she let them go.
Adam stood next to her. “Jenna, I can feed the horses. Let me change and I’ll even drive you home. I can walk back.”
“Adam, really…”
“You can stop arguing.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “I can stop arguing. But it isn’t time for them to be fed.”
He smiled. “Okay, then I’ll come over later?”
“We’ll see. You know, I really can do this myself. I’m used to it. I’ll go home, rest a little, and be back at it.”
A car door slammed. She glanced behind her, and Adam groaned a li
ttle. “My dad.”
“Really?” She watched the older gentleman as he walked toward them, his smile a little hesitant.
“Dad.” Adam held out a hand to his father, and Pastor Mackenzie took it, holding it tight for a minute.
“I came here to help you work. I’d like to see this camp that Billy couldn’t stop talking about. You never know, our church might want to help out.”
“I’ll give you a tour.” Adam looked trapped, and Jenna backed away, giving what she hoped was a clear signal that she didn’t need him and he should spend time with his dad.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jenna touched Adam’s arm briefly. “Mr. Mackenzie, it was good meeting you.”
Adam rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. Jenna Cameron, this is my dad, Jerry Mackenzie.”
“Good to meet you, Jenna.”
“The boys.” Jenna nodded in the direction of the truck. “I need to go before they start it and drive themselves home.”
“I’ll talk to you later.” Adam winked. “Not tomorrow.”
“Well, she seems like a nice girl.” Adam’s dad stood next to him, watching the truck pull down the drive.
“She’s a mom, not a girl.” Adam let out a deep breath and relaxed. “I didn’t expect to see you here today.”
“I know you didn’t, but I told your mother that I’d like to see what’s kept you here.”
Adam bristled a little under that comment. “You didn’t expect me to stay?”
“Did you expect to stay?”
Adam stopped walking. He stared out over the camp, quiet in the late-afternoon heat. The kids were in the chapel behind the door, doing skits. Everything was neat and clean. It looked like a camp—not a summer camp like the ones attended by the children of his friends, with pools, tennis and gymnasiums, but a good camp where kids could have fun for a week.
And he hadn’t planned to stay. He had wanted to sell it as soon as possible. Until just a few days ago he had wanted Jess Lockhart to get his way and shut it down.
A couple of weeks and his life had changed.
“No, Dad, you’re right. I hadn’t planned on staying. At least not staying for this reason, to get it up and running.”
“Maybe this is your fire?”
Adam shook his head, not getting it. “My fire.”
“You wanted to be a fireman. Remember, even when you were little, you begged me to take you to town so you could ride on the fire truck.”
“Yeah, I remember.” He had forgotten, but now it came back to him, that moment on the front seat of that truck, flipping switches that sounded sirens. He had always wanted to be a fireman.
But this wasn’t his fire. Unless a fire was just an emergency that needed to be put out. He could admit that the place meant something to him, something more than he had planned. But it would feel good to turn it over to Pastor Todd, knowing it would continue.
“Are you still planning the job in Atlanta, then?” Jerry Mackenzie stopped a short distance from the chapel. It was a big building with screened sides, a roof and a tall steeple. Ceiling fans circulated the air, adding a little breeze to cool the kids sitting on the wooden pews.
Adam watched as four kids on the stage worked together to create a skit. He smiled at their seriousness. And he remembered church camp when he was ten, and how he had felt about his faith.
“Yeah, I’m still leaving.” And it wouldn’t be as easy as he had once thought. He had found a group of people that were as willing to be used as he was unwilling to be used. Two weeks had changed his life.
“Let’s look at what else you have here. I don’t want to interrupt the kids.”
But for a minute they stood watching the kids who were talking now, saying the words to “Amazing Grace,” and acting it out. Adam smiled as one child wandered around on the stage and another went to help him find his way to a child who was playing Jesus: “was lost, but now he’s found.”
“Let’s go.” Adam walked away, hurting on the inside, because he felt like he’d been lost for a long time and now that he was found, he was going to leave again.
After dinner, Adam watched his dad drive away, and then he started down the drive on foot, in the direction of Jenna’s. He wanted to check on her. He also wanted to walk and think. Maybe even pray.
As he walked up her drive, the dog ran to greet him.
“Dog, you really need a name. I can’t believe that someone as emotional as Jenna Cameron left you with a moniker like that.”
He walked past the house to the barn. He could see her inside, sitting at the table with the boys. They had their heads bowed. His heart did a strange clench. He’d have to tell them goodbye.
And it wasn’t going to be easy.
Now he understood why Jenna hadn’t wanted the boys to get attached. But at least they were prepared. He hadn’t been prepared for the thoughts of missing her, missing them, that assailed him. He had never expected it to be hard to leave.
The dog nudged his leg. He looked down and the animal pushed him again with the stick it had picked up. Adam took the stick and tossed it and then he walked through the double doors of the barn, taking a second to adjust to the dark, and to the smell of animals, hay and dust.
From outside in the corral, horses whinnied to him, not caring that it wasn’t Jenna. They just wanted their evening meal. He opened the door to the feed room and flipped on the light. A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling flashed on, bright in the dark, windowless interior. A mouse ran behind the covered barrel that held the grain and something rustled in the empty feed sacks.
He grabbed a bucket, pulled off the lid of the barrel and scooped out grain. Three scoops for the two horses in the corral. She had fed the horses in the field that morning. So the two in the corral needed grain and hay. He couldn’t forget water. In the late-June heat, that was easy to remember.
He walked outside, back into bright sunlight. The horses trotted over and he poured the feed in the trough, half on one end, half on the other. Not that it mattered, because the two animals went back and forth, ears back, the dominant horse, a big bay, eating at one pile and then chasing the black-and-white paint away from the other pile.
The dog barked, like he knew and wanted to do something about it. “Buddy, you’re going to have to let them work it out.”
The dog wagged his tail. “Yeah, Buddy. That’s your name.”
The dog wasn’t his.
The dog looked up at him, sitting back and wagging his tail. “Yeah, you did good. Come on, let’s drag the hose out here and fill up the water.”
A car rolled up the drive, drawing the dog’s attention away from farm work. The animal sat at the gate and barked. Adam turned on the hose and stuck it in the tank and then he walked out the gate to greet Pastor Todd.
“Jenna’s in the house,” Adam explained as he met the other man at the front of the barn.
“I know, but I’m here to see you. Jess called me.”
“Great. What now?”
“He finally came clean.”
Adam lifted his hat, ran a hand through his hair and settled the hat back in place, pushing it down a little tighter.
“He has demands? What is up with this guy?”
“He wants to sell you the twenty-acre field that sits between your place and his.”
“I don’t want his twenty acres.” Adam turned and walked back to the barn. “You can come with me. I have another water tank to fill.”
“I know you don’t want the land, but I told him I’d talk to you. He gave me a fairly good price.”
“I don’t want his land.” Adam turned, shaking his head. He grabbed the hose and walked the short distance to the tank that watered the horses in the field. “I’m not going to have this old guy extort money from me. If I buy this land then he’ll have another problem, something else he wants from me.”
“I don’t think so. I think he’s looking for a way out of town. This was his wife’s hometown and he wants to go back to Nebraska.”
&
nbsp; “Let him go.” Adam reached to scratch the jaw of the gray gelding that came up to the fence to drink. The horse pushed against his hand and then moved away, sticking his nose into the fresh water and swishing it before taking a long drink.
“Adam, he’s going to a meeting tomorrow, taking his lawyer. They’re going to try and find a loophole that takes away your right to have this camp.”
Adam rubbed his brow and thought about it, about the camp, about the church and the kids. It was all on him.
The one guy who didn’t even want to be here had to make the tough decisions for this camp that he’d never planned to have anything to do with. A short month ago he’d been living his life in Atlanta, clubbing on weekends, dating a model who had only one name, and never knowing who he could trust.
That part of the equation had been left out of the biography of his life. When magazines wrote about him, it was about the nightlife, the women, the money and the rumors.
It was never about loneliness.
“Give me time.” Adam sighed, because maybe they didn’t have time. They had another group of kids coming in two weeks. The camp had, not him. “I have lawyers working on this.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to push you into something you don’t want to do. I wanted to present the facts, and then the decision is up to you.”
“I’ll take that into consideration.” He smiled at Todd. “I’ll even pray. But let me see what my lawyer comes up with. You know, this is something Billy should have taken care of, this zoning problem. And there’s a chance he did take care of it.”
“Or he saw something he could do and he went forward, not realizing how much trouble it could cause.”
“Yeah, he had a habit of doing that.” Good-hearted or not.
“Well, I’m going to head out. They’re having a song service at the camp and then roasting marshmallows.”
“Sounds like a good time.” Adam liked the idea of roasting marshmallows. He hadn’t done that in years. “I’ll be over to join them after I check on Jenna and the boys.”
“I think the kids at the camp would love it if you joined them.”
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