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"What the hell was that?"
"I don't know, Red, but I hope to hell he either never does it again or, um, does it several times a day!"
Canvas Hell 33: Chrysalis
By Bear Pup
T/T; self-discovery - Friday PM
***** Note: This is a very short chapter for a reason.
We were conscious, at least, when Karl returned. When a nude Karl bent over to don his undies, I really did think Jim was going to crack (pun intended -- oh, so very much intended). To give you an idea of just how much the scent then the show affected Jim, he didn't even start to chatter until we were halfway to the Mess Hall.
Trey was about to have a seizure when he saw the food. He literally sprinted back to the cabin to retrieve an extra bottle of hot sauce. The campfire cooks had slow-roasted pork loins on the bone. They'd covered one of the campfire rings with a portable awning-style tent thing and lowered the legs, then put the rack for the roasts just underneath. The result was slow-roasted, juicy, smoky perfection sliced to order off the bone and absolutely one of the best pork dishes I have ever had, before or since.
Next to the roasts was a vat of crap none of us could identify with beans and rice and veggies that Trey rapturously called Hoppin John. Black-eyed peas stewed with the rice to create scrumptious side and a thick, onion-filled gravy to top everything off. The veggie tonight was rather tragic; I assume there is a way to make creamed corn non-toxic, but I've never seen it. The alternative dish was a rather nice-looking chowder of corn and chicken. I had a small bowl of that just to taste and it was excellent.
And Trey was right. The Hoppin John was delicious... right up until you added that hot sauce when it became transcendent. To this day, a bone-on pork loin with Hoppin John and onion gravy is my absolute favorite meal. They'd even managed a dessert that they called Praline Pie. Only about as thick as two pencils atop one another, it was creamy and thick with a brittle top, filled with pecans, all of that in a flaky crust.
The Campfire Cooks were beaming with pride at the praise and even applause... right up until the growling started. It turns out that after nearly three weeks of Chef's palate abuse, running out of really, really good food was a Very Bad Plan. Especially the Praline Pie. Land, Sea and George had to step in and create a bodyguard-barrier. The cooks promised with remarkably-shaky voices to have lots, lots more the next day. Like, really promised.
Song practice was another slam dunk, with Willie increasing his confidence. He would, without question, end his summer at Camp Sinnemahoning a new man indeed. The rain had finally subsided to a desultory trickle. When the session broke, we told Trey and Nate that it was probably a waste of time to come see us; we were trashed from the day. "Anyway," Karl added, "I have a few more things to ask Jim, here."
Jim clearly was considering a night in the Cabin, but neither Karl nor I gave him any such chance. The fact that Nate whispered, "Um, good luck. And, well, you really were a great guy, Jim," did very little to calm our tent-mate. Everyone want to be a great guy; no one want to have been one, though.
Tent Canvas Hell was damp and smelly when we got there. Two days without a real airing (including a night when five guys came eight times in the open air) left clear signs. We rolled open the flaps and, as luck would have it, the wind came up to a strong breeze, angled from behind the tent and whisking away the cloying scent.
Jim was terrified, but Karl was merely contemplative. "Jim, I don't understand. What is it about Red and me that people, you know, care about?"
Jim seemed to melt in the 'not being killed right away' atmosphere. "I don't know, Karl. On that first day, everybody was, just, everyone. Maybe everybody was nobody? I dunno. There were guys everyone was talking about. Big guys, funny guys, strong guys, tough ones, too. But..."
Jim got contemplative as well, and thought a long time before continuing. "...they all knew it. They played it up, you know? The gathered guys into teams or packs or whatever, like... planets in their orbit? The had to be the center. The next day, you talked to me, the kid the worst of them, The Buggers, had trounced. You accepted me, I mean a kid, and didn't treat me like a serf, just as another person. I mean, everyone wanted to see why. You are older and cool and both so, you know, older. I said that. Whatever.
"Anyway, you guys make it so Winner gets gone, Major dragging him by an EAR, and the next day," Jim's voice went flat, cold, quiet, trembling, "Mikey and Bobby did, um, that." His voice vanished for a minute, like a moment of silence for a tragic event. "And, Karl, everyone in the Mess Hall saw that you were ready to murder them. And Red pulled us both out. And, remember, I'm nobody! And you were both there to take on the world for a nobody."
"Jim, you are not--"
"Oh, shut up, Patrick. Seriously. In camp this size? I'm friggin nobody. And then -- this is the part that everyone thinks is too weird -- you two say NOTHING. Broke Winner's gang and destroyed them. Took on the toughest and nastiest, the ones everyone were scared of and hated. And you don't strut. You don't make up a team or a gang or a pack or whatever. You don't even notice people who try to say, 'good job' or 'that's cool'. Red -- okay, don't kill me; this is other people -- Red is like, thinking deeper thoughts that the rest of us could even know and Karl is like, all, 'Dum-dee-dum. Well, it's Tuesday. That's the way Tuesdays go... dum-dee-dum'."
"Dum... Dee... Dum...?"
Jim hurried on, "Well, you know, like it was just another day. Nothing to get fussed over. And it just... snowballed. From then on, everything you guy did got all... mythical? If you caught a fish, it was a whale. If you paddled a canoe, it skimmed over the water. If you said hello, you conferred some sort of magic shield around a guy. If you had found a penny, it would have been a doubloon by lights out. I think... I think the real kicker, though, was the canoe race that second Monday."
"What? Why?" Karl was utterly nonplussed.
"Because we came in second on both ends."
"Right. That should have put a stop--"
"No. That we came in second on both ends and you were both... happy. More than happy. Really jazzed. At coming in second. Any other Big Shot -- you know what I mean -- would have been cursing and furious that they got beat. Wanting a rematch of something. And you were beaming like you won a jackpot, and Red smiled like he had the secrets to the universe tucked into his waistband! Then, to top it off, the... the, um, misunderstanding when we were fishing afterwards. Everyone saw me, uh, upset. And Karl looking murderous and Red mournful. No one knew what happened but the whole camp was buzzing with Trouble in Tent Nine.
"And then, BAM, everything was fine again. And then Nathan and Orson -- Nate and Tex, then Trey -- and what you did with Willie on the singing. Anyway, that's it. You guys can't sneeze without it becoming a story by nightfall. I didn't do it, well, not much. It was all you guys and what you did and how you treated people. Everyone wants to be one of you, or both. If not, maybe at least be close to you? Around you? Like you? So, um, you guys get it now?"
For the first time in about half an hour, I spoke. "No, and I doubt I ever will. But I'm not freaked anymore."
"Really? WHY?" Karl asked.
"Because they're not talking about me," I shrugged and smiled gently. "They're talking about this hero person who does all this cool stuff and knows so much and makes things right and is named Red. It's not me so I don't have to worry."
"No." Karl's voice was slow and certain and held a type of wonder or discovery. "It is you." He was nodding slowly, too, as if everything suddenly made sense. "Guys don't make up Red to tell tall tales about what Patrick does. You're making up Patrick to deny who Red really is."
Jim went to the tent flaps and tied them shut now that the breeze had done its work. I simply sat and stared around as Karl's few, spare words soaked into my skin where Jim's had simply flowed over me in a wave. Jim chivvied me out of my clothes and into my sleeping bag as Karl got himself into bed. Jim was last in and first 'out', snoring softly. Karl fell asleep next as I sat and continued thinking.
The instant, knee-jerk rejection had been possible when it was Jim and Nate and Trey. People don't really know, so they pretend. Jim talks and talks, and likes to make a good story. All just silliness and not at all related to reality. But Karl? I'd never heard him exaggerate anything. He said simple, direct, obvious things.
I'd come to Camp Sinnemahoning with a few absolute certainties. I was always the last picked for sports because I really wasn't very good at them. I was too... everything. Too tall, skinny, red-headed, freckled, nearsighted, gangly, awkward, tongue-tied. My opinions never mattered to people. I was ridiculously-unattractive. I was beyond merely boring and uninteresting to the point of sheer uselessness. Most importantly, I was absolutely terrible with people and was better off just hiding.
I started at the first day of camp. 'Opinions never mattered.' Karl had been absolutely undone by the thought that I, me, Patrick, saw through him and hated him that very first day, so much so that he hung around with people he loathed and that made him hate himself. Nate and Trey's responses when I told them they were really great guys. Willie and the singing. I felt their respect pushing against me like a physical force.
'Boring and uninteresting.' The snake and the centipede. Sq-Sq-Squirrel. The Streak. I felt the stories wrapping tentacles around me. 'No good at sports.' Moved the very first day from swimming to lifeguard. The canoe race. 'Unattractive.' This one I blushed so hard that the tent glowed. Jim didn't find me unattractive, apparently. 'Too... everything.' No one seemed to care other than me. Each added a layer to the ever-tightening fabric around me.
The hardest was the most entrenched, the axiom around which my life had worked for years. 'Terrible with people. Better off hiding.' My whole world was, in one way or another, built around that simple, obvious fact. But...
What about Karl that first day, that first night, and getting him to admit he wasn't a bad person? What about Jim after The Buggers? What about the three of us, healing and helping each other, saving each other? What about... the Kiss and getting Karl out of his nightmare during the storm? What about... the KISS and learning to love Jim? What about Nate? Trey? Willie? What about the look on Trey's face when I told him the hot sauce was the best thing ever, or Nate when I told him he could be who he wanted.
My stress level went up and up and up as each fundamental truth about myself was challenged right there in the fortress of my own skull. Everyone's attention pulled tighter and tighter against me. The transition from waking fretfulness to fretful sleep was invisible to me. I was trapped, squeezed, pulped and smashed. I was suffocated, trapped, crushed. I struggled and could not move. I wanted to scream but had no voice. I wanted to cry but had no eyes or tears. I wanted it to stop and had no defenses left, each wall had been breached, shattered, obviated. I felt my last bit of breath leave me, my last desires fade, my last self-image melt away. My last thought -- I knew it to be the last thought I would ever have -- was simple and the final straw that broke me. 'I'm sorry, Jim.'
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Canvas Hell: 33 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 24 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 26 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Lake Desolation: 18 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/ Culberhouse Rules: 9 chapters .../incest/culberhouse-rules/ Raven's Claw: 7 chapters .../authoritarian/ravens-claw/ Ashes & Dust: 2 chapters .../rural/ashes-and-dust/