Settlement

Mountain Meadows

A little while later we were driving through the woods and came upon a summer camp. Cabins on stilts. A bridge over a creek. Blackbirds sitting on a ramblewire fence. A meadow. A barn. An archery range. Haystack targets. 

In the cafeteria the campers were eating lunch. It was noisy with plates and cups. Someone was playing a guitar. The children looked wild and hungry. They ate any food they saw. For dessert the girls bought candybars from the snackbar with money from home. 

In the bathrooms the boys were taking showers in bathing suits. In one of the stalls several snorted Adderall. Others pissed in a trough filled with ice. Someone said the word penis. Someone else said the word shit. The boys’ noses were orange and blue from doing that with the pills. From what they did with the pills. Those boys and the pills.

In the afternoon there was a thunderstorm and a game of capture the flag. Boundaries were established and children hid in the woods. Several were lost and several contracted poison oak in a ditch. Walking through the forest you could hear voices hitting through the trees but you could see no children. They were far off or hidden. They had just been or were going to be. Grass tramped down slowly springing back, creek rocks wobbling, wet. 

The flag was captured quickly but the game went on for hours. There was no relay, no message of victory or defeat. The winners did not know they were winners and the losers neither. Everyone kept doing it. The sky turned orange and thunder came. Someone threw a frisbee. Someone else knitted a hat. In a cabin by the creek some boys rolled tea bags into joints and tried to smoke. 

That night everyone gathered in the barn for spiritual worship. The song lyrics appeared on the wall. The girls huddled around the overhead projector and sobbed happily so great was the holy spirit. The boys sat in the loft and talked about suicide, what she smelled like when her legs were open. When the singing stopped you could hear the rain on the roof. 

After dinner there was another game. A pickup truck parked in the center of the meadow. A counselor in the bed with a spotlight. Campers had to bellycrawl and snakehodge from the treeline, cross the open land and touch the truck without being found by the light. 

Bugs and the husks of bugs still clinging to leaves. Dark paths. You do not have to move, you just have to watch the light. The beam swinging over the meadow and once again the voices hitting through the night. Boys shouting, soft laughter. Birds sleep in trees. 

You don’t know who’s beside you in the ditch. You don’t know where anyone is. The point of the game is to not do anything. The point of the game is to forget everything and lie still. The point of the game is probably the stars.

Back in the cabins for tuckin time, damp and ruddy, the campers light hidden cigarettes and cast lots for the clothes of the lost children. The ones who had not returned from the day’s games. By lantern light and by firelight. Gambling for the boots of the ones lost at sea.