Spider Lake (18 page)

Ben talked his mother into buying him a modest supply of camouflage-colored face paint from the army surplus store in Rhinelander. He convinced her that the paint was needed because every self-respecting boy had camouflage. How could you play at army without the stuff? She finally acquiesced and submitted to the purchase.
 

The toughest part of their plan was the invasion of the girl scout perimeter. How could they keep that monkey quiet enough to put the plan in place before a camp counselor came out? In the end they came up with a plan to give Morris tasty treats for a few days to throw him off his game. Once the monkey let his guard down, they would slip him a mickey, just like in the movies.

Another problem was how to get to the edge of the girl scout camp without being noticed. The best and most obvious way was by boat, but the only good place to beach it was right at the camp. They couldn’t park the boat there because the camp was off-limits to boys, and the place was crawling with activity until all hours of the night. On some nights when the wind was right, you could hear all those brownies singing Kum Ba Yah as if they were sitting on your own front lawn.

There was one good thing from the girl scout camp that was working in the boys favor. They were making nightly raids of their own to the edge of the mansion grounds on the south side of the camp. They had all sorts of fire-light stories going about the rabid dog in the woods, and the big girls were bringing the younger ones out just to scare the daylights out of them. If they could implement their plan while the girl scouts were on a Hound-hike as they had begun to call it, the boys could get their dirty business done, but they had to be fast.

Digger did call the campground office once to try and put an end to the Hound-hikes, but he was immediately shot down by the camp’s head master, Mrs. Mitchell. She informed McCann that not only did the camp own all the wooded property right up to the Rule estate fence, but also the girls were allowed the run of it. She added; “And if your guard dog harms one tiny little hair on one tiny little head, I will bring the full weight of the Girl Scouts of America down on you like a ton of bricks!” Mrs. Mitchell had a way with words.

The boys decided that the operation could only be mounted by land. Any amphibious assault would be totally out of the question. They would walk to the camp on foot via the north side of the lake where their secret fort was located. They would not want to be seen by anyone walking on the path, so they would
 
duck into the weeds if they heard someone coming, and once they were near the perimeter of the camp, they would have to army-crawl.

They spent quite a lot of time trying to name the operation. To their way of thinking, you really couldn’t run a good operation without a name. All legitimate operations had names. They tried obvious ones such as Monk-Girl, Mor-Camp, or Girl-Bane and not so obvious ones such as Prime-Rib, or Show-Monk, but they finally arrived at Chimps-Ahoy because they liked the sound of it.

The first night of operation Chimps-Ahoy went off without a hitch. The boys had a riot army-crawling their way up to the edge of the camp on the north side. The girls were making their usual girlish racket, screaming every now and then at some dopey ghost story and the boys had to listen to all sorts of ridiculous songs. Then the girls were Kum Ba Yah-ing again. They laid flat and watched through their field glasses for any sign of a pattern. They were mainly watching the older counselors, keeping track of their comings and goings and entering the data into a log book. Luckily, the counselors were creatures of habit, making the rounds at regular intervals just like the Nazi guards in all he World War Two concentration camp movies. Why is it that the enemy was always so ridiculously predictable?

The same scenario was carried on for the next two nights, each phase of operation Chimps-Ahoy being completed as planned and on time. Fortune was smiling once again on the boys, although they didn’t know it. The night they brought the plan to its fruition, some of the older counselors took a field trip to the theatre in Rhinelander to see a dopey Doris Day film leaving only a skeleton crew to hold down the fort.

“Did you get it Matt?”

“Yeah, I have it here.”

Matt pulled a pill out of his front shirt pocket. It was one of his mother’s and the boys had done quite a bit of reading about it in the public library. It was what Matt’s mom used sometimes to help her go to sleep. She had bouts with insomnia every now and then especially since Matt’s father ran off. They knew that they had to be precise with the dose they gave to Morris. If they gave him too much, he would be going for his last Labrador ride. They calculated the animal’s weight and what Matt’s mother weighed, and estimated the fractions scientifically and mathmatically.

They had also found out the favorite food of their little monkey friend, and were armed with a juicy mango ready and waiting to be loaded. Ben and Matt had been throwing the vile creature chunks of tasty fruit for the last few days causing the fur-ball to let down its guard. Ben even had his mom pay for the exotic mango, telling her that it is the monkey’s favorite food. Tonight Morris would get his beloved mango with an added extra little bonus. They broke a tiny chunk off the pill and loaded the mango with it. Operation Chimps-Ahoy was in its final phase.

Matt was in rare form. He really relished putting a good plan into action. Ben was more cautious, even paranoid of getting caught. When the boys were throwing the monkey the loaded mango, Matt was doing his best impression of the TV commercial.

“Take Sominex tonight and sleeeep. Safe and restful sleeeep, sleeeep, sleeeep.”

“Matt, can you hold it down? What if my mom or dad hear you?”

“Oh come on pal, what are they going to do? Yell at me for singing a jingle? Come on Ben, have fun with it.”

They watched the monkey as close as the nasty creature would allow them, and finally the little bugger did fall off to sleep, just as planned. They looked around to see if anyone was watching, and when the coast was clear, they grabbed him and stuffed him into a laundry bag.

If they would have known the camp was deserted by all but a skeleton crew, they might have walked right up the path, across the beach, and right up to where they would place the monkey-bomb, all the time whistling a happy tune. They army-crawled however, stopping only every now and then to check the monkey’s vital signs. Neither of them really wanted to dispatch the animal. They wanted Morris to take care of their dirty business for them. Pay-backs were on the menu tonight. The girl scouts had been their arch-enemy since the beginning of time, and even more so since the anchor incident.

The Hell-hound really barked way too much to be any real use as a guard dog. In his weeks of service at the mansion, he had been taken less and less seriously as time wore on. His best night of service was his first night, when he properly warned his masters of two intruders in the nearby woods. After that, it had been all downhill for him. The previous guard-dog had better senses, barking only when someone was actually close by. By the time the boys crawled up for the finale of operation Chimps-Ahoy, the Hell-hound was already in very poor standing with his owners.

The boys waited with their bag of tricks until the girl scouts motivated a hound-hike. The monkey in the bag was still dozing soundly, and the Hell-hound was beginning to signal his disapproval of the skirted-menace; so the boys looked at the time and planned their window of opportunity. There was one last coup de grâce that needed to be done. It had to happen fast. They tied one end of a tiny piece of string to the monkey’s tail. Then, taking the other end, they attached a string of tin-cans.

With the girls out on a hike, and the counselors inside, they ran as fast as they could to the girl’s shower room. They hesitated just for a minute at the door with their backs to the wall, listening for any sign of life inside. The coast was clear. The planting of the monkey bomb was at hand. The two of them hesitated again having never entered a girl’s washroom before, and hearing all sorts of awful stories, but they finally got up the courage to go in. They pulled the monkey out of the bag and laid the sleeping creature on his side.

Matt, being the obvious risk-taker of the two looked down and said, “Awww, doesn’t he look precious sleeping like that? Ben, come here and have a look. Isn’t he just so very special?”

Ben was ready to flip his lid at his friend for using his real name. No self-respecting outlaw would ever use a real name during a heist. He wanted only to get back to the relative safety of the woods and watch for the fireworks to begin. He did take one quick look down, and he nearly burst at the comedy of it all. Matt had placed Morris’ thumb in his mouth so he looked like some kind of hairy baby lying in its crib. Ben bit his lower lip to keep from laughing at the sight of it.

The wait took some of the shine off the whole operation. The boys had hoped to get a reaction sooner than they did. There was no hurry to go home, having cleared the way with the parents to be camping at their fort, but still, there is nothing more boring than a long wait for something, whatever it is. They twice thought about hastening the waking of Morris by throwing rocks at the shower room, but eventually they decided to let things play out naturally.

Finally, the thing came to a head, and though it didn’t end quite the way they expected, it was well worth the price of admission. The boys were trying to stay awake, and were hashing out whether or not they should abort the mission. The tiny amount of string tied to Morris’ tail would very likely go unnoticed by Ben’s parents. Animals were always getting caught up in string and things of that nature. But if a camp counselor came out and seen Morris still sleeping with the cans tied to him, that was another thing entirely. They would easily pinpoint the source of the conspiracy just by knowing where the monkey came from.

They were still thinking about aborting the mission when a couple of girl scouts left the fire-side sing along to take care of their necessary business. Each boy watched open-eyed as the thing played out before them. Their collective excitement was at levels they had never experienced, and they thought they would burst as their excitement increased with each step the two girls made on their way to the washroom. They were now standing, beaming with huge smiles, and it was a miracle nobody seen them. They could only imagine the two girls’ conversation as they were chatting on their fateful late-night walk to the girl’s rest room, but the Kum Ba Yahing was drowning out their words.
 

The boys were now watching the entire picture. The girls around the camp-fire, the two trigger-girls nearing the bathroom door, a camp counselor opening the counselor’s lounge door and walking down the few steps; back again to the trigger-girls nearly at the washroom. They didn’t want to miss any of the action, no longer thinking at all about being hidden.

Then it happened. The door was opened. The two trigger-girls were inside. Matt spoke way too loudly with his two hands barely muffling the sound: “The cat is in the cradle. I repeat, the cat is in the cradle.”

The shower room which was built out of cinder-blocks had a marvelous way of amplifying sound when it was empty. The first girl had a lovely soprano voice, and a great knack for increasing her vibrato with her crescendo. The second girl was equally gifted, screaming in near perfect two part harmony with the first. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the monkey added his own golden tones creating a three part harmony that would bring a tear to Mozart’s eye. Oh the beautiful music they made that night! It made the two boys want to laugh, to cry, to sing. They even hugged each other in the warmest of embraces.

 
The monkey shrieked again and again, trying very hard to outdo the girls in every way, and when the cans started making their own beautiful music, the boys imagined a wedding vehicle whisking screaming newlyweds on their way to the reception.

Naturally, the nuclear combination would spread wildly. The rest of the sweet young things could only do their part once hearing the racket from the shower. Was it an axe murder? Was it a giant spider? Was it the Hell-hound? Of course they couldn’t know, but the sound they were hearing above the din of their own, had one effect. Get up, scream, and run in all directions. Oh the joy! In the boys wildest imagination, they couldn’t have hoped for more!

The camp counselor ran to the washroom in an attempt to rescue the girls from the unseen menace. Girls were running and screaming in all directions, still fearing their own worst monsters of their dreams. Ben and Matt hugged again. The camp counselor opened the door and the monkey ran in-between her legs, causing the poor woman the fright of her life. The monkey ran in the direction of the Rule estate with all those cans making noise behind it. The bee-line for the safety of the water-tower brought the animal within feet of the campfire, putting one final exclamation point on the finale.

Halfway through the woods the sound of the cans ceased to make their wonderful music. The deed had been done. The boys would take any punishment they had coming to them just to see it all once more, but the magic of the night was over, like the last day of an amazing vacation.

There was an inquiry when all the excitement was over, but no action was taken. It was guessed that the poor little animal had got himself caught in some wedding cans, and had come to the camp for help. After all, many of the girls had merit badges in the art of first aid...

en and Matt decided to go out fishing again at the hot-spot. Ben had the morning’s chores to do, but he was free by the middle afternoon. Both boys wanted to get another chance at the legendary pike, so they grabbed a dozen minnows and Matt climbed into a free boat.