The Week I Camped Across the Lake

The Saw Fund

I had about twenty-three hundred dollars in a coffee can in the shop. I am not kidding about the coffee can.

I had been putting money in it for almost three years, summer job money and side work, building porches and fixing church pews, saving for a good cabinet saw.

That night I went out to the shop, took the can down off the shelf, and counted out two thousand dollars on the workbench in twenties and fifties.

It took me about ten minutes. It did not take me any time at all to decide.

Amy came out while I was rubber-banding it. She leaned on the door frame in her scrubs, because she had a night shift starting at seven and had been trying to get a nap in before it.

“That’s your saw,” she said.

“Saws don’t go to camp,” I said. “I’ll get a money order at the post office in the morning and mail it to the camp office. Or I’ll just hand it to them Sunday.”

The next problem was the week itself. The camp ran Sunday afternoon to Friday morning. Five nights.

Sophie had never spent a single night away from home without one of us, not one, not even at her grandmother’s.

Amy was working three twelve-hour nights that week and could not trade them. I was off for the summer.

The drive from our house to Kerr Lake was about a hundred and forty miles, most of it straight up Interstate 85 past Lexington and Greensboro and Durham.

So I pulled up a map. And there, right across a wide cove from the camp’s dock, was one of the state recreation areas, with a campground right on the water.

I called the number the next morning and booked a site for five nights.

Twenty-eight dollars a night with water and power, a little under a hundred and fifty dollars for the week. I figured it was cheap insurance.

Then I called the camp director, a sensible woman named Kim Dawson, because I was not about to sit across a lake from a children’s camp all week without the people running it knowing exactly who I was.

She was quiet for a second when I explained. Then she said, “Mr. Lindgren, I’ve been doing this nineteen years, and I’ve had parents sleep in the parking lot at the gas station up the road. Across the lake is a first.”

“I won’t come over,” I said. “I won’t call unless you call me. I just want to be close if she needs me.”

“Our rule is no visits during the week,” she said. “It helps them settle. But I can’t stop a man from camping in a state park.” She paused. “I’ll put your cell number at the top of her card. And I’ll tell her counselor.”

A Hundred and Forty Miles

We left Sunday at ten in the morning, because Sophie liked to be early and because I did not want to be the reason she was late to anything ever again.

Amy came straight home from her night shift and stood in the driveway in her scrubs to see us off.

She hugged Sophie for a long time. Sophie allowed it, which is not something she always does.

“You call if you need to,” Amy said. “Any time. Matt will be right there.”

“Matt will be across the lake,” Sophie corrected her. “It’s not the same as right there. It’s about two hundred yards. I measured it on the map.”

We got on 85 at the China Grove exit and headed north. We stopped at a Bojangles outside Burlington, because she will eat a plain biscuit from Bojangles and almost nothing else on a road trip, and I got her a sweet tea with extra ice in a cup she could hold with both hands.

Somewhere past Butner she took her headphones off and asked, “Does Dad know you’re driving me?”

“Your mom told him,” I said.

She thought about that. “He said I won’t last a night.”

So she had heard that part, too. Of course she had. I kept my eyes on the road and my hands at ten and two and took a breath before I answered, because I knew whatever I said she would keep for years.

“Your dad was scared, I think,” I said. “Grown-ups say dumb things when they’re scared. It doesn’t mean they’re right.”

“Was he scared I’d be bad at it?”

“I think he was scared of a lot of things,” I said. “But I’m not. I’ve seen you do hard things. You did the dentist in March without a single break. You did the field trip to the zoo.”

She thought about that for a mile or two. Then she said, “The zoo was loud,” and put her headphones back on, and that was the end of it.