Like You'd Understand, Anyway

“Shouldn't you be jerking off?” I told him. And then we both got into our sleeping bags and lay there touching ourselves and trying to think of what to say next. I was still awake when he finally sat up and listened to see if we were asleep and pulled on his shorts and left. I could hear his flip-flops slapping as he went down the trail.

When the first birds started making noise I could see the canvas over my head again. I could feel a breeze and smell something fresh. My eyes were so tired they burned. There were noises in the underbrush up the hill.

I saw Chris three times before lunch and asked him each time about the flashlight. He seemed distracted. “I don't have your flashlight,” he said the last time, like he was finally able to focus. I didn't see the fat kid or BJ. For a while nobody knew where they were and then somebody said they were in the Health Center. The nurse who sat in the little front room there said they were both resting and I should come back after lunch. She had a little wooden rack of pamphlets on her desk: Your Gums and You, Proper Foot Hygiene, Courtesy for Beginners.

At lunch someone said they both got beaten up, or beat each other up.

There was no one at the desk when I came back so I walked in. They pretended to still be asleep. The fat kid had his hands bandaged with big ice bags on them and had a bandage on his ear too. BJ had two black eyes and an ice bag wrapped in a towel on his head. His cheek was swollen.

Outside, Chris was sitting on the steps of the Health Center with his head in his hands. His knuckles were scabby with dried blood. Two of the other counselors were trying to cheer him up. He was saying he was 1-A and his lottery number was five. Unless he took off for Canada he was going over. His brother didn't have a deferment either. He was over there already.

“That's the least of your worries at this point,” the Camp Director said. “Come with me.” And he got Chris up and they went to the Camp Director's office.

“What're you lookin' at?” one of the counselors said when he saw me.

I stuck my head in the Health Center's back window. BJ closed his eyes when he saw me, but the fat kid looked back, like he finally had something he could tell his parents.

I spent the rest of the day in bed. Daddy longlegs and flies came and went. Joyce looked in and then left. The next morning I missed breakfast but somebody got me out of bed because there was another phone call. When I got to the phone both my mother and father said hello. They were both on the line. I guessed somebody was upstairs and somebody was downstairs. “We had another episode with your brother,” my father said. I was just listening. My mother said he was going to have to go away. She started crying. She said that Doctor Waynik told them he was a danger to himself.

“Because he couldn't play my records?” I said.

That seemed to surprise them. “He has your records. It's not your records,” my father said.

I stood there holding the phone. He was nine. The year before he'd been playing with his toy trucks.

“Can I talk to him?” I said.

“I got some more 45s,” he said when he got on the line. “Dad took me.”

“What'd you get?” I asked. He told me. I raked my fingernails across my neck. “Those're good,” I told him.

“You like them?” he said.

I told him I did. Especially the MacArthur Park one.

He seemed happy about that. “You can play them when you get back,” he said.

“You all right?” the Camp Director asked me. He'd come out of his inner office, where he had Chris. He looked at my neck. He didn't leave until I nodded.

I was holding the dial part of the phone in front of me. I'd lifted it off the desk but there wasn't much reach on the cord. “You there?” my brother said.

“Yeah,” I said. “You gonna be okay?”

He started crying. “They're gonna put me somewhere,” he said. “I'm scared.”

“Oh, Georgie,” I said.