Not a Happy Camper (6 page)

“I think my counselor might be looking for me,” he said. “I think I have to go back to my bunk. Uh—see you at services, I guess.”

Kenny turned and walked away, but I clung to his last remark. It was surely an invitation. I'd see him again in a few hours.

For now, I needed to get back to my bunk, too. Unfortunately, I wasn't that familiar with the layout of Boys' Side since I'd seen it only in the dark. I knew where the dock was, behind the dining hall, and I walked down to the beach where I found a canoe with a paddle in it. I pushed off and climbed in and since I didn't have a lifejacket, prayed I wouldn't tip the boat over or fall out, as I once again hadn't passed my deepwater test.

There was a reason why I was a terrible swimmer. It was all because of my nose. At my former camp and at the Springfield Community Pool, girls were required to wear bathing caps. But if you are a girl with a prominent proboscis, you do not want to put one on. No number of floppy plastic flowers adorning your headgear can detract from the fact that without your hair to hide behind, you are nothing but a giant nose. I hated swimming because I hated bathing caps because I hated my nose. And because of this, I was sure, my crush on Kenny Uber was going to end up with me drowning.

I paddled slowly at first, feeling for rocks and straining to see if I was heading in the right direction. And then I heard it—Vrroooom! My concentration was broken by a sudden, thundering noise. The motorboat!

“Hey, lookit! Think I see someone!”

“Where?”

They were men's voices, yelling, and they were heading my way. It flashed across my mind that it might be Jacques Weiss or Saul Rattner, coming to get me for being out of my bunk in the middle of the night. Saul would throw me out of camp and send me home to my parents and my parents would be furious. Even if they let me out of the house, I'd end up spending the rest of the summer at the Springfield Pool with my bathing cap on my head,
watching my little brothers, while fat women in muumuus and shower caps hogged the shallow section when they announced it was time for the Ladies' Daily Dunk.

I ducked down, so no one would see me as my canoe rocked from side to side in the wake created by their boat.

I wondered if Kenny would miss me if I left. I hoped so.

“Nah. Don't see nobody,” I heard the second man shout as the motorboat zipped away. Close call, but I was undetected. They didn't sound like Saul or Jacques and I didn't care who they were as long as I wasn't in trouble. I made it back to Girls' Side in what seemed like both an eternity and a matter of seconds, jumped out of the canoe, pulled it ashore, and ran back to my bunk. I tiptoed quietly up the creaky front steps, slipped in through the creaky porch door and slid into my creaky metal army cot.

Betty Gilbert sat up and looked at me.

“Going to be late for swim instruction,” she said.

“But it's the middle of the night...”

Betty Gilbert not only talked in her sleep, she also got up and did things. In this case, she went over to her cubbyholes, pulled out a bathing suit and put it on over her clothes. And then she got back into bed and pulled the covers over her head. She was in for a surprise when she woke up the next morning. Meanwhile, a heavy rain began to fall, wiping out all other sounds, and I drifted off as well.

At breakfast a few hours later, the girls from the oldest bunk, the Junior Counselors who lived up the hill, were not in attendance and no one knew why. It crossed my mind that they might have heard about my adventure and now they were off at some secret meeting, some chic restaurant where sixteen-year-olds go, drinking black coffee, smoking Virginia Slims and laughing behind my back:

“Did you hear about Mindy?”

“Went to Boys' Side last night.”

“To see Kenny. What a dope!”

“As if some boy would like her.”

“As if Kenny would like her!”

“Can I bum another smoke?”

Was it narcissistic to think people were talking about how
un
important I was?

After breakfast, it was time to go to Boys' Side for services, which now seemed like the last thing I wanted to do. Walking around the lake mid-morning was not the same experience as walking there at night. As we paraded by, the sunburned townies at the Public Beach glared at us, inadvertently calling up the opening scenes from
Deliverance
. And then there were the bees. One of the cottages was owned by a beekeeper and during the day his little pets were out in full force. A swarm had descended upon the dirt road just a few feet ahead and we stood there, eighty-five of us, frozen. “Just walk slowly,” the man in the head-to-toe protective beekeeper's uniform told us. “They're really friendly.”

I'd had encounters with bees before. At Camp Cicada I'd managed to accidentally step on a hive while on an overnight in the woods when I was hunting for a marshmallow stick. I figured the eight stings were due punishment, since my plan was to rip a live branch from a tree in order to toast calories I didn't really need. My counselor said it was no big deal and I should cover the stings with mud. By the next day, my whole leg swelled up. Now, on the road to Boys' Side, I was facing hundreds, maybe thousands, a solid wall of bees.

“What's the matter?” Dana asked.

“I think I might be allergic,” I explained.

“Just walk really fast. And close your mouth,” Dana advised.

“You don't want to swallow any.”

She had no idea I had the potential to swell, to look like a hippo or an elephant or one of those balloons from the Macy's parade. And that certainly wasn't going to impress any boys.

The old-timers, experienced with this routine from summers past, led the way. They walked ahead, albeit stiffly and carefully, then motioned to the rest of us. Most of the newcomers tentatively followed, walking a little bit faster, almost running, trying not to scream, as that would have necessitated opening their mouths. Even the youngest girls got up their nerve. I couldn't be the only chicken. I clenched my fists, held my breath and walked as fast as I could through the bees until I joined the rest of the group. Sure enough, the man in the full-body protection was right—no one got stung. Once we were all well past the bees, we ran. This unpleasant ritual would be repeated weekly for the entire summer.

We arrived at Boys' Side about fifteen minutes early. Kenny came bounding up to me.

“Hi,” he said. “How are you?”

I was nearly speechless. I couldn't believe he was talking to me.
Maybe he'd come to his senses overnight?

He asked, “You get back okay last night?”

Kenny was all but ignoring Dana, who was standing next to me. It was too good to be true. I had to say something. Something clever. Something that had nothing to do with singing or how bananas smelled.

“Um... yeah. I got back okay.”

Something better than that, but someone was heading toward us. It was Philip.

“Mindy! Hi!”

And it was the worst possible moment. Couldn't he tell that I was talking to Kenny because I wanted to be talking to Kenny and I didn't want to be talking to him?

Evidently not.

“Wanna see something cool over in the Social Hall?” Philip asked, then, finally noting my expression, “Oh, did I interrupt?”

“Well...” I began, turning toward Kenny.

Kenny was busy watching Dana talking to Aaron.

Philip had messed up everything. And what was worse, it was possible Kenny still liked Dana, even after the way she'd snubbed him the night before. Unless, I thought,
It's bothering him that I'm talking to Philip because it's bad for me to be talking to someone most people ignore and as Kenny's girlfriend, what I do reflects on him.

It was all very complicated.

But talking to someone no one else talks to shouldn't make me look bad. It should make me look... kind. And everyone likes kind people.

So I decided to ask Kenny if he'd mind my leaving with Philip, but Kenny was gone.

Philip led me into the Social Hall and behind the darkened stage. I had no idea what he wanted to show me and wished I had a set of keys with me so I could do that thing where you place them between your fingers, just in case.

But instead of lunging at me, Philip pointed up to the rafters. “Look. See?”

Campers' names and their years of attendance were painted everywhere. At first sight this was nothing special. It is a summer camp tradition to sign your name, to leave your mark so people will know you were here, old-fashioned legible graffiti. I could tell you exactly who had lived in my bunk in 1966 and every summer since. It's also a tradition that when the walls get too full, they are painted over to make room for the next batch of names.

Backstage, however, the walls had never been repainted. These were the names of campers from the early days, including the dead ones Autumn Evening Schwartz claimed to be in touch with. Philip showed me his favorite autograph:
Harold Selig ‘22–‘30
. “That was my grandfather,” Philip explained. “My father's father. He was one
of the first campers when he was a kid.” I tried to imagine my own father's father, Sam Schneider, as a child, but couldn't see anything other than the bald-headed eighty-year-old with the phlegmy cough and stubbly beard cheeks that felt like I was kissing a hairbrush.

“There was this group of Zionists,” Philip explained, thankfully breaking my reflections on Grandpa. “You know, those people who promoted the idea of the state of Israel? Saul's great-uncle was one of them. They started this camp.”

“So it's been in his family for like, fifty years?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wow. The only thing that's been in my family for fifty years is the good silverware which we never use because, you know... it's good.”

“I think we have the same set at our house,” Philip smiled and I could see his teeth were pretty white under all that metal. “And don't tell anyone, but the blankets on my bed? They're like thirty years old. Belonged to my dad when he went to camp here.”

Philip and I had way too much in common.

“So how many kids were here the first summer?” I asked. “How did they know how many bunks to build?”

“They got twenty-five boys from New York City to come up here on a train and pitch tents by the lake. There weren't any bunks.”

“No bunks?” I was stunned. “But I'll bet Saul's great-uncle lied and told all the parents they had them.”

“Probably,” Philip laughed. “‘Oh, Harold, you'll love it in Maine! We have heating and plumbing and Scott Joplin teaches piano and we'll show you how to Charleston and – and...'”

“‘And there's not a single mosquito!'”

“That's right,” Philip said. “‘Oh, and there's girls!'”

“Wait. There weren't any girls?”

“Not for the first few years. The girls came later.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I wrote an essay about camp for school.”

“About this camp? They let you do that?”

“Not just Kin-A-Hurra,” Philip explained. “About the history of all camps. Back to before there were any.”

Before? I knew there was radio before TV and straight leg jeans before bellbottoms, but a time without camp? I'd never considered this.

“In the early days,” Philip told me, “boys would go out in groups with a leader who taught them how to pitch tents and cook over a campfire, their rugged lives emulating Civil War heroes.”

“Emulating.” I said. “You copied that out of
The World Book
, right?”

“You want to know about this stuff or not?” he asked.

I may not have been interested in the Laura Ingalls spinning wheels and butter churns my parents dragged me to see, but I did want to know more about these pioneers.

Philip continued, explaining how, over the next hundred years, what was once the domain of small groups of farm boys with high aspirations and a love of the land devolved into masses of suburban Jews with nametags in their underpants heading into the woods to write letters home complaining about it. I wanted to ask Philip more about the history of this particular camp, but Jacques Weiss rang the bell, summoning us to services.

Rows of weathered, dark red benches faced a large tree by the edge of the lake. This was our holy place. The tree was unique, actually two trees growing from one trunk, side by side. A big wooden box was firmly nestled between the two halves. This box was the
Ark
and it contained the camp
Torah
, the parchment scroll from which scripture was read.

Saul (who claimed to have graduated from some obscure rabbinical college but then chose not to be ordained) stood at a podium
in front of the Torah Tree and officiated. Wendy Katz, head of Girls' Side, had no power here and became just another person in the crowd. She took a seat on a front row bench. Kenny was seated with his bunkmates, so I headed for a spot a couple of rows away. Philip sat down next to me, but when I thought Kenny was looking, I got up and moved, even though I knew it was a mean thing to do.

I wouldn't have had this choice to make at home. In the old days in Europe, when my ancestors had lived like the characters in
Fiddler on the Roof
, Orthodox Jews expected the women to sit in the back or up in a balcony, the way some people in the southern part of this country were once expected to ride at the rear of the bus. But by the time our crowd crossed the Atlantic, most Jews had already discovered that with assimilation came options.

“Reform is lazy; Conservative is hazy; Orthodox is crazy.” That's how my friends at my Conservative Hebrew School kept the three kinds straight.

“It's never a good thing to be more religious than your religious leader,” my mother noted one Yom Kippur, as we walked to temple and the rabbi drove by, waving. “Merry Christmas,” my mother shouted, waving back.