continued from part II, and part IThe night before Daniel arrived Randy Sue had a private meeting with me over hot chocolates. It was long after dinner and the dining hall was empty, but because the cooks were still cleaning up in the kitchen, and because Randy Sue was under the illusion that there was someone at Camp Charleston who didn’t know we were fooling around, she was in professional mode, which didn't exactly bother me, and yet it also annoyed the shit out of me. We were at a table by the windows. It was dark outside so instead of lake we could only see our reflections. Randy Sue told me that because I was a little older, because she thought I could handle it, I was being assigned as Daniel’s one-on-one. He’d never had this before, no LD kid had.
"Why?” I asked.
"Because his mother died of a heart attack three months ago and Daniel thinks it was his fault. He’s not in good shape.”
"Wow," I said. "I mean, Jesus.”
D Day A very small, very blonde ten-year old boy stepped out of a baby blue Dodge minivan on the pebbly road in front of the dining hall. He was wearing a red t-shirt, navy sweat shorts and had pulled his white tube socks up high. This was the little terror? This was Daniel Duchene?
I went up to him, put my hand out. “Hi Daniel, I’m Benjamin. I’m gonna be your counselor.”
Daniel shook my hand with his cold little hand, little boy fingers. “Hi,” he said in a small voice. He then cleared his throat, looked away. There was a slight rasp to his speech. He cleared his throat twice more.
"Why don’t we go over to your room? I’ll show you your bunk and you can meet the other guys; they’re already here.”
Daniel shrugged again, looked at the ground, kicked at it.
We spent the afternoon together, me and him. We hung out by the jungle gym. His three roommates were there too, but Daniel wasn't engaging with them yet. I have to say, I was finding him to be the model child, humble, shy, sweet.
Then we had our first meal together. It was at dinner that he broke out of his shell and became interested in finding a way to bond with the other boys. Halfway through the meal he suddenly, randomly, threw his fork down on the wood floor. His roommates found this very funny.
"Daniel! Pick that up.” I said.
Daniel was laughing with his suddenly made friends.
"Daniel!” I said.
He picked up the fork.
"Now you’re going to have to go get a clean one.”
"Fuck you,” he said, little boy voice gone Little Blonde Devil.
"What did you just say?”
"Sorry,” he said. “It’s a tick.”
And what was I gonna say? How could I know for sure?
How? Well, when it happened again at bed time, when I got a fuck you but only at the exact instant I moved to the door and turned the lights out in the boys’ room, when that happened so many times I ended up leaving at 11:00 instead of 9:30 (their bedtime), I was beginning to understand the challenge of Daniel Duchene.
It took just two of the longest working days of my young life (as in from 7am till 11pm) for me to learn to take him away from the group as soon as he misbehaved. Of course when I did that he raged. With Daniel being ten and thin and little, you’d think that restraining him would be easy. The first time actually went fine. I used the one-person restraint getting behind Daniel, crossing his arms and pulling them behind his back, and holding them there. I didn’t even have to hold him more than a minute or two. He calmed and promised to stay calm if I let him go. He even went to bed fairly easily that night. The second time, though, the next day, he didn’t calm so easily. Fortunately, with the one-person restraint, you can sit yourself and the child down, putting him, arms still locked behind his back, between your legs. Except there’s a cardinal rule and I forgot it: Hold the child’s wrists tight and don’t forget to lean your head back. Daniel gave me a pretty severe backward head butt to the nose. Somehow it didn’t bleed but my eyes got watery and it hurt like hell and never before had I felt such anger towards a child. The revenge instinct kicking in indiscriminately. Like it cared about the age of the fucker that had just bashed my nose in.
After I’d gotten Daniel to sleep, at 10:15, I found Randy Sue waiting for me in my room. Not minutes before, literally minutes, as I was making my way across the dark camp grounds from the kid's house to the speciality staff house, to my room, I’d been thinking of how much I wanted her to be there, but when I actually arrived and found her on my bed, flipping through my book (“The Sun Also Rises”) it bothered me. Still, I couldn't not go and sit with her, tell her what happened.
"Ohhh, sweetie!” she said, her voice getting higher, “Are you ok?” She started stroking my head. “Is there anything I can do?”
I said I was fine, ducking my head out and away from her stroking hand. “I just need some air.”
"I can come with you.”
"No! It's ok. I just–” I took a breath. “I just need a second alone. I'll be back in a sec.”
I didn’t mean to be gone so long. Ashley and a heavy girl named Mina, who had the kind of wicked sense of humor that was good for a laugh but bad for finding a mate (I think she scared them all away), had just happened to come up the road as I was finishing my first cigarette. I smoked two more with them and felt much better. They could laugh. Ashley certainly didn't need to get all gooshy-mushy when I told her what happened. It was very ‘Poor Benji Green’ but sarcastically, humorously, not so overly seriously.
Randy Sue was still in my room when I got back half an hour later. Now she was pissed. I was sorry. This time sorry wasn't enough, and I couldn't get over how ugly even the kindest girl got when she got mad. This was, I figured, a good time – a good reason (her overreacting) – to break up with her. It took over an hour to get it finished, which annoyed me because I'd wanted to try and find Ashley before bed.
It was almost midnight but Ashley’s light was still on, her door slightly open. She was sitting up against her vertically turned pillow. She had on a pair of oversized headphones that she slipped down round her neck when I came in.
"What’re you doing right now?”
She gave me a look. “Meditating.”
"Nice. You wanna go for a walk?”
You take a girl for a walk. You take her hand. If she lets you, then you know you can go for a kiss. I got the hand that signaled the kiss that came on the road by the can of butts. We stayed out late, standing out there on the dark road surrounded by black forest, kissing, touching warm and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.
The Bicycle RideIt was the second of Daniel’s two weeks and life was good. Ashley Dunbar was my girlfriend; ok Randy Sue sort of hate-ignored hell out of Ashley (as did most of the rest of the females on staff), and Ashley worried that her future employment with the camp might be in jeopardy, but otherwise life was good. Sunday night Ashley and I went skinny dipping. A lived out fantasy, if you will. Getting to slip the white bathing suit off the lifeguard under a nearly full moon. Who gets to do that? We waited till we got back to her room to have sex. I want to stop now, finish here and say it was the best sex of my young life. It was not. It was self-conscious and awkward. Still, I was with the camp lifeguard. Isn’t that the dream?
The late night hurt the next morning but I wasn’t too worried. I was finally getting the hang of dealing with Daniel Duchene. The key was to keep him interested. With a brain like his, unless he was writing a doctoral dissertation or repelling down a skyscraper he was under-stimulated. With Ray’s help (the music instructor of the gypsy Johnny Depp hair, who was a camp verteran of five years) we had worked out a schedule where Daniel would come to the first fifteen minutes (if that) of whatever the group’s scheduled activity was, and after I’d take him off, whether to play on the swings, to draw, to do something.
There was a devil fighting inside Daniel. No one doubted that. But like all of us who fight with devils, there was also an angel in this little, very blonde boy. The angel, I learned, came out most on a bicycle.
We did just ten minutes of morning activity, not because Daniel acted up, he was actually being good, but because I was so anxious about the bike ride. I had permission to take Daniel down the road, off camp. Standard practice for bike rides. To go off camp. Ray said he had “complete faith” in me. I wasn’t so sure.
"Daniel, slow down. Slow down!” I said, “Bike beside me, ok?” I ruined the first ten minutes of the ride that way, only calming when I finally figured out that Daniel on a bicycle was like anyone on a bicycle. Lighter, happier. The wind was in our hair, the sun filtered down gentle-dappled through the canopy of trees overhead, and it was just awesome, riding fast, feeling free. At one point I gave a woo-hoo! And then smiled wide when Daniel did too.
For a while there was no need for conversation, riding in sync, in effortless rhythm with each other and the road. Daniel was eventually the first to speak.
"Benjamin?”
"How’s it going over there, Daniel?”
"I really love trees.”
"Oh yeah? Me too actually,” I said. “I’m a big fan.”
"But I get jealous of them in a way.”
"What do you mean?”
"They don't move.”
"That’s what you like about them?”
"I can’t do that. I can’t be still like that.”
I nodded because I didn’t want to lie to him. “But then,” I said, “trees can’t ride bikes, can they? What about that, Mr. Duchene?”
Daniel didn’t reply.
"Can I tell you something?” I asked. “Do you know that I see God in the trees?” I’d never told that to anyone. Mine the age when you can talk about blow jobs and sex but you’re too embarrassed to tell your friends you pray. I guess honesty breeds honesty. Daniel didn’t say anything for a while. He was just there, peddling away on his child-size bike. The sound of the wheels whirring, the smell of the maple trees.
Then, “Benjamin?”
"Yes, Daniel. You ok?”
"Don’t you think it’s ignorant for people to think that there isn’t life on other planets?”
This had to be the smartest kid I’d ever met.
We talked about alien life possibility. No, Daniel told. Ben the English major, he listened.
We rode out to where the pebble road ended, in a T, crossed by a much busier country road. There was not a chance I was going to let Daniel ride with the possibility of passing cars. “Daniel!” I yelled. “I asked you nicely. Get off your bike, please.”
We walked our bikes across the street. A few feet on there was a small bridge crossing a wide, gentle river. We stopped to look over, getting lost in the easy flow of the water. After, we both noticed, at our feet, millions of those propeller-like leaves. Muted green-yellow leaves that when dropped fluttered down like helicopter propellers. I showed this to Daniel and in doing got a glimpse of one joy a father gets. Like getting to be the one to share the “Catcher in the Rye” with your newly teenaged son. We proceeded to both drop helicopter leaves, one leaf at a time, watching them flutter down to rest on the slow moving river as mute-engrossed as two old friends sitting mesmerized by a fire.
The ride back to camp Daniel didn’t have any questions for me. I realized he hadn’t cleared his throat once the whole trip. Just the trees, the wind in the trees. That’s all we needed. I decided Daniel deserved a treat. I’d buy him an ice cream sandwich from the Tuck shop, or whatever he preferred.
Ray was out on the road smoking as we came up. “Well, well,” he said, after quickly hiding his cigarette behind his back. “If it isn’t Benjamin Green and Daniel Duchene, for sure two of the coolest cats on campus.”
"Fuck you,” was Daniel’s reply. That’s all it took. Like the ride had never happened. Like God had left the trees.
"Daniel,” I said.
He’d already taken off on his bike.
Next: Part IV (the final chapter)
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