The November rally
The campground outside Sebring sits on the south side of a big lake, with live oaks hung with Spanish moss and a few palms along the water. In November the mornings are cool there, sixty degrees with fog on the lake, and the afternoons are warm and dry.
It is the best time of year in Florida, and the snowbirds know it.
We pulled in on Friday around noon. Eric backed our camper into our site in one pass. The new panel was clean and white, and the sun was high, and I saw Quinn Ostrander walk over and look at it and nod.
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Oren came in an hour after us. He had called Eric from the gas station in Avon Park and asked, in an offhand way, whether Reggie Carney was there yet. Reggie was there.
When Oren’s truck turned onto our row, Reggie was already standing at the back of the empty site with his hands up, and Oren backed in on Reggie’s signals without a single complaint.
He got out and looked at our camper. He walked all the way down the side of it and stood by the new panel. He put his hand on it.
“Looks good,” he said, not to me exactly. “Who did it?”
“A man in Lakeland,” I said. “Spencer.”
“Insurance pay for it?”
“No,” I said. “We did.”
He stood there with his hand on that panel for a long time. I could see him working something out behind his face. Then he said, “Huh,” and went to set up his fifth wheel, and did not say anything else to me the rest of the day.
That night at the campfire circle, a woman from the Ocala end of the chapter, Joann, started telling the Arcadia story to a couple who had missed that rally. She got as far as “and Cassie had parked a little over, and” before Francine Ostrander said, “That’s not what happened, Joann. Let it be.”
I did not know Francine had been paying that much attention.
Oren heard it. He was sitting across the fire with his cap low. He got up a few minutes later and said good night early.