Jim Shepard - Like You'd Understand, Anyway

“Asked me what?” I said.

“He asked me” he said. “I told him I would.” He looked at my face like he'd gotten the reaction he wanted.

“Why would you say that?” I said, though it was none of my business.

He shrugged, his shoulders up on both sides of his ears.

Someone whacked me on the head with a life preserver. “Camp Director wants you,” Chris said when I turned around.

“You finished with my flashlight?” I asked.

He looked at me, trying to figure out who I was. “I don't have your flashlight,” he said.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them he hadn't changed his expression. I told him I was the kid who lent him the flashlight.

“I got my own flashlight,” he said. “Why would I borrow yours?”

Last night, I told him. On the trail.

“Give him his flashlight,” the fat kid told him.

“What'd you say to me?” Chris asked.

Then he repeated that I had a call and gave my shoulder a shove while he was still looking at the fat kid. As in Get going.

When I looked back, he was standing there over him, the fat kid just looking out over the water like he was alone.

“Where the Christ are the records?” my father asked on the phone. When I told him he hung up.

When I got back the fat kid was standing in the water up to his waist, watching the kids on the pontoon raft, and Chris was gone. I got in as far as my knees and the air horn sounded for the end of sign-up events.

“You think BJ stands for Blow Job?” I asked Joyce at lunch.

“Duh,” he said. He had a quarter-sized strawberry on his forehead, like he'd been dragged facedown across a rug.

“So you think it does,” I said.

“It is all he ever talks about,” he said.

We had our trays and were looking for places to sit. “I haven't heard him say it once,” I said.

It turned out that Chris wasn't the only one who was beating on the fat kid. The fat kid's tentmates were too. The night before two of them held him down and one peed all over his face. And his bed. He told me at the Nature Center before dinner. The Nature Center was a two-room cabin that had a stuffed fox on a log and some turtle shells in a glass case. The best things in it were the spiders in the ceiling corners that weren't part of the exhibit. The fat kid said he didn't know where he'd go. He didn't want to sleep with those kids anymore. He didn't want to sleep anywhere anymore.

“I know that feeling,” I said. But he looked at me like I was just trying to cheer him up.

When I saw him later that night I thanked him for backing me up with Chris.

“You don't have your flashlight, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“So what good did I do?” he said.

We were on our way back from the campfire. “Where're you two going?” BJ asked when he saw us walking together. But he sounded worried.

The fat kid ignored me for a while and then he finally said, “I would've left me here too.” He was looking down the trail like he could see Paris.

“Your parents go away every summer?” I asked him. That sounded worse than my life.

“I don't have to be this fat, you know,” he said. “I eat like all the time.”

“Well, stop eating,” I told him. “Get some celery sticks.”

“That's what I'm gonna do,” he said.

We took a wrong turn in the dark and had to double back. He asked me not to say anything about what he said about BJ. “You're not supposed to know,” he said. “He asked about ten kids. I think I'm the only one who said yes.”

“Don't some kids want to kick his ass when he says something like that?” I asked him.

“Well, yeah,” he said. Like: Hel- lo. “What do you care?” he said when I asked if he was really going to do it. “Guys like it. In case you were wondering. Guys like it when you do it.”

We finally found his tent and there was this feeling down inside me like now I'd never sleep. “If you were normal you'd know that,” he said.

It was dark and his elbow kept bumping me. One of the kids from inside his tent stuck his head out. “Who're you? His girlfriend? You walk him home?”

“Yeah, I'm his girlfriend,” I said. “I walked him home.” They all made big noises about that.

“How's your special friend?” BJ said when I got back to our tent.

“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.