Sunday

 It’s too hot for this, I know it’s too hot, but I’m hunched in a ball anyway, desperately hoping that no part of me can be seen. If I’m whimpering, I hope I’m quiet about it, but the truth is I’ve never been good at subtly. 

Yesterday at the junior diamond, a little kid with shaggy brown hair and green eyes got himself smacked in the face, a result of his inability to control his mouth and my aforementioned lack of couthness. He was on my team, and we were up 5-1 in the bottom of the 8th. Everything looked like it was cool, but he kept coming at me, saying little things, being a little shithead. 

“Hey, you like the stuff they serve on Fridays?” he asked me for the thousandth time, knowing I’d been trained to ignore his stupidity.

His (much older) brother had gone up the Camper ranks and worked for some years as a counselor and staff member, head of archery or maybe it was swimming. A cheer had even been made for him when he finally got a job as a banker at Lehman to start of course AFTER his last Brunah summer:

D-O-L-L-A-R-S

DOLLARS, DOLLARS

BANKER-SON!

Bankerson was, ironically I guess, the family name. Whenever he visited thereafter, sometimes just chilling on campus for a week at a time just being awesome and doing nothing, his cheer would erupt spontaneously.

Anyway, Bankerson's brother, the little shithead who, yes, was a Bankerson too, was the batter in the hole, not up next, but the one after that. He already had his bat, and instead of working his swing inside the ascribed circle, he advanced on me pretending that he wasn’t being menacing. 

“The cornbread and chicken are good, am I right?”  The boy was close then, swinging that bat and sneering at me like he was so damn clever. 

He looked surprised when I popped him, like the blood on his lip wasn’t his. But I guess he didn’t think his 19 year old counselor/coach would actually stoop to physical violence. And I guess he assumed that the metal bat in his hand would protect him, but clearly I didn’t give a fuck.

“You're done here,” he’d muttered, retreating to the batter’s circle. 

“Batters up!” cried the ump.

That night in the dark of the North Country Bar, I’d laughed with the guys, my best buds. 

“Yo,” I said as I sipped beer number five,  “Bankerson is such a bitch.” Everybody sniggered, even Big Bankerson, who was of course visiting that week. 

“How do we even have the same parents?” Big B said, prompting even more laughs.

Suddenly we were all swept up in a cheer:

PENNIES, QUARTERS, NICKELS, DIMES

BANKERSON’S SISTER SURE IS FINE!

It was an after hours cheer and I had a feeling of comradery that I could feel down to the piss I was about to unleash on the bushes that lined the seedy wooden shack establishment some 25 minutes from camp. I’m not even sure there IS a Bankerson sister but it really doesn’t matter.

“Hey,” Big B says some time later, after the din of his cheer had died down, “Let me grab you a drink.”

Never a man to refuse free libations, and given Bankerson’s nifty gig on Wallstreet, I acquiesced. He ordered two White Russians, his beverage of choice, and we stood in the dingy one room establishment, just two bros having a drink together.

“Hear about that thing last week?” he asked casually.

Everyone knew about the slaughter of John Ashcroft. How his finger and toe nails had been ripped off. How he’d been lashed with a three pronged whip that most animals would run from. How his face had been speared off so that his countenance resembled a rouge peeled grape. How he’d been castrated, right hand made to hold his bloody balls, left hand his mangled dick. 

“Terrible” he says, without waiting for me to say anything. Then he was with the other guys, chortling and being drunk… 

Well that was last night, but it feels like a year ago and damn: I gotta pee. I’m mad that this cabin is as far as they get from the toot, fifty-two stairs in the trees. I don’t think I can climb up because I’m realizing I really have to go, like really badly but I can’t even move from this fetal position under the sheet.

On Sundays like tonight, we aren’t allowed out. Dinner, chapelsing, and listening to the brass trio try to play more hymns while your cabin fights over stolen candy under the stars. Then, bedtime. 

Most of us counselors are pretty good, but you used to be able to do what you wanted. People were routinely "absent" from breakfast and Monday morning wasn’t an exception. Big Bankerson famously missed Monday breakfast AND lunch three weeks in a row.

 Now though there’s night-watch and I’m not about to get busted. I was hauled in last week for missing curfew, but they meant to talk to DeMarcus. I would never come in at 5am. I'm a junior at The University, one of the youngest ever. I’ve got a reputation to protect.

I wonder how the kids are knocked out. Percy is snoring big, like he didn’t guzzle orange pop an hour ago. Sam and Connor both talk in their sleep, but they aren’t saying much now. Still, even under the covers I know they’re in the land of counted sheep, both of them, just from the big funk emanating from their farts. Or maybe it's something else. 

My assistant had been focused on Chip but I think he should have had his attention on Vaughn. Both were snorting pixie sugar, but the latter is from Baltimore. 

I’ve never been to that city, Baltimore. I mean sure, I almost applied to the robotics program at Hopkins. Oh and to get to Vermont, I came through BWI once. But I’ve never been there–Never even been to Maryland. 

Well Camp loves Baltimore. Even when I was a kid there were always boys who came from there. This church or that one, or maybe a foundation.

 Vaughn is at Brunah because his uncle paid the full pricetag. He likes to say that he is not one of them, but he is good at basketball. And track. It’s like he can’t help it… 

The fuck was that? That slamming sound. Like someone’s trunk was being closed too hard or something. I should look. The right thing to do is look. But I can’t. I just can’t. Because I can’t stop thinking of John Ashcroft now.  

Of his skinned off face, and his mashed up back. Of his lolling tongue, and the flies that surely circled. Of his swinging body, all burnt up, like he hadn’t already experienced enough suffering. 

I feel the naggling feeling in the back of my brain. The bile in the pit of my stomach threatening to overwhelm my throat, my mouth. That deep understanding that Big and Little Bankerson seem to just get about me. About my condition. About my loneliness.

Terrified, I moan once more, hoping the darkness will hide my own darkness. I’m definitely going to pee myself tonight.