That first night, he prayed to it, lying on the cold concrete floor underneath the saw horses, thinking it might make all the difference as in the presence of the crucifix was where it had all begun. But after there was, again, no answer, he merely meditated with it for hours, laying his hands on different points on the sculpture in hopes of once again feeling the pulse that he reluctantly had to admit he didn’t believe he’d feel again. At this point, however, already into the second week of June, Father Billy’s plan for the summer camp was well under way.
He hadn’t known exactly what he was doing when he started taking the sculpture apart, but once he decided that he didn’t care if the wood ended up fractured beyond repair, it was a lot easier. After awhile, he had but one goal anyway: extract the three, foot-long iron spikes that represented the nails used by the Romans to affix Christ to the cross.
It had taken all night, but he finally managed to tear them out of the wooden limbs they’d been ‘driven’ into and weighed each in his hand. One of them had been bent at the tip when the sculptor had pounded it into the hole he’d chiseled out, but Father Billy figured he could straighten it out if it proved an impediment.
But staring at the three nails now three weeks later in camp, now removed from the heavy black leather satchel he had brought them and a handful of other, equally sinister items to Camp Easley in, he suddenly realized that he knew where the sculptor had gotten them from. Though prefabricated railroad spikes had become fairly standard in the twentieth century, he had seen photographs of the crude, poorly-patterned spikes that were used prior to this. Each one would have to be smithed individually, meaning tiny differences and imperfections in the iron would reveal that no two were identical. That was definitely the case here.
Each one was about thirteen inches long, weighed seven or eight pounds and could be easily hefted in one hand. Unlike, say, a kitchen knife that had a handle or a dagger that had a hilt, these nails required the holder to grip them just under the nail head, which could be awkward once the tip struck anything more solid than sour cream. Father Billy had experimented with downward thrusting movements involving the nails for days, repeatedly sliding his hand down the four-sided spike, which led to more than a few cuts and even splinters from residual pieces of wood still embedded on the nail’s flaws.
“It’ll take more than that to stop me,” Father Billy reflexively joked skyward as he applied band-aids to his palm.
The solution turned out to be simple enough — gloves, specifically weightlifting gloves where the padding was concentrated on the palm and underside of the first two knuckles, leaving the fingertips free with webbing around the palm to allow significant range of movement for the rest of the hand.
Satisfied that everything was in order, Father Billy carefully lowered the spikes back into the satchel, careful not to knock over a number of bottles placed on the bottom, then replaced the satchel under the sink.
For the rest of the afternoon, Father Billy spent time outside amongst the campers, getting to know the kids in this summer’s camper class. Though he’d gone over the enrollment list a number of times back at Church of the Lamb and recognized almost all of the names, these were turbulent years for a lot of the kids and even though he might think he knew a camper from a previous year, they could turn out to be a completely different person this summer.
And, understandably perhaps, he didn’t want any surprises.
Just before dinner time, Father Billy retired to the administrator’s cabin and began laying out his plans for the first night. He’d always considered a mask to be essential as he figured the element of surprise might give him a couple of extra steps, but then every mask he’d been able to track down (being summer, few stores were stocking Halloween wares) were ill-fitting and limited his vision. He tried on a motorcycle helmet and a ski mask at a sporting goods store, but the helmet was impossibly heavy and the ski mask had the same problems as a fright mask.
Then he got an idea doing a hospital visitation. He’d been with a parishioner who’d been in a car accident and had some sort of head injury that had been wrapped in gauze. Father Billy went to the drugstore and bought several boxes of sports bandages. He came home and wrapped them around his face in the mirror, replicating those from the head injury, but continuing to add bandages until his entire face was covered. He was quite happy with what he came up with, finding them easy to adjust when they moved and no hindrance to his sight. Also, if they were damaged in any way, unlike a mask, they were inexpensive and easy to replace.
In addition to the bandage mask, he also bought four black Nomex jumpsuits, the kind favored by racecar drivers that would work as a sort of uniform when he was doing the business and might hide him a little more. Between the suits, the bandages and the gloves, he imagined he’d be able to mask his identity completely, at least in the short term.
He waited until it was exactly nine o’clock, the time the campers were required to be in their cabins (lights out wasn’t until an hour later) and checked his watch against the cabin clock before rising. He went to the bedroom and slipped on the first of the Nomex jumpsuits before walking to the bathroom mirror where the first roll of bandages was already waiting by the sink. After regarding his face for a moment, as if wondering if the man looking back at him would actually be able to accomplish what he had set out to do, Father Billy began slowly coiling the bandages around his face, beginning at his neck, just above the jumpsuit’s collar line. When he finished with the first roll, just as he’d covered the bridge of his nose, he clipped a second roll to the end and continued until all but the crown of his head was covered in bandages. He stared at the small patch of black hair still spiking up over the bandages, and made a decision. Taking out his electric razor, he shaved that small remaining circle bald like a friar’s representation of a halo, creating a pastiche of the holy and the unholy.
His uniform complete, he turned off all the lights in the cabin and sat back down on the sofa to wait.
“Hey, come here...”
Cindy woke up when she heard the whispered entreaty, but then realized it was coming from outside her window. She climbed out of bed, figuring frisky campers were already mixing it up outside in the woods, but when she pulled the blinds aside, she saw that it was Pamela and Humberto, just a few feet away from the counselor’s cabin, already wrapped up in each other’s arms.
Pamela glanced up and saw Cindy in the window and smiled guiltily, but then turned back to kissing Humberto, whose back was turned to the cabin, oblivious to being spied on.
“Pamela and Humberto?” asked Judy from the bunk opposite Cindy’s, also having been awoken.
“Yep,” Cindy replied, replacing the blinds and flopping back down on her bunk. “Guess we can’t begrudge them. They are planning to get married and they’ve been apart for a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t know that if you’d been around Humberto all week,” Judy scoffed.
“What do you mean?” Cindy asked.
“He kept trying to pick me up the whole time,” Judy said. “It was embarrassing. He actually tried to kiss me. I was really uncomfortable.”
Cindy tried to imagine Humberto making a pass at the hardly-attractive Judy when he had Pamela waiting for him, but figured boys were boys.
“Why didn’t you say something to Father Billy?” Cindy asked.
“I did — over and over,” Judy said. “Father Billy just said he’d take care of it once the other counselors got here.”
“Ugh. If it had been me, I would have slugged him.”
“Yeah, but with Humberto, that just might make it worse.”
Cindy sank back onto the bunk, figuring that might be true. She wondered for a second if she should confront Humberto with it, but then supposed if Father Billy said he’d take care of it, he would.
Evan Sebag and Bobby Rusch were the biggest stoners at Church of the Lamb and everyone knew it. Year after year, they came to camp with quarter-pound bricks of marijuana in their
bags that they either sold or smoked up themselves, often going through the entire stash in the first week having the hopeless lack of self-control common to many a pot smoker. They’d been smoking out almost since they’d arrived that afternoon by the open-air teaching amphitheater and, after everyone else was in bed, were now raiding the pantry of the mess hall, having jimmied the lock with a skillfully-made skeleton key that they’d now successfully utilized four years in a row.
As they munched through a large bag of chocolate chips, Evan pulled out a joint and asked Bobby if they should smoke just one more before bunking down for the night.
“Are you asking me a question?” Bobby replied.
Becca Roy, the tiny girl who had been unceremoniously lifted over a large boy’s head and thrown into the water, was out in the woods past lights-out crying her eyes out. Not because of the earlier indignity, but because she had recently discovered she was pregnant, but had no idea who the father was. It was one of four boys, but there’d been a party towards the end of the school year and she’d had a threesome with two of the senior boys from the baseball team. That same weekend, she’d also had sex with her boyfriend, Lawrence (a Baptist kid who wasn’t in attendance at Camp Easley) who she knew was cheating on her with Leilani and at least one other of the cheerleaders.
And finally, she’d also been having a sexual fling with her social studies teacher, Mr. Guardino. He was single, so that was good, but he wasn’t particularly attractive; she’d just wanted to see what it was like to have sex with an older man. He had a cheesy mustache, was slightly overweight, but was also an absolute god in bed – at least compared with any of her other hopelessly inexperienced partners. Soon, she found herself fantasizing about him every time she was with any of her more age-appropriate partners. Part of her really hoped the baby was his. She knew the other boys would just deny it or ignore her and walk away, but Mr. Guardino, Elliott, she felt would take care of her. She’d probably move into his house, he’d keep teaching and, at first, she’d raise their child on his salary. When she turned sixteen, maybe she’d get a part-time job and see if her mom wouldn’t babysit afternoons so she could earn some extra money. Elliott would be home by four, (he’d made her call him “Elliott” even though she liked calling him “Mr. Guardino” in bed) so she could work some kind of late afternoon or evening shift. It just might work.
Out alone under the stars, she tried to comfort herself with this fantasy when she heard footsteps behind her in the woods. She figured it would be the boy who lifted her over his head, Albert? Aaron? Something-‘A.’ She knew he’d be there hoping to have sex with her and she began to mentally prepare herself. She didn’t really want to have sex, but she realized that she didn’t particularly want to be alone, either.
She turned around, trying to look as coy as possible, as if it had been her idea to lure him out there in the first place and now her seduction was coming together ever-so-perfectly.
What she saw, however, wasn’t the boy with the pale, zit-covered ass, but a tall man in a black jumpsuit, gloves and bandages covering his face holding an iron spike.
He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Shhhhh...”
IV
Faith woke up early Monday morning, even before her travel alarm went off, and climbed out of bed to take a quick shower before heading to the kitchen to cook breakfast. She looked over at Maia, who was still sleeping, and snuck out the back door to the showers.
Faith had a system when it came to the showers, same as she did in gym class. She hated her body, there were no two ways about that, so she always brought the clothes she’d be changing into as close to the shower as possible. At Camp Easley, that meant hanging them on towel hooks outside the individual stall. She would strip down, hop into the shower, bathe as quickly as possible, and then turn off the water and towel down, generally while standing in a puddle. With some difficulty, she then got dressed, trying not to let her underwear or shorts touch the floor or walls of the stall, though this didn’t always work – leaving her clothes with water stains that would, admittedly, dry out completely within the next ten minutes, but still led her to presage countless embarrassments. If this all went well, she’d then walk out of the stall fully clothed except for socks and shoes, which she’d put on after toweling off her feet a little ways away from the showers.
There were plenty of girls who simply walked out to the showers naked except for their towels carrying their bathing accoutrements in little baskets and then would walk back to their respective cabins similarly clad to change there, but Faith found this incredibly immodest. It wasn’t so much the idea of the camp’s boys seeing her, though, but the other girls.
One of the reasons she had first signed up for the breakfast meal-prep job way back when was because she knew it would mean having the showers all to herself in the mornings.
But as she stripped down, she suddenly heard the back door of Cabin 6 click shut ever-so-gently and looked over to see Maia walking over with her shower basket.
“How come you didn’t wake me up?” she asked, but then reversed herself. “Well, you did wake me up with all your clattering around, but how come you didn’t wake me up on purpose?”
Faith half-laughed at this, but as she was already almost undressed, she very quickly finished the task, hanging up what she wore as pajamas on the hooks and dove into the nearby stall before replying.
“I thought you might want a few more minutes,” Faith said. “You had your own alarm set, right?”
“Oh, I’ve been awake since around four-thirty,” Maia said as she stripped off her pajama shorts and t-shirt and entered the stall next to Faith’s.
The walls were short enough that Faith was a little uncomfortable, but as she was determined not to come off this way, she didn’t say anything and tried not to be too obvious by overly covering up.
“I’ve always been an early riser,” Maia continued, soaping her arms and legs. “In a perfect world, I’d go to bed around eight or nine every night and get up at three or four. Everybody’s still asleep, the neighborhood’s quiet. It’s fun to be up that early.”
“Really?” Faith said, a little skeptical. “Don’t you get tired?”
“Not particularly,” replied Maia. “And there’s always caffeine.”
“True,” replied Faith, shampooing her hair.
“Did you see that that one girl’s bunk was empty?” Maia asked.
“What girl?”
“The skinny one who was on the other side of the cabin. Pale, black hair, doe eyes. Really tiny.”
Faith tried to think of who Maia might be describing, but came up blank.
“Maybe she got reassigned to one of the other cabins,” Faith offered. “There are always extra bunks the first couple of days and people trade.”
“But all her stuff was still there,” countered Maia. “Bet she spent the night with some boy.”
“Could be,” acknowledged Faith casually, not wanting to sound un-worldly. “It’s pretty frowned on, though. They’ve sent people home before.”
“That’s extreme.”
“Well, if someone gets pregnant, can’t their parents can sue the church or something?”
Maia scrunched her eyebrows. “I don’t think they can sue, but they might get pretty pissed and raise a stink about it.”
“Still, it’s pretty bad,” Faith said, rapidly rinsing off soap as hurriedly as she’d applied it. When Maia eyed her haste with curiosity, Faith shrugged.
“It’s really only the first day of camp, so I know whoever else we’re stuck with in the kitchen this morning’s going to be late,” Faith said, hoping that explained it. “So, I always try to get to the kitchen a little earlier.”
“Ah, okay,” replied Maia.
Faith turned off the water and grabbed for her towel, hastily drying off, but feeling as if Maia was watching her. Even though she was still quite wet, she reached for her panties to accelerate the dressing process, only to have them immediately slip through her fin
gers and fall onto the floor of stall, right on the wet drain. She looked up quickly towards Maia, expecting a guffaw or at least a sympathetic look, but Maia was busy shampooing her hair and apparently hadn’t seen. Faith shook the water off her underwear as best she could and, with a grimace, slipped them on, still soaking wet.
“See you in the kitchen,” she said after throwing on the rest of her clothes and breezing past Maia’s stall, forcing a grin.
Maia turned and nodded back, but not before she caught Faith’s gaze, which was staring at her naked body. Faith’s eyes met Maia’s, which were half-surprised, half-querulous, and immediately, Faith turned bright red.
“See you in the kitchen,” was all she managed to say, unwittingly repeating herself.
By the time Faith got to the kitchen, she was still trying to talk herself out of her embarrassment. So, she’d seen Maia naked, big deal. It would’ve been worse if Maia had been looking at her naked. She decided to forget all about it and focus on cooking breakfast. When Maia came in, well, she wouldn’t mention it and if Maia did, she’d make a joke and that would be the end of it.
She hoped.
Cindy had delivered the mess hall key to her the night before at dinner, figuring rightly that Faith would be the first one to the kitchen. As Faith unlocked the door and swung it wide, the familiar musty smell of years past wafted over her. With a happy tinge of memory, she walked in, leaving the door ajar for Maia and the others.
The morning’s menu – laminated — was already lying out on the counter and Faith picked it up, scanning it quickly, though she knew without looking at the weathered page what would be called for as the same page had been in her fingertips many times before.
The first recipe was for a veritable mountain of scrambled eggs that required quite a bit of prep, but as it was an option every day of the week, she had it down to a science. She supposed she’d assign Maia to pancake/French toast duty as that required attentiveness, but not a lot of skill other than a consistent batter-pour to be sure you didn’t run out before making the daily required amount of pancakes (200) and have to quickly whip up another batch. Whoever the other two meal-prep people were could handle filling the cereal dispensers, putting out plates and utensils and getting the steam trays ready for all the food, Faith determined. It didn’t take very long and, in a pinch, Faith knew she could do it all herself if they simply didn’t show up as had happened to her once or twice before.
Sunday Billy Sunday Page 6