What It Was Like (13 page)

Once the actual fireworks started to the blasting sound of recorded Sousa, with the Doggies completely engrossed, I melted away from them and drifted toward the back of the mass of campers. As the fizz of bottle rockets and storm of sparklers began shooting up from the floats on the lake, with all the shrieking and laughing and whooping in the dark excitement, I found Rachel in the deep shadows of the trees behind the crowd, where she knew I'd be looking for her. We moved together naturally and kissed deeply. I could see that she had been crying.

“I get very emotional at these things,” she whispered into my neck, looking down, catching her breath softly between kisses.

“That's OK,” I said. “Emotion is good. In fact, in some situations, emotion is required.”

“I hate when we fight,” she said. “Let's never fight again.”

We kissed until she broke away and said, looking searchingly into my eyes, “I just don't want to be like my mother. I just want someone to love me for
me.
Is that so terrible?”

I saw real fear in her eyes, a deep fear, maybe for her, the deepest.

“No,” I said as tenderly as I could. “It's not so terrible.”

We kissed again as the fireworks exploded in the sky, with
ooohs
and
ahhhs
all around us. We held each other as Roman candles, cherry bombs, and sparkler wheels “burned” the lake. Star mines boomed in the hills, and all the kids screamed. The embers from the sparklers and the multi-stage rockets, the exploding shells and mid-air flowers flew up into the velveteen sky and disappeared into the stars.

As the whole Mooncliff population, arm in arm, sang the camp Alma Mater, whose treacly words I won't even reproduce here – and, believe me, they're worse to the tune of “Danny Boy” – Rachel and I kissed and held each other tight against Time.

“I'm scared to go home,” she said, hiding in my arms. “I shouldn't be, but I am.”

“We're going to be fine,” I said, trying to sound as comforting as I could. “I promise you, things will be better once we're out of here: We'll be free. No Jerry, no Harriet, no schedule to obey.”

“But they'll be other things –” she said.

“And we'll
deal
with them!” I assured her. “As long as we're together, nothing can hurt us.”

“But what am I supposed to do when I get home,” she asked. “And you're not there for three days?”

“Do everything that you have to do, and wait for me,” I said. “We're going to do everything right. We're going to make this last forever.”

“I love you so much,” she said, which is exactly what I wanted her to say. As the last thunder of fireworks exploded in the sky, she gave me a kiss that could last me, if not forever, then for the next three days.

≁

The last morning of camp was drizzly, cool, and foggy, right out of a 1940s black-and-white movie. I almost expected to see Bogart in a trench coat leaning against one of the buses, a cigarette dangling from his lips, amused by the whole sorry human scene. The rain made everything more difficult. All the wet gear cluttered up the bunks and the Mess Hall, dripping on everybody and complicating everything. One stupid Doggy lost a galosh (one galosh, two galoshes?). I had the kids strip the sheets off their beds one last time. They needed breakfast – and I needed a major transfusion of coffee – but we all wanted to just get the kids on the bus and get them out of there. It was time.

Coming out of the Mess Hall, I could see the buses lined up across the baseball fields. Rachel and her bunk hadn't come out yet, but it was all too insanely busy to spend time waiting. During breakfast, the bus lists for the kids, fresh and warm from the mimeograph machine in the Main Office and fragrant with intoxicating purple ink, were handed out by Esther, and one of the Doggies thought that he was on the wrong bus. So in addition to making sure the kids had made and packed a paper-bag lunch (cold cuts or peanut butter and jelly) for the bus ride, and getting them back to the bunk for a last clean-up, now I had to deal with this misrouted Doggy.

I ran up to the Main Office, got my misplaced Doggy onto the right bus, and made it back to the bunk, completely soaked, so that when Jerry called for the Inter boys on the P.A. system, we were barely ready. (Damn Stewie for not being there!) I made sure that the Doggies had picked up all their stuff, eye-swept the floor one last time, and we were outta there.

It had not stopped raining, but it was a little lighter, so our soggy march up to the buses was a bit easier. The Doggies' spirits were high, all excited and giddy, so one last time they sang the
Rawhide
theme that gave them their name. “
Keep rollin', rollin', rollin'
 . . .
 
Keep them doggies rollin
'
 . . .” And we walked fast, in lockstep, and laughed at the “
move
'
em on,
 
head
'
em up,
 
head
'
em up,
 
move
'
em on
” hash they always made of that part. We didn't care. The momentum of the moment carried us up to the buses.

Organized in front of the array of monster silver buses, Harriet in a perfect green Mooncliff canvas poncho yelled through a bullhorn, reading from a clipboard, ordering “My bus captains!” and “My bus monitors!” around at high volume. They had all done this before, but it still felt disorderly. Everything was loud, with kids rushing everywhere. I checked one more time that all the Doggies had the right color-coded tags. The drizzle seemed to hold the bus fumes in the air, souring the scene. Diesel and rain: never a good combination, and so soon after breakfast. Already I heard the sound of one kid throwing up; at least it wasn't one of my kids.

I looked for Rachel down the line but didn't see her in all the mess and bustle of umbrellas and the crowd, spread across the baseball field. I wanted to go find her, but I was stuck with the Doggies with no other counselor to spell me. Sid had unsurprisingly disappeared.

“God, it stinks around here,” said Marcus, sidling up next to me, dripping rain off his Mooncliff baseball cap, carrying his big knapsack.

“Tell me about it,” I replied, still scanning the crowd for Rachel.

“So you're working Close-Down?” he asked, already knowing the answer. “I wish Dale'd asked me,” he continued. “I could use the bread. Damn, these buses stink.”

“They have to keep the motors running so the air-conditioning stays on,” I said. “Otherwise, they'd get too hot inside.”

“Please don't talk reason!” he said, “I'm almost past my puke-point!”

“Connecticut Bus Number One! That's
yellow tags only
!” shouted Harriet through her bullhorn. “Connecticut Bus Number One – yellow tags only! Let's load 'em up here at the first bus on my left! My left!!”

“That's me! I'm going back by way of my uncle's house in Stamford,” said Marcus. “So call me, Brainiac!” he shouted, backing away. “And I'll tell you what
really
happened this summer.” With a smirk, he waved and was gone down the row of buses. I was going to return one last wisecrack, but I let it go. Strange guy; OK to hang with but down-deep unhappy.

The Doggies started to nag me, all at once. They were all restless and who could blame them, standing in the rain for too long.

“When are we getting on the buses?” a stupid Doggy asked.

“When they call you!” I answered impatiently.

The Very Fat Doggy pulled on my sleeve and whispered up to me, “Hey . . . Hey! . . . I gotta go.” Meaning the bathroom.

Great!
“You'll have to hold it,” I told him.

“New Jersey Bus Number One! Orange tags only!” called Bullhorn Harriet. “Let's load 'em up here, right next to me on my right!”

“New Jersey!” said the Doggy Bully. “That's me!”

“Good!” I said. “Go! Get out of here!” and I pushed him out of our line and toward his bus as the other Doggies shouted goodbyes. One down, nine to go.

“Manhattan Bus Number One! Green tags! You're next!”

The Very Fat Doggy pulled down on my shoulder and squealed with discomfort, “I gotta drain my lizard!
Real, real bad
.”

I turned on him and growled, “Tie a knot in it!” I looked around for someone to watch the Doggies, but no friendly face was there to help me.

“Long Island Bus Number One!” called the Bullhorn. “Long Island
blue
tags! Start your loading, Long Island Bus Number One! Blue tags only!”

That could be Rachel's bus! She was on
one
of the Long Island buses – there were three of them, the largest contingent.

The Very Fat Doggy was starting to dance in place next to me, crossing his legs. “Hey, I really-really-
really
gotta go!”

“OK!” I said, “Come with me!”

I turned to the Smart Doggy and gave him an order. “You listen for the announcements from Harriet and make sure all these guys get on their right buses, OK?”

“Yeah! Definitely!” he answered.

“Good!” I patted him on the shoulder of his wet poncho. “I'll be right back!” To the Very Fat Doggy, I commanded, “Follow me!”

I took off, hustling across the soggy grass behind the lines of campers waiting for the call to board their buses. I glanced behind me to make sure the Very Fat Doggy was with me. As I passed by the lines of Junior boys and Junior girls and their counselors, there were so many umbrellas up that I couldn't see around them. I knew Rachel had to be somewhere around there.

The Very Fat Doggy pulled on my sleeve, whining, “Where can I go?”

I pointed to a girls' bunk that was back about fifty yards from the ball field and said, “Look! Go over there to that bunk!”

“But that's a
girls'
bunk!” he protested.

“OK!” I said, pointing him to another place. “Then go over there and go in those trees!”

“That's gross! Someone will see.”

“Long Island Bus Number Two!” called Harriet's bullhorn. “First call for Long Island Bus Number Two!! Blue tags only!”

“Then go in your pants!” I roared at the kid. I had no more time for kids and turned away from him to go find Rachel.

And there she was, looking for me! Our eyes met at the same time, and she rushed straight to me. She was rain-soaked and beautiful, blinking away the tears and raindrops from her eyes.

“I've been crying all morning! I'm all cried out!” she said, laughing and crying as she fell into my arms. We kissed deeply. I heard some
woo-hoos
from somewhere, but I didn't care. And I don't think Rachel did either.

“Bus Number One for Westchester! Red tags only!” went the bullhorn call. “Bus Number One for Westchester!” It started to rain harder.

Rachel broke for air. “You promised to keep the summer from ending.”

“No!” I tried to cheer her. “This will be better! I'll call you tonight, and I'll see you in three days! We're going to do everything right.”

“I believe you,” she said passionately, trying her hardest to show me that she agreed.

“Second call for Long Island Bus Number One!”

“Oh, no!” she said, “That's me, and I'm a bus monitor! Oh, God, I knew this would happen. I gotta go!”

“That's OK,” I said. “We can
do
this!”

She started to drift away from me. “Promise you'll love me forever,” she said. “No matter what happens.”

She kissed me once more with perfect lips, then pushed away from me.

“I promise!” I said, waving goodbye with a hand that seemed to belong to someone else as she turned and ran away.

And then she was gone, disappeared into the crowd. Just like that. Really gone. Our perfect summer ended, right then and there. And in some ways, I might just as well have ended my life, right then and there.

Then it hit me: “
No matter what happens
.” Why did she say that? What did she mean? Was she already fatalistically kissing us goodbye? I wanted to run after her and ask her what she meant, and to take it back, but that was impossible. I had to go back and make sure that all the Doggies got onto their rightful buses.

And they did. At least, when I got back to the Bunk 9 line, no one was there, so I presumed that they all got onto their buses. I guess even the Very Fat Doggy found his way back from the bathroom and onto a bus.

The first bus in line pulled away . . . and then the second and the third. Those of us left behind stood and waved. I couldn't figure out which bus was Rachel's, so I waved at them all. They were all the same: silver and smelly and gone.

Esther from the Main Office, the little old grey owl, came up and stood next to me, waving a green-and-white Mooncliff pennant as the last bus finally left.

“Another summer,” she chirped. “Shot to hell.” Which made me laugh, coming out of the mouth of this tiny old lady. And because she might have been right.

≁

For the rest of the day, Dale worked us hard, us being the dozen or so counselors who stayed back to work Close-Down. Fortunately the rain soon stopped and the sun came out, making things slightly easier. But we traded rain for humidity, so the work was still quite strenuous. We started doing the reverse of all the jobs we did during Orientation: collecting, hauling, and storing the mattresses and bedsprings; rolling up and storing the tennis nets; taking all the boats and floats out of the lake and putting them into dry dock; etc. Of course, we didn't do all those things on the first day; it was a full three days of heavy labor, and we earned every penny we got.

By the end of that first day, the only thing I could think of was getting to the pay phone outside the Main Office by 8:00 p.m. to call Rachel, just as I had promised. On our first night apart, I refused to be late for our first phone call.

And I wasn't. I was exhausted and muscle sore, but I wasn't late. Dale gave us time after a back-breaking afternoon of hauling, scraping, sanding, and painting all the rowboats and canoes for a late swim in the perfectly placid, empty lake. The lake – in fact, the whole
camp
– was somewhat weird, empty of people. It felt haunted and somehow just
wrong.

I got up to the Main Office well before 8:00. I could see the clock on the wall through the window. The rest of the guys had gone into Bailey's after eating dinner in a corner of the big, mostly empty Mess Hall, but I begged off. I suppose I could have called her from Bailey's pay phone, but that would have been noisy and I might have missed 8:00. Besides, I didn't want to go to Bailey's without her.

I dialed Rachel's home number, reading carefully from the piece of pink stationery she had written it on, even though I had already memorized it. I practiced what I was going say if her mother answered, how bright and happy I'd sound. I'd say, “
Hello, is Rachel there?
” But I wished that Rachel herself would answer; I hoped that she'd be waiting by the phone for my call. I cleared my throat and went over in my mind the things I wanted to say before I realized that no one was answering. I let the phone ring eighteen times, I think, when I stopped counting the rings. Then I hung up.

OK, she wasn't home. Her mother – or her father – probably took her out to dinner. On her first night back, that made sense. In the wake of their divorce, I hoped that at least
one
of them would be nice to her.

So I waited there for a while. I'd give her/them some time to get back from their dinner; it was still on the early side. I could wait. I had waited eighteen-plus years for Rachel, a few more minutes wouldn't kill me.

I called four more times until almost 10:00 when I figured it had gotten too late to call. I know that if the phone rang in my parents' house after 10:00, they would think that it was some kind of emergency. (“
Who died?
” I can just hear my mother saying.) So after thinking it back and forth – what would Rachel want me to do? – I gave up and went back to my bunk. It was cold by then. Nothing to do but go back and crash, and rest up for tomorrow: hauling mattresses and counting days.

I thought about trying her number again early the next morning, after a super early breakfast in the Mess Hall. But I couldn't call the Princes' house at 8:00 in the morning anymore than I could have called at 10:00 the night before. I wanted to make a good first impression on her mother, no matter how lunatic or hard to please she might be. Every action I was going to take would be designed to make things better for Rachel and me.