More Than One Way to Play

As soon as we were done eating, D.J. got up and started collecting everyone’s dirty dishes. I didn’t think too much about it until Sergeant Pittman gave him a big smile.

“Thank you, D.J.,” she said. “You can wash those down at the stream. And here’s this too.” Then she reached into her pocket and handed him a blue-painted metal washer. Another tag!

“Pay attention to D.J., roaches,” Fish told us. “Taking on jobs without being asked is worth something around here. Don’t think we forgot how many tags each of you still needs to pass this course.”

I’d almost forgotten—this wasn’t just a week of torture. It was a kind of game too. The kind you start losing as soon as you forget you’re playing it.

I’d been sweating plenty about food, and Carmen, and Fish, and falling off a mountain, but if I didn’t start worrying more about earning those tags, none of the rest would matter. I’d be out robbing banks with my good friend Rocco before you knew it.

In other words, I needed a strategy to get all of those tags. And the first thing I could think of was to talk to the kid who was playing the best game so far. So I picked up a couple of extra spoons lying around and carried them down to the stream where D.J. was washing up.

“You did that on purpose, right?” I asked, squatting next to him.

“Well… if you want to be nosy about it—yeah.”

“It was a pretty good move,” I told him. “You’re the only one with three tags now, and all the rest of us still have two.”

D.J. looked down at the string around his neck. “Oh, that?” he said. “Yeah, that was cool too. But I just wanted the bowls.”

“The bowls? What for?” I said.

“ ’Cause I’m still starving,” he said. He took the first one off the stack and licked it all the way around the inside, burying his face in as far as he could.

“And that’s what you call seconds!” he said, and reached for another.

D.J. did know how to play this—but just not in the way I thought.

“Go ahead if you want,” he said, and pointed at the other bowls. “You can have three, but I get the other six, ’cause I thought of it.”

I looked into one of those bowls, and there were at least a couple of good-sized lumps still sitting there. My stomach whispered hello at them.

Besides, those lumps were food. Food was energy. Energy was what I needed to earn those tags. And like I said, those tags were what it was all about.

In other words—strategy.

“Well, maybe just a little taste,” I said. And neither one of us headed back up to camp until every one of those breakfast dishes was sparkling clean.

After my talk with D.J., I decided it was time to put my game face on. I had to get organized.