What It Was Like

by Peter Seth

  Sid had disappeared someplace, so I was left to fill out all the trunk tags alone, which were color-coded for where the trunks had to go: Westchester (red), Jersey (orange), Manhattan (green), Long Island (blue), etc.

  There were also these Camper Performance Reports that we were supposed to hand in every week, commonly called “the B.M. charts” because there was a column to be checked off, indicating whether said camper had a proper bowel movement that day. I am not kidding about this. That was in addition to all the activities that were supposed to be listed, along with a wide column for special achievements. Anyway, I hadn’t kept up with the B.M. charts since Stewie left, and now I had to finish them off to hand in to Dale, who had to hand them in to Jerry. No paychecks were to be released until all the B.M. charts were handed in. So I had to sit in my bunk and make up stuff to finish them off while the Doggies packed and fought and packed and fought.

  “What did we do last Wednesday night?” I called out, racking my brain for something I probably wanted to forget.

  “The Haunted Campfire!” the Smart Doggy answered promptly.

  “Right!” I said, quickly writing down the same thing on all ten charts spread out on the bed before me. I could get them finished before . . . before what? Rachel was stuck with her bunk too. There was no place to go. There was so little time left, and I was far from where I wanted to be. I should be with Rachel, getting the most out of the last days of Mooncliff and planning our first days back in the real world. Instead, I was calculating and recording the bowel movements of nameless children whom I would never see again after Thursday.

  The two days before the Burning of the Lake on the last night of camp, Dale came to me with a proposition that changed things.

  “How’d you like to work Close-Down?” he asked me.

  Close-Down was three days of work after the campers left, closing everything up in Mooncliff that needed to be closed, putting away what needed to be put away, and essentially reversing everything that we did during Orientation. I knew about Close-Down because the other counselors had mentioned it. It was excellent pay for a few days’ work and was a plum that Dale, who was in charge, handed out to his favorites.

  “Me?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I was thinking that sometimes we weren’t so fair to you about some things, so I thought if you wanted to work Close-Down, I’d be happy to use you.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Let me think about it, but yeah, I could use the money! Thanks!”

  I started to think about telling Rachel, about calling home and telling them that I’d be a few days late. Then I thought of something else.

  I shouted after Dale as he was walking away, “Dale! How will Jerry like that I’m working Close-Down?”

  Dale turned and smirked, saying, “Jerry don’t run Close-Down.”

  I was excited to tell Rachel. On the one hand, it would postpone our getting together right after camp, but on the other hand, it would give me a lot more money for the fall; money that would help us all through the autumn and beyond.

  But when I told her, I didn’t get the response I was hoping for.

  “That spoils all my plans!” she said, her blue eyes literally darkening.

  “What ‘plans’?” I asked her.

  “Everything!” she said. “You don’t understand. My parents won’t let me go out with you until they meet you –”

  “Fair enough,” I commented.

  “But they’re not living together anymore,” she continued. “So to get them together to meet you is not an easy thing. I’ve gotten them to agree to meet you at our beach club the day after we got home.”

  “Your ‘beach club’?” I said, trying not to sound derisive. I already knew about their beach club from Sharon Spitzer.

  “And now that’s all gone for nothing!” she said, right in my face.

  “I’m sorry, Rache’,” I said, “but don’t you see? Getting offered Close-Down is a good thing. I just can’t turn down that much money for only a few days’ work.”

  “How much are they paying you?” she asked.

  I told her.

  “Is that all?” she said, raising her voice. “To hell with the money! I can give you that out of my birthday money, for God’s sake!”

  That was a bit of a jolt to me: I knew that we came from different “worlds” (towns, income, family situation, etc.), but her disparaging comment about how much I was going to earn for Close-Down made that fact “real-er” than it had ever been before. And, truthfully, it was annoying; I’m not rich and spoiled.

  “Well . . . I’m sorry,” I said without feeling apologetic. “But it’s a lot of money to me, and I can’t turn it down. It’s only a couple of days, and then I’ll be able to buy you –”

  “I don’t want you to buy me anything!” she cut me off.

  I tried to reason with her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had things set up with your parents?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t want to tell you until it was set,” she answered. “I just got off the phone with her this morning, and it was not particularly pleasant. But I did it because I want things to be right for us when we get home.”

  “So do I!” I said. “That’s why I can’t turn down the Close-Down money. You don’t realize it now, but I’m doing this for us.”

  She looked at me and said bitterly, “Why are you trying to spoil the last days of camp?”

  We argued it all around again, with no different conclusion. We were both very stubborn people, but I wasn’t going to give in. I had already promised Dale, and as I said before, I could use the money.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But there are certain things I have to do.”

  She turned and walked away from me, but I couldn’t play her spoiled, rich-girl games, not every time. There were certain things on which I had to take a stand, at least at the beginning.

  The last night of Mooncliff was the Burning of the Lake ceremony. It was the crowning ritual of the summer, symbolizing the end of blah-blah-blah, to be renewed next summer with more yak-yak-yak. Even though I knew that this was to be my one and only summer at Mooncliff – there was no way that Stanley would re-hire me even if I wanted to come back – I nonetheless felt a pang of emotion, thinking about the past eight weeks. Even though I’d had more than my share of trouble here, this place would always be special to me because, trouble or not, it was where I met Rachel.

  Of course, the Burning of the Lake was not an actual fire. It was a fireworks show, set out on the swimming area floats and some rowboats that had been moved into position around the lake that afternoon. There was a big cookout with burgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, and unlimited pitchers of bug juice, spread out in the setting sun on the hillside sloping down to the lakefront. Everybody brought a white Mooncliff T-shirt for friends to autograph with the green Magic Markers that were spread around in #10 cans. The P.A. system played Motown and Beatle songs, and everybody was pretty mellow, with the food and the scene and the sense of it all ending.

  When the sun was almost completely down, the last of the light dying on the lake, Jerry tapped his microphone, and he and Harriet began the ceremony of the Burning of the Lake. With some fake-Indian drums thumping behind him as torches were being lit one by one, Jerry, wearing a very impressive, slightly ridiculous feathered headdress that hung way down his back, commenced reading the text of the ceremony. It was a corny hodge-podge of an “Indian legend” about the purification of the Spirit of the Lake to sanctify our memories and cleanse our souls for the challenges of the Harvest Season. (It was also a big fat commercial for Mooncliff, subtly urging all the campers to be sure to tell their parents that they had to come back next summer, to complete the Great Cycle of Nature or something like that.) The “text” was solemn and silly, but taking it semi-seriously was part of the fun. I looked down at the Do
ggies sitting on their blankets, faces just visible in the glow of the torchlight, and they were all absolutely enraptured. “Many summers ago, when the Earth was still new . . .”

  Once the actual fireworks started to the blasting sound of recorded Sousa, with the Doggies completely engrossed, I melted away from them and drifted toward the back of the mass of campers. As the fizz of bottle rockets and storm of sparklers began shooting up from the floats on the lake, with all the shrieking and laughing and whooping in the dark excitement, I found Rachel in the deep shadows of the trees behind the crowd, where she knew I’d be looking for her. We moved together naturally and kissed deeply. I could see that she had been crying.

  “I get very emotional at these things,” she whispered into my neck, looking down, catching her breath softly between kisses.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “Emotion is good. In fact, in some situations, emotion is required.”

  “I hate when we fight,” she said. “Let’s never fight again.”

  We kissed until she broke away and said, looking searchingly into my eyes, “I just don’t want to be like my mother. I just want someone to love me for me. Is that so terrible?”

  I saw real fear in her eyes, a deep fear, maybe for her, the deepest.

  “No,” I said as tenderly as I could. “It’s not so terrible.”

  We kissed again as the fireworks exploded in the sky, with ooohs and ahhhs all around us. We held each other as Roman candles, cherry bombs, and sparkler wheels “burned” the lake. Star mines boomed in the hills, and all the kids screamed. The embers from the sparklers and the multi-stage rockets, the exploding shells and mid-air flowers flew up into the velveteen sky and disappeared into the stars.

  As the whole Mooncliff population, arm in arm, sang the camp Alma Mater, whose treacly words I won’t even reproduce here – and, believe me, they’re worse to the tune of “Danny Boy” – Rachel and I kissed and held each other tight against Time.

  “I’m scared to go home,” she said, hiding in my arms. “I shouldn’t be, but I am.”

  “We’re going to be fine,” I said, trying to sound as comforting as I could. “I promise you, things will be better once we’re out of here: We’ll be free. No Jerry, no Harriet, no schedule to obey.”

  “But they’ll be other things –” she said.

  “And we’ll deal with them!” I assured her. “As long as we’re together, nothing can hurt us.”

  “But what am I supposed to do when I get home,” she asked. “And you’re not there for three days?”

  “Do everything that you have to do, and wait for me,” I said. “We’re going to do everything right. We’re going to make this last forever.”

  “I love you so much,” she said, which is exactly what I wanted her to say. As the last thunder of fireworks exploded in the sky, she gave me a kiss that could last me, if not forever, then for the next three days.

  Record of Events #15 - entered Tuesday, 9:15 A.M.

  ≁

  The last morning of camp was drizzly, cool, and foggy, right out of a 1940s black-and-white movie. I almost expected to see Bogart in a trench coat leaning against one of the buses, a cigarette dangling from his lips, amused by the whole sorry human scene. The rain made everything more difficult. All the wet gear cluttered up the bunks and the Mess Hall, dripping on everybody and complicating everything. One stupid Doggy lost a galosh (one galosh, two galoshes?). I had the kids strip the sheets off their beds one last time. They needed breakfast – and I needed a major transfusion of coffee – but we all wanted to just get the kids on the bus and get them out of there. It was time.

  Coming out of the Mess Hall, I could see the buses lined up across the baseball fields. Rachel and her bunk hadn’t come out yet, but it was all too insanely busy to spend time waiting. During breakfast, the bus lists for the kids, fresh and warm from the mimeograph machine in the Main Office and fragrant with intoxicating purple ink, were handed out by Esther, and one of the Doggies thought that he was on the wrong bus. So in addition to making sure the kids had made and packed a paper-bag lunch (cold cuts or peanut butter and jelly) for the bus ride, and getting them back to the bunk for a last clean-up, now I had to deal with this misrouted Doggy.

  I ran up to the Main Office, got my misplaced Doggy onto the right bus, and made it back to the bunk, completely soaked, so that when Jerry called for the Inter boys on the P.A. system, we were barely ready. (Damn Stewie for not being there!) I made sure that the Doggies had picked up all their stuff, eye-swept the floor one last time, and we were outta there.

  It had not stopped raining, but it was a little lighter, so our soggy march up to the buses was a bit easier. The Doggies’ spirits were high, all excited and giddy, so one last time they sang the Rawhide theme that gave them their name. “Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ . . . Keep them doggies rollin’ . . .” And we walked fast, in lockstep, and laughed at the “move ’em on, head ’em up, head ’em up, move ’em on” hash they always made of that part. We didn’t care. The momentum of the moment carried us up to the buses.

  Organized in front of the array of monster silver buses, Harriet in a perfect green Mooncliff canvas poncho yelled through a bullhorn, reading from a clipboard, ordering “My bus captains!” and “My bus monitors!” around at high volume. They had all done this before, but it still felt disorderly. Everything was loud, with kids rushing everywhere. I checked one more time that all the Doggies had the right color-coded tags. The drizzle seemed to hold the bus fumes in the air, souring the scene. Diesel and rain: never a good combination, and so soon after breakfast. Already I heard the sound of one kid throwing up; at least it wasn’t one of my kids.

  I looked for Rachel down the line but didn’t see her in all the mess and bustle of umbrellas and the crowd, spread across the baseball field. I wanted to go find her, but I was stuck with the Doggies with no other counselor to spell me. Sid had unsurprisingly disappeared.

  “God, it stinks around here,” said Marcus, sidling up next to me, dripping rain off his Mooncliff baseball cap, carrying his big knapsack.

  “Tell me about it,” I replied, still scanning the crowd for Rachel.

  “So you’re working Close-Down?” he asked, already knowing the answer. “I wish Dale’d asked me,” he continued. “I could use the bread. Damn, these buses stink.”

  “They have to keep the motors running so the air-conditioning stays on,” I said. “Otherwise, they’d get too hot inside.”

  “Please don’t talk reason!” he said, “I’m almost past my puke-point!”

  “Connecticut Bus Number One! That’s yellow tags only!” shouted Harriet through her bullhorn. “Connecticut Bus Number One – yellow tags only! Let’s load ’em up here at the first bus on my left! My left!!”

  “That’s me! I’m going back by way of my uncle’s house in Stamford,” said Marcus. “So call me, Brainiac!” he shouted, backing away. “And I’ll tell you what really happened this summer.” With a smirk, he waved and was gone down the row of buses. I was going to return one last wisecrack, but I let it go. Strange guy; OK to hang with but down-deep unhappy.

  The Doggies started to nag me, all at once. They were all restless and who could blame them, standing in the rain for too long.

  “When are we getting on the buses?” a stupid Doggy asked.

  “When they call you!” I answered impatiently.

  The Very Fat Doggy pulled on my sleeve and whispered up to me, “Hey . . . Hey! . . . I gotta go.” Meaning the bathroom.

  Great! “You’ll have to hold it,” I told him.

  “New Jersey Bus Number One! Orange tags only!” called Bullhorn Harriet. “Let’s load ’em up here, right next to me on my right!”

  “New Jersey!” said the Doggy Bully. “That’s me!”

  “Good!” I said. “Go! Get out of here!” and I pushed him out of our line and toward his bus as the other Do
ggies shouted goodbyes. One down, nine to go.

  “Manhattan Bus Number One! Green tags! You’re next!”

  The Very Fat Doggy pulled down on my shoulder and squealed with discomfort, “I gotta drain my lizard! Real, real bad.”

  I turned on him and growled, “Tie a knot in it!” I looked around for someone to watch the Doggies, but no friendly face was there to help me.

  “Long Island Bus Number One!” called the Bullhorn. “Long Island blue tags! Start your loading, Long Island Bus Number One! Blue tags only!”

  That could be Rachel’s bus! She was on one of the Long Island buses – there were three of them, the largest contingent.

  The Very Fat Doggy was starting to dance in place next to me, crossing his legs. “Hey, I really-really-really gotta go!”

  “OK!” I said, “Come with me!”

  I turned to the Smart Doggy and gave him an order. “You listen for the announcements from Harriet and make sure all these guys get on their right buses, OK?”

  “Yeah! Definitely!” he answered.

  “Good!” I patted him on the shoulder of his wet poncho. “I’ll be right back!” To the Very Fat Doggy, I commanded, “Follow me!”

  I took off, hustling across the soggy grass behind the lines of campers waiting for the call to board their buses. I glanced behind me to make sure the Very Fat Doggy was with me. As I passed by the lines of Junior boys and Junior girls and their counselors, there were so many umbrellas up that I couldn’t see around them. I knew Rachel had to be somewhere around there.

  The Very Fat Doggy pulled on my sleeve, whining, “Where can I go?”

  I pointed to a girls’ bunk that was back about fifty yards from the ball field and said, “Look! Go over there to that bunk!”

  “But that’s a girls’ bunk!” he protested.