The Week I Camped Across the Lake

Check-In Sunday at Two

The camp sat on a long point of land with tall loblolly pines and red clay paths covered in needles.

Kim Dawson met us at the check-in table under a pop-up tent. She was about sixty, with short gray hair and a clipboard, and she looked Sophie in the eye and said, “You must be Sophie. You’re in Cabin Six. Your counselor’s name is Hannah, and she likes birds.”

Sophie’s whole face changed. “What kind of birds?”

“You’ll have to ask her,” Kim said. “She says there’s a great blue heron that fishes off our dock every morning around seven.”

I handed over the envelope with the two thousand dollars in it, and Kim counted it right there in front of me, the way you are supposed to, and wrote me a receipt. Then she looked at the bottom of Sophie’s paperwork.

“I see you’ve got Mr. Lindgren down as authorized for pickup,” she said. “And her mother. And her father.” She looked up at me. “I’ll need whoever signs her out Friday to show me an ID.”

“Her mom will be here Friday,” I said. “I’ll be here too.”

Hannah turned out to be a college girl from Greenville, studying to be a speech therapist, with a ponytail and a pair of binoculars around her neck.

She knelt down to Sophie’s height, which told me most of what I needed to know about her.

Cabin Six had four bunks and smelled like cedar and bug spray.

Sophie picked the bottom bunk by the window, unrolled her sleeping bag, and lined up her towels on the shelf with the labels facing out.

Then she turned to me and said, “You should go now. The schedule says parents leave at three fifteen.”

I looked at my watch. It was three thirteen.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to be right over there.” I pointed through the screen at the far side of the cove, where you could see the pines and a little gray beach. “Every night, when you’re on the dock, look for me.”

“Dock time is eight thirty to nine,” she said. “It’s on the schedule. Then cabin time, then lights out at nine forty-five.”

“Eight thirty,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

She hugged me. Quick and hard, the way she does when she means it and wants it over with.

Then she went back to her towels, and I walked out to the truck and sat in it for about five minutes before I could turn the key.