The Hurt Patrol (10 page)

“Well . . . we could distract them.” Hunter chimed in. Somehow, nobody much wanted to hear his idea for how he proposed to do that. Beau could tell he was feeling better, though. He had dialed down that blank, empty . . .
scary
look.

“We need to be sneaky. It's counterproductive if
we
get in a butt-hurt of trouble.” Kyle, again.

“Then something we can't be traced to,” reflected Rob.

“Something quiet,” ruminated Beau.

“So I heard this too—these two troops got into a fight and one troop gave the other brownies, like to apologize—but they had ex-lax in them! That'd be hilarious!”

“Hunter! No! That is totally an urban legend, and for sure we'd get caught! And probably go to juvie
and
get sued!” Pete was exasperated.

“Yeah,”—Rob was regretful—“but good one! Too bad, 'cuz that would be awesome!”

Hunter smiled proudly. They continued digging the latrine with their thinking caps on. They knew when they would strike, they just needed to dial in details. The perfect opportunity was approaching.

Honor Awards was the huge final meeting that bestowed the badges earned at Camporee. As the Hurts rehearsed the songs they'd perform at Camporee, they reviewed their plan. They had been practicing.

All the whole hot week the troops had been learning a song, a series of rounds, the gist of which was making different sounds the different characters made when the guy in the song met them, like the bobsledder went
‘whoosh!'
and the lion went
‘rawr!'
and the Swiss miss went
‘mwah!'
and the engine went
‘zoom!'
and it went on and on and on, totally eye-rolling and dated and dorky, an ass-aching, long song, but also a cherished institution dating from long before these scoutmasters' dads were dinosaurs. Tradition!

All week long the troops practiced their parts and the patrols learned their lines and the whole camp rehearsed this whole multipart song that started to become a performance that was kind of good. Weirdly fun to sing, too, in spite of the corniness. And as they got ready for the ceremony, both the simmering feud between the factions and the lake water heated up.

The night before the ceremony, the Hurts lay in their sleeping bags, making sure the details had been worked out. They had tried to keep the plan very simple and very short. They rehearsed it over and over. All seemed smooth.

“Remember, if we pull everything off smoothly, we will act as surprised as anyone. That's what we want. We gotta be slick.” Pete was a little nervous.

“Dude, it's not like we're knocking over a bank or something.” Rob was nonchalant.

“Rob, we will get so hammed on if we get caught.” Pete had plenty to lose.

“But we won't. Because if we do, the Head Lice win! And we can't let the Head Lice win, Pete!” Beau was goofing, pretending to be serious. He was going to be taking most of the risk. So he was making up for it by messing around.

“Hey, you guys, just saying—thanks for doing this.” Hunter was not quite as crazy since the plan started getting hatched. “I really appreciate it.”

“Hunter?” Kyle spoke to him. He hardly ever did. He cleared his throat.

“Yeah?”

“Do you have a sister named Gatherer?”

Such a nerd dis. Laughing, Rob lobbed a pinecone over Hunter's head.

“You're so welcome, Hunt's Ketchup. You're a spud, but you're
our
little spud. Nobody gonna dog on you—'cept us.”

“Why do you call everybody ‘spud,' Rob?” Beau had always wondered.

“Well, Beau, my son, I will tell you: Because we're all just little potatoes, but I think we can do the Thing.”

Beau shook his head. “Yeah. That's just weird, dude.”

“I saw this line-drawing once, a little potato with a cartoon bubble: ‘I'm just a little potato, but I think you can do the thing.' And I realized it was the truest cartoon I had ever seen. Then I realized I was totally baked. But that didn't matter; it was still the truest thing. We
are
just little potatoes in this big earth, spud . . . and thus I call you—and all of you, Spud. Do you see, old spud?”

Rob was so weird. But they were used to it and hardly bothered telling him so anymore. Pete stretched, and yawned.

“Okay, then. We do ‘the Thing' tomorrow.”

They fell asleep quickly, tired from conspiring.

The next day dawned blazing. They were sweating in their sleeping bags before dawn and had kicked them off completely by reveille. Today was a hike again to the lake for a swim. They were looking forward to cooling off.

Summer by a lake is a beautiful, if sweltering, thing in the Midwest. Triple digits are pretty normal, it's flat and inland, and even though no one around Beau agreed when he mentioned it, it seemed like it was getting hotter. Once when Beau remarked on it at school, his teacher immediately corrected him. Like she was angry—she told him that he just wasn't used to it here. But that was not true. And he couldn't understand the anger in her denial. She said it was exactly as hot as it had always been and it was just the way
they
liked it here. Beau felt she seemed pretty defensive about the number of days in the triple digits, which were undeniably increasing—and that was a fact, whether she got pissy about it or not. But he dropped it. He didn't mean to upset her.

As they approached the lake, they noticed the same thing had happened again that they had noticed all week . . . the lake's tiny fish were floating. There were a lot of them. The smallest fish of the lake were dying in droves. They had floated up into the shallows and rocked there, many eventually making it onto the shore. It looked like there were hundreds.

The Scouts had been alarmed at first. “What's up with the fish?” “Is that poison or something?” “Is it even safe to swim?”

The scoutmasters were reassuring. It had happened before. “It's the heat, guys. The smallest fish can't take it. It happens every time it gets too hot. It's okay for us to swim, though; there's nothing that'll poison you. It's okay, it happened last year too.”

So, encouraged to throw off their misgivings, the troops again waded past the fishy corpses and out to swim in cooler, cadaver-free, deeper water, and it was true; there was no poison for them. They swam and played and frisked around in relief from the heat all afternoon, having a good old time.

That night was the Awards. The guys were ready. They were up for it.

“Are we good Scouts?!” Pete asked, grinning evilly, getting them pumped. “Are we prepared?!”

“Yup-
per!
” “Good to go.” “Can't wait!” “Let's roll!”

So they strolled to the giant amphitheater where the ceremonies were held. They found their places and got in position. The other troops saw them arrive and made room. Then they waited.

Timing would be everything.

It was a huge amphitheater, and there was very little wiggle room once you were packed on the stage with the swarm of other troops. The stultifying part began, which seemed like it would last for several millennia because everyone in the entire state apparently had an announcement, and droned on and on and on and on.... The Hurts shook themselves off and got ready as more Scout troops packed into the amphitheater.

The Hurt Patrol assumed their position, up toward the back of the risers, exactly as had officially been rehearsed. It was almost go-time. Time for the song. The herd of Scouts were on stage for the big finale. Pete and Beau were standing with Rob as the music started. The rounds of the song were introduced. A chorus of
rawrs
and
whoosh
es resounded with all the others. The different rounds began to roll in, rhythmically. The song grew loud. It was actually awesome, to be able to make so much noise collectively.

Beau was equipped. He had preset everything and was ready. Since he was shorter than Pete and Rob, they slowly expanded in front of him with no sudden movement, like Pillsbury dough, until there was no real telling where he was. Then, as the song grew louder and LOUDER, Beau smoothly and quietly popped out behind the other Scouts on the risers so he wasn't viewable, but so he could pop back in quickly if there was an outcry. He was hiding in plain sight, behind the rest, on the bleachers. He waited . . . no outcry. So Beau disappeared under the bleachers, per plan, under cover of the darkness. And then it was up to the others. Mostly it was up to Hunter.

The other Hurts sang out, ever more ardently, to cover his absence. All except Hunter. He had another psyops role to play, unsuspected by everyone in camp. Hunter was their trump card.

Hunter was a young man of abundant and convincing sound effects. He'd had time to practice in his years of solitude, and now he had some skills. One of the greatest gifts in his arsenal was the astonishingly convincing and accurate audio recreation of bodily functions. When the Hurts had discovered this talent, their rejoicing had been beyond measure.

And, as luck would have it, the Hurts had been assigned the Swiss-kissing sound in the round. And, since all the other noises were yells, when the Hurts all went
‘mwah,'
it got much quieter. So as Beau stealthily slipped down behind the bleachers, the Hurts amped it up. They sang lustily.

Hunter, shorter than everyone, was camouflaged by bigger Scouts. Even just standing, he was hard to see, so crouching in the shadow of taller guys worked very well. He was totally invisible. As the rounds of the song went on, untraceable Hunter was set.

The sounds piled up—one on top of the other, and the rounds grew more complicated. It came time for the kissy sound. Hunter was ready—into the soft smooch of the kiss, he maniacally “let one,” resulting in a blast like Godzilla shat himself. It was
way
louder than all the kisses combined—and the audience screamed appreciation. All the Scouts looked to see who it was. The Hurts tried to see, too, as Hunter scuttled for different cover.

The Scout leaders were not amused. As the rounds came round again, they had their eagle eyes on the place they'd heard it. But the sound came from a different area this time. The leaders twirled their infuriated gaze over to the new area as Hunter the Obscure grabbed his cheeks and proceeded to whack out a smarmy, smackity-jack rhythm that caused the other Scouts to go batshit with joy. As the rounds rolled again, the sounds varied between humongous Sasquatch belches and a loose squelchy booming, like marine biologists might record if they echolocated a pod of sharting sperm whales.

Performance-wise, Hunter was
killing
. The Scouts watching the concert were bent double, screeching in wholehearted appreciation. They couldn't get the breath needed to pee their pants. The scoutmasters looked like they would like to drop-kick every little fathead at the entire Camporee off a cliff. They were beyond furious. They couldn't see who was doing what, but they knew they were being Owned.

The round came again—the crowd favorite: leviathan blubber farts. The glorious roar of gassy blasts rose like the Rapture. All the scoutmasters were in the fray, now; every eye was eyeballing—and some snotty smartasses were
really
going to be sorry for flouting the Scouting tradition!

Under the cover of this raucous dark, Beau jumped off the back of the stage and tiptoed to his hiding place. There he got out his huge can of shaving cream. This was what they had planned; they would shaving-cream the tent of the Head Lice, nothing too artistic, nothing too destructive or vicious, just sad faces with tears and “SUX 2 B U!!!” After all, it was just a prank. The payoff was the LOLZ, not to commit a crime or do any real harm.

Beau had been thinking, so Beau had been thorough. He wanted to prepare a surprise that even the Hurts didn't suspect, a
special
surprise. Shaving cream seemed like the Head Lice were being let off too easy. So Beau had put on his thinking cap . . . and it came to him.

All week he had pondered the Head Lice tent as he was walking by, and he'd seen several rips in the sides where the tent windows were sewn. The thread had not been UV resistant or whatever, because wherever there was a window, underneath was a rip. The window-side walls were reinforced with a separate layer of fabric, so with the rip each made a long open “pocket” where you could stash things.

But what? That's what Beau pondered. Till the perfect present presented itself.

In the dark he got his gear. A can of shave cream and a big Baggie. They had been preset and waiting, and in spite of the fact his hands were trembling with nerves and adrenaline, Beau was so enjoying himself.

As he heard the shouting laughter of the Scouts and the leaders' agitation growing exponentially, Beau hurried over to the Head Lice tent and started his art. He spray-creamed two folded fingers on each side of an extended middle finger in the universal flip-off sign. He drew “SUX 2 B U!!!” He penned “YO MAMAZ BUTT, O SNAP, ASS-WIPES,” and then, growing inspired as he shook the shaving cream, he embellished. He inscribed
“CIRCLE OF JERKZ!!!”
in a fancy, calligraphy kind of way, but back to block for “O YA!!! I SAW U—YR OWN-D!!” He wrote and then, as the can was running low on medium, he ad-libbed butts, prolifically: large
OO
s and
UU
s, and tiny
oo
s and
uu
s. As the econo-sized shaving can finally gave out, hissing to its finale, he had to leave the last ass with only one tiny butt cheek, but that too looked like a dis, like half-assed—so, yeah.

Oh, ho-ho; but Beau was
so
not done. He had another surprise, and this one was a surprise for the Hurts as well. Beau had cooked it up alone. But he was sure that for the Hurts, it would be a pleasant surprise.