“Why not just pull them out?” Charlie asks.
“Because the head usually breaks off and stays in,” Claire begins.
“And then you might get an infection,” Patrick finishes.
I pick up my half-fried assailant, show him around the little crowd as they chant “yuck,” then toss him at Charlie.
“Hey,” Claire chastises me as the other kids giggle and clear away, but Charlie, scoundrel that he is, catches the little bug and starts chasing some girls with it. He holds the tick high above his spikes of dirty red hair and waves it like a trophy.
There's no putting off that little horror, who has been following me around every moment he can. He's like an embedded tick himself, I reflect, but seniors aren't allowed to apply matches to the behinds of first-year harassers.
I sneak a smile at Claire and retreat toward my cabin. Claire and Patrick round everyone back to their cabins for “quiet time.”
“Can't believe we've been here only two days,” I say to Herb as I leap up the steps to our cabin just ahead of him. I throw myself down on my narrow lower bunk, which I claimed the first day. “Feels like two weeks already.”
“Nah, feels like two days,” he replies, scraping his shoes on the doormat outside for a full two minutes before opening the screen door. “That was really brave of you,” he adds. “I'd freak if I got a tick.”
“Yeah? Well you probably will, and it's no biggie.”
“Well, other than ticks, isn't this place the greatest?” he says. “Everyone is so nice. I'm having a great time. I even like the food. What's your favorite activity, Wilf? Mine's canoeing.”
“My favorite activity is quiet time,” I declare, hoping he'll take the hint. I pull the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue from under my pillow and turn toward the wall, willing him to find another victim for his happy-talk. To my amazement, he crawls up the bunk ladder in his unsteady way and tucks into
War and Peace
.
My little notebook falls out from the pages of my magazine. I study it carefully. It holds my top-secret strategies in code. Looking it over, I figure just two more days before I pull off my sneak departure. I've been plotting like crazy. By day I go through the motions of a good camper; by night I polish my plans. My days go something like this: First, breakfast in the log dining lodge under the mounted
moose antlers, where my motor-mouth cabin mate follows me around like a boom box that I've forgotten to unstrap from my shoulder. Next, archery class, where I am useless. Then, arts and crafts (give me a break), wilderness survival, first aid (I'm all ears in those sessions), sailing (maybe the knot-tying stuff will come in handy), and canoeing and kayaking. Now, canoeing and kayaking is where I've always excelled and where I'm hoping to put the finishing touches on my plot. Somehow, I have to find out what's downstream. Downstream, I'm hoping, is my ticket out of this fun-park.
The biggest surprise about our canoeing and kayaking class is that Herb has actually been in canoes before. In fact, I'd say he's been in them a lot. I guess his overprotective parents must have decided at some point that he was okay in canoes if he was within arm's reach. Like a sea lion, he's awkward as heck on
land but astonishingly strong and smooth the minute he hits water.
After canoeing and kayaking class comes lunch, where my main project is spiriting away as many cans of food as will fit up my sleeves, down my shorts or under my baseball cap. The trick is getting stuff out without a soul seeing me. This, as it turns out, is where I truly excel. Although I don't expect to be around for Camp Wild's last-day awards ceremony, I reckon I'd ace the blue ribbon for food-supplies diversion if I were.
Afternoons mean tennis (yawn), swimming (Claire in a bikini: wow!), and free time (during which I stash stolen food beneath the cabin's floorboards while Herb is out). Then there's supper (more supplies to collect), campfire singing, and “lights out.” (I did mention that Nazis run this camp, didn't I?)
A loud crunching noise above me interrupts my thoughts.
“Hey, we're not supposed to eat in the cabin. It attracts rodents,” I quote Patrick as I watch pieces of potato chip fall past me.
“Oh, you want some?” Herb's ugly, upside-down face appears above me.
When I don't reply, he says, “Wilf, what are you writing in that little notebook of yours? How come you won't tell me? You're always writing stuff down.”
“I'm recording everything you eat, Herb. I'm an undercover junk-food policeman.”
“Hey, I need the energy for afternoon classes. And for getting away from Charlie. He follows you around too, doesn't he? Is he really only ten?”
“So they say. I consider him the king of hyperactivity and the prince of deviousness. But he can paddle a kayak like a demon.”
“That's âcause his dad taught him. And he likes you, Wilf. You have noticed he likes you, right?”
“Herb, I'm only going to say this once. I hate kids. And on the brat scale of one to ten, Charlie rates an eleven.”
Herb laughs. “Yeah? Well he worships the ground you walk on.”
And sticks to me worse than you,
I think. Did I ask for two demented shadows?
“I'm going for a walk,” I say aloud.
“But it's quiet time.”
“Exactly.” I heave myself up, tuck my notebook into my back pocket and stride out the door. I let the screen door slam. I walk briskly to the canoe house and step inside. The moldy smell of drying lifejackets assaults my nose. I scan the racks and stick my head inside the shortest aluminum canoe to inspect it. Too long. Good thing I know where the shorter, solo canoes are stored. I select two paddles (one as a spare), a lifejacket and wetsuit just my size, a helmet, flotation bags, waterproof gear bags and a
bailer. I glance around to make sure I'm alone, then stash them in a cobwebby corner beneath a tarp. I pull out my notebook and start checking things off.
“Hi, Wilf. Whatcha doin'?”
I swing around. His head is poking out from under the longest canoe, and he's grinning all over.
“Hey, Charlie. Just making sure all the gear's ready for class tomorrow. What are you doing here?”
His beady little eyes bore into me. He squeezes out from under the canoe and brushes dirt off his overalls. “Spying.”
“Yeah? Well I wouldn't spy from under there. Probably mice or rats in this shed.”
He grins wider. “You can't scare me.”
It's too true. I pull a stick of gum from my shirt pocket and offer it to him. He grabs it, then tears out of the shed like I might change my mind.
“I hate kids,” I mutter as I jam a stick of gum into my own mouth and head down to the river. “Especially that one.”
“Wilf, Herb, wake up guys.”
Patrick's voice wafts through our cabin's screen door, but I know for a fact it's not seven o'clock yet. How do I know? Because the camp's obnoxious wake-up bugle hasn't blasted through the chill morning air. And the sun hasn't yet cast beams of light on the clothes Herb
and I have left scattered about our tiny cabin. (That's the only thing we have in common, I've decided.)
“Go away,” I mumble, and sink deeper into my sleeping bag.
Patrick takes this as an invitation to step in.
“Sorry you two, but one of our canoe and kayak instructors is ill this morning. I'd normally take over for him, but I have to run into town on business. I'm wondering if you can help out. Just one class: the little kids.”
“No thanks,” I say.
“You bet!” Herb pronounces at the same time. I feel the entire bunk bed sway as he sits up above me.
I lift my feet and push up on the mattress beneath him in the hope he'll take it back. But he's such a suck-up to Patrick, I know he won't.
“Ow! Wilf, stop doing that. You heard Patrick. He needs help.”
“Wilf, are you in?” Patrick's voice sounds a little muffled from inside my sleeping-bag cocoon. “I've noticed you're both strong paddlers. Claire would really appreciate your help.”
Claire? I pop my head out of its shell. As it turns out, I'm suddenly
sooo
available to help juniors with their J-strokes. “Sure, why not? Does that get us out of arts and crafts?”
“If you like,” Patrick says. “Thanks, guys. It'll be good training if you want to be junior counselors next year, you know.” The screen door slams, the bugle sounds, the sun creeps in to expose our messy cabin.
“Like we want to be junior counselors,” I gripe. I crawl out of bed and splash water on my face from the dirty washbowl I was supposed to empty last night.
“Wilf, you'd make an awesome one if you wanted to be. You know exactly how the camp runs, and the kids love you.”
The kids love me?
“Like cats who jump on the laps of people allergic to cats.”
“Yeah, well the kids never talk to
me
.”
“Maybe if you talked
at
them less, Herbie.”
“Wilf, why are you always so negative? This place is a blast. Relax and enjoy it. It'll be fun teaching this afternoon. Bet the cook will even give us extra portions at supper.”
Ah, a second thing we have in common. A desire for more food than we're allotted. But my agenda is long-term and more noble. Well, okay, maybe not so noble.
The morning drags by. Finally it's the kiddies' canoe and kayak class. Claire's on the shore fitting out the munchkins in puffy orange lifejackets. I admire her pierced navel from afar, not for the first time.
“Wilf, Herb! Thanks guys, for being willing to help out,” she calls. As we come close, she adds in a lowered voice, “This group can be a handful for just one person.”
“Aw, they're just normal kids with good energy,” I say smoothly as I help her lift some kayaks from the upper racks of the boat shed. Herb's eyebrows slant in confusion at my remark before he shakes his head and starts rummaging around the rack of paddles.
“Charlie, can you help me carry these?” I hear him shout.
“Nah, I'm gonna help Wilf,” he says, appearing beside me. For a split second, I feel the throb of where I extracted that tick yesterday.
“Charlie, dude, let's see if you can carry more paddles than Herb and I can,” I say.
He eyes me carefully, then falls for it. Competitive little devil, I think. Soon we
have seven little water rats on the river, four in canoes and the rest in kayaks.
“Everyone switches boats in half an hour so we all learn both types of paddling,” Claire reminds them.
“Not me,” declares Charlie. “I only want to kayak.” Claire ignores him.
I dig my knees into my canoe's foam kneepads and demonstrate the art of crossing the river's mild current, as Claire in her kayak and Herb in his canoe do the same. One by one, our little ducklings imitate our best forward, back and sweep strokes, crossing and re-crossing the river. The canoeists demonstrate their J and crossbow strokes as well, some a little shakily. Now and then, a student gets washed downstream, prompting Claire and Herb to give chase and coax the kid back up the eddies. Once, a timid girl capsizes in her kayak, ejects and comes to the surface gasping.
“You should of rolled,” Charlie chastises her from his bright orange kayak.
“Now, Charlie, you know you're the only one in this group who knows how to roll,” Claire says.
“You can roll?” I ask, surprised.
In response, the ten-year-old makes sure I'm watching before capsizing and righting his kayak three times in a row.
“Show-off,” his wet classmate mumbles as she eases herself back into her kayak.
“Awesome, buddy,” I say to Charlie with a thumbs-up, only because it makes Claire smile warmly at me. “That'll come in real handy when you do rapids. Speaking of which, Claire, what's downstream of here?” I remember talk from past summers about wild whitewater, but I never registered the details.
Claire smiles indulgently, allows the kids to paddle into a sort of huddle in the biggest eddy and stabs her paddle in the direction I'm looking.
“It's nice, gentle-flowing water for about half an hour, which is what makes this site such a safe place to learn. Then the river starts dropping faster and becomes rapids with boulders the size of cars that you have to maneuver around.”
“Cool,” Charlie inserts, but some of the tykes are clutching their paddles and looking behind them nervously.
“And then?” prompts Herb.
“Then it drops into a narrow canyon with steep walls on both sides and non-stop rapids for hours. It's really, really intense.”
“You've canoed it?” the little girl with wet hair asks, wide-eyed.
“I have,” Claire says solemnly, staring at the dark water beside her canoe as if it's replaying the footage. “I did it with a bunch of crazy guys last summer. I'd never do it again.”
“Why?” the kids shout together as they inch closer to her, the same way they do
when she tells ghost stories around the evening campfire.
Claire's eyes glow with a faraway look. “Because there's a killer waterfall at the end of the canyon, and you have only seconds to get out before you reach it. Plus you need ropes to climb down from there to the last rapids before the river dumps into a wilderness lake. It's not safe, and we should never have done it,” she says solemnly.
I mentally add rope to my equipment list. I want to ask about those last rapids before the lake, but I don't want to make her suspicious. So I turn to order the kids back to their paddling exercises. Claire tosses me a grateful look. One by one, our charges return to paddling Camp Wild's decidedly un-wild river bend. All except Charlie, whose eyes, squinting beneath the wet spikes of red hair sticking through his kayak helmet's drain holes, refuse to leave my face.
Today is D-Day, as in time to defect from this camp. That puts me in such a generous mood that at the breakfast buffet, I load one Danish into my mouth, two more into my pockets and deliver a fourth to Herb. He is hunched on the bench that pulls up to the long mess-hall table.