On the day of the campout, I had to face a bowl of mush before Mama would let me outside. I looked at Eddie for help, but he grinned and said, “It’s been bubbling on the stove for about an hour. Ought to be nice and slimy by now.”
When Mama dished it up, it dripped long threads of slobber, all soft and shiny like the undersides of the snails that crawled under wet leaves in the garden. When I looked at it, I wanted to gag.
I covered it with sugar, put a hunk of butter in the center, and stirred it around until Mama told me I was too old to play with my food.
“I’m always too old for some things and not old enough for others,” I said. I was going to say what I thought of that mush, but she gave me one of her don’t be sassy looks. I left the table as soon as I could and went outside. Buster was waiting by the front door. I scratched his neck. “Come on,” I said.
Geraldine and Reba Lu were already tying ropes to some low-hanging tree branches when I got to the Adams’s backyard. “You’re late,” Geraldine told me.
“Mama made mush,” I said.
“Nasty, slimy stuff.” Geraldine shivered.
Reba Lu sighed. “It’s good healthy food, and it doesn’t cost much.”
“Neither does snot,” I said, “but I don’t eat it.”
I was thinking how nice it was to have the last word as we hung up the old sheets Mama had found at the back of a cupboard. We clipped them together with clothespins, then pinned back a flap on one side to make an opening for going in and coming out.
“You should have put your blankets on the ground before you hung the sheets,” Charles said. “Now you have to crawl inside and drag the blankets through that narrow opening.”
He was chewing on a piece of toast. I wondered how long he had been sitting on the back steps watching. I reached around my waist to make sure my shirt was tucked into my shorts.
Reba Lu rolled her eyes. “Don’t pay him any mind. He’s jealous because he doesn’t get to camp out.”
“Do too,” Charles said. He walked over to the far side of the backyard and began hanging sheets over the rows of clotheslines where Mrs. Adams hung her clean washing to dry. He had already spread a blanket on the ground. “This is my territory, Reba Lu, and don’t you forget it.” Then he looked at me. “I can help you drag those blankets inside when you’re ready.”
I smiled, but I didn’t answer. I seemed to have lost the connection between my brain and my tongue.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” whispered Geraldine, pointing to Charles’s side of the yard. “With no covering on top, Charles can lie there and look at the stars all night!”
“And the bats and owls can come in,” Reba Lu said.
Pretty soon, we began to hear a soft clucking, and a pretty little speckled hen stepped out from behind a bush. “Chick-chick-chick,” Reba Lu called, and it came right up to her. She picked it up like it was a cat and stroked its feathers.
“I never knew you had a pet chicken,” Geraldine said.
I could tell she was impressed, and so was I. Lots of people had chickens, but they were for laying eggs and frying. If you made a pet out of one, and it ended up on your dinner plate, it could turn you off drumsticks forever.
But Reba Lu didn’t seem worried. “Her name is Gloria,” she said. “My daddy says when she brags about an egg she’s laid, it sounds like she’s praising the Lord. He says he’s considering taking her to church to sing the Gloria Patri with the choir.”
She scratched Gloria’s head and got up to put her in the chicken coop for the night. “We’ll never cook Gloria,” she said. “She’s too good a watchdog. If anything comes in this yard that doesn’t belong here, she’ll let us know. You should hear her when she gets worked up!”
We heard her when Reba Lu put her back in the coop. She made such a fuss of cackling that Buster put his nose down with one paw over his head.
We all went home to get some lunch and gather the extra things we would need: a bag of chewy Walnettos, homemade sugar cookies, and a package of Twinkies with banana cream filling.
When we returned to Reba Lu’s backyard, I saw that Charles had picked up a lot of small rocks and put them in a pile near the opening to our tent. “Ammunition to throw at coyotes,” he said. I noticed he had already dragged the blankets inside our tent.
“Thanks,” I said.
He shrugged and looked at his feet. “No problem.” He went back to fixing his camping gear, and I walked over to where Reba Lu was fussing with the sheets.
“That was pretty nice of Charles,” I said.
“He’s in love with you. That’s why he’s acting like that.”
“In love? What do you mean in love? Charles hardly knows me.”
“Maybe so, but he sure looks at you a lot. Talks about you, too. He thinks you have ‘expressive blue eyes.’ He says that’s his new favorite color.”
“Well, I never heard of such a thing. It’s just … just ridiculous.”
“I’m only telling you what I know.”
I ignored her and began fussing with a sheet that kept coming loose. But while I fussed, I thought about Charles and decided I could do worse. Charles was taller than me by at least two inches. He didn’t have bad breath. And Reba Lu said he was good in arithmetic, which I hated.
I took a good look at him when he was busy catching an alligator lizard. I didn’t dwell on what he might be going to do with it, but concentrated on his chin (it didn’t recede), his fingernails (not too dirty), and his hair (dark brown and combed flat on top).
“When did Charles start doing that to his hair?” I asked Reba Lu.
“When he got goofy about you.”
I changed the subject. “I wonder what Dodie is doing?”
“Who cares?” Geraldine asked.
“That’s a bad attitude,” Reba Lu said. “God is probably listening to you right now.”
Geraldine looked uncomfortable. “Do you want me to lie and say I’m sorry she isn’t here?”
Reba Lu looked thoughtful. “I can’t really say I miss her.”
I didn’t say anything. I was wondering what Dodie was doing right that very minute when we were looking forward to having a good time. Was she scrubbing somebody’s dirty laundry? I was starting to feel bad for her, and I kind of missed her. Dodie was different from Geraldine and Reba Lu. I could be myself around her and not worry about making mistakes.
After a while, Eddie came over to start the campfire, and we got to talking about the weenies and marshmallows we were going to roast. Reverend Adams had dug a shallow pit and put large rocks in the bottom and pieces of Geraldine’s outhouse wood on top. Eddie got the flames going, and we sat around watching them reach out to lick the summer air. Pretty soon Reverend and Mrs. Adams brought the twins outside. Before you knew it, there were my folks, and Mrs. Murlock, all sitting on blankets on the ground, waiting for the flames to die down and become embers, and I didn’t think about Dodie at all.
Charles came out of the house carrying hot dog buns, a couple of packages of weenies, and a jar of mustard. All of a sudden, everyone seemed to be hungry, and we put those weenies on long sticks and turned them slowly over the embers. Mama, Mrs. Adams, and Mrs. Murlock took charge of opening the buns, spreading mustard on them, and putting them on paper plates. Those embers were just right, and before I knew it, Charles had taken my stick and was turning it slowly so the weenie got cooked on all sides.
When it was done, he handed it to me. “Thanks,” I said. I gave him a quick smile. Then I got busy putting the weenie in the bun. I took a big bite and tried to pretend that Reba Lu and Geraldine weren’t watching and poking at each other.
Reverend Adams began to sing an old camp song.
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky’s so blue,
And I will tell you why I love you.
Mrs. Adams joined in. Then we all started singing. It felt good to sit in the open air, with twilight coming on, and the sky so big above us. Pretty soon it would be full of stars, sparkling up there like somebody had salted the universe.
I put a marshmallow on a pointed stick and held it in the embers until it was toasted on the outside and gooey in the middle. Then I popped it whole into my mouth and let the sweetness fill me. Geraldine burned one and ate it anyway, charred parts and all.
“I like it this way,” she said, but I knew she was showing off a little.
Pretty soon, Mrs. Adams took the twins into the house. They were carrying on, screaming and kicking, because they wanted to camp out, too. Then the others wandered off home, except for Charles, who was rustling around in his corner of the yard.
It was getting dark, and the stars were coming out fast. Geraldine and Reba Lu and I lay on our backs in the grass and found the Big Dipper, and argued about how to find the North Star.
Then we went into the tent to read about Nancy Drew in The Hidden Staircase. Buster came with us and stretched out by my blanket. It wasn’t long before we turned off the flashlights.
“You always know it’s safe outside when the crickets sing,” Reba Lu whispered.
“Everybody knows that,” I said. “It’s when they stop that you have to watch out.”
“Crickets are good luck,” Reba Lu continued. “You don’t want to kill a cricket.”
She went on, telling us about things we already knew. Geraldine glanced at me. First chance we got, we changed the subject and began talking about what was on all our minds.
“Mama doesn’t like Jefferson Clement,” I said. “She told a fib at the picnic to keep him from sitting with us.”
“Good for her,” Reba Lu said. “I’ll never forget the way Miss Emma cried when she looked out her window and saw him. What do you suppose he did to make her so scared?”
Geraldine sniffed. “Might be nothing at all. You can’t trust everything Miss Emma says.”
“Well, I trust Miss Emma more than I trust Mr. Clement,” I said. “Maybe we ought to take him off our list.”
“You mean just give up on him?” Reba Lu sounded shocked. “We can’t start changing our list of sinners just to suit ourselves.”
“I’m not sure he’s a sinner worth saving,” I told her.
We were quiet for a bit. Then Geraldine said, “Smell that honeysuckle?” We all sniffed. “It has a heavier smell at night.”
We sniffed again. Cool air from the canyon drifted softly across the yard, carrying the scent. I felt as though the flowers were sighing. I was thinking I might even write a poem about sighing honeysuckles when Reba Lu broke the spell by saying, “Sometimes I’m scared of the dark.”
“Me, too,” Geraldine said, and she began to tell about the shadows that lived under her bed.
“I’ve got them in my closet,” I said. “They open the door, a little at a time, slowly … slowly …” I reached out and grabbed Geraldine’s arm.
She screamed, and so did Reba Lu, even though I hadn’t touched her. We looked at each other a minute, then started to laugh. Reba Lu grabbed a flashlight. “I’ll show you what monsters look like!”
She had me hold the flashlight while she made shadow pictures against the hanging sheet of our tent. She was good at it. Her fingers formed arms and legs, and her fist made a witch’s head with a pointed hat and crooked nose. Then she did something with both hands together that looked like a big coyote with its nose pointed to the sky as if it were howling. Finally, she made a little dog that danced.
Geraldine and I were impressed, but Reba Lu shrugged. “My daddy taught me,” she said. “When I’m afraid of the dark, I can form a shadow monster. Then I can send it away and make something funny instead.”
We were all quiet for a long time. I was thinking about how a shadow can be scary sometimes and funny other times. Then I remembered Dodie’s secret. She said she had been scared of the dark, but I couldn’t help wondering if she had more to be afraid of than a few shadows.
Despite the gentle breeze outside the tent, I was sticky with sweat. I kicked off the light blanket that Mama had made me bring and lay without moving, trying to get my skin to cool down. I could hear Geraldine and Reba Lu breathing. Long, deep breaths that meant that they were either asleep or close to it. Then I heard a strange sound, like a chicken starting to cackle. It stopped almost before it got started, and I didn’t pay any more attention. I wished I could go to sleep. I closed my eyes. It was so hot that the crickets had stopped chirping.
I opened my eyes. That wasn’t right! Crickets didn’t stop chirping because it was hot. They stopped when they heard something, or someone, coming. And then I heard it, too. Slow, careful steps across dry grass. I wondered why Gloria didn’t sound an alarm. Buster made a soft sound, deep in his throat. I took hold of his collar with one hand.
With the other, I pulled the blanket back up, covering all of me right up to my nose. I would have covered my head, too, but if it was a coyote, I was determined to get a look at it. One good look before I yelled. I tightened my fingers around my flashlight. I saw the shape through the sheet of our tent. Large and looming. Not at all like the hand shadows we had laughed about. This one looked solid and seemed as big as a horse.
I watched the shadow move to the flap that we had fastened with clothespins. One by one the pins were quietly pulled away. He stood, outlined in the moonlight, not a horse at all, but a man. Probably it was Reverend Adams, I told myself, checking to see that we were all right.
“Reverend Adams?” I asked softly.
There was no answer. Buster began to growl, low down in his throat. I tightened my hand on his collar. The shadow moved … the tent flap opened …
“Help!” I yelled. “Help!”
Geraldine and Reba Lu sat straight up and bumped heads. Buster’s throaty rumbles turned into angry barking. I let loose of his collar.
“Sic ’em, Buster. Sic ’em!” I shouted.
Buster leaped forward and fastened his teeth into the backside of the intruder, who had turned to run but got caught in the ropes that we had strung to hold the tent up.
“Get him, Buster!” I yelled. “Get him, boy!” Buster hung on as the man gave a loud yell, scrambled to his feet, and staggered away.
“Attaboy, Buster. Hang on!” It was Charles’s voice. His footsteps thumped across the yard as he chased after the man.
The three of us all tried to crawl out of the tent at the same time. Geraldine stepped on my hand, and I put my elbow in Reba Lu’s eye. Reba Lu began to cry.
Then we heard a yipping sound. A few seconds later, Charles was back, carrying Buster. When I reached out to pet him, saying, “Good boy, good Buster!” and touched him on his side, he yelped in pain and began shaking all over.
“Oh, he’s h-h-hurt,” Reba Lu stammered. Her teeth were chattering, hot as it was.
Upstairs in the parsonage, the lights went on. Reverend Adams leaned out a window. “What’s going on out there?” he demanded. “Did you see a coyote?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. His head disappeared, and a minute later he clattered down the back steps. “What was it? What happened?” he asked.
“Something tried to get into our tent,” Reba Lu said. “Ask Angie. She was awake. She’s the one who yell—”
“It wasn’t something. It was someone,” I interrupted. “It was a prowler!”
“I saw him, too,” Charles said. “But I couldn’t see his face.”
“A … a man?” Reba Lu stammered.
Reverend Adams looked angry. He didn’t ask any more questions, but made us all come into the house. “You can camp out right here on the living room floor. We’ll sort this out in the morning,” he said.
He wrapped Buster in a blanket and headed up the street toward Dr. Thomas’s house. “The doc will fix him good as new,” he told me. “Everybody says he’s as good with animals as he is with people. Don’t you worry.”
Mrs. Adams made hot chocolate because of Reba Lu’s chattering teeth. I would rather have had some cool lemonade, but I drank what I was given.
Reba Lu and Geraldine kept asking questions. “How big was he? Did he say anything? Did you recognize him?” They had been too busy bumping heads to see what happened.
“It was too dark,” was all I could say.
I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. For a long time, I lay on the floor, wide-awake. It was true that I hadn’t seen the man’s face clearly. But I did see the way he moved. And I remembered smelling something besides his sour sweat. Something spicy.