Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

Fin

June 19

Dear Future Husband,

Caroline is sitting on her bunk bed playing the Christmas prostitute song. Pita says that at the end of camp, she is going to lead our cabin in a procession to the lake and hurl the flute into the water. We all (besides Caroline) agree that this is the first good idea Pita has ever had. The hurling will be either a milestone or a ceremony. Captain Beaver is big on Milestones and Ceremonies.

My personal milestone while I’m at camp will be to ride Jo at a gallop. In riding class we’re only supposed to walk, but the elitists with experience are trotting already. Andrew should tell them to stop, but he doesn’t. I try to encourage Jo to trot but she walks like she’s waddling through molasses no matter what. I have less than a week left to reach my goal. You can’t ride a horse by reading a book.

Today Andrew told me that Jo was so fat she probably couldn’t even tell I was riding her. She probably didn’t even know I existed. Struck dumb with fury, I was able only to glower at his carefully suntanned Ken-doll face. He slapped my thigh, hard. “Horsefly,” he explained. He gave me a slow smile. “You wanna ride a different horse?” What different horse, I said sullenly. All the other horses were taken. He said if I really wanted to learn how to ride, he would give me a private lesson after taps. Then Pain In The Ass butted in to ask what we were talking about. “None of your damn beeswax,” I said, and turned back to Andrew to remind him that we had the Black Night Ceremony after taps. He smirked and touched the brim of his baseball cap in a gesture I have only ever seen in The Lone Ranger, which I was forced to watch over many long afternoons at my grandmother’s house. I stared at him over my shoulder as Jo bore me away to plod in a ponderous circle.

Fin

June 19, again

Dear Future Husband,

It’s been raining hard since mail call. I heard the counselors whispering at dinner about canceling the Black Night Ceremony. They think the weather will make it too scary. Pita says they’re playing it up to set the mood, because the whole point of the ceremony is to scare us. Same with the porno movies, she says. (Our last activity before dinner was an hour-long Sexuality presentation in the gym. I pretended to be bored. Caroline pretended to be disturbed. Pita laughed and laughed.)

Fin

June 19, again

Dear Future Husband,

We’re back in the cabin. They decided not to make us sleep in the Temple (the lodge) after all. We had to put on our camp whites for the ceremony, and before we went into the lodge the female counselors told us stories about menstruating girls who were inhabited by demons. The demons could make the polish on our nails turn rotten. The smell of blood could bring snakes slithering into our cabins. We were forbidden from touching pickles and instructed to form an unbroken circle. The lodge was decorated with moose heads and stuffed ducks and mounted antlers, and candles lining the walls for maximum shadow effects. The male counselors danced and hollered outside with burlap sacks over their heads. They weren’t very well disguised. Andrew still had on his cowboy boots. Inside we sat on the floor in a clump. We weren’t supposed to talk, but Pita whispered dirty words from the porno movies to needle us. After a crack of thunder Caroline started chanting Dignae et provisae iucundae, and we all joined in. Finally the Beav came in and turned on the lights, and that was the end of the Black Night Ceremony.

Our counselor didn’t come back to the cabin with us. She rarely spends time with us, so we hate her. Although I was not impressed by the ghost stories and pickle warnings at the ceremony, I confess that the thunder is loud, and the rain, and the wind pushing through the trees. I worry for the horses. Our cabin roof is leaking in two places. Caroline announced she’s homesick and began to cry. Now everyone in the cabin is wailing.

Caroline asked her bunkmate to sleep in her bed, prompting all the top-bunk girls to climb down into the bottom bunks. Guess who got stuck with Pain In The Ass? I suggested that we sleep head to feet, but she said no, and she wrapped her spindly arms and legs around me. “Get off me, Pita,” I said. “My name is Emily,” she whispered in my ear, “and this is how we always sleep at slumber parties.” I pushed her away so hard that she rolled onto the floor. Then I stood up and, as a distraction, loudly announced I would go in search of our counselor. Caroline reminded me, however, that I’ll get a zero for the Colts if I leave the cabin. Pita (also a Colt) climbed back into her own bed and dangled her head over mine and threatened to spit on me if I tried to leave. She said I’d never find our counselor anyway, because she escapes nightly to the woods with the other counselors to participate in a vomiting ritual.

I have to tell you a secret. After I told Andrew that I couldn’t meet him after taps tonight, I made plans to meet with him for a private lesson tomorrow.

Fin

June 20

Dear Future Husband (Andrew?),

This morning, like every morning, we rose at dawn and ran toward the sun. This morning, unlike every morning, I ran all the way to the woods and back, and I was fastest. Half awake and half dreaming of a gallop. The girls behind me a stampede of hooves. Hi-yo, Silver! Away! When I got back to the starting line, the Beav slapped me across the face and hung a medal around my neck. “Welcome to the Sisterhood, Josephine,” she said. I was so startled that I bit my own tongue. Caroline plucked a buttercup from behind our cabin and smeared its pollen on my forehead as if she were a priest anointing a new baby, after which I upchucked last night’s dinner (lasagna) into the weeds.

Instead of having a Sisterhood meeting today for the new members, the staff held a camp-wide emergency trunk inspection, and a girl in another Morning Glory cabin was sent home. She’d been caught faking her period. “But I bet her laundry was extra-steadfast,” Pita said sullenly. She has been in a particularly sour mood all day. Caroline says she’s just jealous that she hasn’t gotten picked for the Sisterhood. Pita says she heard that the trunk inspection was really meant to make sure we weren’t hiding any contraband. “Like candy bars?” Caroline asked pointedly. Contrary to her malnourished appearance, Pita is an actual pig for candy bars. She brings back armfuls from the canteen. “No,” snapped Pita, “like a giant vibrating dildo.” It’s hard to tell sometimes if Pita is joking. Our counselor, both lazy and careless, didn’t look in my sanitary-napkin box, so my notebook remains undiscovered.

The horse pen turned to mud after the hard rain last night. At the beginning of our class Andrew already looked like the Swamp Thing from the knees down. I squinted at him so that he went blurry and I could pretend he really was the Swamp Thing, and for one raw moment I missed my grandmother, her paisley sofa and her too-loud infinite TV. Summer used to be simple. I used to want simple things, like small marshmallows from the jar in my grandmother’s kitchen. I would squish them into tiny pancakes between my thumb and forefinger and eat them one by one. I stopped squinting at Andrew and tried to tell him with my eyes to come talk to me. But he ignored me, and with each passing minute I felt my dream of horsewomanship slipping away. In the fifty-fifth and final minute of class, Jo waded nonchalantly back to the gate, carrying me powerless on her back. As we passed Andrew he reached up and touched my arm. “After taps,” he said, in the same casual voice he uses to tell the elitists Nice Work Today! I looked down at the muddy streak his hand had left on my skin. Speak in a low, soft, soothing voice. Be accommodating. Use your yes words. I tried for apple cheeks. I had been practicing all morning. “Yeah,” I said, apple-cheeked, to my own bare arm.