Chapter 11

“I-want-to-go-home!” the little girl bawled, just a little too petulantly for her age.
Jesse was being patient with her, trying to understand, attempting to comfort. The girl was only eight years old, she told herself, and had every right to be homesick. She wasn’t doing it to annoy her or the other staff, neither was she spoiled or whiny. Like most homesick kids, she just missed her mom too much to have fun. But it was only the second day, and she hated to phone the parents before the child gave it an honest try. If one girl was allowed to leave, others would want to go, too. Yet if she stayed, her misery might have an even more widespread effect over the camp. It was her decision to make, to let the girl go or try to convince her to stay, and she desperately wished it weren’t. She didn’t want to be responsible for creating a Junior Week of mass exodus. Under the right circumstances, the juniors could be worse than even primary campers. The younger ones, especially the six-year-olds, were easily distracted; but when juniors got homesick, they were old enough to remember that they were homesick. This girl certainly looked wretched, and her cabin leader didn’t look much better. It was just after lunch, so there was little chance of convincing the girl to stick it out until the next morning. Jesse finally decided to make the call home, to the relief of the distraught cabin leader. Having been there herself a good number of times, Jesse could relate.
As she dialled the number, Michael came into the office, swaggering cheerfully as always. Seeing the sniffling little girl and a counsellor trying unsuccessfully to comfort her, he did a little backtrack to where she was sitting. Jesse shook her head at him from Bob’s office, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. As she watched, he knelt down beside the girl so that they were eye-level and started talking to her.
She turned her back to them when someone picked up at the other end. She could hear faint laughter behind her as she explained the situation to the girl’s mother. By the time she called her over to the phone, the little imp was beaming from ear to ear, though her eyes were still red and puffy from dried tears.
“Thanks a lot,” Jesse said insincerely when the girl and her cabin leader had left to go pack her things.
Confused, Michael went on the defensive. “For what?” he asked.
She glowered at him accusingly. “I told that woman that her child was upset - extremely upset, I believe, is how I put it. I told her she had been crying all day, she wasn’t participating in any activities, and was inconsolable. And after talking to you for two minutes, she’s the happiest camper I’ve seen all day: picks up the phone, says ‘hi mom!’ and gleefully - yes, I said ‘gleefully’ - announces she wants to come home. Her mother must have thought I was crazy! I can’t believe she actually agreed to come pick her kid up!” She had one hand on her hip and gestured animatedly with the other as she reamed into him.
“What can I say?” Michael asked helplessly, “I have a gift.”
“I’ll show you a gift,” she threatened wryly, shaking her fist at him over the counter. “I’m in no mood.”
“Really? Well, if anyone can fix that, it’s me. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Oh, go fix someone else’s mood. Leave mine alone.” She disappeared behind the counter, opening a lower cabinet door and angrily pulling out bundles of paper.
The smile never left Michael’s face. “If I thought you meant that, I’d do it,” he declared, leaning over the divider. When she had a stack of three packages she shut the door and went to pick up the pile, but Michael was too quick for her.
“Uh-uh-uh,” he clucked, coming around the counter in a few long strides. He picked up the paper before she could get her hands around it. “Pregnant women do not carry paper, and I hope I don’t see you try anything like it again. Where would you like this, my dear?”
She pointed wordlessly to the photocopier, not able to think of anything appropriate to say to that.
Michael took advantage of her embarrassment. “Is that a blush I see, Miss Jesse?” he teased.
That helped her find her voice. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she said, imitating his teasing tone. “I do not blush.”
“You don’t?” he asked, quite shocked, as he loaded the bottom tray of the photocopier with paper. It was true that her face wasn’t at all red, but she had seemed ill at ease, and normally the suggestion that a girl was blushing was enough to bring on that very reaction.
“Not that I have ever been aware of,” she answered truthfully.
“Must be nice,” he said as he straightened, throwing the last paper wrapper in the blue box.
She didn’t say anything, but she knew he was referring to his own tendency to turn a striking shade of red. Her desire to exact revenge surpassed her mercy, however. “Oh, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she assured him. “It just means you’re a very sensitive sort of fellow...” and then she laughed out loud as she saw a flush creep across his face. “Are you doing that on purpose?”
He shook his head, looking away. “Trust me, no guy does this on purpose. I was teased non-stop about it as a kid, sometimes I still am.”
Jesse was a little sorry for doing just that a minute ago, but he didn’t seem upset about it.
“It gave me a thick hide, though,” he assured her. “I might blush like a rose, but now it’s usually when I’m hot or tired, or sad, or angry, not embarrassed.”
“But you’re embarrassed now.”
Bob walked in casually, wearing khaki shorts and a Rocky Bay Bible Camp t-shirt, his sunny-day usual. His cloudy-day ensemble consisted of zipping the legs onto his sunny-day shorts. “Hey...” he glanced around the office. “What’re you two up to?”
“I’m embarrassing Michael,” Jesse answered brightly.
“She’s doing nothing of the sort,” Michael contended. “I am embarrassing her.”
Bob nodded in agreement as he walked through the office. “Well done. Keep up the good work!” he said encouragingly, and went into the dining hall.
Michael looked at Jesse when he had gone. “Are you embarrassed?”
“No, I’m not embarrassed,” said Jesse. “Are you embarrassed?”
“I don’t think so, no, not really.”
A strange voice intruded then. “Would you be, if you found out that someone had been in the room with you this whooole time?” Zeb asked as he stood up behind the corner computer desk. One hand was on his hip, and his words and his body moved slowly, as if to emphasize their gravity. He had earphones draped around his neck and a bag of nachos in hand. His hair stood on end and there was a queer light in his eyes. His voice was so smooth and controlled that Jesse didn’t blink at the noise, until she caught sight of him looking so much like a freakishly tall, young punk red-headed Albert Einstein. The effect was a little startling and she jumped just a bit, then laughed at him.
Michael was duly impressed by his dishevelledness. “Zeb, you gotta get out more. How long you been sitting behind that desk? As in how many days?”
Zeb was imperturbable, as always. “Don’t worry. You kids were so boring I had to listen to some music to keep me awake. Just gotta go use the little boys’ room,” he said with a stretch and a yawn. Reaching with a long arm, he scratched his back as he ambled out, his head close to the top of the door-frame as he crossed the threshold.
When he was gone, Jesse looked pointedly into all the corners and behind every desk that might be concealing another body. Satisfied that there were no more peeping toms, she decided to defend herself. “You’re the boring one,” she let Michael know.
“I beg to differ,” Michael differed. “You couldn’t be more dull if you tried. I, on the other hand, am a perfectly shocking individual.”
“You’ve never done a shocking think in your entire life,” Jesse wagered.
Michael looked personally offended. “Now just hold on a minute there,” putting his hand up in self-defence. “Just who was it who came to breakfast in his boxer shorts on Saturday?”
“Those were pyjama pants.”
“But I wore fuzzy puppy dog slippers with them.”
“Yeah, that was scandalous, alright.”
“And you’ve got better?” Michael asked haughtily.
“Yesterday I told Mark I was madly in love with him,” she claimed.
“Well see there, you probably made his day. I, on the other hand, missed three prayer meetings last week.”
“I didn’t go to church on Sunday,” Jesse said boldly.
“I once wore a baseball cap for an entire summer without taking it off.”
“Last year I threw a muffin at a camper’s head,” she countered.
Michael sized up the situation and decided to play hardball. “When I was eight years old I ran naked through the sprinkler in our front yard.”
“The first year I was a kitchen girl I missed curfew one night and mooned the moon.”
The competition stopped short. “You didn’t,”said Michael.
“I did.” Jesse proudly vowed. “Me and four other girls; and the head cook and her husband saw us from their bedroom window. The next day we were in the kitchen for twelve hours straight, doing every job the cooks could think up in their vengeance. The dining hall hasn’t been that clean since it was built, and they were still mad at us for the rest of the summer.”
“And you really skipped church on Sunday?”
Jesse tipped her chin proudly. “I was in perfect health, and I don’t feel at all guilty about it.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she acquiesced. “Not exactly shocking, but eight is a little old to be running around without clothes.”
Michael managed to look slightly shame-faced. He hadn’t lied, exactly, but he couldn’t help feeling a little deceitful for pretending those were the worst past offenses he could come up with. He couldn’t contemplate telling her that he’d tried marijuana for the first time in grade seven. Or that in grade eight he had lent his cherubic face to help some highschool kids rob three old ladies on one street. Would she still be able to laugh if he’d told her any of the really ‘shocking’ things he’d done?
“Yes, but I had the cutest little tush, you see, and I thought it a shame to deprive the world of it just for the sake of propriety,” he said, keeping his thoughts to himself.
“Well, let’s just be thankful you seem to have reconsidered, now that you’re in your 20's.”
“Oh I learned that lesson well before I hit my teens,” he assured her. “You, on the other hand, seem to have taken a while longer.”
Jesse did not blush. In fact, she wasn’t even embarrassed. A thousand possible retorts flashed through her head, but none of them was quite good enough. Michael noticed her hesitation and was starting to look smug. Not able to endure that, she held her head up and stalked out of the room before she said something she’d regret.
She felt proud of herself as she stepped into the sunlight. She took a deep breath and went to lean on the porch railing. Laughter reached her and she was once again amazed by the pleasant ring it carried, when not accompanied by the whack-whack sound of Ed’s Alley pool balls hitting each other and the sides of the wooden alleys. She had always hated the game, no matter how popular it was with the campers. When the maintenance crew started chopping up the tables for firewood this morning, it had been a shock to everyone, but Jesse’s heart had been warmed.
She gazed contentedly at the bustling campground. The new plastic playground by the water stood unused, but nearby a group of muddy boys lined the banks of the creek. They were rigorously building new dams and destroying old ones. Once in a while a girl might help out, driven by curiosity or just to prove she wasn’t afraid to get dirty. The soccer field was being used again, as was the basketball court. Three girls played on the swings. Oh, what a beautiful sight was that pile of firewood! The campers were discovering the rest of camp.
The bell rang seven times. The happy, dirty children rushed to the field where their teams’ flags and captains were waiting, eager to win extra points by being the first team assembled. Jesse was glad that for her the bell signalled time off. Team Time had never been her favourite, and now she had a good excuse not to participate in it. Pregnancy was not without its perks, she admitted to herself. Since there were two games a day, at 45 minutes each, she had a total of one and a half hours off instead of the standard hour. She and Michael made the schedules for all the cabin leaders’ time off as well as their own, and she had not argued when Michael insisted she take Team Time rather than a Major or Mini. She saw him exit at the far end of the dining hall and rush to meet up with his own team.
It was an unusually hot, humid afternoon. It had warmed up over the last few days, and Jesse was aching for a swim. A little piece of her died at every swim time, when she was left on land with the water-shy. Sometimes she waded in wearing shorts, but that was far from satisfying.
Even as she brushed a damp tendril off her forehead, Samantha and the kitchen girls came to sign out in the office. She knew where they were going and went weak with envy.
“Hey Jesse!” Amy Laverly greeted her. She and the others were sporting bathing suits and towels. Sam would be taking them to Moose Creek. After last week, Samantha had switched from cabin staff to be the head hospitality hostess, since the position had been unfilled and Linda, the head cook, was just about fed up with the young girls. Besides needing supervision, they had been getting cabin fever without a ‘head hosp’ to take them out on trips. Swimming at Moose Creek was one of their favourite outings.
There were four kitchen girls this week: Amy Laverly and Missy Nerino, who were here pretty much all summer, and Rachelle and Caitlyn, who’d been to camp before but were only working a couple weeks.
“You off now?” Missy asked her as they came up the stairs. “Why don’t you come with us? We’re going to the falls.”
Jesse smiled but shook her head. “I don’t think I should. You guys have a good time.”
“Why not?” asked Amy. “Swimming won’t hurt you. You don’t have to jump.” Getting to Moose Creek meant leaving the camp road to follow a set of railroad tracks, to where they formed a bridge over the river. From there you could either walk down a steep bank to the water, or jump off the bridge. A short way upstream was a waterfall.
Amy looked at Samantha. “We can fit her in the car, right?”
Samantha shrugged. “Sure, if one of you rides in the trunk.”
Rachelle and Caitlyn both quickly volunteered, eager for some excitement.
Jesse was convinced. She ran off to get changed, tucking a large towel up under her arms to that it covered her body as well as part of her legs. Although she was fast, she almost regretted her decision when she got to the car and everyone else was already loaded and waiting for her. The girls in the trunk dangled their legs out over the bumper and seemed itching to be off. Samantha didn’t look annoyed, though, and Jesse told herself that she was imagining Sam’s dislike of her. The others were all very nice, fussing about making her comfortable and asking if it was alright for her to wear a seatbelt, and she found herself glad to be getting to know them better. As they drove off, Missy asked her if she’d ever been to the falls before.
“A few times,” she answered.

She’d had her first kiss under the waterfall.
Rules had toughened up since, but back when she was a camper, it hadn’t been an uncommon thing for the hiking class to walk up to Moose Creek on their last day. She was eleven when she first came here. Their leaders were easygoing, and the class spread out as they walked upriver - skipping rocks, picking up sticks, trying to spot fish. Jesse was at the back of the procession with a couple of friends, and the falling, churning water was loud. When they rounded the last corner and came face to face with the waterfall, she thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
While the others picked raspberries and their leaders talked together, she discovered that the back of a waterfall is not a straight wall of rock. She never would have ventured in if she’d heard the order forbidding it, but by coincidence or fate, she hadn’t. Eyes wide in wonder, she picked her way over a wet, narrow ledge till she reached a large cavern filled with mist, looking through the back of the cascading river and seeing only shadows of the people on the other side. The sounds of her group were drowned out, and she felt very alone, as if she had stepped into a world where everything was backwards.
A boy came in after her. He was wearing faded jeans and old running shoes, because they were supposed to wear pants and shoes to hike, and a grey t-shirt because it warm, though cloudy outside. He had dark brown hair, quite a few freckles, and was just a tiny bit taller than her, which meant he was probably twelve. He had never spoken to her before, nor she to him. But on the first day, while she helped her parents unpack the trunk of the car, she had felt someone watching her. She’d looked up and seen him, then, two cars to their left. He’d picked up his sleeping bag and smiled at her. Since they’d found themselves in the same hiking class, their eyes had met again a few times, usually when they both noticed something that no one else seemed to: like when a fox crossed the road far ahead of them, or when their female leader wore a pair of very short shorts for their march through the bush and flirted with the male leader, or when a low rumble of thunder had sounded in the distance. He had soft brown eyes, and she thought they were very nice-looking. She didn’t wish he would talk to her, or that he would ask her to the banquet on Friday. She was content with her own cabin mates as companions, and had no desire to be teased by them; it was much more desirable to keep her coed friendship, if it could be called that, unspoken.
So she was not as surprised as she might have been when he entered the secret world behind the waterfall. He looked around and seemed to like the cavern, though it didn’t awe him as it did her. He was there to see her, not the back of the waterfall. He walked up to her and cupped his hands over her ear so that he wouldn’t have to shout, and told her they had to leave. When she mouthed “ok”, he took her hand. But before they walked out, he leaned toward her and kissed her on the lips.
They didn’t say goodbye on Saturday. He didn’t speak to her again at all that week, and she’d never seen him at camp since that summer. Sometimes, now, she wondered if he’d been real. She had no doubt that he was real to her, but would he be real to anyone else? Perhaps that was why she never told anyone about him. He was too precious for his memory to be laughed at.

When they came to the bridge, she and Sam slipped and skidded down the steep incline to the river as carefully as they could, while the rest of the girls walked out to the middle, then dropped one by one into the deep, freezing water, screaming as they went. Each one bobbed up a little way downstream and scrambled up onto the bank. They walked to the waterfall because there was no use trying to fight the current swimming. They could swim once they reached the falls.
It was very small, hardly ten or fifteen feet in height. Rising up from the narrow beaches on either side of the creek were miniature cliffs, and above them were trees and sky. Their swim was much too short for Jesse’s liking, but still rejuvenating. The running water was icy, in contrast to the shallow, almost tepid bay back at camp. As always she was overwhelmed by the wildness and beauty that surrounded and shielded her in this place. She swam as close as she dared to the foam, testing her strength against its relentless power. She floated on her back as the current slowly pushed her away. The waterfall held for her a magical quality, unremarkable as it may seem to others. It was a place where time should stand still.
Unfortunately, Amy had brought a watch, and all too soon it was time to go. They had left their towels in Sam’s car, where the tracks met the road. The sun quickly dried everything but their hair as they picked their way back to the bridge. This outing was the first time Jesse had been in a bathing suit in front of anyone but family since she felt herself starting to show, and she was very self-conscious about it. None of the girls had stared at her, but she knew they had all snuck discreet glances at her stomach.
As they were leaving, Amy finally brought it up. “You know, you hardly look pregnant at all, Jesse,” she said.
“Heck, I look more pregnant than you!” put in Missy, who was slightly plump around the waist. Some of the girls giggled.
“Oh, Missy, don’t say that,” said Amy. “We’ve told you it’s just a little baby fat. And it’s nothing compared to my thunder thighs.”
Missy smiled but didn’t look convinced.
“Alright girls, what did we say about body image?” asked Samantha. Missy and Amy looked grudgingly repentant for their indiscretions. “No putting ourselves down here. You’re all beautiful the way God made you.”
That put an end to the self-deprecation.
“Amy’s right though,” said Rachelle to Jesse, after they’d all taken an appropriate moment to think on Samantha’s words. “If you hadn’t told us, I would never have dreamt you could be pregnant. I’m sure you could get away with swimming back at camp this week, if you’re worried about the kids. They would never know.”
Jesse showed no sign of being convinced. “I’m not so sure. I know it’s not terribly obvious yet, but I do look kind of funny. I don’t look big to you because you’re expecting to see a tummy. If you hadn’t known, and I came out here like this, you’d all definitely be wondering about it.”
The girls digested this for a moment. She might have a point there. They tried to imagine Jesse was not pregnant. Did she look strange in that light? Rachelle, Amy and Missy appeared unsure.
Caitlyn decided a voice of reason was necessary. “Sure, we might wonder,” she conceded, “but eight and ten-year-olds won’t. They hardly know what being pregnant means. My mom didn’t tell me or my sisters that she was having my little brother till like a month before he was born, and that’s the truth. And none of us thought anything of it till then. Kids don’t notice those things. To these campers, we’re just grownups; kids don’t care what grownups look like.”
Jesse was glad to have her vote of confidence. Caitlyn hadn’t spoken to her before, but she seemed like the kind of person she would like, and might have been friends with if they were closer in age.
She shook her head, though. “I’d have to think about it.” She considered confessing the real reason she hesitated to swim at camp, but they would only reason away that excuse too, and then she’d have nothing left to argue with. In reality, Jesse expected that the campers wouldn’t notice anything was amiss. She was more worried about certain staff members, the male ones in particular. There was a difference between telling them she was pregnant, and parading around in front of them so they could see it with their own eyes. It would attract attention, and that was one thing she didn’t mind going out of her way to avoid. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed, but they might be.
The subject dropped as they climbed up to the tracks. Steep as it was, Jesse managed to scramble up easily enough. It was less tricky than going down had been.
Once they were up and on their way, though, a rustling noise in the bushes to their right brought her to attention pretty quick.
“Probably just a bear,” Samantha said nonchalantly. The others also shrugged it off, but Jesse could not dismiss this horrifying possibility so easily. She searched the trees warily as they picked their way over the railway ties, looking for any sign of something big and covered with black fur. As a result, her steps slowed, and she and Missy, who was behind her, found themselves quite a bit removed from the others before they were halfway to the car.
This became a concern when, against Samantha’s certainty, a bear actually sauntered lazily out from the underbrush, directly between the two groups. It didn’t seem to mind the girls at all, and just sat back on its haunches when it saw them. It was a little thing, not full grown yet, and it would have been cute if it didn’t terrify her so. Missy, who was concentrating on her feet, bumped into Jesse’s back.
“What the...” she started, then she saw it, too. “Oh,” she said, with a glance at Jesse. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Just keep going, it’ll run off.”
Jesse didn’t answer her. She didn’t move, either. The bear sat there, looking at her. All she could think was that with one swipe of his paw, those claws could rake through her flesh; in one deadly bite those teeth could sink into her skull...
Ahead of them, Samantha and the others were leaving the tracks. What are they doing? Jesse thought hysterically. They were actually walking on the grass, closer to the great beast than ever. Did they have no fear of the danger he represented? Did they even see it?
Missy, following their example and stepping off the tracks, said something to her, but she didn’t hear it; her words were drowned out by a long, low whistle. A deep rumbling in the ties beneath her brought enough feeling back into her legs for her to turn and look behind her, and finally she understood why the others had taken their chances with the bear. But train or not, she knew she could not move any closer to the wild animal that claimed the safety of the grass. She pressed her lips together and stifled a cry that came out as a rasping whimper.
What happened next would be told around campfires and dining hall snacks for years to come. Caitlyn especially turned out to be an excellent story-teller.
“So the five of us are on the grass to the side, like sensible people. But Jesse was still on the tracks, and the train was just barrelling down; it was almost on the bridge already, and she’s not even halfway to the road yet. So we were all screaming at her to get out of the way, obviously, but she didn’t even look at us. She took one look behind her and went tearing down the tracks, like she was going to outrun the train! So we all started running after her, of course, but only Sam even came close to catching her. And I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life. Sam reached her, eventually, and we thought it was all gonna be ok, right, so we slowed down a bit. But when she finally managed to grab hold of her arm, what do you think Jesse did? She shook her off! Sam goes rolling backwards, and Jesse just kept running! We all thought she was definitely going to die, then. But Sam popped right back up, and started chasing her down again. By now the train was getting close, and we never thought she was gonna make it. We were all back at full speed, but Sam and Jesse were still ahead of us by quite a bit. The train was just hollering away behind us, just like in a movie, only it was way louder and scarier, and then there was that moment: this gut-sinking, awful, sickening moment, when the train passed us. It was the most horrible feeling I’ve ever had in my life. Samantha jumped on the tracks, but it seemed more like she was flying; like an angel just picked her up by the arms and threw her in front of that train. And then she was gone: the train rolled over the spot where she and Jesse had just been, and I swear to you I was absolutely certain they were both dead. The cars went by and suddenly we realized there was nothing we could do. Missy says she counted them.” (and if Missy were there for the story, she would add that there were 84 cars before Caitlyn could continue).
“ She stood there the whole time, while the rest of us fell down on the grass and tried to breathe again. And then it was gone, and the bare railroad ties and iron rails didn’t hold a trace of them. It was like they had never existed.”
And here she would pause for dramatic effect. Eyes would widen and a collective breath would be held; regardless of whether both Samantha and Jesse were sitting beside them, very much alive, or not.
Jesse didn’t have a very good recollection of the events thus far, but she remembered what happened next.
She opened her eyes to find herself flat on her back, and Sam’s face staring into hers.
“Are you alive?” Sam had asked urgently, barely audible over the roar of the train.
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you hurt?” Sam asked.
“No,” Jesse answered.
She looked up. On the right side, where the bear had been, the tracks were slightly elevated, maybe a foot or two off the grass, by a long embankment of stones. But she and Samantha were now on the left side, and on this side there was a ditch, which they were now in. The train rushed by a good five feet above her head. Sam had pushed her over, she knew that much. Why she hadn’t thought herself to use that path of escape, from both dangers, she couldn’t imagine.
Jesse sat up. “Are you hurt?” she asked Samantha, suddenly very concerned that her rescuer might have been injured because of her.
“I’m fine,” said Samantha distractedly.
Jesse vaguely noticed that the sound of the train’s whistle started to sound more like girls’ screams.
The girls, having watched dumbly as the train rolled by, now found they had tears and voices, as well as legs that could and would carry them further. As soon as the train passed, they began running back to camp. All the while, Samantha and Jesse lay in the weed-filled ditch. If Jesse had known that every staff member would soon hear that she and Sam had been run over by a train, she would have made more of an effort to get up. As it was, however, Samantha insisted that she lay still until she could remember what her first aid training called for in a situation such as this. Jesse was beginning to see that Samantha had a bossy side, and it intrigued her.
After checking her out thoroughly, Sam decided that since there was no obvious injury to Jesse herself, the only thing she could do was get her to a hospital. She did so, very efficiently. Jesse was fairly lifted off the ground and laid in the back seat of the car. “Where did the others go, do you suppose?” she thought to ask. Samantha made no answer, just shrugged and put the key in the ignition.