What It Was Like

by Peter Seth

  “Nah,” he grunted. “I’m good.”

  The Doggies were crowding around so I shooed them away.

  “Come on!” I barked at them. “Leave Stewie alone.”

  “Yeah!” said the Fat Doggy. “Let the Groinmaster pack in peace.”

  I got the kids ready for General Swim. They hardly talked, and I could hear a few of them sniffling. I wonder if they would have cried for me, had I been the one who was leaving.

  A couple of the Doggies came over to Stewie with a brown bag filled with contributions from everyone for his drive back home to Massachusetts: Hershey bars, gum, Charms, strips of candy buttons, and a couple of six-packs of Nik-L-Nips.

  “This is for your trip,” said the Fat Doggy.

  “A CARE package,” added the Smart Doggy.

  Stewie turned and took the bag from them. “Thanks, Dogs.”

  He put the candy into his gym bag, but the Very Fat Doggy shrieked, “No! The chocolate’ll melt!” He practically dove into Stewie’s gym bag, retrieved the candy, took out the chocolate, and put it in a different bag.

  “Keep these separate!” the Very Fat Doggy said very seriously to Stewie, handing him back the two bags of candy, but showing him which one had the chocolate, “And keep this one out of the sun. The sun is the archenemy of chocolate!”

  “Come on, Dogs,” I called them. “Into suits! Who has ‘grounds’ today? I don’t want to see any wet suits on the floor after we get back from swim.”

  “Are we gonna see you later?” the Doggy With Braces asked Stewie, who was almost fully packed by now.

  “Yeah,” said Stewie, without turning around. “I’ll see you all later.”

  I could see that he wanted to be left alone. “You guys go on down to swim!” I said. “I’ll be right behind you. Go on! . . . And you, putz, don’t forget your towel again!”

  When the Doggies were gone, I changed into my bathing suit as Stewie clicked the locks closed on his last suitcase and checked his other belongings in a pile on his bed.

  “You sure you’re OK, man?” I said.

  He just sighed.

  “When the next laundry comes in, I’ll send you your stuff,” I said. “Leave me your address on my bed.”

  “Good idea,” he said, turning to me with a little smile.

  “It’s good you have the Super-Coupe,” I said. “So you can take everything with you.”

  “Right,” he said, swinging the closed suitcase off the bed and onto the floor with a thump.

  “You still gonna be here after swim?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Cause you shouldn’t just go without saying goodbye,” I said.

  He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I guess he was pretty close to his grandmother, with all his stories about his grandparents’ cranberry farm. I love both my grandmothers, but I don’t know if I would leave camp if one of them died and not come back even after the funeral. Maybe I would. In any case, Stewie was going.

  “I gotta get down to swim,” I said. “They’ve been on my case like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I’d believe it,” he said with a tight smile. “Life is full of surprises.”

  “Yeah,” I said, standing at the open screen door. “Well . . . see ya.”

  “Take care, man,” he said, giving me a twisted smile and a little power-fist salute. “Me gotta go now.”

  As I turned to go, he yelled out one last thing, “Hey! I’m gonna send you some real cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving! Beats the hell out of that Ocean Spray crap.”

  I let the door slam behind me and trotted down the steps toward the Boys’ waterfront. I was sorry to see him go; he was basically a good guy and a good co-counselor. And that was the last time I ever saw Stewie Thurman.

  I ran down the path to the Boys’ waterfront in my flip-flops, thinking how insane the last few hours had been. I hadn’t even gotten to talk to Rachel, to see what she was going through. I wondered if she got the same going-over I got, but from Estelle. As I got down to the waterfront, I saw that the kids were already lining up to sign in at the Buddy Board. I grabbed a long bamboo pole from the rack and went out onto the dock. I found an empty space in front of Area #3 and stood with my pole as the pairs of checked-in kids dove into the water.

  My head was spinning with clashing thoughts. Would they move another counselor into Stewie’s spot, or would I be covering Bunk 9 all alone? That didn’t seem likely; I needed some kind of back-up, handling the Doggies. Leaning on my bamboo pole, I looked over at the Girls’ waterfront across the lake where the girls were having their General Swim. At this distance, I couldn’t see clearly, but I wondered if Rachel was over there. There was so much I had to tell her. And I wanted to see how she was holding up. Why were these people so dead-set against us? It was only a summer camp; the whole idea of a place like this was to fall in love and have fun. Instead, they wanted to bully and tyrannize us. It was pure jealousy. I wasn’t a bad counselor. I just wanted to be with my girl; that didn’t hurt anyone. I saw how the other counselors treated their kids. Even Stewie used to whack them occasionally or snap a towel at some kid’s bare butt. I never hit any of the Doggies, no matter how much they might have deserved it. It was funny how righteous Stanley got about not wanting to leave a bunk with two new counselors, as if he were protecting the integrity of something precious. If it was that important to Stanley not to leave the bunk with a strange counselor, I should have asked him for more money right then and there! (Only kidding.)

  The whistle blew for the buddy call, bringing me back to my senses on the dock. I moved the long bamboo pole from one hand to another, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun. As the kids started to count off their numbers, I looked down into the deep, dark water of Area #3 and saw the vague flicker of something red on the bottom. At first, I thought that it was just a shaft of sunlight, going down into the water. Then I saw that it was a kid!

  Instantly, I dropped my pole and dove straight down into the black water, pushing down off the edge of the dock. I pulled down with my arms and kicked my feet to dive deeper toward the Red, but my stupid flip-flops hampered me. I kicked them off and swam deeper. There, I saw the boy lying face down on the bottom of the lake – his hair was what was red. I swam frantically, ripping my way through the water, down to where he was. As I grabbed the kid’s wrist and pulled him up off the sand, I saw that it was the Redheaded Doggy!

  Holding his arm as tightly as I could, I pushed off the squishy bottom, jerked my body upwards, and swam to the surface as hard as I could. I kicked my legs to get some force upwards. My lungs were bursting and burning. Pulling as hard as I could with my other arm, I swam up toward the light above. I wouldn’t let the Redheaded Doggy’s arm go, even though I wasn’t sure I could make it to the surface. I was about to let it all go when I burst into the open air. I gasped once, hauling the Redheaded Doggy up out of the water. Coughing and choking, I called “Help!”

  People were already in the water, ready to help me. Someone took the Redheaded Doggy away from me just as someone else grabbed me from behind and pulled me up, clear of the water’s surface. I was still gasping for breath, spitting out water as someone else yanked me up the ladder and onto the dock.

  Choking, I was turned onto my stomach, but I could see that they had already put the Redheaded Doggy onto his back, and Sal was blowing air into his mouth. Kids were crying, standing all around as I tried to get my breath as water and mucus coughed out of my nose and mouth.

  “Get back! Get back!” someone yelled. “Give ’em room!” said someone else.

  I tried to get up, but someone pressed gently on my back and said, “Stay down, man, stay down. Get your breath.” And that seemed like a good idea. My sides ached and I still was spitting up watery phlegm. I had this fiery, shooting pain in my forehead and my temples, but I was OK. I was alive. I was breathing. I was breathing, and
so was the kid.

  ≁

  The next thing I knew, we were back at Bunk 9. Someone had run to get Dr. K. from the Infirmary to check out the Redheaded Doggy and me. Stewie and his stuff were completely gone, but people hardly noticed. Now the Big Topic was how I saved the Redheaded Doggy’s life; Stewie’s leaving was old news. Dale came to the bunk to see the Redheaded Doggy, and Sal, who actually saved the Doggy with his Red Cross breathing, showed up too.

  Sal sat on the end of my bed. I was sitting up after the doctor had examined me and given me the OK. I must have swallowed a gallon of lake water because I still felt a little queasy. But all that didn’t matter; what mattered was that the kid didn’t drown.

  “Thanks, son,” said Sal to me with real sincerity, patting my leg. “You did good. I’ve never lost a kid, and I didn’t want to start now.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was kinda bizarre. I was lucky that I saw him.”

  “No,” said Sal. “He” – pointing to the Redheaded Doggy on his bed – “was lucky you saw him.”

  Of course I should never have had to save the kid in the first place; his swimming “buddy” – the Doggy With Braces – should have been watching out for him, and truthfully, the Redheaded Doggy wasn’t a strong swimmer and probably shouldn’t have been passed into Area #3 in the first place. But all that didn’t matter now: I was a hero.

  By Evening Line-Up, word had spread all over camp so that Jerry had to call me up to the flagpole, to help with the lowering of the flag. I gave Jerry a big smile and wave. I could see that he was burning inside. Not only did I still have my job, but he also had to be nice to me, “the hero.”

  After dinner, I was besieged on the front porch of the Mess Hall by all kinds of people congratulating me. Kids, other counselors, people who hadn’t talked to me all summer came up and patted me on the back or said something nice. I was humble about the whole thing; it was lucky that I saw the flash of red in the water. I didn’t say that if I hadn’t been daydreaming about Rachel and our situation that I might have seen the Redheaded Doggy go underwater in the first place, and no heroism would have been required.

  In the midst of all the well-wishers, I saw Rachel at the back of the crowd. I hadn’t seen her since last night. I had so much to tell her and to ask her. Was she OK? That’s really what mattered to me.

  Fortunately, the crowd saw her . . . and parted. They opened a path for Rachel to walk straight to me and give me a huge, deep, warm, wet kiss. Everyone whooped and cheered at our kiss. I was a little embarrassed, but on the other hand, I didn’t care. It was almost the end of the summer, and I was kissing my girl.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered to her.

  I took Rachel’s hand and broke through the crowd. People still cheered and clapped as I pulled Rachel free and down the stairs of the Mess Hall porch. As we walked away, hand-in-hand and temporarily free, I saw Jerry and Harriet and Estelle, standing together, all three of them, looking our way disapprovingly. For the moment, I didn’t care: I had saved a kid’s life, had nearly drowned myself don’t forget, and I had Rachel.

  It was Free Play, and we managed to elude the Doggies and her girls to steal away to the Quarry. As it turned out, Rachel wasn’t so good, and the Quarry was the perfect place to talk.

  As we walked down the trail to the Quarry, Rachel told me how they – by “they,” she meant Harriet and Estelle – had been very mean to her about her going to Bailey’s with me and breaking her curfew. They’d threatened to call up her parents, which was the last thing that Rachel wanted. She had to make a special plea to Stanley not to let them call her parents. He finally stopped them from making that call, but she said that he hadn’t been very nice to her.

  “Why are people so horrible?” she sighed.

  “Because they’re jealous. They see us, and they’re just jealous,” I replied, taking her hand as we walked through the cool forest. “People are unhappy and frustrated in their lives so they have to look outside themselves, to take revenge on others.”

  “That’s what I see my parents do,” she said, looking straight ahead, her expression grim. “I’m really looking forward to going home. It looks like I’m going to live with my mother, but they’re gonna make me go to my father’s house, every other weekend, wherever that is.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know! He never liked me around the house when he lived there. Why would he want me now?”

  “To punish your mother,” I said.

  “Exactly!” she exclaimed, gripping my arm. She had a strong, bony little grip. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No,” I said. “It makes perverted sense. People do what they want to do for their own selfish reasons. Nothing is accidental.”

  “How am I going to get through all this?” she wondered.

  I turned her around by the shoulders to face me.

  “I’m going to save you,” I said, looking straight into her eyes. “That’s how.”

  “OK,” she said, trying to smile. “I believe you.”

  It was the right thing to say, and what’s more, I meant it.

  When we got to the Quarry, we saw that unfortunately we were not alone. Across the water, a bunch of Boonies were partying on the cliff on the far side. There must have been at least twenty kids and quite a few cars. We could hear the radio from one of the cars, blasting across the Quarry, but I couldn’t tell what the song was. We couldn’t actually blame them for invading “our” space; it was a beautiful evening to be outside, and it was really their hang-out, their space.

  One guy in a bathing suit stood at the edge of the rock and, to our amazement, jumped off the cliff and straight-arrowed, feet first, right into the water, far, far below him.

  “Wow,” I said. “That guy is out of his mind!”

  “I guess that water really is super deep,” Rachel said. “No wonder they dump all their garbage there.”

  Another Boonie jumped into the water – head first, in a beautiful swan dive – to the whoops and cheers of his friends.

  “It’s amazing what people will do for some cheap thrills,” I said.

  “They just want to be free,” she declared. “Just like everybody else.”

  I spun her toward me, took her in my arms and whispered in her ear, “Someday, it’ll be us. I promise. . . . Someday.”

  We had to run through the forest to get back on time, but we made it.

  Record of Events #13 - entered Monday, 9:01 P.M.

  ≁

  Of course I should have known that Jerry, Harriet, Estelle, etc. weren’t finished with us. They could have left well enough alone, but they had to prove that they had the Upper Hand. (Why do adults always have to do that?) They couldn’t fire me and kick me out of camp now that Stewie was gone, so what did they do? They found a way to send Rachel out of camp. The second-to-last week of camp was the big Senior Trip, a five-day excursion to a bunch of different places (this year, it was the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Howe Caverns, and some other touristy sites I can’t remember), and at the last minute, they decided to make Rachel a chaperone.

  “Bastards!” I said when she told me of their plan to send her away. “Who thought of that brilliant idea?”

  “I don’t know. Harriet? That scarecrow Estelle?” she said bitterly. “Who knows?”

  “You could refuse to go,” but even as I said it, I knew that that wasn’t going to happen. She was still a C.I.T. and, technically, could still be ordered around.

  “Oh, I wish I could,” she winced. “But when they didn’t call my parents after the Bailey’s thing, I promised Stanley that I’d do everything by the letter until the end of camp.”

  “And this is how they treat you? By sending you away from me for five days?” I said.

  She had no answer for that.

  “We can do it,” she said with weak enthusiasm.

&nbs
p; “We have no choice.”

  The Five Days Without Rachel were a big lesson in Negative Learning. I learned that I did not like being without her. It was one thing to miss her for a few hours between morning and afternoon activities, or not see her overnight. But to go for five days without her was both actually depressing (I missed seeing, talking, touching, etc. her) and annoying (it was completely unnecessary and punitive). There were plenty of other C.I.T.s who could have gone on the Senior Trip. They picked Rachel just for spite, to keep us apart. And I haven’t mentioned all the other things they did to keep us apart all summer, like making sure that we were on different teams for the Olympics – she was a Greek, I was a Roman. Plus they made sure that we were on opposite ends of the climactic Apache Relay. And the all-camp Sing too. She was a Martian, and I was a Buccaneer. You should have seen her, her skin all painted green, dancing the “Martian Monkey.” It caused a sensation in the camp and greatly displeased Estelle, Harriet, and all the other prudes, blue-noses, and killjoys.

  I learned that not only was the world a lot less fun when Rachel wasn’t around, I was a lot less fun. I was grouchy and impatient with the Doggies, and I didn’t particularly care that I was. Dale moved Sid, from Marcus’ bunk, over to us to take Stewie’s place, but he proved to be almost completely worthless. He was a warm, fat body, and that was about it. All Sid did was read Mad magazine and steal candy from the Doggies. He was like a big Doggy himself, only he was supposed to help me watch the kids, not just lie on his bed, chain-smoke Viceroys, and pass gas. For two of the Five Days Without Rachel, it rained like some monsoon season somewhere. I had never seen anything like it; the rain came down like nails. So the kids were restricted all day to “bunk games,” which meant sitting on their beds, reading comic books or playing quiet games. For me, it was two days of napping, brooding, and breaking up fights over Battleship, Sorry, and a coveted PEZ dispenser in the shape of Wonder Woman. Not to mention a maddening day-and-a-half long argument among the Doggies (and idiot Sid) about which superpower would be the best to possess. My personal choice? Invisibility.