The Deer Camp. El Dorado, Arkansas 1985
Great Uncle Pete is the first one to reach the pinnacle of complete inebriation. As one side of his lawn chair sinks slowly into the mud, his body oozes, unnoticed, onto the ground near the camp fire. All the while reciting an oft repeated tale of the battle of Midway, he crawls through the mud to Uncle Edmond’s chair, uses it for support, rights himself and then picks up his chair and puts it back in the same spot. Never missing a beat, never stopping the dialog. He continues this oozing process throughout the night. His war stories mingle with those of deer hunting, stock markets, and country club peccadilloes. He pauses at least five times to propose a toast to his sister Sophia, confined by a diminishing brain and a rapidly deteriorating body in a nursing home some fifty miles south of the deer camp.
A group of twenty-three adults, all at various levels of drunkenness ranging from merely intoxicated to complete stupor, sit around the large fire and keep it burning by feeding it pine branches and paper plates filled with chicken bones and small mounds of potato salad. Some, teenagers at the last reunion, join the circle for the first time.
Children run through the dark forest surrounding the camp. The woods reverberate with the high pitched screams and squeals of the young who have no supervision and realize it. Nearby, the sound of a bard owl’s cry competes for dominance of the night against the human noise.
Sparks from the fire light up the night above the family and reflect in the children’s faces as they come just within earshot of the grownups and pause to listen, to see if it is still true. And it is. No one is paying any attention to them. Excited out of any chance of sleep, they stay in the woods all night long. The children solve their own conflicts, smacking and threatening the transgressors into silence. They mete out juvenile justice in a quiet way designed to keep the grownups out of the dark forest, out of the way. Hissing words ssshhhhh they’ll hear you… shut up… okay you can have it, just be quiet… don’t tell Mom… it’s not bleeding, you’ll be okay… I’ll give you my Mars bar… shut up… shut up you baby. Don’t tell…
The sun at dawn is a TV in a dark room when there’s no other light but the effervescent glow of the screen. Nothing but a thin stream of smoke and the smell of burning food remains of the fire. Surreal colors reflect off the exhausted children’s faces as they began to surrender to the day. Creeping into the fire circle, one by one they gently place their hands on parent’s arms or shoulders, reminding adults of responsibility. Of the frailness, the smallness, of seven and ten year olds.
Shaken into a brief moment of sobriety, parents rise. Grasping their offspring to their chests like grocery bags, they carry the children inside and drop them with loud thuds onto pallets made of hundred year old quilts and wool blankets. The rest of the adults slowly realize the anonymity of darkness is fading and the liquor bottles are empty. Glass bottles and beer cans impede their progress as they wend their way toward the cabin. Crawling in between the quilt covered mounds, they claim their own territory and promptly pass out.
It’s almost noon as one by one the children wake. They creep silently, single file, out the door and settle at the picnic table on the screened in porch. They’ve slept in their clothes. Covered with mud and smelling of the humid Arkansas mid-July sun, they are too exhausted to pick fights. Aunt Louise helps them refresh their batteries with huge tumblers of orange juice, mounds of pancakes heavily laced with syrup, and the promise of another ride on Great Uncle Pete’s ATV if they will just stay quiet until Larry Wayne wakes up and has his coffee.
–Valerie MacEwan
originally published in Night Train Magazine -this is an edited excerpt of the original story. Now, in 2008, this can be published as it truly is meant to be — a memoir.
