Not a Happy Camper (24 page)

“Are you sick?” she asked. “'Cause that's going to be really unpleasant if you upchuck on the truck.”

“Not that sick,” I said. “Not really. I'm just not a good swimmer.”

I think she caught my drift because I found myself in three contests, all of which kept me from getting completely wet and allowed me to keep my shorts and t-shirt on over my bathing suit. My most successful event was the Girls' Watermelon Heave, which
was really pretty similar to the softball throw, only this time hurling large fruit into the lake.

I was surprised to see Kenny and Philip among the contestants in the boys' solo canoe race. Kenny, a Kin, would undoubtedly beat Philip, but he could still lose to our fellow teammate, counselor Cari Lorberfeld's fourteen-year-old brother Eric, also fresh from the Allagash. It was odd these two whitewater veterans had entered the race. It seemed so unnaturally un-Kin-A-Hurra-ly competitive. Come to think of it, like my own participation in the softball throw. “This is gonna get ugly,” I heard El Mosquito groan, and he was right.

The race was not pretty. There were six contestants in all, Kenny and Eric vying to win and the rest just hoping to make it back to shore. Philip and the two other boys had never soloed before and didn't know they needed to alternate sides with their strokes. Each boy paddled on only the right side of his canoe and within a minute there were three boys going around in circles in the middle of the lake in the middle of the race.

Eric, meanwhile, took a quick lead, infuriating Kenny. Kenny paddled hard and fast to catch up, so hard and fast he was unable to stop when he came within inches of Eric. “Win Kin! Win Kin” turned into shouts of “Look out!” and “Watchit!” as Kenny crashed his canoe into Eric's, sending them both into the side of the dock and out of the race. Philip, now moving his paddle to the left side of his canoe and back again, and taking a cue from Aesop's tortoise, easily glided to shore and took first place. In fact, he took the only place as the other three contestants had to be rescued by motorboat.

The boys' kickboard relay produced an even more startling result. You'd think someone had made a horrible mistake telling twelve-year-old Mikey Schreiber to get ready to jump into the lake.
A member of the Hurra team, Mikey would be swimming the final leg of the boys' kickboard relay even though Mikey himself had only one leg.

Mikey was in this situation because Saul did more appalling things than promise golf courses and hydroplanes that didn't exist. P.T. Barnum himself couldn't have done a better job of assuring the parents of prospective campers that Kin-A-Hurra had special facilities for children with special needs, when in actuality we had hardly anything for anyone. Saul referred to these kids as “special campers,” but really, they were pretty common around here and what I'd suspected was motivated by little more than pure greed inadvertently paved the way for an avant-garde political correctness.

Mikey stood clutching a blue Styrofoam kickboard with one hand, and a teammate, for balance, with the other. Tagged on the foot by a boy in the water, Mikey jumped in, swimming and kicking crookedly toward the rope. “At least the Hurras are way behind,” I observed. “Mikey can't be blamed for the loss.” And he wasn't. Because Mikey reached the rope first, turned around, swam back—and won. Counselors from both teams lifted him out of the water and carried him in the air, back to the beach where his other leg (the one made out of molded plastic) was lying in the sand, waiting to be strapped back on. Camp owner Saul Rattner was on the beach, too, pipe in hand, a faint smile and an “I-told-you-so” look on his face.

I think some people viewed Saul as the ultimate con man, the lying, scheming owner of a broken-down, worthless mosquito-infested camp who cheated unwitting parents out of their money. Others, meanwhile, saw him as a dedicated and exceptional social worker, a man with the capacity to gather up a campful of outcasts with nowhere else to go and make them all feel like winners,
a man who so believed in his own lies, he somehow turned them into reality. And some people, me included now, saw him as a little bit of both.

A friend of mine once described NBA basketball this way: “Give each team a hundred points, put two minutes on the clock—go!” Kin & Hurra was far from over. At the end of the second day, the score was once again tied. It all came down to the last event, the War Canoe Race. Here, the twelve oldest and strongest campers from each team, the ones besides Kenny and Eric who'd survived the Allagash, paddled out slowly to the middle of the lake in the two big old war canoes reserved for this contest. The rest of us—the whole camp—stood on the shore, waiting, until chef Walter Henderson fired off a cap gun and the race began.

“Win Kin! Win Kin!”

“Nothing rhymes with Hurra, hey!”

I had my Instamatic out, snapping photos as the two teams paddled back furiously. It was a close race, both war canoes appearing to hit the beach simultaneously. We would have to wait for the judges (Chef Walter, the camp doctor and Rhonda Shafter from the theater) to announce the winner over a megaphone.

Five minutes later, it was all over. I can still recall the chills that went through me as the winner of the War Canoe Race, and all of Kin & Hurra, was announced, but I cannot for the life of me remember which team it was. What I do remember is that as soon as it was over, everyone on both teams, screaming and hugging, ran into the lake with their clothes on to sing the camp reunification theme,
Chock Full 'O Nuts is That Heavenly Coffee
. Everyone but me again.

I had tried all summer to be like everyone else and what had it gotten me? Kenny? No. Philip? No. Any boyfriend? It had gotten
me wet and muddy and embarrassed and sorry I'd tried to change.

Although Camp Kin-A-Hurra's mailing address was Canaan, Maine, a large portion of the camp actually sat within the boundaries of the next town, Skowhegan, a Native American word meaning “A Place to Watch.” This was where I stood now, where I had been all summer long.

My plan was to stay back on the beach, taking pictures, from a distance. That was my plan until my bunkmates saw me, ran out of the water and chased me down the shore. I figured there was no chance they'd catch me. Autumn Evening was the fastest, having been a Greek decathlete in a former life, but that was a long time ago. We must have looked like we were having fun because other campers began running out of the lake and joining in the race. Ten or so at first and then a couple dozen. “Get her! She's dry!” I heard them yell.

I knew I was in trouble. I was fast but not
that
fast. Sure, I'd won the President's award, but I was only eighty-sixth percentile in the 400–yard walk-run. I needed an adrenaline rush, like the one in that article I'd read about the grandmother who lifted a car when her grandson got run over on his tricycle. Otherwise someone was going to catch me and then they'd throw me in the lake. With my clothes on. And it'd ruin my camera and my parents would be mad at me and never send me back to camp again. Which might be good, because then I wouldn't have to worry about stuff like this.

No adrenaline rush kicked in and someone had my ankle. And someone else had my other ankle. And when I hit the ground, my camera flew out of my hands as two people grabbed my wrists. The trip back down to the lake was swift, kind of scary and kind of fun and kind of like an amusement park ride—the kind you look forward to getting off of. I closed my eyes and held my breath
when I knew I was going in, going in with a bigger splat than the big old watermelon I'd hurled a while earlier. From beneath the surface, I could hear the cheers from above.

Everyone was looking at me as I came up for air. It was a moment I knew I'd want to forget but never would because Philip was standing there, right in front of me, snapping a photo—with my camera.

Camping Out
by Mindy Schneider, age 13

Oh I love to go a-camping in the great outdoors
Where air is fresh and life is so real.
I love getting up at five in the morning.
I love the disgusting, groggy way that I feel.

I love having four people in a two-man tent
Where you're lucky to sleep for an hour
I love getting up and putting on fresh clothes
When it's been six days since I've taken a shower.

I love the campfire.
The smoke repeatedly stings my eyes.
I love how just when we start the cooking,
Rain pours down from the skies.

I love how we vote to bring the chicken inside the tent.
(I turn out to be the only negative voter.)
I love how hours after there are bones wherever I step
And a wonderful burnt chicken-y odor.

I love the way the clothes are kept.
So neatly—in a clump.
I love baked beans one day, the day after and the next.
I love the oatmeal's every lump.

I love cleaning oatmeal and baked beans off prehistoric mess kits.
It's by far and wide my very favorite chore.
Yes, you can surely tell I'm a great camper.
So adventurous, inventive and so anxious for more.
I love the people who talked me into this camping out caper.
Especially the one who forgot the toilet paper.

But the next time I go camping out,
I'll have everything I need.
I've figured out what it's all about.
I've found a way that's just my speed.

Oh sure, I'll work up to roughing it,
But I've got an easier place where I'll begin.
The next time I go camping out,
It'll be at the closest Holiday Inn.

W
E WERE NEARING THE END OF THE CAMP SEASON, TIME FOR THE
Banquet Social, the big dress-up event on the second-to-last night of camp. In previous years, Boys' Side and Girls' Side had held the banquet part separately, meeting up afterwards for the social. This year, Saul's plan was to hold the banquet over on Boys' Side, everyone together, claiming it would promote solidarity, but we suspected it had more to do with a slow week in train wrecks and a shortage of meat.

“How are we all going to fit into the dining hall?” Betty asked. “It was awful during Kin & Hurra. Shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, all squished together.”

“That's what was fun about it,” said Dana.

“No one will be able to move in their good clothes,” Betty argued. “No one will be able to eat.”

“Which is exactly what Saul wants,” I suggested.

“You're finally getting it,” Dana congratulated me. “But we're not going to let that happen.”

Dana and Autumn Evening concocted a plan that would not only solve the problem, but would also give us an excuse for one last middle-of-the-night raid on Boys' Side.

“Rise and shine, everybody,” Dana announced at one AM. “We're going to dine al fresco.”

“Sounds good,” I said, rolling down my itchy green blanket. “What is it?”

“It's French,” said Betty. “Don't you know anything?”

“Yes,” I said. “I'm taking French in school.”

Which was true, but I'd only learned to conjugate a few irregular verbs so far and I hadn't learned anything useful like “a la carte” or even “ooh-la-la.” We just kept reading in our primer about Mademoiselle Simone and her friend Bebe, “
l'elephant qui parle
”. If I ever went to Paris and met up with a talking baby elephant, I'd know just what to say. Otherwise, I was kind of screwed.

“Al fresco is Italian,” Autumn Evening said. “I lived in Italy for a year.”

“In one of your past lives?” I asked.

“No, when I was seven. My father taught at a university. I do have a present life, y'know. I'm going to be famous. The dead soul from one of my future lives came back and told me.”

“Canoes or walking?” Dana asked.

“I'll take you,” Maddy called out, groggy.

“Oops, sorry. Didn't mean to wake you,” I apologized. “We almost made it through the whole summer.”

“Are you joking?” she asked. “You woke me every night you went out. I never bothered to say anything.”

“You're not going to make us jog there, are you?” asked Betty.

“I've been jogging for eight weeks,” groaned Maddy. “It's enough already. Let's take the Valiant.”

And so it was under a full moon on a crisp August night that we spent three hours removing every single table and bench from the boys' dining hall, and then recreating the exact floor plan in front of the flagpole on the boys' softball field.

“Voila,” said Dana, as the last moldy old wooden bench was placed under an even moldier old table. “‘Voila', by the way, is French. It means we're done.”

“We're done with what?” asked Betty, looking around in astonishment. “What am I doing on Boys' Side? How did we get here?”

“Oh my God, were you asleep this whole time?” Maddy asked.

The rest of us didn't know what to say.

Betty cracked a smile. “You guys are so gullible.”