A plump girl grabbed his arm. “Dance? Dance?”
“Let go.” He pulled away angrily. The plump girl ran off after someone else, laughing and shoving.
The music ended. Jimmy came back inside, slipping over beside Carl. “How was it?” he asked.
“How was what?”
“The dancing.”
“I didn’t dance.”
“I never thought they’d have dancing at a camp,” Jimmy said. “Who ever heard of dancing at a camp?”
It was very silent during the long nights, with everyone asleep and no light anywhere. Sometimes Carl woke up and lay listening, warm in his sleeping bag, only his head out. The night wind moved through the trees growing by the creek.
Carl lay listening. He could hear many scratching sounds in the darkness. Animals? One morning he had found a grey squirrel standing on his sleeping bag. The air was heavy with mist. No one was up. The squirrel stood upright, gray and rigid. Then he flowed off onto the ground, followed by his tail. The squirrel dipped and weaved across to a big redwood tree and scrambled up it.
Later, when the mists had faded, the kitchen people began to bang things around in the dining room. Lying in his sleeping bag, waiting for the breakfast gong to sound, Carl could hear their sound, echoing up the creek, a hollow sound, a distant drumming. A strange sound, mixing with the slowly drifting creek, the great silent trees, the leaves and earth.
Everything was so different from home. His regular life seemed unreal. A dream. His room, his microscope, his stamps. The pictures. Books, records, endless drawers and piles. The stuffy closed-up room. Here the air was thin and clear. He could see for miles, rising green hills and trees, higher and higher. The smell of the air, the trees, the moist ground. The way stones felt under his feet. The freezing water. The dry sand against him.
He paid a nickel to ride in a canoe, up the creek until he came to a bridge. The shore was covered with stones. Endless gray stones. He drifted with the stream, allowing the canoe to go where it wanted. He forgot that it was costing him a nickel an hour. He put the paddle down and lay stretched out, listening to the sound of the water, to the silence of the woods around him.
On and on the canoe went. The camp was a long way behind. He stirred. It was time to go back. He was entirely alone, for the first time in his life. There was no one at all. It was not like being alone in his room. There he was surrounded with things, a whole roomful of things. And beyond the room was the whole city, endless men and women, countless people. In the city no one was ever alone.
But here there was no one. He gazed at the steep banks that rose on both sides of him, tangled shrubbery, old roots, crumbling soil. The lines of trees, firs, redwoods, Cyprus, pine. A bird cried out, rushing away. A bluejay. So alone. It made him feel sad, but he enjoyed the sadness. The sweetness — It was such a strange sadness. As if he were rushing away, faster and faster, in his canoe, down the stream between the steep banks. Leaving everyone behind him forever.
He picked up the paddle and turned the canoe. He paddled back.
At night he could hear the creek. He could not see it, but he knew it was there. The creek was very close to him, just beyond the trail and down the slope. Moving always, silently, carrying bits of bark and twigs and leaves along with it. Branches and leaves, all the way to the ocean.
Carl stared up at the dark sky. Above the redwoods a few stars winked. He could see the outlines of the trees, the columns rising up on all sides, supporting the sky. He thought about the girl, the girl with the dark hair. Would he ever see her again? The two weeks were going swiftly. Across the stream was her tent, someplace on the other side. She was there, beyond the water, sleeping silently.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again the first feelers of gray mist were starting to settle down. It was morning. A vague, diffused light hung everywhere. The stars were gone. Carl shivered. It was very still and cold. In the cot next to him Jimmy grunted and turned over.
Carl lay watching. Mist blew around him. His face was moist. He could see the creek, now. The broad surface, like pale stone. And the bank on the other side rising up, the trees and roots and vines. The ancient twisted roots.
After a while he slipped out of his sleeping bag. He was trembling all over from the damp coldness. There was no sound. The world was utterly silent. He pulled his cotton pajamas around him and padded across the trail, down the slope, picking his way carefully. Nothing stirred. The mist eddied everywhere. He came to the bottom of the slope. There was the water, the flat opaque surface. It moved so slowly that it did not seem to move at all. But it was moving. A branch passed, a black dripping branch, cold and stark, its leaves hanging limp.
Carl sat down on the slope at the edge of the water. Time passed. He did not feel the cold. The mists began to go away a little. But there was no color anywhere. The sky, the water, the trees, everything was dull and flat. Gray. A world of ghosts, silent shapes.
He dozed. And when he opened his eyes she was standing on the other side of the stream. He was stiff all over, stiff and cold. She was looking at him. She did not speak. Carl and the girl gazed across the gray stream at each other.
A bird flashed through the trees. Faintly, down the creek, a metallic booming drifted. The kitchen people, starting breakfast. The girl stood between two trees, her hand against one, at the very edge of the water. She wore a kind of gray robe. Her hair was long and black. Her eyes were black. He could see her tiny white teeth. Her mouth was open a little. A cloud of moisture rose from her lips as she breathed.
Carl did not move. The trees, the girl, the water, everything blended together in the silent grayness. After a time he fell asleep again.
When he woke, Jimmy was kicking him in the small of the back.
“Get up!” Jimmy demanded, his voice shrill and far away.
Carl stirred. He could hardly move. His bones ached. He was stiff and numb.
“Get up!”
Carl got slowly to his feet. His head ached and rang. He could hardly see. He was terribly tired. Up the bank he climbed, trembling and shaking.
“What’s the matter? You sick? Why were you sitting there? How long were you sitting there?”
He did not answer. He made his way to his cot and sat down. One of the counselors came striding along the trail. He halted. “Anything wrong?”
“He’s sick,” Jimmy said.
The counselor came over. “You sick, Fitter?”
Carl nodded.
“There’s something wrong with him,” Jimmy said.
He lay in the nurse’s tent, in the big bed. The sheets were crisp and white. He was very tired. He wanted only to lie quietly.
The nurse came in. “How do you feel?”
“All right.” It was early morning, about ten. He could see the sun, shining through the tent flap.
The nurse took his temperature. “Your mother will be up sometime today. Do you feel well enough for the trip back?”
Carl nodded.
“Have you had breakfast?”
“No.”
“I’ll have someone bring over your pancakes.” The nurse went out of the tent, past the table of bottles.
Carl gazed out at the sunlight and the trees and vines. Soon he would be going home. His mother was coming. He was tired. He turned over on his side and closed his eyes.
A sound filtered into his sleep. He lifted his head a little. The room came into focus. Someone was standing by the bed, looking silently down at him. He stirred, turning over. Was it— His heart caught. Was it—
The woman moved closer. It was his mother. He lay back.