I woke up on top of the picnic table where Marty had laid me out like a corpse. I looked straight up into an endless azure uninterrupted by clouds or sun, and for a few moments I just gazed and enjoyed the freedom from focusing, the sight of nothingness. I could smell algae from the lake water in my hair and on my clothes and that drew my vision down to the objects around me. The sun was warming the sky, and Marty had stoked the fire and brought some flames back to help chase the autumn chill away. As my senses began to return, I recognized that I was freezing and that my throat was raw from the pot and the lake water and sleeping out like that. Marty, however, looked cool and was drinking coffee that he somehow knew how to make over an open fire. I remember thinking as I lay there looking like a bum on a park bench, that the remarkable thing about Marty was that he never seemed scruffy or slovenly. It could be five in the morning and he could have been up all night chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, and yet he could remain as articulate and balanced, as cool and smooth, as if he’d just stepped out of a shower and was ready to go for the day. Even his disheveled appearance seemed somehow always right and almost intended. He was as natural as the sky or the flames in the fire. Life and Marty were blended to such an extent that living, experiencing, was all Marty was. I envied that about him. To be in life was what I desired, instead, lying there on top of that picnic table, I felt the first pangs of my lot.
Marty walked over to me and held out a tin cup of black coffee. I sat up, hung my legs off the end of the table, and carefully took the cup. I sipped the coffee and worked some of the sleep out of my head. On top of the picnic table, Marty sat down beside me. He lit a cigarette and looked at me. I felt ashamed sitting there beside him like that after what had happened the night before. I almost felt like I should thank Marty or something for pulling me out of the water. But instead of gratitude, the fact that I felt obliged to Marty irked me. I had wanted to prove Marty’s equal, his peer, instead I proved to be nothing but a struggling kid. The feelings of obligatory appreciation and of disappointment coupled with sleeping in wet clothes in the cold air urged me away from Marty at that moment. Marty had control, he was directing the script, and it occurred to me that as long as I was with Marty, it would be this way. Marty needed it thus. I stood up, set my cup on the table, retrieved my bag from the car, and started the long walk to the regular camp sites where there was a shower house.
It felt good to get away from Marty then, to regroup under a hot shower. I had no idea what time it was, but the shower house was empty. I could tell by the musky stale air that others had already been and gone. A bar of soap had been left in the shower stall by some camper, and I used it. I lathered my body and face while standing with my back to the water. I wanted to be covered in the suds before rinsing them off. I have always done this, I don’t know why, but there is something I like about being under the soap lather, the cleanness of it all. When I left the shower house I felt better. The sun was out in full and the dry air was quickly warming up. I still wasn’t ready to face Marty though, so I walked around the regular camp grounds for a bit. There were not many campers there at that time of year, and the few who were set up were mostly senior citizens on permanent lots, or guys in tents who had risen much earlier and were already out on their fishing boats. A few people still sat around morning campfires sipping coffee or reading papers that they had bought at the ranger station. The only people from that morning walk that I can remember in detail are a group who were camping in tents around a trailer. There were ten or twelve people in all, including the children, and I remember thinking that they looked happy. The couple, who I imagined to be the grandparents, seemed to own the trailer, and the tents seemed to belong to the grown children and their children. I have no basis for these assumptions, perhaps the people were not even related, but all in some kind of church group or something; yet, I like to think they were a big family. Scattered throughout the treed site were coolers and vinyl clothing bags and cooking equipment. There were four bikes, all laying on their sides, haphazardly dropped wherever the last rider’s attention shifted to something else. Between two trees, a clothesline hung and towels and shirts and shorts and rags of all sizes were pinned to it. I carried my dingy cloths under my arm in a ball, their dampness soaking into the side of my t-shirt. For a moment I thought maybe I could just walk over and hang my stuff on their line and sit down around their fire and just slip into their history, like I had always been there, like I was part of them. They all stopped talking for a moment as they noticed me no longer walking but just standing there in front of their site, just standing there with wet stringy hair and dirty laundry under my arm, and they looked at me with wonderment. I didn’t say anything, I just stood there and peered in for another moment, then I lowered my eyes, turned, and walked back to the wilderness sites.
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