Patiently Alice (12 page)

“Alice! No, I was just sitting out on the porch. How are you, honey?”

“How are
you,
Dad? I’m really sorry about Sylvia’s sister.”

“Well, so am I. It was a big disappointment for both of us, but there’s nothing to be done. Nancy’s seriously ill. Septicemia is a worrisome business, and we’re just hoping she pulls through okay.”

“Can’t the doctors do something? Give her antibiotics?”

“Well, of course. That’s what they’re doing. But it’s tricky. They have to figure out just what combination of drugs will work. Meanwhile, the infection can spread to the brain, the heart—almost anywhere.”

“Oh, Dad. You’ve waited so long.”

“I can wait a bit longer, I guess. Right now the important thing is Nancy’s health.”

“Is Sylvia coming back to teach in the fall?”

“Everything depends on Nancy. Sylvia’s already told the principal she probably won’t be here for the start of school. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

We were both quiet for a few seconds. “I wish I was there,” I said finally.

“Now, Alice, what could you do? You are exactly where you are supposed to be, and I hope you’re having a good time. Are you?”

“Well, yes. I didn’t know that being an assistant counselor was so exhausting, though. I mean, I’m tired even when we don’t do anything physical. Just trying to keep the peace wears me out.”

He laughed, and it was good to hear that familiar chuckle. “Kids are a handful, all right,” he said. “I can remember times you and Lester about drove me up the wall.”

“Not recently, I hope.”

“Not too recently, no.”

“Has anyone asked about me? Called or anything?”

I could almost hear Dad’s brain working at being tactful. Playing it safe. Trying to decipher what I was really asking.

“I think most of your friends know you’re away, hon,” he said. “There aren’t any phone messages. I don’t know about e-mail. Everything going okay
there at camp? You and Gwen hitting it off as cabin mates?”

“Gwen’s wonderful,” I said. “Pamela and Elizabeth are in separate cabins, thank goodness, because they both like the same guy—there are a
lot
of cute boys here—but other than that, we’re doing okay.” I didn’t want to get into the nude swimming bit.

“Well, you’ll be home in another week, right?” he said. “Call when you get in. I don’t know who will pick you up, but somebody will drive over.”

“Dad? Have you heard from Sylvia since she left?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. She’s called twice—once after she got there and again from the hospital. Right now Nancy’s holding her own, but we won’t know anything much for a while. Sylvia’s where she needs to be too, Al. That’s life. We take things as they come.”

He was saying all the right things, but how did he really
feel?

“I love you, Dad,” I said. “Rivers.”

“I love you too, Al. Oceans.”

I had a hard time falling asleep that night. I kept thinking about Pamela and Elizabeth. We’d been friends for a long time, and I didn’t want anything to come between the two of them. We’d come to
camp excited and looking forward to three weeks of fun together. It had been that and even more for Elizabeth, but I’m not sure about Pamela. And the letter from her mother sure didn’t help.

I got up finally, and, throwing on my jacket, I slipped out of the cabin and made my way down the narrow lane. Night noises were all around me, and a breeze rustled the leaves of the aspens. When I got to cabin twelve, I noiselessly opened the screen door and moved across the floor to Pamela’s bunk. She was lying with her face to the wall.

“Pamela,” I whispered.

At first she didn’t move. Then she rolled over and peered at me through the darkness. “Alice?” she said. She stared at me for a moment, then scooted over to make room. I lay down on my side and rested my cheek on one hand.

“I’m worried about you and Liz,” I said.

“Well, don’t be.”

“I just hate to see you fighting over some guy. Even Ross, nice as he is.”

“We’re not fighting.” Her voice was flat. “This isn’t the first time I’ve lost out. It won’t be the last,” she said, and she sounded resigned. Defeated.

I tried to see her face in the darkness. This was
Pamela
talking? The talented, sexy Pamela Jones
whom I’d envied so much in sixth grade? Then I remembered how she had pulled out of the high school Drama Club last year because she figured she didn’t have a chance at a lead part. Now
I
was worried.

“You know,” I said, “if ever a girl needed to have a guy be loving and tender with her—a guy her own age—it’s Elizabeth.”

“I know that,” Pamela whispered back. “I was lying here thinking the same thing. And it’s not just tonight; I’ve been noticing how much he likes her. The way he watches her. When I’m feeling mature about it, I wish Ross lived closer so they could go out once camp’s over. When I’m feeling sorry for myself, I’m glad he’s in Philadelphia.”

We were both quiet awhile.

“I hate to see you feeling so low,” I whispered finally. “It’s… it’s partly your mom, isn’t it?”

There was a catch in her voice. “I get sad thinking about how we used to be, when we were a family.”

“I wish you’d consider yourself a part of
my
family for a while,” I said. “I wish you felt you could come over whenever you wanted and talk to me and Dad.”

I could hear a note of mischief creeping into her voice. “Lester, too?”

I knew Lester would kill me, but I said it anyway. “Sure. Just consider him your big brother. G’night, sis.”

“Good night, Alice,” she said.

On the Fourth of July, each cabin was given a flag to hang out front, and the camp held a picnic. We had relay races and potato sack races, and the full counselors performed in a makeshift band with a tin whistle, a potato chip can for a drum, a harmonica, and a washboard. We hand-cranked peach ice cream, and each kid had a chance to turn the handle.

I thought this might be something Latisha would particularly enjoy, but if Latisha enjoyed anything, she kept it to herself. Gwen and I saw a modest improvement in most of our girls. Ruby quit trying to smuggle food from the dining hall, which to us meant she was more comfortable here at camp—didn’t feel as though there might not be enough food to go around. Kim was less fearful, Josephine more adventurous, Mary less protective. Even Estelle showed less prejudice toward
Ruby and Gwen and, to some extent, toward Latisha.

But Latisha was like a sphinx. If we saw a change at all, she was a bit more quiet, but not, it seemed, less angry. Some of the Coyotes had asked to make a second twig basket to take home to someone they loved. But Latisha showed no interest in making more. She enjoyed contact sports, anything that allowed her to bump or push or pull or wrestle. Otherwise, she sat on the sidelines and glowered at everyone else.

On our last Friday, assistant counselors’ night out, the guys were planning to take us on the promised “Kelpie Hunt,” led by Phil. It was supposed to be a preview of what our little campers would get the following night.

“You can never tell what the guys have up their sleeves,” said Doris. “I think we ought to wear bathing suits under our shorts, just in case.”

“Hey! How about
nothing
under our shorts? I’d like that better,” said Pamela.

“I’m going to be sorry when camp’s over,” said Tommie. “I wish we had another week here. Craig and I were just starting to get chummy.”

“You could always write,” I said.

“Oh, you know how summer romances go,” she told me.

Elizabeth was thoughtful. “Well, Ross and I
really like each other, and I wish ours would go on forever,” she said. “You know who I feel sorry for?” I hoped she wouldn’t say Pamela. “I feel sort of sorry for G. E. Why don’t we each try to say something nice to him before camp’s over? I mean, something spontaneous and sincere.”

“Like what?” asked Gwen.

“Anything. That you like his T-shirt. Or just sit and talk with him a few minutes. We don’t want him to know we agreed to do it, but it would give him something nice to remember about Camp Overlook. He must feel like the odd man out.”

“He
is
the odd man out,” said Doris.

“But you know how you’d feel if it were you,” I said.

“I suppose we can manage to find something nice to say,” said Tommie. “He’s not a total dork in
every
thing.”

When the kids had gone to the dining hall and the full counselors took over for the evening, we assistant counselors gathered at one of the trailheads, where the guys were whispering among themselves.

I was relieved to see that Phil was there, obviously in charge. Sue had said that the Kelpie Hunt had become a tradition, sort of an initiation for all the new assistant counselors, but you could tell that the guys knew what was coming and the girls
didn’t. It sounded like fun, though, and we went along with their joke—sort of like a haunted house at Halloween, except that the guys got to be the ghosts.

“O-
kay
!” Phil said. “Is everybody
ready
?” And the guys all grinned at us.

“For
what,
exactly?” asked Gwen.

“Here’s the deal,” Phil said mysteriously. “There’s a creature here at Camp Overlook that lives on the river bottom, and few have ever seen it. A kelpie is half ghost, half horse, and if it calls your name, you’ll feel this irresistible compulsion to climb on its back, where it will take you down under the water and you’ll never be seen again.
Our
job is to find the kelpie before it finds you.”

“Great,” said Pamela. “And which of you guys gets to play the kelpie?”

“Hey, ye of little faith!” said Richard. “It’s an old Scottish superstition, but doesn’t every superstition have something real behind it?”

“So what are we supposed to do?” asked Elizabeth. I noticed that Ross was standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her, face against her cheek. Elizabeth was stroking his hand.

Phil continued: “Well, the kelpie knows you’re here. It knows everything about us—who’s here, who leaves. We’ll try to spot it when it comes to
the surface for air—capture it, if we can. If you hear it, of course, you have to go toward it. The trick is to keep from climbing on its back. That’s what the guys are here for, to protect you.”

“Yeah, sure,” we said, laughing. “And if it calls
your
name?”

The guys all looked at Phil.

“Oh, it’s gender-specific,” Phil said. “It only calls girls’ names.”

We laughed again and set off—some of the guys in front of us, some behind, with only the small beam of Phil’s flashlight to guide us. We figured that Gerald must have been assigned the role of the kelpie, because he wasn’t with us.

“Why are we going uphill if the kelpie’s in the river?” I asked.

“To throw him off guard,” said Richard, and the boys whispered some more.

We continued climbing, the guys holding back branches that would have scratched our faces, until finally we came out on a ridge in the moonlight. I hadn’t been on this trail or this ridge, but I could tell by the way the wind tossed my hair that we were up pretty high. There didn’t seem to be anything between us and the sky.

“What we’ve got to do,” said Phil, stopping, “is rappel down the cliff, where the kelpie would least expect us.”

“In the dark?” asked Doris.

“How far down is it?” asked Elizabeth.

“Only fifty feet or so.”

Several of us gasped at once.
Isn’t there any adult supervision up here
? Lester had asked when he’d visited. I wondered how old Phil was—twenty-two, maybe? Still…

And then we heard a faraway call. “Pam-e-la!… Pam-e-la!” Gwen and I smiled at each other. We figured one of the guys here had a cell phone or a walkie-talkie; how else could the call come just as we’d reached the top?

“Uh-oh,” said Andy. “I’ll be brave. I’ll go with her.”

We jeered.

“Strange, but I don’t feel the slightest urge to go toward it,” Pamela said. “I think the kelpie’s losing its magic.”

“You don’t fool around with a kelpie,” said Andy. “You sure don’t want it coming looking for
you.
C’mon.”

“Watch it, Pamela,” said Craig.

“If it’s a choice between Andy and the kelpie, take the kelpie,” said Ross.

Phil produced a couple of harnesses and ropes that seemed to be tied to a tree, just waiting for us. I couldn’t believe Pamela was actually going to do it, but she gamely stepped forward and put her
feet through the straps of the harness, pulling it up around her.

“I think all the
guys
should go fight the kelpie and we’ll stay up here,” said Doris.

“Yeah, me too,” said Tommie.

“Oh, that wouldn’t work. We have to have bait to catch a kelpie, and he’s partial to girls,” said Richard.

I began to get a panicky feeling in my chest. This was dangerous. Was this one of those times Lester had warned me about, when you have to use common sense and say no?

In the moonlight Phil was demonstrating to Pamela how you hold the rope to rappel yourself down the side of a cliff.

“Pam-e-la!… Pam-e-la!” the faraway voice called again.

“We’ll go together,” said Andy, getting in the second harness. In a matter of minutes Pamela and Andy dropped over the edge, and all we could hear were their feet scuffling along the face of the cliff. Then suddenly, eerily, all was quiet.

As the moon went behind a cloud, then emerged again, Phil stood with one finger to his lips, listening, waiting. Then he and Richard began to pull on the two ropes, and after a while the harnesses came up over the edge, minus Pamela and Andy.

“Al-ice!… Al-ice!” came the call.

Suddenly I could feel my body trembling. I didn’t know if I was going to be sick or faint, but I just crouched down, my hands over my stomach. I felt Richard’s arm around me as he crouched down too.

“Hey!” he said. “You’re shaking!” And then he put his mouth to my ear. “It’s safe,” he said. “Trust me.”

I thought of all the stories I’d heard about guys talking girls into stuff they shouldn’t do. Girls getting into cars with guys who were stoned. Was I about to rappel myself over the edge of a fifty-foot drop in a flimsy harness to my death? But no one here was drunk. No one was stoned. Phil was the head counselor, and Richard had kept me safe on the horse. I decided to trust.