Not a Happy Camper (13 page)

“C'mawn in,” Jim said. “Take a look around.”

“Not a lot of stuff in here,” I noted.

“Nope. The Spartan life. Just m'bed, m'radio and, of course, the guns.”

A regular hillbilly rube, I would have thought, except Jim was also a vegetarian who grew his own food, an activist who supported
nuclear energy and an avid reader of both
Newsweek
and
Time
, when he wasn't down at the dump shooting at cans with creepy George.

“What's the rope for?” I asked. “Catching the prowlers?”

Jim shook his head. “Still workin' on that. Boys' Side dock come loose. Gonna tie it back up.”

“Hey! Jim!

It was Kenny, returning from the shower house, calling out to his sensei.

“Mornin'.”

“Need a hand with something?”

“Nope. I'm fine.”

“I'm going on the Katahdin trip tomorrow,” Kenny told him. “I'm leading it.”

“Katahdin,” Jim reflected. “That's a fine little hike.” Jim turned to me. “You going, too?”

I'd never considered climbing Katahdin. Until now. There was a trip leaving the next morning, Kenny Uber was going and there was one more spot available.

Dana had signed up and then dropped out at the last minute, leaving me another chance to replace her. I wanted to confide in Hallie, to ask for advice on whether or not I should go. But as much as Hallie and I were alike and it was good to hang out together, she was still a snoop, a potential gossip not to be trusted. She might tell anyone and everyone
why
I would be going on this trip.

Afraid someone else might grab it first, I went ahead and took the spot. As much as I'd disliked overnights at Camp Cicada, I did own some cool stuff and was pleased to have another opportunity to use my canteen, poncho and green sleeping bag with the red flannel lining featuring pictures of elk. My parents had purchased these items a few years before when my older brother, Mark, joined the Cub Scouts and my parents looked forward to his new avocation.

As it turned out, my brother was not meant for the great outdoors. He preferred spending his free time in the Springfield Public Library, reading about Greek mythology and the history of politics. I'd inherited his camping stuff and was willing to put it to use for a chance to get away from Philip and nearer to Kenny.

I had most of the clothes I would need for the climb: plenty of t-shirts, thanks to Judy's older brother Victor, and a baseball cap from my father's law office with the firm's name embroidered above the brim: Schneider, Waxgeiser, Moskowitz, Pinsky, Fallick and McCullough. The letters were really small. I even had a pair of work boots my cousin had outgrown, but I did not have the right pants for mountain climbing. Judy Horowitz had worn flimsy elastic waist shorts that would have ripped in a second and my painters' pants were simply too bulky. I needed to borrow something. Bigger than my bunkmates and my newly svelte counselor, I headed up the dirt road that led to the Junior Counselors' bunks. Secluded in their own little cul-de-sac, these three bunks were known as the Havens, though right now they were just a haven of impetigo.

Hesitant about borrowing things and embarrassed by my size, I timidly entered Haven One where I was assaulted by the commingling scents of Jean Naté After Bath Splash and marijuana. The girls were busy playing backgammon and Chinese checkers and applying cotton balls full of Calamine lotion to their backsides, the stuff you did when you couldn't go near the boys, the stuff (I would realize too many years later) that was a lot more fun than what I was doing. Except for the itching.

Stoner Stacie Hofheimer looked over at me. “You toke?”

I'd never even smoked a cigarette.

“Uh... what flavor is it?” I asked.

“Acapulco Gold.”

The first time I'd seen those words was on a black t-shirt at the mall. I thought it was a vacation resort, the kind of place other
families went to while mine went to Pennsylvania to look at Amish people. Stacie handed me the joint and I pretended unconvincingly to know how to hold it. I may as well have been handling a power tool or a pork chop.

“Just suck it in and hold it,” she instructed me, as if it was the natural thing to do.

I held onto the joint and stared at it as it burned down closer to my index finger.

“Um, actually, I'm going to Katahdin and, um, I need to borrow some pants. If anybody has a pair...”

Stacie took back the joint. “Katahdin, eh?” (She was from Canada.) “Pretty clever plan.”

“Why'd you say that?” I asked, panicked she could see through me, right to my heart.

“Just got a boyfriend and now you're going away. Good way to make him miss you. Pretty sneaky.”

Stacie had a brand new pair of Levi's. We wore the same waist size, but she was tall and thin and the pants were five inches too long for me.

“So cuff them,” she suggested.

“These are brand new,” I reminded her. “You don't mind? They might get dirty if I'm climbing a mountain.”

“That's the whole point. I want you to break them in for me.”

I was thrilled. New pants meant Judy Horowitz had not worn them before and, better still, it meant that no one with impetigo had worn them either. I thanked Stacie and even thought about hugging her (something people seemed to do a lot around here), but refrained when she reached around to scratch her rear.

I was ready for the trip.

to the tune of
Tzena, Tzena

“Peanut butter, peanut butter,
Peanut butter, peanut butter
Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

Peanut butter, peanut butter,
Peanut butter, peanut butter
Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

Jelly! Jelly! Jelly, peanut butter
Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter
Jelly! Jelly! Jelly, peanut butter
Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter

Peach nectar, peach nectar, peanut butter peanut butter
Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter
Peach nectar, peach nectar, peanut butter peanut butter
Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

Grapes! Grapes! Grapes, peanut butter
Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter
Grapes! Grapes! Grapes, peanut butter
Peanut buuu-ter, peanut bu-u-u-ter

Peanut butter, peanut butter,
Peanut butter, peanut butter
Peeee-nut butter, peanut butter

Peanut butter, peanut butter,
Peanut butter, peanut butter
Peeee-nut butter, SANDWICH DAY!”

W
E WOULD BE RIDING TO
M
T
. K
ATAHDIN IN THE
G
OOD
T
AN
V
AN
. I
T
was our one relatively safe and modern vehicle, purchased by Saul from a local mental hospital that went out of business and a point of contention between the girls' and boys' Head Counselors. Boys' Side already had the bigger waterfront, the less-buckled tennis courts and the hotter bad food, so Jacques believed it was only right that they should also have the only decent transportation. And Wendy thought that that was just plain wrong. In the beginning of the summer, in an attempt to prove who needed it more, the two Head Counselors duked it out, each planning as many out-of-camp trips as possible necessitating the use of the van. For the boys, this meant canoeing through freshly sawn logs floating down the Kennebec River or trips to the newly modernized “air-cooled” bowling alley. For the girls it meant rides into Skowhegan where we could buy bandanas at Cut Price Clothing before heading into Woolworth's to fantasize about the percolators and placemats we'd purchase one day when we had our own kitchens.

The battle over the Good Tan Van grew so intense that Wendy and Jacques took to stealing it away from each other in the middle of the night. Ultimately, Jacques won the war simply because Wendy had no great desire to keep sending us out all the time. Her idea of a perfect day was one where everyone was together and busy. And
on the rare occasion when it was sunny, she would declare a Beach Day and we'd spend the whole morning and afternoon down at the lake. Jacques, on the other hand, liked Boys' Side best when it was empty and he could stay behind planning the next batch of activities, or whatever it was he and my counselor did in that back room.

Today, however, we'd be sharing the van as we set off to go climb a rock. The counselor on the trip was upstairs dining hall moaner Julie Printz, a dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanite whose closest experience to mountain climbing thus far was a class field trip to the Statue of Liberty in the early 1960s, when they still let you up into the torch. Used to taking taxis, she wasn't much of a driver either, and spent at least five minutes adjusting the seat and muttering things like, “What's this knob do?” before the rest of us boarded.

Kenny, the one experienced climber, rode shotgun, second in command. He took this trip and his position of authority very seriously, even more so than captaining the inter-camp basketball team, and he'd brought along enough charts and maps to rival Magellan.

“So, you're really into mountain climbing?” I asked, not really interested but hoping to make conversation.

“Yup, climbing's the best” was his reply, which of course would have to change if I had my way, married him in a few years and we bought a house in the suburbs where I'd learn to play Mah Jongg and make onion dip from a bag of Lipton soup mix.

The rest of us were seated in tighter quarters, squeezed together in the rear two rows of the van, crushed by all of the equipment. Our group included Mindy Plotke and a couple of boys from the now-burnt-down Wolverines' bunk. One of them, Keith Fernbach, lived in London, a wealthy kid whose parents thought it might be
nice for him to get away from rainy London and spend eight weeks in sunny America. Oh well. Keith spent a lot of time complaining about the girl back home he'd recently broken up with, a “jolly hockey sticks what-ho” type. I had no idea if that was a good or bad type, I just liked listening to his accent. Marc Gross, from Rhode Island, was better known as “El Mosquito” because, well, he looked like one. The only boy I ever met who slept with his glasses on, Marc never had a nickname before he came to camp and was honored to go by the new moniker.

We'd driven about one hundred feet off the property when Julie realized she'd forgotten to get directions to the mountain, and Kenny's maps and charts were no good to us for another eighty-one miles. “Bloody hell!” Keith Fernbach yelled out. Another thing that was great about having a Brit at camp was learning all of his swear words. Julie dropped us off at O'Boyle's while she went back for a map.

Everyone loved O'Boyle's. While most summer camps have a building designated as the Canteen, a place for socializing and buying snacks, Saul was too cheap to stock his own snack bar and staff it. Instead we shopped at the general store across the street, run by three family members whom we knew only as Ma, Pa and Son O'Boyle. They dressed like we did, in overalls with bandanas, but they were serious. This little building was our oasis of candy and soda in Saul's desert of dreadful food. Rumor had it that the locals shopped here, too, which might explain who was buying the Schlitz beer and dented cans of pumpkin pie filling, but we rarely saw anyone from outside camp. In the summer it was like we owned the place and I couldn't fathom how the O'Boyles survived the winter without our patronage.

Mindy Plotke wondered about that, too.

“I'll bet they love us
and
they hate us,” she stated.

“Why would they hate us?” I asked.

“Everyone hates it when the nouveau-riche invade.”

Mindy Plotke was not only pretty and petite, she was also really, really smart in a dark sort of way, the kind of person I thought my bunkmate Betty Gilbert could be friends with, if Betty ever looked up from her books while she was awake.

A few minutes and numerous junk food purchases later, Julie came back with a map—and Dana Bleckman. For the first time all summer, I wasn't pleased to see her.

“Changed my mind again,” Dana announced as she held up her guitar. “You guys can squeeze me in, right?”

I wanted to say, “No, there's no room for you in the van and no room for you in Kenny's heart. Today it's all about me, me, me.” But that would have made me look bad.

Dana tossed her gear on top of the rest of ours, squeezing into the back row. Kenny appeared more than a little annoyed, too, and I found that temporarily comforting.

Julie's lack of driving skills, coupled with our cramped circumstances, made the trip up the I-95 as uncomfortable as any ride in the Green Truck. In order to make it to the mountain and set up camp before nightfall, we didn't stop until we'd reached the town of Millinocket, home of The Great Northern Paper Company and the last vestige of civilization. The telephone and power lines ended here, so while refueling the van at Last Chance Gas, Julie decided to phone the camp and let them know we'd arrived safely. She placed a collect call, which the Main Office refused to accept.