It’s Heather’s idea to go camping. Alex is six, Lucy is one, but why not try? A restorative time away from work. We bet about my ability to stay off my phone throughout the trip. Me that I could, she that I can’t.
Sunday is shopping for groceries and supplies: propane canisters, an extra flashlight, batteries, hotdogs, all the requisite things. Bourbon and coffee. We buy ice on the way out of town.
We pull into our spot late Monday afternoon. A small gravel drive, right up to our own private patch of wilderness.
“Don’t hit the tree,” Heather says, one hand gripping the door handle. The other white knuckling her own knee. And then, “Our spot seems so close to the one next to us.”
“It’ll be fine.” I say.
“But isn’t it so close?”
“When the sun sets, it’ll feel miles away.”
She nods like she believes me. Like Yes, we can do this. We’ve got this.
We’re out unpacking and setting up. If we move fast, we can be relaxing under a great stretch of blue inside 45 minutes. Alex helps with the tents and stretches his arms as far as they’d go.
I come up behind him and finish what he started. “Well, you didn’t totally mess it up.”
Alex smiles and kicks gravel in my direction. “You messed your side up.”
“Nuh uh,” I say, unsure of what we’re talking about anymore.
There’s one tent for him and Lucy and one for me and Heather. Heather unpacks the stove and our dinner, all while cradling Lucy, who can’t walk yet and always demands up-ah. You should feel Heather’s left bicep. It’s a rock. She invites people to touch it.
“I do CrossFit,” she’ll say. “But only on my left side.”
After the tent I get a fire going with a bundle of logs we bought at the front office of the park. I send Alex on a hunt to gather twigs and pine cones for kindling.
“Will these work?” He asks. “More? Is this enough? What about this?”
He holds up a rotted log. I kneel and blow on the tiny flames. I blow, then Alex blows.
“It’s going now,” he says.
We cook hotdogs and macaroni and cheese. After dinner, Alex dangles a skewered marshmallow precariously over the fire. The first bursts into flames. The second is going well and then drops into the coals. On the third, tearful try, Alex roasts his marshmallow to a perfect temperature. He crushes it between graham crackers and Hersey squares. Heather assembles one for Lucy, who manages to get at least bits of it into her mouth.
“Lucy’s first s’more,” Heather says. “It’s official.”
Getting Alex and Lucy set up in the tent is a breeze. Alex in his sleeping bag, Lucy in her Pack ‘n Play. A portable sound machine roars on the floor. I put it on the night sounds setting. It’s what you’d hear camping but more and louder.
I unpack the Solo Cups and bourbon and mix Diet Coke into Heather’s drink. The fire is really going now because I keep feeding it. The first round of logs is hot and glowing. My shins sting from the heat and I periodically jerk them away. The bourbon sears my mouth, makes me salivate and nearly brings tears to my eyes. Heather is next to me. She arranges our chairs so our arms touch. I feel no need to pull out my phone. I have all that I need.
I talk about how, when I was a kid, I’d put my face up to our fireplace at home. I’d look down to the bottom where it was all glowing orange embers.
“I pretended that’s what hell is like,” I say.
“Hell is so beautiful,” she says.
We go to bed together and make the quietest love we’ve ever made because we are six feet from Alex and Lucy, who are sleeping.
It’s Tuesday afternoon and a bronze sedan backs into one of the sites on our loop. Two kids tumble out.
“Hey,” I say. “Check that out. I mean they can’t be older than 16, right?”
Heather comments on the girl’s clothes: a white blousy top and black jeans. She wears boots up to her knees. The boy has on matching jeans.
“They can’t be out of high school,” I say.
“What lie did she tell her parents to make this happen? Heather asks.
“What if she didn’t lie?” I ask.
“No chance. No way my parents would let me go camping with a guy.”
“Even now?” I ask.
“Especially now.” She checks me with her shoulder, pitching me forward.
“There’s got to be easier ways,” I say
***
We get dinner going. Alex piles a small collection of rocks next to our picnic table. He asks me to sword fight, make him a walking stick, burn stuff. Lucy gropes at Heather’s legs happily gah-ing while Heather fires up a pot of baked beans on the camping grill. I stoke the fire and keep tabs on the couple across the loop.
They’ve strung up a hammock, now marching back and forth from the woods to their fire pit holding handfuls of twigs.
“Look at that,” I say. “Didn’t they know you could buy bundles of wood at the office?”
I get the bourbon out and pour a little in a Solo Cup and hand it to Heather who fans it away. I pour a little more and take it for myself.
I can hear the couple talking across the loop.
“Do you have any more matches?” The girl asks. She kneels by the fire, strikes one match after another and holds them to the sticks.
“I got a ton in the car,” the boy says.
Rookies.
“Maybe I should help them,” I say. “I could give them a starter log.”
“Don’t be weird,” Heather says.
I wonder if they’d had sex before. Of course they have. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s why they were here. A whole special first-time getaway thing. I’d had sex by the time I was whatever age they look like they are. It was as graceful as two cows going at it out in a field. I imagine these rookies mooing in their tent all night. I wonder if it will be as awkward as them trying to light the campfire.
Sixteen. How awful. How exciting.
Alex pokes me with a stick, and I strip the bark with my knife and drink more bourbon.
The rookies finally have a small flame going. A miracle. I whisper to Heather, “Oh no. Look at them now.”
The girl holds one of those Jiffy Pop pans of popcorn over their fire. If you can call it a fire. The dark ink of a tattoo pokes out from the hem of the boy’s short shirt sleeve, spreads across his bicep. From here it looks like the Aerosmith logo, but it can’t be. There’s no way.
“How long do you think that’s going to take?” Heather asks.
***
We eat baked beans with cut-up hotdogs mixed in. Lucy sits in a highchair and squeezes her food through tiny fingers. It squishes out like Play-Doh. She throws it, so we give her pouches of baby food. More s’mores for dessert. I haven’t looked at my phone once. I’m going to win that bet.
The rookies are laying on each other in the hammock, perpendicularly. They braid their limbs into each other. It’s grotesque and beautiful.
“I want to get a closer look at them,” I say. “Don’t you? See if they really look that young up close.”
“No.” Heather tugs at a knot of sweaty twisted hair.
***
After Alex and Lucy go down well again, Heather and I congratulate ourselves for bringing two little campers into the world.
I drink more bourbon. Heather has some with Diet Coke.
“Maybe we should ask them for a cigarette,” I say.
“Hmm?”
“And the see if we can get a closer look. I’m dying for one.” And I can’t let go of the Aerosmith tattoo. I need to know.
“A cigarette?”
“Yeah. Don’t you want a cigarette?”
“No, I don’t want a cigarette. What the hell? And kids don’t smoke cigarettes anymore.”
“No?”
“No way,” Heather says.
“That’s depressing. What do they do instead?”
“Instead of smoking?” she asks.
“I mean, they gotta do something.”
“I don’t know.” She drinks her drink and makes a face. “They go camping. They roll molly.”
“They what?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d like to roll a cigarette. I’d like to take some nicotine.”
“What are you, fourteen?” Heather is laughing.
“While I’m dropping this alcohol,” I say.
She says she’s going to bed and asks if I’m ready.
“I think I’m going to stay up, I say. Take it all in. That okay?”
She kisses me and tells me not to be long.
“Do you think kids get Aerosmith tattoos?” I ask.
“What? No. I don’t know. Why?”
“I think the boy has the Aerosmith logo tattooed on his bicep.”
“I don’t even know what that would look like. Can you not obsess over them and come to bed soon?”
She’s smiling as she disappears into our tent.
***
I try to find the big dipper but can’t and maybe spot Orion’s belt instead. The rookies’ fire is dead. They’ve since gone into their tent.
I want them to come back out, so I snap Alex’s walking stick in half and chuck it across the loop toward their site. It falls unsurprisingly short of their tent. It’s stupid. What had I hoped would happen?
I palm one of the rocks from Alex’s rock collection and chuck it hard. It hits their tent for sure, like it actually connects with something inside. I scrunch down in my chair.
A light flicks on. The tent glows. The boy comes out, the glow follows him. In one hand he holds a light above his head. Looks like a lantern. He is naked. The lantern makes his chest shine, toning it with sharp, defining shadows from above, all the way down to his what he’s got swinging from a dark patch of hair.
He sweeps the lantern. His other hand arcs through the darkness and catches a rogue flash of light. I can see that he’s holding a gun. A full-grown man, out of his tent, absolutely naked, and pointing a gun.
The audacity.
This is more than I could ever do.
The gun is looking for me. I shrink in my chair.
It takes a minute, but finally he is satisfied and finds peace and backs into his tent, out of sight. The tent glows and then goes dark.
***
I poke at my fire and spread out the coals so it will die down faster and then go into my tent to sleep. But I can’t sleep. Throwing the rock and seeing the gun and the whole entire thing keeps me up.
I don’t sleep because I think about awful things and secrets and about Heather, beside me, beautiful and trusting and snoring. And Alex, how he asks me a hundred questions a day and believes everything I say. And Lucy and how she smiles and coos when I lift her out of her crib and how she grabs her tiny, perfect feet when I change her diapers.
Heather stirs, senses me near her. She moves against me. The tent is small, and I cannot put enough room between us. She moves against me until I respond. We make even quieter love than the night before. Quiet because we don’t want to wake the kids, yes, but also because I feel a gaze bearing down from above, an exposing light trying to break through our tent. Quiet because I am holding my breath.
***
David Williamson is a writer living and working in Richmond, VA with with his family and a whole bunch of animals. Williamson’s stories have been published in Short Story Long, X-R-A-Y, BULL, Maudlin House, HAD, Farewell Transmission and others.
***
image: Ashley Beresch. Check out more of her work on Instagram @ashleyberesch
Rejection Letters 