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Get Those Animals Out of the Mud PART ONE Kenneth Bywater leads fifty campers in song: Beaver one, beaver all, let’s all do the beaver call. He wears a black T-shirt spanned by a silver eagle that wheels across the curve of his gut. He is fat. He seems very happy. The song he leads has no pitch, but a united monotone, he antecedent, the children consequent, each line twice. The children repeat: Beaver one, beaver all, let’s all do the beaver call. Now the rhythm of the words is mimicked in beaver talk, each syllable a tching sound, made through beaver teeth. Tch-tch TCH, tch-tch TCH, tch tch tch tch tch-tch TCH. Bywater chants the second line: Beaver two, beaver three, let’s all climb the beaver tree. Tch-tch TCH, tch-tch TCH, tch tch tch tch tch-tch TCH. Motions accompany. Camper hands mime beaver paws, drawn to the chest, climbing. Beaver four, beaver five, let’s all do the beaver jive. Tch-tch TCH, tch-tch TCH, tch tch tch tch tch-tch TCH. The children dance, following Bywater’s every move. Beaver six, beaver seven, let’s all go to beaver heaven Tch-tch TCH, tch-tch TCH, tch tch tch tch tch-tch TCH. Beaver angels fill the hall. Beaver eight, beaver nine, STOP: it’s beaver time. Everybody hums the bass from a famous hip-hop song. The humming ends in clapping. “That was wonderful,” Bywater says, “Next Shelly is going to lead a song.” His lips stretch across his teeth in a grin as taut as the belt at the top of his pants. Around this grin is beard, fullest from the underside of his jaw, whispy up his cheeks, unmixed with gray, unlike his graying hair. He is forty. He is southern and he sounds southern, projecting a voice high, tentative, genial, and sweet. “Michelle is our lifeguard. Can yall say Hello Shelly?” His hands are small for his mass as a man, hairy paws on chubby arms that bob as he talks. His movements are delicate. He smiles as if from a terrible depth. His smile marks his distance from people. He will never marry, nor take a boyfriend, nor speak his great hurt to his old, unhealthy parents. He will always squeeze his hurt into a single Christian feeling that cannot possibly, successfully, contain it. His emotional life is this labor, this forcing many impulses into one impulse by way of loving God. He is Camp Director. The children say: “Hello Shelly.” Michelle steps forward from the line of staff. All the staff wear turquoise polo shirts, on the back of which an image of Detroit bleeds into northern trees behind a camper, above whom is printed: HERE I AM LORD. Michelle wears black jeans, and is tall, and has blond hair, wide hips, and present but unassuming breasts. She has blue eyes and a face that everyday takes too much sun, is red. In order to keep children safe she neglects herself and the burning of her nose. Her concerns begin where her body ends. She is pretty, after a fashion, but these features that could so easily glow with coyness are incapable of coyness, glow with chastity, its oblivion, its smile. They tighten with a nervousness as profound as that chastity is deep. It is a big crowd. “Hi,” she says. She presses her fingers together, splayed, the tips of one hand against those of the other. She holds her hands like this for all the time she talks, not gesturing. She has posture straight as if straightened from practice with books. She says: “I’m going to teach you ‘Rise and Shine.’” Some children cheer, who know it. She smiles tighter and begins to sing, and soon “Rise and Shine” fills the air. It is easy to learn. The Lord said to Noah there’s gonna be a flood-ee flood-ee The Lord said to Noah there’s gonna be a flood-ee flood-ee Get those animals out of the mud-ee mud-ee Children of the Lord. But later it is the beaver call that rings in the showerhouse where counselor Tom Ward has seven boys. The beaver call is the chorus to the aggressive talk that rises in this moment of nakedness. Tom Ward and his seven boys are undressing. In their bodies the seven boys sense change as horses sense weather, each fearing without knowledge. They are no younger than nine and no older than eleven while Tom is turning twenty-one and strengthening even more than he did in the hottest days of adolescence. His body is now in the year when the figure of youth grows its final hair and becomes stronger but less beautiful. This late stage brings the last narcissistic pleasure of growth, the ultimate acclivity before the short plateau and long descent. Strength is an especial pleasure for mild-looking men. Tom is mild-looking and mild-acting. If Tom were a woman like Heidi who counsels the girls, this last stage would be the accretion of fat. Heidi is pale with black hair and fat shapes. Two years ago her curves had young heat but now suggest the cool thickening that time will make stay. Next door Heidi and her six girls shower quietly and sing nothing. STOP: It’s beaver time. The boys fuss. Tom has led this group since they registered at four o’clock. Now it is almost eight o’clock. It has seemed longer than four hours. Kenneth Bywater led the beaver call at seven o’clock. Tom does not know the names of all the boys yet. The names of those who look most alike blend. Two boys stand out particularly. Bumper Harmon is nine, loud, and undeveloped. What muscles he has are thin sheets and cords. His head is boyish with a large crown where hair swirls to make the crowning cowlick sprout. He is small and his pug face adumbrates the anger he will show the world as a man who feels small. “Gross,” he yells. He yells at Sean Columbus, twice his size. Sean weighs more than a grown woman, and soon, for a few years, will be tall, and then, for the rest of his life, will be fat and tall. He is fat and short. Over him change hangs like a sentence. All that is attractive is a quality of skin that acne will destroy. His head is a block and his neck muscles fail it, it wobbling above his body and suggesting through its constant roll some weakness of the spirit. He is tender and ostracized. Bumper yells “gross.” He yells: “gross Sean we don’t want to see you gross.” With poor balance Sean pulls off underwear. Sean’s whites are not white and though he is too young for body odor he smells dank like something that has sat. Tom is not disgusted, however, because Sean is already his favorite. He likes Sean best because he can see that from the trial that is Sean’s life Sean has developed the ironic resolution that says yeah I’m the fat kid but isn’t life funny. Also Tom can see that Sean is smart but that often his intelligence seldom comes out right. Today his only success has been to explain to the other boys what proctology is. Otherwise he is not respected. Already, after four hours, he has been elected loser, placed last. Tom says: “Bumper, you don’t have to look at Sean.” In this matter, however, Tom has no power and cannot really reprove. Among unacquainted boys precedence is sovereign. Precedence provides the order that calms the fear of lawlessness. Bumper Harmon has decreed the law, and the law proscribes nakedness. In a showerhouse with one toilet-stall, four shower-stalls, and seven boys, each boy must dress and undress in the toilet-stall. One by one each must keep his towel around him until he is safe behind the shower-curtain. After his shower each must reverse the motions. Showers take a long time. Outside, the girls are waiting. Later the boys have finished and have returned to the cabin. Pushing through the door Bumper says: “Get out of my face, pigball.” He is talking to Sean. “Shut up, Bumper.” “Shut doesn’t go up.” The cabin is a single room. Standing on a top bunk the boys can peek out the large window that fills the triangular space where the apex of the roof meets the walls. Twenty yards away is the girls’ cabin. All the boys stand on the same top bunk, chins and fingers on the windowsill, glaring and screaming toward the girls’ cabin with spontaneous wrath. Bumper and Sean stand next to each other, elbowing. “Get down,” Tom says. All the boys do, except Sean, whose bunk it is, who continues looking out. “Get down Sean,” Tom says. “You have ten minutes to get ready for devotions.” The boys seem to prepare. They mill through belongings. They begin to dress or forget to dress. For seven minutes Sean has one foot socked and one foot bare. Each boy screams, jokes, farts, laughs, and tells each other off. Tom reclines and hums “Little Rabbit Foofoo.” “Trade you beds,” Bumper says to Sean. Earlier in the day there was a quarrel when Sean got a top bunk and Bumper did not. “No way,” Sean says. “Sean let him have it,” one of the other boys says. “No way,” Sean says. “Sean let him have it,” somebody else says. Bumper says: “I don’t even see why he wants it it must be like impossible for him to get up there.” “Is everybody ready?” Tom says. “We need to number off.” He assigns each boy a German number, which each boy loves. Tom and the boys go over to the other cabin. At devotions the seven boys and six girls pretend to respect Heidi as Heidi talks about miracles. Reading from a lesson book she explains how you think that miracles are very large but how really miracles can be very small and how you can see miracles in everyday life. Heidi has counseled for three years and knows how to do devotions. She loves devotions and during them is very solemn and sweet. She knows sign-language, and signs her words as she leads prayer, though nobody is deaf. Tom does not love devotions and stands with crossed arms near Sean, who giggles for private reasons. “Sean,” says Heidi, “can you think of a miracle you know?” “Yes,” says Sean. “I think a colostomy is a miracle.” Heidi does not know this word and looks at Tom who looks at his feet to keep from laughing. After devotions and back in the cabin it is time for bed. Tom turns out the light. The dark inspires self-propagating hysteria. Flashlights scribble, farts sound. Sean laughs most of all, and sounds sick, as if his laughter is a sickness of his lungs. Tom rises from his bunk and stands in the center of the single room. His presence creates silence and seems itself silence. He walks to Sean’s bunk. His head is level with Sean’s head. “What it wasn’t me what.” “Sean,” Tom says quietly “Tom it wasn’t me, what, I swear to God, I mean my mom, I swear to her.” “Sean,” Tom says. Laughter fills the space behind Tom’s back. He paces until it stops. Then he lies down and listens. He listens for a long time. Most of the breathing is awake-person breathing, awake and anticipatory. After ten minutes Sean says: “Tom?” “Sean.” “I’m scared.” “Sean.” “I really am.” After a pause: “Tom?” “Sean.” “Can I switch bunks?” Tom says nothing. “I want to sleep near you.” “It’s up to Jordan.” Jordan is the third strongest personality among the boys. Jordan spent last week at Boy Scout Camp. He is blond and plump. He likes to bug his eyes and talk in his crazy-person voice. His crazy-person voice is not very crazy. He is nevertheless very likeable. He calls everybody Bob. “No way Bob,” Jordan says. “Tom,” Sean says whining, “I’m scared.” “There’s nothing to be scared of.” “What if somebody’s out there,” somebody says. “What if Bob comes in,” Jordan says. “If anybody comes in,” Tom says, “I’ll kill him.” Now everybody is very awake. It is some time before silence returns. The boys hear Sean whimper. Then everybody sleeps. On the second day the whole group plays a game in the dining hall with Kenneth Bywater while Tom drinks coffee and Heidi drinks cocoa. Common struggle makes friends of the counselors. They talk the kids over. They watch. “This game,” Bywater says, “is about things, about you and me.” Bywater has a happy voice for children. “Because, when we learn together, we know each other, and, can love together.” A circle is made of one fewer chairs than players, and everybody sits, except the remaining player, who stands in the middle of the circle. Bywater begins in the middle. The idea is that he will say what he loves and if what he loves is an attribute or characteristic of you, you must switch to another seat. This will give him a chance to find a chair. Whoever remains standing, then, must say what he or she loves, causing another switch, continuing the game. “I love blue eyes,” Bywater says. Five campers scramble. Bywater tries and fails to sit. He says: “I love the Detroit Tigers.” This time he takes a chair, and the smallest, quietest girl is marooned. “I love—” she looks around “—the Detroit Tigers.” Later when Bumper Harmon stands in the middle he says: “I love fat people.” Tom calls him aside. When Sean stands he says: “I love toe goo,” and laughs, and nobody laughs, and nobody moves. After this game the boys and girls take rest hour. On the trail back to the cabin, Tom’s boys trot ahead. Tom listens to them talk. Bumper asks Sean: “Is that your dad?” “No way, who?”
“Bob,” says Jordan. “Buttwater,” Bumper says, “Kenneth Buttwater. You look like Kenneth Buttwater.” “Bobwater,” Jordan says. “Son of Buttwater,” Bumper says.For the rest of the week Sean has a nickname. Tom takes to leading contests among the boys. He himself likes contests. The contests he runs are playful. The second night the challenge is to see who can froth most from tooth-brushing. The nervous boys remain in the cabin. Sean, Bumper, Paul, Jordan and Tom scrub wildly around the spigot, their bubbles and spit messy and white in the shade of evening trees. The five act like dogs and laugh hard until chins disappear and shirts are streaked with foam. Paul wins. Paul is skinny and Christian but not too Christian. He is uptight and fastidious but liked. The next night Tom holds a contest to see who can sing the longest note. Pitch does not matter. Everybody else warbles and trembles, exhaling, while Paul times with his enormous digital watch. Bumper fails completely, starting too loud. Paul makes the prettiest sound. Jordan gasps. Sean sings a note that lasts twenty-one seconds, placing first. His note is on pitch and the victory makes him very happy. Later he recounts his victory to everyone. On the fourth day, on the path, on the way to swimtime, Tom hears jokes. Bumper, Jordan, and Paul are walking and whispering when Bumper blurts Me Chinese Me play joke Me go peepee in your Coke. Paul looks back nervously. The boys try to hide the jokes they tell, not knowing Tom would rather listen. Tom, however, cannot allow something hither and not yon, because the boys have no sense of company, cannot edit themselves as appropriate. What is allowed in the cabin will leak out around Bywater. Tom lets them fear him. The trail turns to sand and the sand turns to beach and Tom catches up with his group, which is throwing sticks in the lake. Bumper is mocking Sean’s paunch. Sean’s paunch glows brown in the beach sun. Other groups are present and some children already swim. “Number off,” Tom yells, and the boys speak German. Standing on the beach Tom sees Michelle far out, red and blond, sitting on the raft, holding the floppy red float. He waves so she waves. On the beach Bywater stands in his swimsuit, his hairy torso whiter and larger than the whitest, smallest child. He frowns. For Bywater happiness is a property of speech, and, when he is not talking—even when he stands before the public of the camp—his face shows disdain for the chaos that is the children that are his charge. Disagreeableness is his weakness. Bywater knows it, and seeks absolution in the weakness of others. He likes it when others are weak. Ministering he can be relatively strong. He will never be absolutely strong. He approaches Tom. Although incapable of apprehending Tom’s weakness, Bywater forever searches. “Hello Tom. How is the week going?” He asks this sympathetically, as if certain Tom needs a friend. “Great,” Tom says. “Fantastic.” To swim, each camper must have a buddy, and, when Tom’s group pairs off, Sean is left out. Tom is his buddy. Tom swims with the seven boys to the raft. Sean lollygags and doggypaddles. At the raft Tom watches Michelle. Her arms hug the float and her eyes stay intent on the heads of children. Tom talks to the boys, but everything he says, he says for Michelle to hear. He very much wants Michelle to notice. Michelle is impassive and watches the swimmers and hardly nods. On the raft the boys act silly and ruffle language like chickens ruffle feathers, the shapes of words becoming hysterical and unclear. They shout in unison, each in an idiot voice, each pushing his idiot voice into deeper idiocy, until all their voices become a single, profound, gamesome, idiot sound. The fury of sound settles whenever one speaks loudly enough. Bumper yells we’re the fashion show swimmers oh yeah and falls to the water, arms wagging. Fashion show swimmers Sean yells and cannonballs. This then becomes the phrase. Paul covers his chest and his groin with skinny arms, as if a woman discovered naked, and in falsetto says oh I am beautiful! He titters, falling. Now they are the Fashion Show Swimmers and even the Christian boys say so. Each boy repeats this phrase again and again until its descriptive meaning no longer exists and it becomes a thing to say, a refrain for a particular act, for a particular group, for a moment, for these boys, for this place. On the afternoon of the fifth day the whole group does Rebirth, an obstacle where campers lift and push each other through a tractor tire hanging five feet high between two trees. The challenge is designed to force cooperation between a group of children like these six girls and seven boys who scream and quarrel about it the whole time. All the boys except Sean go first, before the girls, leaving Sean to boost all six girls. Then when everybody is through except Sean, it is realized that Sean cannot lift himself, and that the group has failed the challenge. Tom pretends that they have not, and lifts Sean through himself, and hurts his back doing so. The week ends with an all-camp celebration, an event intended to harden freshly poured faith. For Bumper, Jordan, and Sean—off whom faith has easily run—the celebration is unrelated to Christ. Campers are allowed to do skits, and Bumper plans to steal the show. He rewrites a famous rap song to be about mosquitoes. Jordan helps. As best they can they simulate hip-hop fashion, wearing warm-up gear and sunglasses. Paul prepares backup vocals. As they are practicing Sean says: “I can sing.” Bumper says: “What’s up, Buttwater?” “I can sing you know I can.” “Not as good as Paul,” Bumper says, “and we got it planned out anyway. Sorry.” “Sorry Bob.” Sean stares at the floor with a crestfallen face. The all-camp celebration is held in the fire-bowl, a deep vale with steep sides covered by thick forest. At the bottom is a clear, flat space, large enough for a ring of log-benches that encircle a smaller fire-ring of stones. Into the fire-ring extends a ceremonial log, part of which is burned on each occasion. Tonight Tom and Heidi’s group arrives last, when the circle is already crowded and happy. Pacing the circle with an immense smile, Kenneth Bywater presides. “Well,” he says when everyone sits, “How has the week gone?” Tom watches Michelle, who sits across the ring from him with the group whose love for her has been most vocal. As lifeguard she can choose who to sit with and is desired by everyone. Now she wears her lifeguard windbreaker. She is braiding her hair into beautiful ropes. Even sitting on a log her posture is good. She joins her knees and spreads her feet, forming a triangle of shadow between her legs. She never looks at Tom. “Let us pray,” Bywater says. In daily speech he talks in fragments, like anybody, but maybe a little worse. When he prays, the work of formulating thought is gone—thought has been formulated. He speaks unbrokenly. The eternal arises in eternal phrases, righteous Lord, bountiful wedding feast, sayeth, speaketh, save us. He has memorized these words. After prayer the celebration begins. Heidi has taught her girls a sign-language song, which they perform, trembling and shy. Michelle leads “Rise and Shine,” and then Matt Dover, who is the favorite boy counselor, more popular than Tom, conducts a roar from his boys. humbah humbah HUMBAH HUMBAH a tiki tiki tumbah A TIKI TIKI TUMBAH moosa moosa moosa MOOSA MOOSA MOOSA a alaway alaway alaway ahh A ALAWAY ALAWAY ALAWAY AHH Then Bumper, Jordan, and Paul rap. Tom has dreaded this performance, but it turns out better than expected. Bumper does not seem delinquent, only sharp and confident. Paul sings well. Jordan is funny. Even his bulging, crazy-person eyes are funny. When they finish they are happy, everybody claps, people rehash and praise, and Sean watches with gloom. After the celebration Tom and Heidi take their kids to the dining hall to eat ice cream. Sean sits alone, exaggerating sorrow. He pushes his spoon, he sighs. After snack they have showers. As the boys promenade from toilet-stall to shower-stall, Tom takes Sean aside. “Huh what I didn’t even do anything what,” Sean says. “You aren’t in trouble,” Tom says. “You want to learn a joke?” Sean looks Tom over. Tom says: “They’ll love it. I’m going to teach you a joke to tell the guys.” Sean is silent. “Is that OK?” “I don’t give a crap about the guys.” “I don’t either.” Both are silent. “What is the hardest part,” Tom says, “about eating a vegetable?” “The life support system,” Sean says. “Is that the joke?” “No way. I’m warming up. Do you know any?” “Sure I know tons really,” Sean says. He thinks. He says: “There was this guy and he went to a motel and after he was in bed he heard something. He heard these voices saying when the log rolls over we’re all gonna die and it totally scared him so he put the pillow over his head and but still he heard these voices when the log rolls over we’re all gonna die so he gets up and looks under the bed but doesn’t find nothing but still these voices keep saying when the log rolls over we’re all gonna die and but so he looks through the room and doesn’t find nobody but finally goes into the bathroom and in the bathroom the voice is like a lot louder when the log rolls over we’re all gonna die and but so finally he looks in the toilet and in the toilet is three ants sitting on a big gross nasty turd.” Sean laughs. Tom teaches Sean a joke. When they return to the cabin everybody is hyperactive. Jordan apes farts that keep everybody laughing for a quarter of an hour. Then the boys discuss at length the success of Bumper’s rap. Amid praise Bumper feels welcome to praise himself and repeats lines from the performance. He calls everything rad. With lights out the boys howl. Tom allows it. This is his last night counseling, and the job seems done. If the boys are tired tomorrow, so what. Short jokes become long jokes and clean jokes become dirty. One of the jokes gets told three times, because three of the seven boys know different versions, and, even though each version has the same punchline, each has its own set-up. All the boys laugh each time. Many of the jokes are not exactly jokes but strange narratives that, with a stretching of decency and logic, seem suitable paths by which to arrive at an obscene concatenation of words. Between jokes, Jordan trumpets more farts. All the while Sean laughs, but does not say anything himself until he begins the joke from Tom. He starts. “I have a joke listen to this. So the Springfield elementary school was studying phonics and so the teacher said to her bad student Archibald Barisoll Archibald say your name in phonics but Archibald Barisoll was a bad dude and so he said fuck you bitch and so the teacher was mad but she was a good teacher and so instead of giving it to him she had her best student, Mary Smith, go. She said Mary say your name in phonics and Mary said OK. You got your MARE you got your REE you got your MARE REE you got your SMITH you got your REE SMITH you got your MARE REE SMITH The teacher was happy of course but what she really wanted was Archibald Barisoll to participate so she says Archibald if you say your name in phonics I will give you a cigar from Cuba so Archibald Barisoll says OK bitch. So Archibald Barisoll clears his throat and spits a like giant hawker on the floor and says You gotchur ARCH you gotchur EYE you gotchur ARCH EYE you gotchur BALD you gotchur EYE BALD you gotchur ARCH EYE BALD you gotchur BARE you gotchur BALD BARE you gotchur EYE BALD BARE you gotchur ARCH EYE BALD BARE you gotchur ASS you gotchur BARE ASS you gotchur BALD BARE ASS you gotchur EYE BALD BARE ASS you gotchur ARCH EYE BALD BARE ASS you gotchur HOLE you gotchur ASS HOLE you gotchur BARE ASS HOLE you gotchur BALD BARE ASS HOLE you gotchur EYE BALD BARE ASS HOLE you gotchur ARCH EYE BALD BARE ASS HOLE, bitch.” Sean speaks the punchline in his lowest voice. He sounds crazy. Long before he finishes, the boys laugh with sick and furious laughter. There is a common hysteria to which Tom belongs, relinquishing authority as he joins, feeling the muscles in his back relax with the chemical ease of great laughter. The jokes go on then for another hour, everybody in the cabin happy for the general peace. Even the tentative Christian boys sense it. Bumper is no longer attacking, Sean is no longer whining, everyone is jocular, everyone is in. The boys ignore the rankings of the week and have fun, invisible in the dark, faceless, speaking, not seeing, laughing hard. The next day, as parents arrive, the boys romp in the old hierarchy. Precedence is sovereign. Bumper remains Bumper, Sean remains Sean—remains Buttwater. Nevertheless Tom is happy for Sean. Sean had a good night. Tom watches as Sean greets his aunt and uncle with a big grin. He is brimming with that same resolution, the ironic resolution of a fat kid who thinks yeah I’m the fat kid but isn’t life funny. Sean introduces Tom. “Tom, this is Dave and Aunt Maureen. This is Tom.” “Pleased to meet you,” Tom says. Dave looks at Tom with accusatory weariness, as if Tom were to blame for taking this child from him, for showing him what a bay of peace life can be without a sister-in-law’s tender glutinous bastard son. He shakes Tom’s hand. Sean says: “Tom lifted me by himself through Rebirth and we went to Croaker Island and sang and I can sing in the car.” Tom waves at the singing head of Sean in the backseat of an Oldsmobile, driving away. Tom feels good. He feels, well, rather Christian. Saturday morning the campers leave. Sunday afternoon new ones come. Saturday afternoon is the only time off. Heidi, Michelle, and Matt Dover often spend it together, and sometimes Tom joins them, and sometimes he does not. This Saturday he drives alone to Petosky and watches the water and the rich people. He has reasons for getting away. He eats in a coffee shop and enjoys the taste of food from outside the camp kitchen. He does not think about Sean. He is preoccupied. Perhaps he would not have thought about Sean in any way significant ever again if, when he returned to camp, Michelle had not tacked this note to his door: TOM: CAN YOU COME FIND KENNETH AND I? WE GOT A PHONE CALL AND NEED TO TALK NOW.
Tom arrived at camp five weeks ago today. He did not come to counsel. Kenneth Bywater had hired him as camp nurse. Tom knows first aid. For five weeks Tom served as nurse, but last week Bywater asked Tom to counsel the seven boys. When Bywater asked, Tom said no. When Bywater asked again, Tom said no again. When Bywater asked a third time, Tom said yes. Every opportunity in Tom's life has been met with such reluctance. In each case, reluctance has found reason for itself: an excuse that appears tenable but is subsequent to what it explains. Tom is an atheist. Nobody knew this when he arrived five weeks ago. For four weeks he served very peaceably. For Christians the affable newcomer is a token of Providence. When Tom arrived he was a newcomer in an otherwise self-contained place. This camp cultivates its own. Inveterate campers attend counselor training camps. Graduates return as staff. Heidi, Michelle, and Matt Dover all camped here long ago. They know each other. To them, at the beginning of the summer, Tom betokened God. He seemed an important surprise. He seemed very nice. When five weeks ago Tom arrived he went to the manager’s cabin, as Bywater had instructed in a letter. The manager’s cabin is a structure of unfinished wood hung with colorless photographs of loggers, horses, and trains in snow, and filled with the brightly colored literature that Christians publish periodically. When Tom arrived the staff was making dinner. Tom stomped on the crucifix doormat and nodded at the room. As soon as Bywater spoke Tom recognized the voice from the telephone. But Tom did not need to hear Bywater speak to recognize him. He was twice as large and twice as old as everybody else, gay with matronly decorum, fixing Ragu. Everybody else was twenty: Heidi, round and pale; Michelle, red and blonde; Matt Dover, confident. “Hi,” Tom said. “Tom,” said Kenneth Bywater, “Tom this is Heidi, and Shelly, and Matt.” “Hi,” Tom said. “How can I help?” And then: “Boy is this place up here. I think I passed some affiliates of Santa Claus.” Everybody liked this and liked Tom. Tom was two days late. Two days ago these four people had convened and begun to prepare the camp and themselves for a summer of ministry. The four together had many rites to observe in preparation, rites that could begin now that Tom had arrived. They gathered to eat. But because of the hard work of the last two days, and because Matt Dover and Heidi share a romantic history that dooms them to wormwood sweetened only by New Testament readings, and because Bywater is a weak leader who frets small problems with great sighs, and because Michelle is a perfectionist who quietly compensates for his ineptitude, the four of them bickered over grace. “Michelle, why don’t you choose something?” Bywater said. “I don’t care,” she said. Bywater sighed. Michelle moved her eyebrows high. Matt Dover looked at Tom. Tom excused himself with a blank face. “Matt?” Bywater said. “Heidi?” “Johnny Appleseed?” “We did that for breakfast,” Matt said. Finally they prayed. Everybody agreed that the spaghetti with greenbeans, garlic toast and milk was delicious. Then Tom helped wash. Afterward they gathered in the living room to begin the spiritual bonding requisite to the summer. They wrote a staff covenant. In this they decided together the rules of their Christian practice: to give 110%, to watch the attitude, to set aside time each day for God. On the same paper they co-authored a statement of purpose. They signed it and Heidi decorated it with doodle flowers. The language described gifts, fears, journeys, and faith. Under single words were tucked all the feelings that make the stuff of life. These words did not illuminate this stuff, but accounted for it vaguely. After drafting the covenant the group performed a sending off. The five stood together, each in turn surrounded by the other four, everybody hugging. Whoever was in the middle was silent while the others spoke, each person owing each other person praise. Having been at camp two hours, Tom praised with not so much elaboration, but listening to the others he learned how things were. He watched the smoldering romance of Matt and Heidi flare. He heard Bywater compliment Michelle excessively. He saw that Michelle ran the camp. Bywater had begun as director only in February, working downstate until April in an office near Detroit. Then he had come north and begun living here, but stayed indoors. Michelle knows the guts of the camp: fuse boxes, paths, meal schedules, canoes. Bywater hates mosquitoes and hikes. From this night on Tom heeded Michelle more than he heeded Bywater. Although his allegiance was based, and based soundly, on her superiority as a leader, it was also based on her. Immediately he liked how she looked and how she was. She clothed herself in a restraint that might have covered unrestraint. This fascinated Tom. As he contemplated what her real clothing hid, he ascribed to her a kind of emotional clothing that was as pleasant to dis-imagine. This emotional clothing did not exist in Michelle’s perception of herself. Michelle had her own crush. Tom seemed nice. He was effortless in small talk, but not too suave. He was handsome but awkward, had the manner of someone who would make a good father. In the room tense with personal history, he took no sides, pleased everybody, joked as if in the utter absence of discord. After the covenant and sending off, Michelle took Tom’s foot into her lap. With blue thread she stitched on his sock a T. This development Bywater eyed. Tom and Michelle did not talk about anything. They would seldom talk about anything. The camp is called rustic. The roads are dirt and the cabins are the color of wood. Electricity runs through buried cables. The camp fronts a lake and includes a mile of undeveloped shoreline where four bald eagles live. The lake itself is undeveloped, circled by other Christian camps. Away from the lake at this camp large hills roll upward. In the valleys are swamps. The land was lumbered sixty years ago and now the trees are sixty years tall. To preserve the peace of the forest the camp prohibits all cars except the Red Truck. Already at the beginning of summer, however, Bywater was ducking this ban, faking small emergency after small emergency, driving around in a blue station wagon whose floor was littered with food cartons wrecked by chicken grease. Even in a car, Bywater arrived everywhere breathless. On the second day, while Bywater did paperwork frantically, the four youth worked outdoors. They raked the waterfront, opened pipes, swept floors, and hacked paths. Later Matt fixed smoke detectors while Tom, Heidi, and Michelle prepared tent cabins. The camp owns a small Japanese tractor which Michelle loves to drive. The tractor is a Kubota and Michelle never calls it “the tractor” but always “the Kubota,” saying “Kubota” more often than necessary, the word providing authority, delight. Heidi and Tom rode in the Kubota trailer while Michelle drove. Beneath the roar of the engine Heidi talked to herself in sign-language. Tom lay on his back, watching above him the motion of leaves that blocked the sun but showed light in glowing, shaking layers. Everything was green. Over the sound of the engine Michelle told Tom how earlier this spring she had walked forty miles. She had walked twenty miles and then turned and walked the same distance back. She had done this in one day. The next day her shoes had not fit. “I love to walk,” Tom said. The tent cabins are built from lumber, plyboard, and screen, and are roofed in summer by large tarpaulins. To prepare the cabins, Heidi, Michelle and Tom swept out leaves, hammered metal pieces into bunkbed frames, and unfolded tarps across rafters. Michelle insisted that it was hers to climb up, position each folded tarp, and, balancing on one foot, pull it open to the sky. She loved this feat and pushed and strained against the wood and canvas with agression and care. Tom sweated, watching Michelle above him. Heidi hammered on a bunk. Mosquitoes were ubiquitous and in ubiquity joined the motion of work: sweep, slap, sweep, slap, sweep. The hills of the forest were steep and the trees were tall, and Tom, who had only now returned outdoors after his college years, laughed cynically at the pleasure of outdoor work, but was nonetheless very pleased. For Michelle and Tom what began as possible soon grew certain. A week after Tom arrived, neither doubted it, both had a pretty good idea. In Michelle’s head rang incompletely these violent what have violent ends which as they kiss consume these violent what these violent WHAT She wanted to ask Tom violent WHAT? Tom liked looking at Michelle and liked how much he could look at her each day. Later, when things did not work out, events appeared culpable. Events were not culpable, because impossibility was present to begin with. Michelle had guts for the transcendent, saw perpetuity everywhere, Tom did not. For her, love preceded circumstance and fought against it; for him love was circumstance. Between them might have existed a middleground, where love rested on chance but never lost meaning to it. If such a place did exist, however, neither Tom nor Michelle caught sight of it. Neither saw past a limited conception—hers too absolute, his too arbitrary. Neither conceived of their feelings as a ménage à trois with place. When camp began, Heidi and Matt were the counselors. At meals, Kenneth, Michelle and Tom would sit at the staff table, just the three of them. Over the summer they became very familiar. Tom memorized how Bywater ate. Bywater equivocated over food. His equivocation was redolent with panic. Sometimes he devoured large portions. Sometimes he ate privately, skipping meals and driving forty minutes to Gaylord for fastfood. At meals, while Bywater tried and failed to hide his sin of gluttony, Tom flirted with Michelle. Tom made jokes about how hard she worked by implying that she did not work hard enough. She worked very hard. Sometimes Bywater said: “Why don’t you just ask Shelly to marry you?” Tom had never mentioned atheism, but neither had he ever mentioned God. Bywater, slow in many respects, was fast to mark this. The younger Christians, however, did not do the same. To them the order of the Lord was so evident that they could not suspect its absence from the life of an affable stranger. But Bywater knew doubt better than they, could smell its trace in the breath of circumspection. Occasionally he tested his hypothesis against Tom. One day at lunch he said: “When is Shelly going to settle down?” “Never,” Michelle said. “Never?” Nervous laughter cascaded. “Well, later.” “He’ll have to be very handsome,” Bywater said. “No he won’t. He won’t he won’t.” “He’ll have to be very nice,” Bywater said. “That’s all that matters.” “All?” Bywater said. “What if he’s a very nice atheist?” “No way!” Michelle said. Tom did feel uncomfortable. Tom and Michelle swam together every morning at daybreak. Early in the summer they had discovered a mutual interest in doing so. On the first occasion Tom had arrived before Michelle and stood to his ankles in water that cast up steam like hope. He stared at the sleek face of water not yet broken by the wind of day. Above the shore across the lake, dimmed by haze, the sun was round. The sound of Michelle through the forest was nothing but an augmentation of sounds a forest already unceasingly makes. Michelle appeared then, a sweatshirt broken in the green, then herself. Like Tom she remained expressionless. Without stern faces neither she nor he could have borne this togetherness. They were mortified. They stripped like athletes to swimsuits, ignored each other's form, dropped into cold water. They swam to the raft. They climbed out, wetness sucking cloth against bodies at which Michelle refrained and Tom pretended to refrain from looking. Tom did glance, making of breasts and legs mental pictures that held in his memory while he stared at his feet, whose ghastly, knuckly whiteness looked sick against the wood. Exercise had squared Michelle off, given her the geometry of health. The deferral of the fat of age made her beautiful. Michelle observed the nice morning and considered how nice Tom was. First they only swam mornings, but then, sometimes, they swam at night too. This was even more mortifying, even more desired. Together they bent beneath an awareness that could not have been heavier. They strained to ignore it. They swam matter-of-factly. At night what was wet seemed wetter. The water doubled and wrecked the sky. Tom and Michelle swam underwater side by side, each strange, wan, lurid, each to the other the only sign of not-dark in a medium that contained obscurity like a property of cold. At the raft they treaded, reaching upward to grip the its edge. Tom did a pull-up and water ran off him. He lowered and Michelle pulled up. They laughed. They lifted and lowered themselves then, in tandem, in rhythm, until their arms were warm from exertion. They pushed away and treaded. Michelle treaded easily and Tom did not. Later Michelle submerged for a long time. Nothing better than breath control showed her will. When Tom heard her breathe again she was beneath the raft. There he joined her in the rectangular space walled by pontoons and roofed by the raft floor where starlight fell through slits. Facing each other, their breathing was wet, tinny, raspy, and close, echoing from pontoons and water. Working fingers and toes between the slats above them, both tried to pull free of the water. They laughed with exertion and strain as boyancy fell from them in dark plashing cataracts. The last inches of water were impossible to escape, and they dropped weakly and breathed more, sputtering, unspeaking. Outside the pocket they treaded again and Tom said “I’m freezing.” They swam in and dried off. “Have you ever been to a sperm bank?” Tom said. Michelle made a sick face. She made this face unconsciously. Matt acted naturally. “Have you?” he said. They were in the staff cabin. Tom said yes and then described the cryogenic office, which had been sterilized and stocked with pornography. Matt laughed and Michelle swallowed much that she was chewing over to say, asking only whether it bothered Tom that he might have unknown children. Tom said no of course not but that it didn’t matter anyhow, that his test sample had had low motility. This exchange had occurred after three weeks, and was the beginning of a change. Tom began to say other things, told other offensive stories. He no longer omitted exclamations of God, My God, and Good Lord. He knew Michelle liked him. He never tried to kiss her but pulled at those other clothes he thought she wore. How this made her feel he had no idea. He was bored, impatient, and amorous. It made her feel sick. The solidity he seemed to have brought, his ease with children, his diplomacy, his manners, his handsome face rather without lust—all this shook. He now seemed sometimes terrible, surprisingly terrible, like beautiful food ruined by too much salt. It was Michelle’s way, however, to hold a steady front. The week before he counseled, Tom substituted for one of the kitchen girls, who was sick. He was still nurse, but now he was Kitchen Crew as well. For that week he washed dishes, put away food, and mopped. Michelle often helped him. Late one night of that week Tom scrubbed alone in the bleachy heat. After finishing he removed his apron. He stepped out onto the loading dock and felt the difference in temperature. It was ten degrees cooler. Having finished dishes he was to mop the floor, but he decided he would mop the floor tomorrow. Then it would be cooler inside. He would rise long before breakfast and mop. Cutting through the forest to his cabin he met Michelle. “Do you want to come for a night hike?” she said. “Sure,” he said. “Let me get rid of this stuff.” They stopped at his cabin and then followed the swamp. For a few minutes the dark was prohibitive. Then deep blacks became dark blues and dark blues became light blues which the brain made white. Without the windy soughing of day the forest buzz was constant. Walking sounded loud. Tom and Michelle crossed swamp logs on which they balanced above ducksbreath that caught some light. Frogs plopped like stones. On the far side of the swamp Tom and Michelle cut through pines and then birches and then along the lakeshore. Neither said anything until Michelle said: “Did you finish up OK?” “Sure,” Tom said. Then: “I’ll mop tomorrow.” To clarify Michelle said: “You didn’t mop.” “No,” Tom said. “I’ll mop tomorrow.” Michelle told Tom that the floor must be mopped tonight, and Tom said that there are only three people it matters to, you, me, and the Health Department, and it won’t make a difference to at least two of us if it’s mopped tomorrow; and Michelle said that it will be mopped tonight, it’s a camp rule and it’s the principle of the thing; and Tom said I don’t really believe in the principle of things; and Michelle said it’s how things are; and Tom said I don’t believe in “how things are”; and Michelle said it will be mopped tonight and Tom said if that’s so then it’s your problem. Michelle went to the kitchen and mopped and Tom went to his cabin. This was sudden and terrible the way all real fights are sudden and terrible. When Tom as an atheist had applied for the job at the Christian Camp he had envisioned three clandestine months, a different view. But why would he want to do this? For an atheist an empty universe is a very dull, frictionless fact. Likely it is the dull, frictionless fact. Tom’s view was so solitary, sad, and cold, that the prospect of active refutation, from real, faithful people, might have seemed happy and warm. Perhaps the only thing he did not anticipate was the gravity of people exceeding the gravity of belief. Bywater knocked on Tom’s door. It was the end of the week of kitchen duty. “Hello one second,” Tom said. His front door was framed by screen and standing on the darker side of it he saw Bywater more clearly than Bywater saw him. Bywater visored his brow with his hand and looked in. Tom opened the door. “Hi there Tom,” Bywater said. “Things going OK?” “Yes great,” Tom said. “Is everything OK now between you and Michelle?” Earlier Tom had relayed the mopping fight. Michelle never would have mentioned it. The younger Christians did not gossip, and Tom knew this. Still he had wanted Bywater to hear his side. “Yes, great,” Tom said. “Got a moment to talk?” “Sure.” “Good.” In all speech Bywater sputtered until enough pressure had built up. Then he spat out short statements followed by long sighs. “I have a problem.” Here Tom was to interpose soothingly. When he did not, Bywater said: “Our numbers are very high next week, and, they’re not supposed to be, but, we’re in trouble, and, I was wondering how you would feel, if, I asked you, if, you wanted to counsel.” Tom’s hesitance has already been described, though not the reason behind it. As nurse, he spent many hours a day alone with Michelle. As counselor he would spend none. He resisted this separation with the bald irrationality of thwarted love. Bywater, who had no idea, and thought Tom hesitant for other reasons, pushed him. The pushing made Tom increasingly loath. Frustration that began in love emerged as a broader anger. He became angry with the Christianity. Immediately this anger seemed to precede what had caused it. Asked a third time, Tom agreed to counsel, but now his anger roiled high. Then he vented it through a rash act. On Sunday, before the new campers came, the staff met to discuss the forthcoming week. After a short prayer Bywater said: “As some of you know, we are short this week, and, would have been in big trouble, but, Tom, who has done everything, and, who has never counseled, said, that, he would do it this week.” Everybody smiled. Everybody looked at Tom. When everybody looked at Tom, Tom told everybody that there is no God. He made his repudiation specific by mentioning Christ. He excused himself from inculcating absurd beliefs in children, and said he would counsel but he would not sing or pray or preach. When he finished nobody smiled or frowned. Michelle and Bywater especially did not smile or frown. “I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Matt said later. So Tom counseled. He was paired with Heidi and Heidi agreed to lead prayer and worship. The seven boys arrived, and Tom actually enjoyed the bustle, intimacy, and mania of his job. Experiences often undermined his reluctance in this way. For six days, however, his proclamation hung over his head. Michelle was now a distant figure, there across the water. Tom wanted to resume as nurse, wanted to have evenings alone with her, wanted to set things straight with words. He wanted this whenever his mind cleared of his duties, which, as it happened, was not very often. Whenever he saw Michelle he regretted not only what he had said, but also what he could not bring himself to believe. Michelle was distraught in her own way. There was no sense to be made of any of this. Tom had given himself a terrible label, one that seemed weak against the best in him, but that nevertheless stood. It could not be reconciled. Because it could not be reconciled, she was very close to stepping back. She was ready, provisionally, to take what Tom would have called a larger view.
Tom cannot think of anything to say. At the table in the manager’s cabin Bywater is sitting where he sat five weeks ago, eating. He seems upset and also not upset. Tom is standing. Michelle is curled where she stitched Tom’s sock, knees now pulled to her chest. She holds a braid of hair and stares at its end, flicking its end with an index finger. Bywater says: “I’m not going to repeat what an angry mother said her son learned last week at camp. I don’t talk like that, and, I don’t know if it’s true, and, I don’t want to accuse you of anything, but, it sounds like yall had a pretty wild time.” “I’m disappointed,” Michelle says. Certainly she is. Tom has acted directly against the whole spirit of the camp. He has shown poor judgement. He has shown poor taste. She is very sorry, but, when it comes down to it, the event does makes things easier. It’s what you’d expect. It clears things up. Now there is nothing to reconcile. Tom finishes the summer as decent people finish necessary jobs, obligation outweighing disdain, but not by any great tip of the scales. Nobody treats him differently, unless—and he honestly cannot tell—this sameness reflects monumental effort. Michelle is very equitable. Heidi acts very nice. Matt Dover’s self-assurance grows. Even Bywater, who had, for a moment, in shock, looked outward at Tom, returns to inward fussing. The weeks always end in the fire-bowl. Now the summer ends there too. Tom has skipped a couple of these all-camp celebrations, but he decides to attend the final one. It is mid-August. The fire-bowl looks the same. The motions are the same. Bywater prays. With clean charisma Matt leads rowdy boys in Humbah Humbah. In sign-language Heidi and her girls sing. The ceremonial log burns shorter in the fire. The sun sets. Freshly poured faith is hardened. Bywater asks questions to remind the children about God. Most of the children love Michelle. Those who have loved Michelle most vocally get to sit near her. Her hair is in braids. She is happy and is always happy at the all-camp celebration. Tom watches her and she knows Tom watches her. She does not look at him and he knows that she does not look at him. The group sings a fun, familiar song: I am a C. This song spells out its important words. I am a C.H. In doing so letters become melody. I am a C.H.R.I.S.T.I.A.N. The song is tricky, especially for young people who are learning to spell. And I have C.H.R.I.S.T. in my H.E.A.R.T. and will L.I.V.E.E.T.E.R.N.A.L.L.Y. Everyone sings in warm, loving unison.
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