A Fistful of Fig Newtons (10 page)

After what seemed like several days, the lecture was over. The wilted mob surged out with relief into the driving rain.

“Boy, this is fun,” Flick said earnestly to no one in particular. “If we ever get lost, now we can find where north is.”

“Yeah.” It was all I could come up with, since I was too busy keeping an eye out for the sergeant, who was picking kids out of the line ahead of us. He got the three of us with a single scoop of his hand.

“You guys are on cleanup detail. Let’s move.”

We joined a clump of Chipmunks who were cowering next to a battered pickup truck. For the next couple of hours, we hopped in and out of the truck, picking up candy wrappers and stray twigs around the grounds. Between the trees, I could occasionally glimpse groups of campers in ragged formation, on mysterious missions. And from somewhere in the distance, the sound of a Ping-Pong ball continued, as it would day and night for the weeks to come. Though expeditions were formed to find the table and those who were playing on it, no one ever did.

“Get that cigarette butt over there. By that big rock.” The sergeant, whose name was Biggie Clagg, a second-year defensive guard at the University of Iowa (first string) didn’t miss a thing.

“If I ever catch the little crumb who was smokin’ that, he’ll be sorry he ever heard a’ cigarettes. They stunt yer growth and they wreck yer wind. I don’t wanna catch none a’ you guys puffin’ on a butt, y’hear?”

So it went as we drove in the rattly truck back and forth through the trees and over the trails.

“You guys are really lucky getting the cleanup detail today,” said the sergeant from behind the steering wheel. “Now you got it over with. You won’t catch it for another week.” We all agreed that we were lucky indeed. If we hadn’t been on this great detail, we might have been wasting our time playing ball or puffing on butts. We looked out at the other campers as they marched about, with honest sympathy for their having missed the chance to be with us.

“Maybe you guys don’t know what good work does for ya, but one day you’ll realize it’s the best thing for ya. Keeps ya sharp. Cuts the fat off ya. Good for yer wind.” Biggie continually flexed his muscles as we scurried among the weeds, carrying burlap sacks and searching for bits of paper.

“Hey! I found a dead turtle!” Flick hollered excitedly.

“In the sack,” Biggie barked. “We don’t want no dead turtles clutterin’ up the trails.”

Flick poked the turtle with a stick. It lurched forward. In a single motion, it snapped the stick cleanly in two. Flick leaped back wildly with a cry of mortal fear. The turtle, in high dudgeon, lumbered off into the undergrowth.

“Boy, what a chickenshit!” sneered Schwartz, flailing a branch about and looking for another turtle.

“YIKES!” he screamed a moment later, leaping upward, his feet churning to keep him off the ground. “HELP! A SNAKE!!”

The entire detail of Chipmunks scrambled onto the truck in
about two tenths of a second. A tiny green garter snake slithered away unconcernedly. A garter snake’s life in a boys’ camp is a hectic one.

We drove on. “I don’t know what you guys would do if ya ever saw a rattler,” Biggie rumbled in his raspy voice. “What a buncha pantywaists.”

The rain had petered out. From time to time, the sun broke through the overcast. Out on the lake, a fleet of green canoes milled about on the choppy waters.

“Look at those guys out in those rowboats,” said a Chipmunk near the front of the truck.

“You’ll get your turn tomorrow,” Biggie said. “And they’re not rowboats, stupid. Those are canoes.”

They were the first canoes any of us had ever seen in the flesh. They looked great. Occasionally, from the lake, we could hear muffled shouting followed by wild splashing, but we were too busy picking up candy wrappers to watch.

Our first day in camp ended with supper in the mess hall–corned-beef hash, canned peas, dill pickles, and grape Kool-Aid, followed by watery Jell-O and Nabisco wafers. My mother would have had a fit at our diet, but we thought it was great.

As we were finishing, Morey Partridge came over to our table to announce: “Since this is the first day in camp for you Chipmunks, there won’t be a sing-song tonight, so’s you can get settled in your cabins. You get the night off.”

We wandered out of the mess hall into the twilight. The second shift of mosquitoes had come on duty. A great swirling cloud drifted over us from the lake. We swatted and scratched.

“Boy, do I have to go to the toilet!” said Flick uneasily, shifting from foot to foot as he slapped. I was with him on that. We hadn’t gone since the diner back on the road. The time had come.

“I think it’s over there.” Schwartz pointed up a path that wound behind the rec hall. We joined a long caravan of fellow campers winding up the dim trail. A wooden shed with a swinging door lit
by a yellow light bulb stood at the head of the line. From time to time, a kid would come out, ashen-faced, with an apologetic air. As each appeared, a cheer went up.

The line inched forward painfully. It was getting more serious moment by moment.

“Jeez, I’m goin’ in the bushes,” Flick finally said after a quarter of an hour.

“Y’better not,” said Schwartz between clenched teeth. He already had two demerits. “If Biggie found
that
on cleanup detail, he’d really get sore.”

After an eternity, and just in the nick of time, Flick and I finally got inside the shed. It was lit brilliantly. There were four holes cut in an elevated wooden platform. Two other Chipmunks were hard at work. Furtively, we got down to business. The four of us squatted in embarrassed silence. Three frantic-looking Chipmunks who stood in the doorway formed an impatient and ribald audience. Somehow I had never thought of this side of camp life. It was my first experience with mass facilities, and it had a curiously inhibiting effect. I found that I didn’t have to go as much as I thought I had. As a matter of fact, nothing happened at all.

“Come on, you guys! Yer just sittin’ there!” One of the audience banged his fist on the wall in desperation.

Still nothing happened.

The kid on the end hole stood up, buckled his belt, and scurried out with the air of a man who had done nothing but had taken a long time doing it.

“Oh, wow!” The loud Chipmunk beat another kid to the hole, ripped his pants down, and squatted with obvious relief. Three other Chipmunks entered and began pacing and observing. The new kid on the end hole, who’d been so anxious, fell silent. He, too, was having problems.

“I guess I didn’t have to go,” Flick whispered and left with his face to the floor. I followed shortly. It was the beginning, although we did not yet know it, of a mysterious ailment known as the
Nobba-WaWa-Nockee Block, or Camper’s Cramp. Many a kid went for two weeks or more before finally giving in.

Back at Mole Lodge, we prepared to spend our first night in the woods. You’ve never seen a dark night till you’ve spent a night in the Michigan woods. We were glad to be indoors. There were great shadows on the walls as I climbed up into my bunk. The fat Chipmunk already lay in his bunk, reading a thick paperback, holding it close to his nose in order to make out the print.

A face appeared in the screened doorway: “Lights out in half an hour, at nine-thirty.” It disappeared.

Schwartz’s head peeked over the edge of his bunk. “Ain’t this great, you guys?”

From somewhere in the gloom, Flick answered, “Yeah. Sure is.”

I lay dead tired from the long day, the bus ride, the lecture, Captain Crabtree, the rain, the cleanup detail, Biggie; all of it was like some endless dream. I had been away from home only since morning, and already I could hardly remember my kid brother, my mother, and the old man. The lights went out. After a brisk flurry of whispering, silence.

I shifted restlessly on my muslin mattress cover. The mattress seemed to be filled with fingernail parings. Constellations of prickly things jabbed me everywhere. Finally, I slipped off into a troubled sleep.

“What’s that?” It seemed like I wasn’t asleep for five minutes when Flick’s voice, trembling with fear, made me start straight up. I hit my head a reeling crack against the bunk above and fell back stunned.

“There’s something out there!” Flick’s voice ended with a slight sob. Mole Lodge was in a turmoil. From the window, the dim-gray light of early dawn fell on the board floor. I heard Schwartz mutter, “Look out and see what it is!”

There was a pause. Another voice answered, “Oh yeah? Do it yourself. It ain’t gonna get me!”

It was the dreaded Thing in the Woods syndrome that afflicts
all denizens of every kid camp everywhere. We lay petrified until the sun came up and reveille was blown. Only the fat Chipmunk slept through it all. He was the first person I ever saw who slept with his glasses on.

It was a sharp, brisk, sunny day. Camp Nobba-WaWa-Nockee swung into action. After breakfast–oatmeal, milk, raspberry jam, burnt toast–Morey Partridge announced:

“Wolves, Eagles, Polar Bears, Jaguars, and, oh yeah, Moles–it’s time for leathercraft. Let’s go. On the double.”

Leathercraft! There are few among us who have not felt the pain of a needle piercing a thumb, the inexpressible boredom of toiling over a wampum belt or a lumpy wallet bearing the likeness of Roy Acuff done in colored Indian beads. For the next couple of hours, we fumbled with pieces of leather, hacking and chopping away. A tall, reedy counselor who called himself Cliffie moved among us in his tight pants and furry shoes, clucking sweetly.

“Yes, boys, we certainly love to make things, don’t we? My, just think how pleased your mommies and daddies are going to be with the wonderful leatherwork you’ll bring them from camp. Made by your very own little hands!”

I decided on a spectacular creation featuring the silhouette of
The End of the Trail
, which was a picture of an Indian on a horse looking down sadly at the sunset. I had admired it on a calendar my old man had gotten from the Shell station. I figured I would do it with beads and copper rivets.

“That’s very nice,” said Cliffie, peering over my shoulder. I could smell a faint whiff of perfume. “What is it?” I told him. “My, my, your mother will love that,” he commented in a somewhat stunned voice, maybe because it was more than four feet square. That was the only way I could figure out how to get all those beads and rivets into the picture. “Well, keep up the good work.” He patted me affectionately on the behind and strolled off.

Kissel was bent over a shoulder holster with a fringe for his
father’s bourbon bottle, and Flick was deeply involved in a grotesque catcher’s mitt that already looked like a dead octopus. We toiled away happily until Jake, the muscular Beaver, barged in.

“What the hell is that silly thing?” he sneered, poking at Kissel’s creation. Kissel said nothing, his face crimson. We sensed trouble.

“Jee-zus, is that supposed to be an Indian?” Jake snarled at my laboriously penciled outline. “Looks like a scarecrow takin’ a crap on some kind of a goat.” He cackled at his own rotten humor. I peered down at my drawing. He was right. It did look like a scarecrow taking a crap on a goat.

“Oh yeah?” I answered with my famous slashing wit. Jake ignored me. He turned his attention to Flick.

“Hey, kid!” Flick looked up from his monstrosity. “Wait’ll Cliffie boy sees yer makin’ a jockstrap for your pet elephant.”

The fat Chipmunk, who was silently working away on some obscure object at the other end of our table, glanced up, his tiny eyes expressionless behind his thick glasses.

“Who ya lookin’ at, fatso?” Jake glared at him. The fat Chipmunk sniffed quietly and returned to work. “Boy, Chipmunks are gettin’ worse every year.” Jake went back to his crowd of Beavers over in the corner.

That afternoon we set off on a hike, led by Captain Crabtree, wearing shorts and a baseball cap. “Now, boys, a hike is not just a walk. A woodsman is alert. He knows the meaning of every broken twig. He can identify every leaf in the forest. I want you to examine things and learn. Off we go now, follow me.”

At a rapid pace, the captain charged off into the woods. We followed, grunting and scrambling.

“Look around you, boys. Nature is kind,” the captain sang out. We looked.

Ten minutes later, an uproar broke out as a Chipmunk near the rear yipped frantically past us–pursued by 12 million angry hornets. Chipmunks flew in all directions, yelling and screaming.

The captain stood in the middle of the trail. “STAND STILL,
BOYS. THEY WON’T STING IF YOU STAND STILL! THEY’RE MORE AFRAID OF YOU THAN YOU ARE OF THEM!”

I burrowed deep in a thick growth of shiny green leaves that I wasn’t to learn until my second nature lesson–too late–were called
Toxicodendron
, commonly known as poison ivy. I caught a glimpse of a cloud of hornets settling on the captain, who stood like a statue. Foraging patrols of free-lance hornets ranged up and down the path, searching for scurrying Chipmunks.

The captain suddenly bellowed hoarsely and took off in the direction of the camp. An angry wedge-shaped formation of hornets streamed after him. We didn’t see the captain again until three days later when he snuck in the back door of the mess hall. We didn’t recognize him at first. Once again, the notorious Stand Still and They Won’t Hurt You theory had failed. But the captain, a true nature lover, didn’t give up on it until the following year, when he tried it on a bull grazing in a meadow.

In those three days, meanwhile, the lines had been drawn clearly. Being a Chipmunk, we learned, consisted mostly of attending lectures, making wallets, and fighting off Beavers, who could spot you a mile off wearing that damned Chipmunk cap. The only time you didn’t have to wear your cap was when you were sleeping, which wasn’t often–between being scared every night by the Thing in the Woods and having to get up at 3
A.M.
and wait in line to go to the toilet. We quickly fell into the rhythm of life at Nobba-WaWa-Nockee.

A few days later, Biggie Clagg gave us a swimming lesson, but not before we had been warned by two Beavers in the mess hall to beware of the monster that lived in the lake.

“Y’gotta watch it,” one said. “Y’remember Marty?” he said to his friend, who had a pinched face and a worried look. “It grabbed him right over there by that big rock. He barely got out alive. It’s got some kinda spines that sting ya, and it’s got suckers on its feet, and if it ever gets ya, it’ll drag ya right down to the bottom and eatcha.”