The Bat

The Camp Director, a tall, elderly man with long, bony fingers, sat in his high-backed, wooden chair while handing out mail from home to the young boys who were sitting cross-legged on the floor, assembled not in rows or assigned positions but randomly, a flotilla of bobbing faces and little knees before him.  None of the boys were paying close attention until their own name or that of a close friend was called.  “Frank Smartman, you have a letter from home.  Please come up and get it.”  Frank stood and took the outside route to the front of the room.  “Joseph Breede . . . come up and get your package from your Aunt Corine.  Appears to be a batch of cookies, which you’ll want to share with your tent mates.”  Joseph rose and stepped around and over fellow campers as chuckles and requests for cookies surrounded him, but before he made it half way, a piercing scream tore through the assembly, pushing Joseph backwards where he tripped over a pair of legs and fell into a crowd of campers trying to roll out of the way.  Thirty young heads turned at once, all eyes peering through the open archways to the wooden porch that ran the length of the assembly hall.  In the middle of the porch, waving his arms and springing up and down on his toes as he screamed at full throttle, stood The Bat.  He wore a pitch black sheet, poncho style, that draped him from neck to ankle, and on his head he wore a black hood with two eye slits, like an executioner’s.  The Bat stepped in our direction as though he intended to snatch and devour one of us; then he screamed once more before turning to the stairs to make his get-away, his black poncho flapping behind him like a cape.

The braver among us leapt to our feet.  We had been told that any camper who captured The Bat would receive magnificent though unspecified rewards and accolades, and we often speculated on what those awards might be: a summer’s worth of free candy, perhaps, or a camp-wide celebration to praise the boy hero, or maybe the suspension of mandatory bedtime for the remainder of the summer.  A stampede of sneakered feet pounded the hollow wood floor as we poured out of the assembly hall, and I was in the lead, because this time I was ready for him (I had been sitting at the edge of our group, nearest the porch), and I was quick and fast.  I flew out of the room and turned to chase The Bat, who had no more than a five yard lead on me.  I was so close I felt I could have leapt forward and clung to the back of his poncho.  But the toe of my right sneaker found a wet spot on the porch, and I slipped and went down hard, my right knee banging against the wood floor and sliding over it.  Like all the campers behind me, I was wearing slight cotton shorts that provided no protection.  I lay on the floor as my fellow campers ran over and around me, single-minded, as I would have been, in their pursuit of The Bat.  I covered my knee, which felt as though it had been pierced with a knife and slugged with a baseball bat, with my scraped hands, but the blood seeped through my fingers, and I felt faint.  I put my head down on the floor and berated my judgment and my bad luck; I should not have gone into high gear until I had completed the turn, but at the same time, were it not for the inexplicable slick on the floor, my sneakers would have had traction, and I would have been right on The Bat’s tail.

            My father, who was the head counselor of the young boys’ camp, walked out of the assembly room and saw the blood which had begun to stain the wood planks of the porch.  “Let me see,” he said.  I uncovered my knee.  “Uggh.  It’s a bad one.  What happened?” 

“I slipped.”

“There’s a wet spot right over here,” he said.  “It’s slick.  I wonder where it came from?”

A trick of The Bat’s, no doubt.  My father dropped to his knees and placed his arms under me.  “Are you ready?” he asked.  I nodded, yes, through my tears.  He picked me up and held me, one arm under my upper back, the other just below my knees.  “Try to keep your knee straight,” he said.  And he carried me down the stairs and began walking through the camp, as the mob of boys headed back to the hall and The Bat screamed at us again, this time while standing in a motorboat on the lake.  I could see him clearly, and I’m sure he saw me being carried away, his victim.  His tone had changed subtly.  On the porch, he had tried to scare us into submission.  But now he was taunting us.  He had gotten away again!  We would never catch him!  We were too slow, and weak, and he was too smart for us.  The motorboat zipped back and forth at high speed, not far from shore, as The Bat flapped his wings and screamed.  Then he saluted us and sped away with a roar from the rear engine as two boys paddled after him in a canoe and a group of disappointed campers stood along the shore and shook their fists at him.

            My father, who might have been The Bat himself in years past, before he became the head counselor, the counselor of the counselors, carried me over the dirt and pine needle floor past my cabin.  Unlike the younger counselors, most of whom wore sneakers, my father wore moccasins that made no sound and left no tread mark.  He smelled of sweat, stale tobacco smoke, and baked chicken, a sharp stew from which I drew strength.  We continued on past the cabins, where the six to eight year olds slept, and up a hill and past the canvas tents held by ropes to raised wooden platforms, where the nine and ten year olds made their home for the summer.  To the left, the canoe dock and the lake.  There were only a few clouds in the sky, but it seemed a dim day to me.  We reached the end of the young boys’ camp, and then we took the path through the woods past the site where we practiced our campfire making and tent pitching and earned our Beaver pins if we did so successfully.  The trees were not tall here, but the brush was thick on both sides, and whenever I had to traverse this path in the dark, I was scared that someone or something would leap out of the bushes and kidnap me, but now I was safe, in the daylight, in my father’s arms, though my pain was severe and I was frightened by what was to come: rubbing alcohol, stitches, perhaps even amputation at the knee.

            Our journey was no more than half a mile; it was a trip we made three times every day, not to the infirmary but to the dining hall just beyond it.  We came into the clearing, walking through the shadows on a thick bed of pine needles.  Then we turned left, toward the lake, and stepped into the sunlit office of the nurse.  She was sitting at her desk, but she looked up and stood to meet us as though she was expecting us.  “What have we here, James?” she said.

            “We’ve got a brave young boy who nearly caught The Bat, would have caught him if he hadn’t slipped on a wet spot on the porch.”

            “Oh, my.”  She glanced at my wound but then brought her face close to mine and looked into my eyes.  “And what would you have done with him, if you had caught him?”

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            “Maybe take his mask off?”

            “Yeah,” I said.

            “They say that would kill The Bat, if someone took his mask off.”

            “Yeah,” I said.

            “But why does he hide like that, behind his mask?”

            “He likes to scare us,” I said.  “He’s mad because he wants the woods and the lake all to himself.  He doesn’t like to share with the campers.  But we know he’s really just a counselor from the upper camp.” 

            “Is he?” she said.  “I didn’t know that.  Oh, dear, that must sting,” she added, holding my leg in her fingers before looking up and into my eyes again.  “It’s a good thing you’re such a brave boy.  That will make it easier to fix you up.”

            I did not feel brave; my face was saturated with tears, but if they said I was brave, then I had to be, and I was.  I sat on the patients’ table, extended my leg, and looked out the window at the lake.  I should be canoeing right now, I thought.  But it wasn’t so bad in here.  I was the center of attention.  And I didn’t mind the smell.  It was clean and fresh, more like lavender than medicine, and the nurse herself, when she bent over me, smelled not of perfume but of soap, as though she had just stepped out of the bathtub.  She wore pale, subtle lipstick, unlike my mother, who favored the popular bright red style.  And though she wore a knee length white frock, she had shed the silly, standard nurse’s hat that made them look like ice cream vendors.  Her hair was curly, like my mother’s, only of lighter color, and she wore it shoulder length.  I liked her and felt more comfortable with her than I had with the nurses who had assisted with my appendectomy the previous spring, or with any nurses I had encountered during doctor’s visits.  “You should see some of the boys when they come in here, screaming bloody murder, and not hurt half as bad as you are.  This is quite a deep cut you’ve got here.  But you’re going to be fine.  We just have to clean it up some.  Here, now, this might sting a bit,” she said, as she dabbed her alcohol-soaked cotton ball over my wound with no more than required pressure.  “And of course we have to get this out.”  I looked away as she approached my wound with her tweezers.  She grasped the splinter gently on her first attempt and pulled it out at the precise angle it had gone it.  I could feel the length of it as she pulled, and the pain was excruciating but isolated to the wound area itself and there was relief as well as a new stinging sensation when she had it out.

            She showed it to my father, but I did not look.  I was being brave, but I did not dare test myself.  My father took it from her hand, and examined it, as though to analyze it for disease, before wrapping it in tissue and tossing it in the waste basket.  The nurse had me lie down flat on my back as she pulled up a tall chair and hovered over my knee.  “Now we’ll sew you right up and you’ll be as good as new.”  My father stood beside me and looked down on the two of us, the brave patient and my skillful nurse.  It did not take her long, and her sewing did not hurt.  She placed the gauze pad over my knee and wrapped it with surgical tape, carefully, slowly, as though wrapping a present for one of her children.  When she finished, she sat me up and ran her fingers through my hair and laid her hand on my shoulder.  “Such a handsome young boy, isn’t he, Dad?  I love your curly hair.  And your eyes are such a deep blue.  A healthy young boy like you will heal in no time.  Take it easy for a few days, then come back and see me.  There shouldn’t be any scar tissue,” she added, looking at my father.

            He nodded, then turned toward me.  “You’ll be as good as new,” he said.  “How do you feel now?”

            “Not too bad.”

            “Good.  I’m proud of you.”

            “I hear you’re quite a baseball player,” the nurse said.

            “Yup,” I said.

            “Well, you’ll be back out there on the field, oh, end of next week.”

            I got down from the table and limped toward the main office.  The nurse and my father stayed behind to exchange some words, in confidence.  When I looked back, my father’s face was close to hers; he had his back to me, and the nurse caught my eye and smiled as she listened to my father’s soft words, and then she dropped her eyes and spoke softly to him.  I figured they were talking about me, praising my bravery in leading the chase on The Bat and in allowing the nurse to operate on me, and perhaps discussing in more detail my good looks and baseball prowess.  When they were done, I said thank you to the nurse, and my father and I said good-bye, and we walked out into the pine forest and headed back to camp.  We did not think to stop by the cabin where my mother was spending the summer with my brother who was still too young to be a camper.  Her cabin was only a few hundred yards away from the infirmary where the nurse lived and worked, but it was back a ways in the woods, around a curve and up a path.  We could not see it from where we were.  Anyway, it was just as well that my father and I had handled this situation without her help.  She would have panicked, might even have feinted at the sight of blood gushing from my leg.  She would have been overly concerned, but not as brave as I had been, and not as calm and competent as the nurse.  I would tell her all about it later, after the drama had passed, after I had begun to heal and the mishap was just a story to be told.

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