The Inverted Forest (3 page)

“There’s some weather headed your way,” Schuller began. “We got it last night. Wind and showers and whatnot. Nothing dire, but if you’re going out to Holy Infant this afternoon, you’ll want to have Theresa bring along an umbrella.”

To this a curt reply, not so much a word as a breathy huff of acknowledgment.

“And you’re adjusting very well to the new blood medication. No dizziness with this one. At least according to Mrs. Davenport. That’s good news, I would think.”

From Sandie a murmur, a kind of elongated “huuurrummmmmph.”

They were abrupt and one-sided, these Saturday phone conversations. One always hoped for the solace of family connection, but then again, one was frequently disappointed. At least today Schuller had an interesting topic. He began describing last night’s spectacle, the shock of it, the willfulness involved, and a question came to him: he wanted to know what would cause young women to undress and behave that way. Schuller had grown up in the world of boys and men and knew their tendencies. But women? It was widely known they didn’t have the same appetites as men. So what pressures had been brought to bear on them? Was it alcohol? When it came to the conduct of women, Sandie’s experience extended beyond his own. Certainly, Schuller would have liked to have known, but instead he talked about the strewn clothing and cigarettes and beer bottles, and at last he received a prolonged response, sibilant and damp and plaintive-sounding. Without recognizing a single word, he understood the sum and substance of Sandie’s reply, his primary objection: the location of the swimming pool. Years earlier Schuller had insisted the pool be built twenty yards into the woods, and he was now willing to concede that it wasn’t worth the extra expense, or years of leaf-clogged filters and root damage, not to mention the after-hours enticement a secluded pool presented to young counselors. So, yes, Schuller admitted,
an unwise choice all around. He should not have been so stubborn. The problem at hand, though, was the violation of camp rules that had occurred the night before. Schuller had a specific penalty in mind, and when he shared this, he was surprised by both the vehemence of the response and by the fact that he’d not made sense of a single word.

“All right,” he told his brother. “I’ll certainly take that into consideration. We may just be of the—”

Another forceful reply, of which Schuller understood the words
you
and
anyway.

“Very well, Sandie. You’re still my codirector after all. I remind everyone here of that. I do. All the time.”

“Sal-waze dun hut-chu-like.”

“I think so, yes. I’m inclined to agree. Now then, Mrs. Davenport says the van to Holy Infant leaves at three this afternoon. That’s an hour early. Theresa knows this. She’ll have everything ready. So, give my best to Father Ed and, well, everyone. Goodbye, Sandie.” He hung up the phone and watched several beaded drops of rain commingle and slide down the office picture window.

At seven-thirty he convened an emergency meeting of the senior staff: Program Director Linda Rucker, Head Cook Maureen Boyd, Head of Maintenance Reggie Boyd. Normally, a senior staff meeting would have included the head lifeguard and camp nurse and several others. Not so this meeting, which Schuller decided to limit to just himself and the three others: Linda, Maureen, Reggie, each of whom had worked at Kindermann Forest more than fifteen summers.

They arranged their chairs in a half circle around the director’s desk and then went straight to the strong pot of coffee Schuller had brewed, filled their cups and grimaced at the first sip.

He said it as plainly and forcefully as he could: “There’s been an
incident that requires our immediate attention.” The somber tone he’d used and the careful way he’d assembled his words made Linda Rucker slump down into her chair and then lift her broad face up to Schuller with a wince of trepidation.

He recounted for them the events of the previous night, along with the pertinent details: the drinking, the discarded clothing, the inflatable hot dog and inner tube. Reckless behavior to be sure. More reckless, more vulgar than the usual indulgences of a summer camp staff. When Schuller revealed his recommended penalty for last night’s violations, he could tell it was not to Linda’s and Maureen’s liking. Quiet, uncomplicated Reggie Boyd, Maureen’s nephew, looked as if he wished he were back in the oily kingdom of his maintenance shed.

“Let’s think a moment, Schuller,” Linda said. “Let’s slow down just a minute and make sure this is the right step for us to take.”

He assured them he had thought it through. And it was the right step. No use trying to sort out all the different offenses: curfew, alcohol, trespassing, nudity. Much simpler to apply the same penalty to everyone.

“But we have to think about the timing, don’t we?” Linda asked. “Is it the best thing to do
now,
with the training nearly done? With the first and most difficult camp session still ahead of us?” Between Linda and Maureen there was a certain glance, pained and knowing, as if his involvement in this matter was an ordeal to be endured.

But what could they do, really—except exchange their glances and ask their patient questions? It was up to Schuller to determine what was necessary. He was still founder and owner of Kindermann Forest. The camp bore his name. The fact of it was so obvious it couldn’t be spoken aloud.

After the meeting, he walked with his senior staff across the meadow to the mess hall for breakfast.

At least they, his truant counselors, had managed to bring themselves, bleary and uncombed, to the mess hall tables. Schuller stood for Morning Prayer. Afterward platters of scrambled eggs and pancakes were passed from table to table. When breakfast was done, he rose and walked among the benches and finally motioned to a petite, freckled young woman, an arts and crafts attendant. He believed her name was Stacy. “Would you be kind enough to walk with me to the camp office?” he asked. And she nodded and strolled beside him, patiently, as he traversed the length of meadow.

Inside the office he sat her on the opposite side of the director’s desk and without preamble told her that her employment at Kindermann Forest had ended and she should make arrangements to be gone by dinnertime, if not sooner. She stared at him coolly from across the reach of the desk, a red-haired, pixie-faced college freshman who could pass for fifteen. Perhaps she thought of herself as brave. If so, she would need to revise her opinion. When he slid the phone across the table, when she dialed and spoke the first words to her father, her voice caught in her throat and she let out a loud, blubbering sob. Her father’s remarks seemed to make matters worse. She hung up the phone and cried harder. After a while she stopped. Schuller sent her to her cabin to pack and set out across the meadow to the mess hall.

It was a round-trip journey he made fourteen more times. Odd, but you could never tell in advance how a counselor would receive the news. Those who trembled and stuttered with anxiety during the walk over sometimes found a well of self-possession to draw upon when the phone was passed to them. Some who were aloof broke down. Kenny Cossman, unit leader for male counselors, cried. Schuller had spotted burly Kenny the previous night bouncing up the pool steps with his clothes in his arms (his penis half-erect and bouncing along with him). Too late now, of course. Nothing could be changed, senior staff member or not. But how odd it was, truly, to observe
Kenny and several of the other large young men. They pleaded. They begged his pardon or cursed under their breath. Yet when the phone was handed to them, they huffed and sputtered and wept. Was there a particular frailty to large men when it came to being dismissed? One had to wonder.

He called upon Head Lifeguard Wendy Kavanagh last. By then, of course, the news was out. As they walked toward the camp office, she asked if it was mandatory that she be packed and out of camp by dinnertime.

He said it was.

Because her mother, she explained, would have to drive down from Chicago and wouldn’t reach Kindermann Forest until after dark.

“Then you may wait on the bench outside the front gate,” Schuller told her.

In the office she went straight to the phone and placed her call. “Swimming,” she said to her mother. “Swimming at night. After curfew. Oh yes,” she said, as if just now remembering. “Swimming naked. Yes, Mom,” she said. “Right. Wait a minute.” She held the receiver to her chest and turned her gaze across the table toward him. “Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why are we being fired?”

He nearly laughed. What a ridiculous girl! Was the whole world a puzzle to her? “As a counselor,” he said, “you have responsibilities, yes? For example, you are in charge of campers. And what if they were to sneak from their cabins—such things happen all the time—and see you and other counselors drinking and parading naked about the pool? What sort of lasting impression would that make? And what would it do to Kindermann Forest’s reputation if they were to return home and tell their parents or guardians?”

“But there
are
no campers,” Wendy said. “The campers don’t arrive till Monday.”

In his mind’s eye he reviewed what he’d seen of her the night before: her paunchy belly and enormous buttocks and thighs, the whistle dangling between her heavy breasts. Of the many reasons he had for firing her and her fellow counselors, the first was simple outrage. Outrage at the stupidity of the young. There was an old-fashioned name for this stupidity: callowness. What they’d been celebrating last night, these callow young men and women, was the oldest and most tedious joke—the penis, the vagina, the spectacle of intercourse. If they couldn’t feel shame at their own callowness, then let them at least feel the humiliation of being fired.

“Even so,” he said. “Campers or no campers. The principle remains the same.”

As it turned out, they’d inherited a muggy and slate gray morning. Schuller would have liked to have settled down in his cottage for a nap. Yet to do so would deny his remaining staff an essential loyalty: after all, if he were principled enough to make the truly hard decisions, then he should be equally mindful of helping to deal with the consequences. Inside the mess hall he found what remained of his senior staff in a desultory huddle around the director’s dining table: Linda Rucker, Maureen and Reggie Boyd, Camp Nurse Harriet Foster.

Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near as hopeless as they thought. He told them so. No time for discouragement, he said. Yes, they had two days to assemble a new staff of counselors before the campers arrived on Monday afternoon, but they would not be alone in the enterprise. He knew of more than twenty professional acquaintances who would begin working at once on their behalf. For instance, a list of potential lifeguards could be obtained from the YMCA. Counselors might be hired from the highest ranks of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts or from seminaries or from more than a dozen midwestern charity organizations. Not so impossible after all, he said, and for the benefit
of a defeated-looking Linda Rucker, he raised his soft eyebrows in an expression that he hoped was measured and wise and determined. Nearby, Nurse Foster’s five-year-old son—fatherless, lighter skinned than his black mother—sat on the floor and let an old-fashioned wood top spin inside the corral of his legs.