The Boy Who Earned the Campout

“I’ll remember that.”

“Is Orrin going to take him?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

He nodded and picked the blank back up. I bought a box of picture hooks I did not need.

Saturday afternoon I found Kurt Jaworski in the milking parlor, hosing down the floor ahead of the five o’clock milking. He and his brother ran seventy head of Holsteins south of town, and I had a pan of lemon bars for his wife on the passenger seat. I set them on the feed room shelf and asked my question over the sound of the compressor.

He shut off the water.

“I was a lousy Scout,” he said. “You want the truth? I quit at thirteen. I hated sleeping on the ground.”

“You don’t have to say anything more.”

“No, I’ll tell you what I remember.” He looked at the drain. “I walked last. Every hike, I was at the back, because I was out of breath by the first hill. And nobody said a word about it. The troop went my speed. Nobody ever said, hurry up, Kurt, or, you’re holding us back. I didn’t even notice it was a decision until I was grown.” He picked the hose back up. “That’s about all I’ve got. I’d have told you it was nothing, and then you asked.”

Lyle Haugen was different. I caught him at the Kwik Trip on Sunday morning, filling his propane truck, and he heard me out with his hand on the nozzle.

“Orrin’s careful,” he said. “I’d rather have careful. That bluff is no place to find out what a kid can’t do.”

“I’m not asking you to say he’s right or wrong.”

“I’m not saying he’s right,” Lyle said. “I’m saying I get it. If it was my boy, I’d want Orrin on the radio, not a stranger.”

I thanked him. He was not wrong about the bluff. I did not argue, and I did not add him to a list of men who agreed with me, because he was not one.

Zach Ruddick came after church. He wired houses for a living and chaired the troop committee, and his son Tanner was the senior patrol leader. I walked over to his truck in the parking lot with my question, and he listened with his arms folded on the door.

“It meant I showed up when I said I would,” he said. “That’s what I tell Tanner. Why?”

I told him what Orrin had said on the lawn. His face changed.

“Hold on.” He unfolded his arms. “The committee approves the roster. That’s how the book has it, and that’s how we’ve done it since I took the chair. Nobody told me Jonah came off it. Nobody called me.”

“Please don’t call Orrin yet.”

“I won’t make it a thing, Trisha.”

“Those were Jonah’s words.”

“Then I’ll wait,” he said slowly. “But I’m going to be at the hall Thursday like every Thursday, and I’m going to have my questions.”