Camp Coincidence

There was no end to the amount of kids jumping in that pool. Being a good summer camp, there’s always a place for them to go and blow off steam, at least we thought so. We couldn’t have them cooped up doing crafts or learning about which berries were okay to eat. It was a big pool, plenty of space for all of the kids to swim. It was the best part of camp, for them, for us, we all loved it. It’s closed. The young ones won’t stop shitting in it. Four times they’ve let a log roll out and four times we’ve closed it. It all happened in such quick succession the camp manager decided it wasn’t worth keeping open. One hundred and twenty kids and twenty-two counselors without a pool. It was tough to imagine the camp without a pool.

Everyone was just starting to smile again when the camp opened because a few weeks prior all the fish in the pond had died. Their bellies white and pointed toward the Sun, hundreds floated dead. I think it was the runoff from one of the farms upstream who’d washed their pesticides off the crops – it’s the only thing that makes sense… I mean, Old Man Jones who runs that terrible farm doesn't care one way or another as long as his corn grows. Everyone in town hates him because of it, I think it was him. The younger kids didn’t understand, the older lot didn’t want to, they were all upset, especially the boys who looked forward to the fishing class every year. How do you explain to a five-year-old why the fish weren’t swimming? It was a wonderful sight watching the other farmers and residents marching around the pond with their signs and anger… still, we couldn’t go near it and the kids were sad and the fish were dead.

The petting zoo was Tom’s idea – I know, it wasn’t good. The kids loved seeing the small bunnies and baby goats walking around in the hay. It only lasted for a couple of days. None of us had any idea on how to keep animals, especially ones in an outside pen. A small girl, Gretchen, only seven years old caught a fox trying to drag one of the bunnies out of the cage. Its body was stuck and her screams were loud. Apparently, we should have had them somewhere safer… I didn’t even know there were foxes around here. A few of the kids here are more outdoorsy than several of the counselors, did they know this would happen? I can’t imagine they’d let us just leave the animals to die. Still, the bunnies and the goats had died and this brought about bugs and mice and even some vultures. We tried to get them to go away but we were all too scared, so the large meeting hall was a quarantined zone until the pests stopped coming around.

Obviously, some tried to get into the pool anyway. Two boys, Hank and Curtis were caught swimming in the unclean water. They spent the next few nights vomiting and moaning about their bellies. Curtis had to be sent home, his parents weren’t surprised and neither were we. There was never any hope of keeping them out for the entire camp, especially since the camp manager decided to keep water in it, it was inevitable.

There hasn’t been a bear in our area in decades.

Beyond that, it scared a group of kids and chased them down, shit it even killed a boy, James in the older group. Seriously, it’s been at least thirty years and not even a single sighting. It was a trail on the north side of the camp that circled the pond. It's a walk we always do with the kids, every morning. A wonderful place to see the sunrise and even sunset when the bugs weren’t so bad. The trail is only about a mile and doesn’t dive into any thick bush for the most part — I mean, the odds. Sometimes the kids went and did it themselves like this time, it wasn’t odd because we let the older kids have a lot more freedom than the younger ones. There was one time we caught two of them doing things even kids their age should know about in the thicker areas and we went back to stricter rules. It wasn’t fun at all doing that, the rules I mean, I hated having to enforce them all the time but the kids needed them and we couldn’t afford anything else happening. Still, the one week we let the older kids have a little freedom there is a bear. I mean, the odds, you know?

It didn’t even stop there. After the bear, fourteen more kids died from a variety of reasons. Coyotes, falling down a cliff, climbing a tree, it’s crazy that one of them even got into the pond and died in the hospital later in the week. There hasn’t been a death at camp in over fifty years, and even that one death was a kid who had a medical condition the counselors weren’t aware of. The local council began demanding the camp shut its doors but many of the kids had nowhere to go. Some of them even came from hours away to stay here for two months, they couldn’t just up and leave. The council doesn’t understand, they just see kids dying, I guess that’s not a great way of saying it. The counselors can’t be everywhere all the time. We couldn’t have stopped the bear or even kids from shitting in the pool. Damn, I wish the pool was still open and the kids weren’t so bored. The kids were scared, we were scared, how could you not be? Still, we couldn’t just leave. There were only really the younger kids left, the ones in single digits that were helpless. The ones who didn’t know any better.

The camp now had eleven counselors and forty-seven kids. The rest had left if able. The vultures and mice and bugs finally left the bony remains of the bunnies and goats outside the meeting hall. Alice, the acting camp manager, decided to teach a lesson about animals to the younger children. We spoke of the bunnies, the birds, the bears, and the bugs, and how they all helped one another even if they had to eat each other. The young children began asking if the animals felt pain when they died. I said, I’m sure they do but it’s just all the sadness leaving the body before they go to their happy place where they aren’t sad. They asked if you could see the sadness leaving the body if the passing was visible. I said sometimes, but only if they make faces and cries. Then they said, our sins and transgressions would pile upon our souls so heavy, O’ the weight, O' how the animals must maintain themselves in such ways but are believed to not bear the weight or wrongdoing, so how should they wield pain upon death? Should it not be us who would so delicately release our maladies and dance into the golden Sun of heaven above? Thy power who’s should be sated couldn’t be satisfied without our cries, our pain –

I said, that’s true, animals don’t know right or wrong.

They stood and began to circle. Unconvinced my words to be true. Then they danced, and sang, and jumped, and rang.

We should see,

the world as it is to be.

Beneath our own squalls,

should we paint the halls.

We be bereft of sun and smile,

So dance, dance, and disappear awhile.

They said, help Jillian lose her sadness. Please, we want to see, please, please.

She has seemed sad, more than usual recently, but I won’t do that. I said I won’t.

We just want them to smile, we want all of us to smile, they said. How can we be happy without knowing how to lose the sadness inside.

I said that Jillian would be gone forever if that happened. We want to keep her here I said and Jillian looked toward the door panicked.

They danced and sang and rang around the room and then parted with one holding the large knife from the kitchenette. Please, please, please, we want to see her smile so big and so bright, please they said. We are scared of being sad forever and if we see how to smile then we all will smile.

I took the knife and went to Jillian and stabbed her in the arm until a good line of blood drained out. For the kids I said, they should know how to smile. She screamed and the other counselors ran over and pushed me away. What the hell are you thinking, they said. A vehicle’s honk came from outside the hall. That’ll be the ponies Alice said. The children screeched with excitement and ran outside. All of them were smiling.