Patiently Alice

  Wrong. They were terrified half out of their minds. These kids, who were used to shouts and sirens, were petrified by the stillness of night in the mountains. This time not only did Ruby and Kim cling to us like Velcro, but Mary frantically reached for my hand, Josephine attached herself to Gwen’s pajamas, and even the indomitable Estelle stayed as close to us as she could get. Only Latisha walked on ahead, but she leaped whenever something rustled or croaked.

  The boys weren’t quite as obvious in their terrors, but I could tell by their silence that they were awed. One little kid, sitting between Andy’s knees, had his head tipped back about as far as it would go, one finger pointing toward the sky, trying to count the stars. But his other hand was wrapped around Andy’s thigh in a death grip.

  Connie Kendrick was sitting on a log with a blanket around her shoulders, and when everyone was seated, she just started singing very softly, and one by one, those of us who knew the song joined in: “Kum ba yah, my Lord, Kum ba yah…”

  When the song was over, Jack Harrigan—as tall as Connie was short—told an Indian legend about the Big Dipper, but I noticed that nobody suggested ghost stories around the fire.

  Then a little boy’s plaintive cry broke the spell: “I wanna go home,” followed by a sob.

  Now, a sob around a campfire on the first night away from home, we discovered, is like smallpox in a crowded tent. The cry was immediately followed by a whimper somewhere else, and then I heard Kim give a tearful gulp.

  But Connie was ready. “Okay, campers,” she called in a loud voice. “What’s the Overlook cheer?” And everybody began to yell:

  “Clap your hands,

  Stamp your feet,

  Our Camp Overlook,

  Can’t be beat!”

  “What?” said Connie. “I can hardly hear you. Is that the best you can do?”

  “Clap your hands,

  Stamp your feet,

  Our Camp Overlook,

  Can’t be beat!”

  we all shouted, the children loudest of all, as much to drive the homesickness away as to frighten any creatures that might be lurking around.

  We sang funny songs next—“Do Your Ears Hang Low”—and then Jack did an imitation of a clown who keeps trying to open an umbrella and hold his pants up at the same time. The kids shrieked out their laughter. Even Kim was giggling in my lap. She was fingering a lock of my hair, twisting it around and around, and I could feel her body shake when she laughed.

  I noticed Richard Harrigan smiling at me across the campfire, and suddenly I felt very self-conscious. My hair was wet, my pajamas wrinkled, my Reeboks untied, and a new guy was smiling at me in a warm sort of way. I smiled back. Then I realized he was smiling at all of us, not me alone. Maybe he was feeling the same way I was, that it was just nice to be with friends. Or maybe I was fooling myself and missing Patrick more than I liked to admit. The cool star-filled night—I could almost feel Patrick’s arm around me, the way I’d snuggle up against his shoulder. I found myself still missing him at odd moments, wondering where he was and what he was doing. But then it passed, and here I was, cozy in my pajamas and jacket, sharing a campfire in a new place with new people.

  Jack went over the schedule for the following day. Then Connie sang a lullaby that she said Native American mothers sometimes sang to their children, and she told us to go softly back to our cabins and that a bell the next morning would announce breakfast.

  Quietly we retraced our steps and, after one more trip to the toilets, crawled into bed by the light from our flashlights. We didn’t want to turn on the overhead light because it would break the mood.

  We had no sooner got everyone in her bunk than Josephine said she had to go to the bathroom again. I put on my shoes and we went to the toilets.

  Ten minutes after I got her in bed the second time, she said she had to go again. I figured this was a bid for attention. “I guess the next time you have to go the bathroom, Josephine, Mary will have to take you,” I said.

  “Josephine, shut up and go to sleep,” came Mary’s voice in the darkness.

  After that the cabin grew quiet.

  Tired as I was, I couldn’t fall asleep right away. There were too many things to think about: Dad and Sylvia back home; Estelle’s remark in the showers; homesickness for Lester, for the gang; my self-doubt about how good an assistant counselor I would be; Elizabeth and Pamela both liking the same guy; not being in the same cabin with either of them; Richard’s smile.…

  I decided that what I really wanted to happen at camp—in the romance department—was nothing. I wanted a time-out from wondering what guys were thinking about me, from fussing with my hair, using mouthwash in case a guy was going to kiss me. I would like one summer of just being friends with people. Smiling at guys and feeling a certain electric charge, but no blinking lights, no bells, no whistles.… Just liking each other without having to get involved. That would be nice.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” Gwen whispered, sneaking over to my bunk. “You awake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too. You think we’re going to make it?”

  “I don’t know.” I scooted over to make room for her, and she sat down on the edge. “Think what the full counselors go through. They’ve each got seven kids to handle all by themselves. It’s all we can do to keep six kids in line between the two of us.”

  “You know who I miss?” said Gwen.

  “Legs?”

  “No. Granny.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Yeah. She’s always lived with us. As long as I can remember, I went in and kissed her before I went to bed. If I was going out for the evening, I’d kiss her before I went out. Isn’t that weird? Fifteen years old and still missing my granny?”

  “You want my blankie?” I asked, and we giggled. Then I asked, “Really, though, you’re not thinking about Legs at all?”

  “Not much,” she said. “I finally realized he’s not right for me, and there’s a big wide world out there.…”

  “Of guys,” I added.

  “Guys and everything else. Jobs! College! You know what I think? I think Legs was my ‘blankie.’ The Boyfriend, you know? Just to say I had one?”

  “He really liked you, though, Gwen.”

  “Maybe. But we’re so different. Isn’t it strange how you can go with someone who hardly shares any of your interests and convince yourself he’s The One?”

  “Love’s strange.”

  “It wasn’t love.”

  “Well, relationships are strange, then,” I said. “That’s why I want to be totally free for now. The No-Boyfriend Summer.”

  We sat for a few minutes listening to the crickets through the screen.

  “Well, if you want my permission to go call your granny, you’ve got it,” I said finally.

  Gwen laughed softly and stood up. “No, I just needed a heart-to-heart talk with my counselor. G’night, girl. Sleep tight.”

  I heard the springs squeak as she got into her bunk. And then a voice from somewhere above said, “I could hear everything you said!” and I knew that Estelle had been listening the whole time.

  “Watch it, girl-baby,” Gwen said.

  4

  * * *

  Wet

  The next morning I couldn’t believe it was time to get up already. I wanted to sleep twice as long and could tell that Gwen felt the same way. Even the girls were awake before us. I had no idea that working with kids could be so exhausting. It wasn’t just that hiking was followed by rowing, and volleyball was followed by swimming; about thirty times a day we found ourselves mentally counting heads to be sure nobody had wandered off or drowned or fallen off Point Overlook.

  “I’ve never been so tired in my life,” Elizabeth said to us the third evening. “I’m even more tired than when I baby-sit Nathan all day.”

  “It’s the responsibility,” said Gwen. “And the fact that we have to stay one step ahead of the girls all the time.”

  “We’ve got a girl who cries for
her foster mother and keeps begging to call home,” said Elizabeth.

  “I’ve got a girl who wets the bed when she gets upset,” said Doris Bolden.

  A bunch of us were sitting around Pamela and Doris’s cabin, putting Band-Aids on our feet and witch hazel on our mosquito bites. If Gwen was the color of cocoa, Doris was the color of nutmeg, and I realized that my mind was once again focused on food. I’d eaten more the first day I’d been there than I eat in two days at home, but I needed every ounce of energy I could get.

  The kids were up in the dining hall watching a movie, and the full counselors were supervising so we could have some time off. We’d talked about going swimming in the river, but nobody was making a move in that direction.

  Pamela came in from the toilets just then. “Hey!” she said. “I just found out that the guys are skinny-dipping and left their clothes on the bank.”

  You never saw six girls come alive as fast as we did. Suddenly we weren’t as tired as we’d thought. We piled out of the cabin and headed, giggling, toward the river.

  There were twelve assistant counselors at camp, six for girls, six for boys. Gwen and Pamela and Elizabeth and I, plus Tommie Lohman and Doris Bolden, made up the assistant counselors in the girls’ cabins. Andy Simms, Craig Kimball, Ross Mueller, and Richard Harrigan were assistant counselors on the boys’ side, plus a guy we called G. E. and the guy Gwen had her eye on, Joe Ortega.

  We went down the path single file. The moon was half full, and the sky was cloudless. We could hear muffled laughter and talk from the guys as they splashed about in the water, and when we came through the trees, we could see their clothes in little heaps there on the ground.

  Elizabeth grinned as she went over and sat on top of somebody’s jeans and T-shirt. Then the rest of us chose our own little pile, where we sat cross-legged, like pieces on a chessboard, and it wasn’t more than a few seconds before the guys saw us.

  “Hey, c’mon in! Water’s fine!” Ross called.

  “No, thanks! We’re just looking,” Pamela called back, and we laughed.

  “Just browsing,” called Doris.

  “The view from here is great,” I told the guys.

  They laughed and splashed some more, not rising above waist level, I noticed.

  “Oh, this is heaven!” said Gwen. “I think I’ll just sit here the rest of the evening.”

  “Yeah, it’s so nice of you guys to leave your clothes for us to sit on,” said Tommie. One of the boys splashed water on her, and she just laughed but wouldn’t get up.

  The guys did all sorts of stunts, like swimming along underwater, then popping up farther on. We felt so powerful sitting on their clothes, in complete control, none of us willing to leave so they could come out. The movie, we knew, was an hour and a half long. There would be snacks after that, so we had maybe forty minutes left.

  “Hey!” Richard Harrigan called finally. “Some-body toss me my pants? Somebody with a good aim, please?”

  “Which ones are yours?” called Pamela.

  He pointed to the pile that Gwen was sitting on.

  “Sorry,” Gwen called. “You’ll have to come get them.”

  Now we really hooted. Because Richard was the assistant director’s son, we knew that alone would keep him from squealing on us. It’s the same with a teacher’s or preacher’s kid, I think. He goes out of his way to prove he’s one of the gang.

  The boys laughed too and splashed us some more, but not too much because their clothes, after all, were getting wet. We could tell that there was a lot of whispering going on out there in the water. We couldn’t see their faces, but the way they clumped together told us we had them stumped.

  “They must be getting cold,” Elizabeth said. “The river’s cold even in the daytime.” She grinned.

  “They’ve been in for at least twenty minutes,” said Doris. “I don’t think I could stand it for more than ten. Not at night.”

  “Hey, c’mon, girls. You can keep our boxers if you really want them, but could we just have our jeans?” called Andy.

  “How are you going to put them on in the water?” I asked.

  “There’s a bank over there. We’ll swim to the other side so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities,” said Craig.

  We held a conference. They held a conference.

  “Nope!” I said. “We like it here just fine. Most comfortable we’ve been all day.”

  We figured they’d swim downriver a ways, climb out in the dark, and go back to their cabins to put on something else. We began debating as to what we’d do with their clothes. String their underwear up the flagpole, maybe? Or decorate the trees and bushes with their clothes and be back in the dining hall before they could catch us?

  But suddenly there was a great splashing of water, and here the guys came, charging up the riverbank, all six of them buck naked.

  We gave a little scream and grabbed on to the guys’ clothes so they’d have to wrestle us to get them back, but they didn’t even bother with their clothes. I don’t know who picked me up—Joe, I think—but each boy grabbed a girl and either dragged or carried her to the water and threw her in.

  We gasped and gagged, shocked at this sudden reversal of fortune. And then the boys were in the water with us. We were all laughing and splashing each other with the palms of our hands.

  “Hey, girls, you’d swim a lot easier if you didn’t have anything on,” Ross called.

  Pamela giggled. So did Gwen and Tommie.

  “Yeah, if anybody wants her shorts unzipped, I’m the man,” said Craig, and we laughed some more.

  But none of us girls took him up on his offer. We just floated around, watching each other in the moonlight, knowing the boys were totally naked under the water, and now and then colliding with a hairy leg. If Aunt Sally knew what her “little Alice” was doing right now, she’d probably pass out. It was exciting as anything, and Elizabeth looked positively in shock. Delightedly so.

  “Hey, next time we go swimming, let’s make it coed,” said Andy. “Next time you girls have to take it all off.”

  “Ha! What next time?” said Doris.

  “Next movie night. Deal?” said Ross.

  “Deal!” said Pamela.

  “Pamela!” Elizabeth and I said together, but we laughed, too.

  We talked about ourselves then, just the basics—where we were from, what year we were in school. Craig and Richard, at seventeen, were the only ones who had been assistant counselors at Camp Overlook before.

  “What’s the hardest part of camp for you?” I asked Andy.

  “Trying to keep my boys from sneaking over to peek in the girls’ showers,” he said, and the others grinned.

  “Trying to keep himself from sneaking a peek, you mean,” said Craig.

  “Then my girls are right to worry,” I told him. “It’s the main topic of conversation in the showers.”

  Richard told us that the full counselors got Saturday nights off, and the assistant counselors got Friday nights. He said we had from six to midnight to go into town if we wanted, as long as we had one of the older counselors drive.

  “Think we could get the camp minibus for the evening?” Craig asked.

  “I don’t know. Dad might let us. I’ll see what I can do,” Richard promised, and that was something to look forward to.

  We could just make out the dining hall from where we were floating about in the water, and when the lights came on, we knew the movie was over and the kids would be having their snack. We needed to be back there in ten minutes.

  So we girls pulled ourselves out of the water, our clothes heavy and clinging, our sneakers squishing with every step we took. We stood on the bank a minute, squeezing water from our shorts, then told the guys good night and hurried back to our cabins to change.

  “That was fun!” Elizabeth said breathlessly. “You didn’t know where the guys were going to be in the water, and I’m pretty sure my foot touched somebody’s… well… you know!”

  “No, I don??
?t know,” Pamela said mischievously. “His what? His ear? His arm?”

  But Elizabeth only said, “You know” again, and we smiled.

  I was thinking back to the time when Elizabeth confessed to me that she had never seen a man naked. I guess her dad never walks between the bedroom and bathroom in his birthday suit, and she hadn’t had a little brother yet. So, to help out, I’d gone through a pile of old National Geographic magazines looking for naked men, but there always seemed to be a spear or a shield in front of the very places Elizabeth would want to see most.

  I had hardly got into a pair of dry shorts when the Coyotes trooped in, looking for us. Mary and Josephine were in the lead, Mary holding Josephine’s hand, and were followed by Latisha, looking as belligerent as ever, then Estelle and Ruby and Kim. Kim was near tears because we hadn’t been there in the dining hall to escort them back to the cabin and they’d had to set out on their own. Kim clung to Gwen when she came in.

  “Where was you?” Latisha demanded. “You’re our counselors, and I’ll bet you been swimming!”

  “Right!” I said. “As a matter of fact, I got thrown into the water, and I’m just now drying off.”

  That shut them up in a hurry. They looked at us wide-eyed.

  “Who threw you in?” asked Mary.

  “Some of the guys,” I told her.

  “You gonna tell?” asked Ruby.

  “No.” Gwen laughed. “It was all in fun.”

  Kim still seemed on the verge of tears. “I don’t want anybody to throw me in,” she said.

  “I won’t let anyone do that to you, girl-baby,” Gwen purred. “And if somebody did, I’d be right there to pull you out, so don’t you worry.” She put both arms around Kim and held her close, and that just seemed to be the opening bell, because all the other girls edged in for a hug. Even Estelle. But Latisha watched with a jaundiced eye.

  “Bet one of ’em’s your boyfriend,” Latisha said to Gwen.

  “Yeah? Which one?” Gwen said.

  “I don’t know. Andy somebody?”