by Peter Seth
Finally, to stop all this noise, Dale put his two index fingers in his mouth and whistled, so loud and so high (damn, I wish I could whistle like that) that everything in the room came to a screaming, screeching, whistle-controlled halt.
“Inter Camp! Please sit downnnnnn!” he ordered from the front of the room, and, as he let his “nnnn” die, everybody did just that. They might have been giddy and fidgety, but they all sat right down. I was impressed by Dale’s command of the room.
My Doggies were in the second row, behind the younger Inters. Stewie was on one end, and I sat on the other, next to Bunk 10 and Marcus, who kept up a steady stream of low chatter as Dale called the meeting to order.
“Welcome, Inter Camp . . .” he shouted. “To the best summer of your lives!”
As if on cue, the kids cheered like mad. Dale and Estelle beamed as they let the kids release some energy.
As Dale addressed the Inters, I looked around the big room. The basement of the Rec Hall – the upstairs had a really nice, professional-quality basketball court and a full stage for doing plays and talent shows and things like that – featured a large, all-purpose room with a juke box, ping-pong table, and a big playing area for games and general hanging out. A few steps up to another level, and there was the Snack Shak, the Camp’s canteen. (Did I mention that a great many things at Mooncliff were named the something-Shak, in honor of the Marshaks? There was the Snack Shak, the Nature Shak, the Boat Shak, the Boys’ Milk Shak, the Girls’ Milk Shak . . . you get the idea.)
My gaze wandered across the walls covered with green-and-white pennants and black-and-white photographs of happy campers from earlier years. They seemed to have a nice sense of tradition here. I guess that there is something timeless about a place like this: time goes on, but the kids always stay young.
Then it happened: I saw her. I caught a glimpse of this older girl across the room, sitting with the Inter girls. She was sitting on the end of the second row, as if she were a counselor, but I hadn’t seen her before. She had long, dark hair and seemed to have a pretty face (it was a big room and she was far away). But there was also something else. Just the way she sat with her arm around the crying, probably homesick little girl next to her, comforting her, she attracted me instantly.
“Psst!” I whispered to Marcus,. “Who’s all the long, dark hair over there?”
“Oh,” he whispered back with a snort. “Forget it. She’s trouble. Totally spoiled. A Marshak cousin.”
“Why haven’t I seen her before?” I muttered.
“I don’t know. She must be a C.I.T. this year,” Marcus whispered back. (C.I.T.s were “counselors-in-training.” They were seventeen-year-olds: too old to be campers, but too young to be counselors. Stanley charged them only half the camper rate for the privilege of being taught how to be a counselor.)
Dale coughed and shot a look our way. Estelle was talking about something.
“Come on, guys,” hissed Stewie to our kids, snapping his fingers. “Pay attention!”
“As far as evening activities off campus,” Estelle announced to the eager Inters. “We’re going to be going bowling,” which elicited oohs and ahhs from the kids. “And GO-karting!” Bigger oohs and ahhs. “And if you listen to your counselors and play your cards right . . .”
Unable to take my eyes off the pretty girl across the room, I whispered to Marcus, “She really has this interesting attitude going on, and –”
“Don’t even bother,” muttered Marcus. “She teases a couple of guys to death every summer. It’s really nuts. Nothing happens.”
I grunted some acknowledgement, but I didn’t stop looking at the girl. I like to think that I’m not easily impressed, but there was something undeniably appealing about her. Even from across the room.
“What’s her name?” I whispered.
“Rachel . . . Prince,” he intoned softly, and I heard, for the first time, the name that would be forever linked with mine.
Record of Events #3 - entered Wednesday, 8:01 P.M.
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That was the first time I saw her. I saw her several times more before I actually spoke to her. It wasn’t a question of my not having the courage to go up and speak to her – well, it was that – but it’s mainly that there was no opportunity. I saw her twice a day, at morning and evening Line-Ups around the flagpole, in those first couple of days. She looked as if she were in her own perfect little world, standing quietly with two or three adoring girls around her. Once I saw her at the pay phone outside the Main Office, twirling the phone cord around and around her forearm as she talked intensely to someone on the other end. I looked at her, and I think she looked at me, but we didn’t really meet until the fourth night. I suppose that I could have just walked up to her at any time and struck up a conversation like a normal person, but that’s not me.
The first time we talked – the very first time – it was the night of the fourth day, and the Doggies, along with the rest of the Inter Boys, had their first Evening Activity with just the Inter Girls: square dancing. Now this was a pretty hard-core-sissy, squirm-inducing activity for a bunch of nine- ten- eleven- and twelve-year-old boys. But it was the first real icebreaker with the Inter Girls, something that had to be done sometime.
So Stewie and I herded the Doggies – all of us dressed like cowboys, or as close as we could come – to the upstairs of the Rec Hall, all the way fighting their reluctance to do anything that combined girls and dancing. But I have to hand it to Jerry or the Marshaks or whoever at Mooncliff found these square-dancing people; they had this old geezer (I guess that’s redundant, but he was so old, redundancy in this case is simply the correct emphasis) named Pecos Pete, and he called one helluva square dance.
“Honor your partner! Honor your corner!” Pete’s charming, rinky-dink combo of bass, banjo, guitar, and kazoo/apple-cider-jug/washboard/spoons/Adam’s apple, played by what must have been his family (the whole bunch looked like the Joad family, but with sequins), got even the shyest kids up and dancing. Oh, sure, some of the kids were goofy, but the music eventually worked its honky-tonk magic. We circled right and circled left; we dozy-doed this way and that way. I’m not the greatest dancer, but this I could do.
I don’t remember exactly what songs they played as I tried to “dance” and keep my kids in line. But I do remember those glimpses I had of Rachel, all night long, as she danced.
How she danced! She was two squares away from my square, but as I circled right and circled left, as I allemanded left and allemanded right, I could see her, her dark hair flying, her eyes sparkling, graceful hands reaching out to help the little kids in her group or whipping them around the square, their feet barely touching the floor. She was having such fun that it made me have more fun. The drive and good humor in the music, the dancing, and the general tone of just-barely-controlled confusion (kids giggling, beaming, sweating) made the night fly by. Swing by, really.
The square dance ended in a big, yahoo circle, and the boys who until recently couldn’t stomach the thought of dancing or even holding some girl’s hand for more than a second had to be dragged out of the Rec Hall bodily.
Coming out of the wide back doors into the night air, herding my sweaty Doggies, is when I literally ran into Rachel . . . well, almost. This was the first actual moment of contact, under the pool of floodlight, right outside the doors. She, stumbling over her girls; me, counting my kids, struggling still to recall their names, and tangle-footed too. And then, there we were, face to face.
She smiled at me. There was a slight pause in the Universe.
I said, “It’s hot.”
She said, “It’s summer,” looking me right in the eyes. Her eyes were very blue. Blue-blue. Right then, right then, I felt that something was going to happen between us. I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew it was going to be something . . . significant.
The path back to the bunks from the Rec Hall
divided – Boys’ Campus, one way; Girls’ Campus, the other way – but for a while, before the split at the big baseball backstop, girls and boys could walk together. That’s where the older campers, the boyfriends and girlfriends, could get one last kiss before being separated.
So Rachel and I, with the other counselors, walked the kids back down the path toward the big backstop, all together. This is when we talked for the first time, introducing ourselves carefully. At least I was being careful.
“You’re new,” she said. That was a good sign; it meant that she had noticed me.
I didn’t say anything. (Did I freeze, or was I just being smarter than usual by not being me?)
“You’ll like it here,” she added, with an easy certainty in her voice.
“I believe you,” I said. Not sure if she was being sincere or condescending.
We walked for a moment in tantalizing silence.
“I’ve been coming here, to the Moon-shak, forever.”
“I didn’t see you at Orientation,” I replied, feeling what it was like to walk next to her. I was just tall enough for her.
“They made me come up with the campers. In the buses,” she said, reliving the unpleasant memory. “But at least I’m a C.I.T. now – finally.”
“So now you get the best of both worlds.”
“Or the worst; my curfew is an hour earlier than you counselors, and I can’t go off campus.”
“Oh, that’s not so bad. I’m sure you’ll find a way around that.”
Which made her laugh, once. Good. That was a start. The laugh, and a look. As we walked and talked, I was listening not only to her words but also to the sound of her voice. Her voice was musical, the way she ran her words together or lingered over individual syllables. She played her voice like it was some instrument: she was quick to laugh, quick to darken everything; one moment celebrating the smallest detail of something, and the next, condemning something or someone else with a surprising, full, throaty ferocity. She had this insolent, confident manner, so relaxed about her beauty that as she walked next to me, talking to me, I felt myself being drawn in.
“I like my girls, the girls this age,” she said. “They’re very honest and pure, before all the teenage drama begins.”
“You don’t like teenage drama?” I asked.
“Only my own,” she said. Which made me laugh.
“But this is definitely my last year here,” she went on. “So I want to try to be a good counselor.”
“Why is it your last year?” I asked.
“It just is,” she said, with a simple finality that made me ask nothing further. At least for the time being.
“They put me in with Sara Molloy,” she went on. “Who is a very good counselor. They call her Serious Sara, but I like her anyway.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re going to be a very good counselor too,” I said.
“How would you know?” she shot back to me.
I was a little stung by her sharp response but didn’t show it. I liked how she talked, her quick words and her sly smiles, how she didn’t simply accept my cliché of a compliment. I liked how she was playing with me.
“I just have this feeling,” I said, completely casual.
She smiled when I said that.
“I saw the way you danced back there,” I said. “Tossing those kids around like rag dolls.”
“I’m very strong . . .” she smiled. “For a girl.”
“I bet you are,” I answered right back, trying to keep looking in her eyes and not down to her upper arms and the rest of her body.
With a twist of her mouth, she was about to say something flirtatious (I think) when Estelle, standing guard at the big backstop, stopped us all cold.
“OK, boys! Back to Boys’ Campus nowwwww!” announced Estelle. “Girls – you know where to go!”
Rachel moved away from me, gathering her campers. “OK, Bunk 8 – you heard Estelle!”
I had to say something to her before she got away.
“So, that was fun,” I said, indicating the Rec Hall and the square dancing.
She paused, turned on me, and purred, “I approve of any activity where you honor your partner.”
The formality of her diction and the direct way she looked at me stood me still for a moment. I laughed, and she liked that I laughed. Then she turned with a smile, knowing that she had almost certainly conquered another male heart.
She looked great, walking away bouncily, quickly hugging one of the girls to her side and joining in their song or game or whatever they were doing. I stood there for a moment, watching her go. When she walked away, it was as if the world had dimmed. Everything was a little darker, a little less exciting, a little less alive. I noticed that the very first time she left me, and it was never, ever really any different.
I was snapped back to the present world by the Redheaded Doggy, pulling at my arm. I had promised to read them a story after Lights-Out if they cleaned up the bunk a little before Evening Activity, and kids unfortunately never forget a promise. So I walked with Stewie, herding the Doggies and the other Inters back to the Boys’ Campus, all the while thinking of Rachel. Marcus caught up next to us, falling in step through the damp night grass.
“That’s where you’ll have to break up the boyfriends and girlfriends, later in the summer.”
“Boyfriends and girlfriends?” Stewie said. “But these kids are only eleven!”
“Are you kidding?” Marcus squawked. “These horny little suckers! Summer is all about raging hormones. Besides, some of ’em are almost twelve. All they whisper about is ‘cuppies.’ This girl’s got cuppies, that girl’s got cuppies.”
“What’s ‘cuppies’?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s Mooncliff slang for ‘breasts.’ I don’t know how it started. Did you see: Mazlish? That little twerp has this poster of Nancy Sinatra in his closet that I want!”
I laughed and said, “I bet your boots are going to walk all over him.”
“I, uh, saw you talking with Prince back there,” said Marcus.
“Yeah,” I said neutrally.
“So . . . ?” he demanded some elaboration.
“So what?” I said. I didn’t owe him any explanation. There was nothing to explain at this point.
Marcus laughed and shook his shaggy head. “Oh, boy. She’s gonna chew you up and spit you out! A girl that pretty, who knows she’s that pretty? You sure she isn’t too much for a regular dude like you?”
I grunted out a “ha” and let him have his laugh. I had better things to think about. And how did he know I was a “regular dude?” I certainly didn’t feel regular, walking alongside Rachel Prince.
We got the Doggies back to the bunk, and with about the expected amount of chaos from getting twelve little boys into bed – with toothbrushing, please! (What is it about young boys and hygiene?) – I settled back on my bed and thought of Rachel, how she looked when she was dancing, how she looked walking next to me, how she looked when we were face-to-face. I mean, I was watching and counseloring and shouting at the Doggies who were screwing around and not getting ready for bed, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking of Rachel. The seed had been planted: real events that I could then relive, re-imagine, and spin into fantasy. Even when I got them into bed and was reading them the story of The Tell-Tale Heart (I’m a huge Poe fan) in the dark by flashlight, I was still thinking of Rachel, seeing her in my mind’s “vulture” eye as I read them Poe’s tale of madness, obsession, and murder.
Looking back on everything now – with my vulture eye – I can’t even begin to describe Rachel Prince in a way that would do her justice. It wasn’t just her physical beauty (the hair, the eyes, the perfect nose); it was her restless, intense attitude and the way that she used her beauty and charm and wit almost as weapons, but selectively, that made her different from any girl I’d
ever met. After all, there are a lot of medium-height, nicely shaped, moneyed, long-dark-haired beauties from the Island and in this world, but none of them had the Life Force that Rachel possessed. If she was selfish and moody sometimes, she could just as easily turn gentle and almost angelic in a moment. If that made her difficult for some people to take, it made her attractive to me. Some people say that Rachel was self-centered. I guess that was true, but if you had a self like Rachel Prince’s, you’d be centered on it too. But there was no objective, external reason for my feelings. Love is not logical, and a great, all-consuming love, which is what we had, creates its own super logic. Only It matters; only It makes sense.
Record of Events #4 - entered Thursday, 5:15 A.M.
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The next morning – the mornings in the mountains were shockingly cold – we tramped the kids through the dew-soaked grass to Line-Up around the flagpole before breakfast. I was tired: this getting up at 7:00 reminded me too much of school, not summer vacation, and now I had to be the enforcer, getting slugabed kids out on time when I was the one who wanted to stay in the sack. Stewie was always the last out of bed, throwing his sneaker at any Doggy who was slower than he was. Through gritty eyes I looked across the big circle of the whole camp – all yawning and toeing the ground, listening to Jerry drone the announcements, saying the Pledge of Allegiance – and looked for Rachel. There she was, standing behind her girls, calmly keeping them in line and quiet. I watched her for a long while. She wore this big coat with a hood that almost hid her face. She didn’t look at me, or even look my way.
Which was fine with me. Just because I was looking at her didn’t mean she had to look at me. After all, she was much better to look at than I was. Of course, ascribing good motives to questionable actions became something of a habit with me, later on.