The Week I Camped Across the Lake

Across the Cove

The drive around to the state campground took twenty-five minutes on the county roads, through tobacco fields and past a Baptist church with a sign out front about the Wednesday night fish fry.

My site was right at the edge of the water, under the pines, with a picnic table and a fire ring and a clear view straight across the cove to the camp’s dock.

I parked the truck beside the spot where the tent would go and got to work.

That was when the ranger pulled up in his state truck. He was a heavyset man about my dad’s age, in the gray shirt and the flat hat, and he walked over slow with his thumbs in his belt.

“Evening,” he said. “You fishing or watching?”

He was looking straight across the water at the camp dock, and I knew exactly what he was asking.

A grown man alone at a lakeside site across from a children’s camp. If I’d been him, I would have walked over too.

So I told him the whole thing, plain. The camp, Sophie, the director, my number on her card. I gave him Kim Dawson’s name. He listened without saying a word and then said, “Mind if I give her a call?”

“I’d think less of you if you didn’t,” I said.

He walked back to his truck and made the call with his window down. I could not hear the words. After a few minutes he came back and stuck out his hand. “Ray,” he said. “Kim says you’re all right. She says you paid cash.”

“Saw money,” I said.

He looked at me funny, and I explained about the coffee can, and he laughed out loud. “My wife would’ve made me buy the saw,” he said. “Then she’d have made me give it to her brother.”

The First Wave

At eight twenty-five, the kids came down the red clay path in a line, all of them in life jackets, the counselors walking with them. From across the cove they looked about the size of my thumb.

I could pick Sophie out right away. She had on her yellow life jacket, the one she had chosen herself at the store in Salisbury because yellow was the color on her visual schedule for swimming.

She walked to the end of the dock with Hannah beside her. She stood there looking around the cove for a long time. Searching, I could tell.

Hannah was pointing. I stood up out of my chair and waved both arms over my head like a man trying to flag down a plane.

The sun was going down behind me and the water had gone that flat silver color it gets at dusk in June.

I could not tell if she saw me. And then the small yellow shape lifted one arm and waved, once, back and forth, very slow.

At nine thirty my phone buzzed with a text from Hannah. “She’s in her bunk with her headphones on. She told everybody in the cabin her stepdad is camping across the lake. She said you are the one with the gray chair. Is your chair gray?”

My chair was gray. I sat in it and laughed until my eyes ran.

Amy called from the hospital on her break, around ten. I told her everything. “First night done,” I said. “She’s in her bunk.”

“I’m texting him,” she said. “Nothing ugly. Just the truth.” And she did. I saw it later. It said, “First night. She’s fine. She waved to Matt from the dock.” He did not reply.