Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

Behind the bookcases there was a futon covered with three different blankets, one checkered pattern peeking from under another. At the foot of the futon sat a row of different-sized boxes. The sign on the smallest said MAGAZINES, and the sign on the biggest said EQUIP. She peeked into the EQUIP. bin and saw a hammer, a large net, three broken umbrellas, and a ragged leather case with a thermos inside. The thermos had a white plastic knob and a blue strap. It must have been the same one that Ben and his dad used to take on their skiing trips. She reached out a finger to stroke the hard yellowed leather of the case.

The clothes were kept in a huge plastic bin with a paper sign that plainly stated CLOTHES. The clothes didn’t smell musty at all. They smelled like cold, hard earth and a little like oranges. Which wasn’t surprising, she thought when she found some dried-up orange peel wrapped in a sweater. Most of the sweaters were too rough and prickly. Only one looked both soft and warm, but it had a large brown stain across the chest. All the way here Lena had been fantasizing about undressing and going to bed with Ben as soon as they got to the cabin. But it was so cold here that she wouldn’t have undressed at gunpoint. She took Ben’s high-waisted jeans and wore them over her leggings. She had to tie them with a string at the waist and roll them up at the hem. And she wore Ben’s stained sweater over her shirt. Her reflection in the tiny mirror on the wall reminded her of herself back in Russia, putting on all these bulky warm clothes, getting ready for a school ski trip. She was simultaneously turning into Ben and into her younger self.

Outside, they sat on a rickety half-rotten bench by the campfire ring. The bench was facing the lake, but they couldn’t see the water in the dark; they could only hear the heavy splashes of waves.

Ben had built a complicated structure of sticks and logs, crowned by a Times Business section from 1987. It took him a while to start the fire—he kept adding more and more paper, until the Business section all burned and he had to resort to Sports. That did the trick. The smaller sticks finally caught fire, and the bigger logs followed suit.

Lena shivered and moved closer to Ben.

“Perfect for a horror story, don’t you think?” Ben asked. “How about your scary version of Chaucer or Boccaccio?”

“Actually, there was one story that I didn’t base on any of the classics. I made it up myself. It was my masterpiece. The kids really loved it. It became so popular that they’d ask me to tell it again and again, and they would even retell it to the kids from other units. I heard that it became sort of a camp legend, and the kids were telling it to each other long after I left.”

“Wow! It’s not too terrifying, though? I won’t be scarred for life?”

“I can’t guarantee you that, but if you are, it’s going to be worth it.”

“Okay, go.”

Lena peered into the flames and cleared her throat.

“Once upon a time, two girls went to fetch a pail of water. One was blond and fat, the other dark-haired and skinny, and neither of them was very pretty.”

Ben chuckled. Lena smiled too: “I don’t know why, but this line about the girls not being pretty always managed to crack the kids up. Okay, so. Both girls were wearing summer dresses, sandals, and white socks. They didn’t have a pail, so each of them carried a large tin teakettle. There was plenty of drinking water in the camp, but it didn’t taste good. People fetched water from the little spring that ran under the trees just off the road a couple of miles away from the camp. The two girls went out the gate and started to walk down the country road. There were almost no cars on the road. Just one or two passed by. It was a long walk. By the time they got to the spring, the sun had dropped to the tops of the trees in the woods and become heavy and large and red, and then it fell behind the clouds. They stepped off the road and walked up to the spring and then took turns filling their teakettles. ‘Look!’ the skinny girl said when they made it back to the road. ‘What?’ the fat girl asked. The skinny girl pointed to the sky. There was a huge fiery disc in the sky, just above the top line of woods. It was about three times as big as the sun and it was moving. Going up and down. Slowly. It would drop and graze the tops of trees and then rise a little, drop and rise again. The thin girl was so stunned that she splashed some water over her dress.

“ ‘Do you know what that is?’ the fat girl asked her.

“ ‘The sun?’ the thin girl answered.

“ ‘Does it look like the sun? Can the sun move like that?’ No, it didn’t look like the sun. And they knew very well that the sun couldn’t move like that.

“ ‘That’s a UFO,’ the fat girl said, ‘an alien spaceship. Look, it’s obviously trying to pick a place to land.’ She put the teakettle down on the ground, straightened her shoulders, and raised her arms so that they formed a straight line. Then she closed her eyes.

“The thin girl closed her eyes too.

“ ‘Aliens!’ the fat girl yelled. ‘Here, right here!’

“ ‘Shh,’ the thin girl said, ‘they might hear you.’

“ ‘I want them to hear me. Aliens! Come to me. I’m a space element. I’m a cosmic creature. I’m a part of the universe. Come to me! Take me.’

“The thin girl grasped the teakettle handle tighter as if it could help her to hold on to the Earth. ‘Aliens, please, please, don’t come,’ she whispered, ‘or if you come, don’t take me, take Inka, she really wants you to take her. I don’t. She is a cosmic creature. I’m not.’ ”

Ben laughed.

“The kids would start laughing too,” Lena said, “and sometimes they would even chant: ‘Take Inka! Take Inka.’

“They felt a sharp gust of wind. Then another.

“The fat girl opened her eyes. There wasn’t a fiery disc in the sky anymore. ‘Where did it go?’ she asked the thin girl.

“ ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t looking.’

“ ‘Oh, shit! They’re gone. We should’ve sung something.’

“ ‘Sung?’

“ ‘Yeah. Sometimes it works. But you have to hit a very low note.’

“ ‘Oh.’

“And here the kids would always nod with approval,” Lena said.

“The fat girl sighed and picked up her teakettle. They turned to go back. It was significantly darker now, and colder. The thin girl started to shiver in her wet dress. They’d walked no more than a hundred feet when a car appeared as if out of nowhere, passed them by, then came to a sharp stop a few feet ahead and started moving in reverse in their direction. There was a man in an officer’s uniform behind the wheel. He stopped the car and climbed out. There was something strange about him, but the girls couldn’t say what it was right away.

“ ‘Hey, girls,’ he said, ‘where are you going at such an hour?’

“ ‘We went to fetch some water,’ the fat girl said. ‘Now, we’re going back to the camp.’

“ ‘Oh, the camp,’ the man said. ‘I heard there was a summer camp around here, never been there.’

“ ‘It’s right over there,’ the fat girl said.

“ ‘Is that right? Do you need a lift?’

“ ‘No, thank you,’ the thin girl said.

“ ‘Are you sure? Those kettles look heavy.’

“The thin girl nodded, then shook her head.

“The man smiled, climbed back into his car, and drove away. Only then did the two girls realize what was so strange about the man. This wasn’t a man at all. This was just a huge black sausage in an officer’s uniform. It didn’t have any legs, or arms, or head, and it was soft and wiggly.