Chapter 14
The thing Miles liked the best about working school groups versus family and recreation groups was that the fullest days with school groups never started until ten in the morning or so since the kids had to first get to their school at around eight to get on another bus for a multi-hour ride to Ontonagon. The days of guarding the tubing hill at seven in the morning trying to fend off frostbite were a distant and salty memory.
He curled back into Sophie when he saw that the clock was two hours short of serious. She made room for Miles though she was probably not conscious of the action.
When the pace of the clock was unable to be ignored the two grudgingly swept aside their blankets. Yawned morning greetings were exchanged and the tacky blue polo shirts they were both so used to wearing were found amongst the mound of clothing on top of the dresser and re-worn.
Miles and Sophie walked hand in hand until they knew they were in possible view of guests. Their newly freed hands made shy acquaintance with the cold air on their way to less-friendly pockets. The pair was the last to the staff table. Two minutes short of being late was just fine by them. Miles had recently switched to the harder stuff and made his way to the coffee machine before going to the buffet line.
Sophie almost immediately snuffed a frown upon seeing Miles’ breakfast. Some eggs and a few pieces of burned bacon tried to spread themselves across his plate while black coffee billowed a distinctly fragrant haze next door.
Miles pursed his lips and shrugged at Sophie’s reaction. The gesture was not meant as a defiant gesture and she knew Miles well enough not to take it as such. She squeezed his arm under the table which elicited a warm smile from Miles. It seemed to Sophie that every time she pulled Miles out of his stressed mindset over careful and tender days he was thrown back into anxiety as soon as they left the haven of one another. She saw it in Miles’ diet, his emotions, his physical…any number of things, really. If it had been because of her, because he was unhappy with her, she would have understood. The terrible part of it was that it was because of her, because of the most wonderful love she had ever received. At times Sophie wanted to stop everything and let go of Miles before the damage became irreparable. Every time she had that thought, however, she remembered that she had already done him in, in a manner of speaking.
Sophie watched him trying not to watch her and felt the heat build behind her eyes. She had caused what he was going through; whether or not it was unintentional. Sophie knew she had to be the thing to bring him out of it but her options and ideas were running out. She squeezed his arm again to push back the water from her eyes. Sophie knew that Miles seeing her in the state she was close to being in was the worst thing for Miles. She nearly laughed out loud when she was reminded that the reason for their grief was the same. Miles wanted to be the world for Sophie and Sophie wanted to be the world for Miles. Is that what love was? Sophie smiled at the thought. If what they felt was what love was supposed to be then the world was being mislead through delusions of happiness. Love was periodically crashing Sophie’s world to a halt, and that applied to every metaphor she had thought of. Sophie squelched her thoughts when breakfast ended but made a point to sneak a kiss from Miles before they were split into groups.
The outdoor education aspect of the camp was not the strongest. This was due mostly to the outdoor education director being relatively new and having a number of other hats to wear and budget. Summer camp was where the biggest money was, but recreation weekends and retreats were the biggest off-season cash cow. Public schools just did not have the dispensable income that eight hundred New England bourgeois spread over two months had.
As a result the activities offered for outdoor education at Ontanogan were sub-par at best. There were no classroom-type lessons offered at all. A geo-dome activity which was supposed to tie into geometry and a few predator-prey variations were really all there was during the day.
The saving grace of the outdoor education program was the evening-long Underground Railroad scenario. UGRR, as it was called for short, was a pre-civil war scenario about escaping slaves and those that helped them to Canada. The students played the role of the slaves being herded around the property by guides while a ‘sheriff’ tried to recapture them. It was always a crowd pleaser amongst students and teachers alike and a fun activity for the staff since they got to yell at kids and pretend to be mean for a change instead of pretending to be nice.
About half of the staff, including Miles and Sophie, was dressing up in straw hats, long skirts, and old overalls to play double roles as slavers in the beginning of the program and landowners, authorities, and Quakers for the remainder. Miles was the Sheriff that evening. Sophie was the last safe-house proprietor before the ‘slaves’ made it to Canada. They always had a good time acting like nemeses.
They chose to hide themselves in one of the closets in the room and jokingly make out while Charles, the OE director, gave the kids in the meeting room an explanation of the scenario and a colorful history lesson. At a premeditated point Charles said a key word and the program staff, garbed in faded and too-large clothing, burst out of closets and through doors to ‘capture’ the students and begin the program.
Miles wandered around the grounds after the kids had been separated into smaller groups and given maps of the safe-house location. His job was to lurk around Sophie’s house and question her about suspicious noises and stirrings. It gave the kids one last little scare before they ended up back in the meeting room they had begun in which had magically turned into Canada.
After the kids got a cookie and a paper cup of punch they were sat down and introduced to the staff that had been either harassing or helping them that evening. Charles led a rather long-winded debriefing session after which the kids were sent to their cabins and the staff was let off.
It was almost ten by the time Miles and Sophie got back to his cabin. Miles was glad the door was unlocked because the only thing on his mind was sleep. When his eyes adjusted he could see the Scott and Kyra had beaten him to the punch. With barely a sound save the meeting of warm lips Miles slid into bed with Sophie until the morning came.
There were only six people at the breakfast table the next morning. Breakfast was the one meal that no one came to unless it was required. Miles looked groggily at Jabari, Gerri, Christopher, and Emma looking groggily at one another. He sipped his coffee and wished it was cooler so he could get it down and working faster.
Miles knew that as soon as he was caffeinated it would not be that bad of a day. The kids left after lunch and they had only used four cabins so cleanup would be a breeze with six people working. Past experience gave him the prediction of a two-thirty wrap up on the day. The group would give him a twenty-two hour workweek but that was alright by Miles. He had not thought of what to do over the weekend except fill out a marriage license application online, which reconnaissance surfs had shown to be easier than setting up an Ebay account. The entire process would take under a half-hour.
Both of them were wise enough to realize that cutting hours was not a problem if they also cut their spending. The big trips they took in the beginning were nice to bond with one another and the group but not really necessary. Going out to eat three times a week and day-long shopping trips were also laid by the wayside in favor of having money reserved for whatever happened next. They could always find somewhere to be by themselves if they needed to be or somewhere were people were hanging out if they felt like being social. Most often the former was what the two were after.
“Are we going to have room for all of our stuff in your Jeep?” Sophie asked absently as she lay against Miles, who was propped up on a pillow in his bed. She was lightly scratching the side of his head above his left ear, which was the surest way to get him to fall asleep. Sophie knew exactly what she was doing.
“Probably. It wasn’t completely full when I came out here. Although both of us have accumulated our fair share of junk since we’ve been out here.
“Mostly me. They didn’t let me bring nearly enough on the airplane.”
“We’ll figure it out. If it doesn’t all fit we can UPS stuff. Boxes of clothes can’t cost that much to ship.”
“Oh, good idea. I never thought of that.” Sophie continued scratching and Miles’ eyelids drooped steadily until they were both asleep. They dozed on top of the blankets and still wearing their Ontanogan shirts until Scott and Kyra came through the door.
“How was the group?” Scott asked after sitting on his bed and shucking his shoes. Kyra followed him like a synchronized swimmer. They both lay on Scott’s bed and got comfortable.
“Pretty good. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“That’s good,” Scott yawned, “We’re working the group coming in tonight, a father-daughter thing through a church. Should be mellow, it’s basically a rec weekend.”
“Well, I hope it’s as uneventful as our time was.” Scott hummed a short reply and within moments both pairs were sleeping the afternoon away.
Hunger roused Miles from his nap. There was no dinner in the dining hall that evening since the new group did not arrive until the evening. Having no camp food for a night was not a particularly bad thing, but the store of food that he and Sophie actually wanted to eat was dwindling. He was pretty sure the cans of pineapple (ingredients for a pina coloda night long ago?) and the bag of black beans as well as an armful of other random dry goods would be passed on to the next generation of program staff whether they wanted them or not.
Sophie woke up shortly and had no objections to going to the lounge. They tiptoed past Scott and Kyra and out the door.
“What do you want to do tonight?” Sophie asked.
“We could apply for that license; get that out of the way. I shouldn’t take to long from the looks of it. Send it out tomorrow morning.”
“Sounds good.”
“Then, I don’t know. Watch TV?” Miles could tell the kind of mood Sophie was in before the all the words came out of his mouth. “Or we could drive into Avon and go to Chile’s, then walk around and end up in Borders.”
“Mmhh. I want to end up at one of those high little wire tables outside of Starbucks.” They sharply switched direction toward the parking lot.
“We have got to quit doing this, you know.”
“I know. We’ll stop in another month.” Miles rolled his eyes and continued walking.
They had been doing fairly well; it had been nearly two weeks since they had trekked to the city shopping centers had built. It looked to be the same as they had left it. The first stop was Chile’s, where, after a twenty-two ounce glass of Sam Adams, Miles did not feel so bad about spending money. They did go to Borders afterward to walk off fajitas and forty-four ounces of beer. After a routine of browsing the two had down to a timed science they ended up, according to plan, sitting outside of Starbuck’s sipping macchiatos.
Miles stared at Sophie in the brashness of the streetlamp and remembered that he would be spending the rest of his life with the woman across the table from him. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop; when he would see things in Sophie that would make him feel resigned to his fate rather than elated at his fortune. When was he supposed to be indifferent to Sophie and start treating her like a family member he had to like because he loved instead of a gorgeous exotic plaything?
At least he had always noticed the former attitude in most married people and even most people who had simply dated one another for too long. He was far to cynical to believe he had stumbled upon his perfect match or found some kind of wonderful solution to the relationship but he could not think of anything more logical.
Miles realized that he had been staring to long when he realized Sophie was staring back at him quizzically. “Nothing, nothing,” he mumbled, answering a question Sophie had not asked. She shook her head with a smile.
“We’ve done everything we can do except think about how we’re going to have this wedding, you know.”
“I know,” Miles answered. “What do you think? This is pretty much your department, right?”
“Well, I was thinking it would be nice to have it near your parents so they could at least see it if mine can’t. But, I don’t want to have photos and whatnot with only one set in them, and we’ve never even met. The only people we have in common are these people.”
“My parents would fly out here for sure if you want to do it in New Hampshire. I never thought of that. Marriage licenses do go by county.”
“That would be nice. It’s not that I’m opposed to meeting them, but just the four of us, or the four of us and your college buddies would be…”
“I know what you mean. And I’d like the people here to see it all, too.”
“Emma will probably be my maid of honor. That will be a funny conversation.”
“She is the logical choice. So, do we just want to find a local chapel, or city hall?”
“Well, you know I’m not that religious, but I would like a church, I suppose. Seems cozier.” Miles nodded.
“Like I said, if we pick one, I’m sure my parents will fly out. That way they won’t feel excluded and we’ll still have the comfort of our friends.”
“Who’s your best man going to be?”
“I have no idea.” Miles had friends, to be certain. He had grown up around Chicago, went to UIC, the whole bit. He had a lot of numbers in his cell phone and a lot of options on a Saturday night, but none of his friends seemed like the best man type. He hardly kept in touch with high-school buddies and college had been such a blur that even those friends he had going back five years from UIC seemed to be on the fringe of his life. It sobered him to realize that he did not have that childhood buddy straight out of a hallmark commercial, that he had caught frogs and climbed trees with. He shrugged again.
“I don’t know. Scott? You’re picking your roommate.”
“Oh, that’s such a cop-out.” Miles did not respond because Sophie was absolutely right.
They finished their coffee and their talk just before the place closed at ten.
“I mostly just want to get it done,” Sophie said, continuing the wedding conversation on the drive home. “I always thought I would want a big wedding, fancy everything and whatever, but I never thought I would be in this situation. I just want to make it official; not for us, for politics. That’s more important to me than aesthetics, I guess.”
“I feel the same way. But that’s probably because I’m a guy.”
“Well, whatever. I just want to get this past us. What happens after this whole thing is the most important part, right?”
“Of course.” Miles took his eyes from the road to look into Sophie’s. He took her hand and slid her arm alongside his over the seats. “Have I ever told you how much I like your accent?”
“I don’t know,” Sophie smiled, wondering where the question was leading.
“I do. It’s sweet. And different. Kind of soothing, even besides your voice. I like it.”
“I’m glad. I’m sure you won’t think anything of it years down the road.”
“Just don’t become Americanized too quickly on me. We’re mostly an obese, ignorant crowd, to be honest.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
They were quiet for the rest of the ride home. Even though they had only worked two-thirds of a day the hours were beginning to catch up with them. There was no question as to whether dropping off to sleep was the immediate plan when they got back into camp.
“Okay, I filled out all my stuff. Your turn.” Miles handed Sophie the marriage license application he had printed minutes ago. All that was required was a processing fee and basic data like a name, social security number, address, and the like. I was as easy as filling out a magazine subscription card. Sophie filled her lines sans social security number and handed it back to Miles, who sealed the papers in an envelope and walked with Sophie to the office to drop it in with Monday’s outgoing mail.
“And now we wait,” Miles sighed, kissing Sophie’s cheek as they walked back to the lounge.
“I wonder what’s going to come first, the license or the fiancée
green card.”
“That should be coming soon as well. In about a week, I suppose.”
“We’ve done all we can do. I’m sure it will work out fine. You’re going to be laughing at yourself for being so worried about all this rubbish in six months.”
“I know. And you’ll be gloating because I’ll have to tell you you’re right again.”
“Nonsense. I’m positive you’ll tell me I’m right loads of times before then.” They lapsed into a bout of silliness before composing themselves and entering the lounge.
“The lounge was starting to remind Miles of the TV show ‘Cheers’. He knew who would be there, a different combination of the same people, talking about the same things in a slightly different way, it was at the same time comforting and making Miles wish he had a remote to see if there was anything else on. Jabari and Emma were playing foosball, Christopher, Sergio, and Paul were watching TV, and Gerri was leaning on the fridge and eating cottage cheese straight from the container.
It was half-past ten; too early for lunch at the dining hall even though both Miles and Sophie had skipped breakfast to fill out their last bit of paperwork. They split the last bagel they had and watched Jabari and Emma continue their season-long struggle at the foosball table. Emma won that particular game and swung around the table to join her foe against Miles and Sophie. In what may have been record time, the newcomers were disposed of.
“Well, I can’t really feel too bad. That’s the first time I’ve played this thing sober,” Miles said, leaning into the table on his arms. Sophie rolled her eyes. She remembered all too well the last time Miles had played foosball. Since that drunken debacle neither had consumed more than three or four drinks in a night, and even those instances could be counted on one hand with digits to spare.
“Are we going to do another trip? We talked about it earlier.” The question was from Jabari.
“I don’t know. We’ve got to save up for the wedding and all the paperwork that goes with that. There are a lot of hoops.”
“Word. I haven’t heard anything solid from anybody yet anyways. I think everyone’s in that getting finished frame of mind, looking toward the next thing.”
Miles nodded. He and Sophie had been in that frame of mind for months. Miles realized how hard it was to appreciate the situation they had been in when his thought were always looking ahead. Almost all off his happy Kodak memories had happened within the first two months of arriving in New Hampshire; before things had gotten complicated.
“Well, maybe we don’t have to do anything crazy. We should just get together one night, soon, before all the summer camp people show up next month. We could just go to that fire pit on the other side of the hill behind the lounge, right off of that nature trail. Get some drinks and some wood…Just chill.”
“I’d be game for that. I see what you mean. Even getting to a bar takes a lot of work with this crew.”
“And it’s not something we would have to plan anything, really. Whenever it seems like a good time, we can just go.” Jabari kept nodding and stroking his chin fuzz. Emma and Sophie were standing idly by, spinning the foosball players absently. Miles brushed his fingernails across the small of Sophie’s back. She scooched closer to let his arm curl around her hips while she spun her line of over-sized army men over a pock-marked field.
“What do you think of that, party girl?” Sophie made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a grunt, both positive sounding.
“What are we going to do all day?” Sophie cried in overacted exasperation. She flung herself into Miles’ arms and rubbed her nose on his shoulder.
“Are you itching your nose on my shoulder?” Miles asked incredulously
“No,” she said, without breaking rhythm.
“You are, too. You’re so strange.” Sophie stopped, but only because she was finished. She released her grip on Miles’ shoulder blades and leaned on the foosball table instead.
“In answer to your question, I don’t know what we’re going to do today. But we’re not going into town. We’re spending the whole day right here.”
“What could we possibly do here, though?”
“Well, there’s the company of our friends, board games, cable…The possibilities are limitless, when you really think about it. We used to just sit and talk all day long, you know. Quick, What color are my eyes?”
“You’re such a girl. And that’s trick question. You don’t even have eyes.”
“If you start being sarcastic I’m going to do a British accent…”
“Oh, God, I’ll stop. I didn’t know it was that important to you. And besides, I thought I told you that you weren’t allowed to be British ever again.”
“Well, you’d better be nice to me,” Miles chuckled, “Or else I’ll do it with your parents.”
“They’ll think you’re a mental patient.”
“Those are the stakes I’m willing to play at, baby.” Sophie grinned, unable to counter. A kiss quick enough to not cause an uncomfortable moment in the room full of people quieted Miles’ tongue as well.
There was nowhere else to go so the two found a free spot on one of the couches and eventually realized they were watching a movie called ‘Airheads’ on Comedy Central. They got into snuggled comfortable positions and let the think-piece on the tube carry them to the lunch hour.
The lunch table was a great place to be if you were not working. Anyone who had been on all morning used the meal time to recuperate but those who had been spending more time off of their feet than on them used lunch as an excuse to see if anyone else had done something interesting with their time off. Miles chatted with Scott, who had been in their cabin all morning with Kyra, as well as all the drifters he had spent the morning with. Everyone on the staff’s side of camp talked too much and ate even more because they had nothing to do but use their words up and wander back home to digest for the afternoon.
Sophie’s restlessness had calmed by the time they made it back to Miles’ cabin. “Six weeks,” she stated, flopping onto his bed. The topic was in heavy conversation rotation. Miles did not have anything to add so he just nodded a response and sat down beside his fiancée. He rubbed the small of her back consolingly.
“I’m looking forward to being back in Chicago, to tell you the truth,” Miles said, finding his voice.
“Me too,” Sophie smiled. “It just feels strange, though, to be thinking about somewhere else. Sometimes it seems like we’ve been here forever and this is where we’re supposed to be.”
“I’m sure we could get camp counselor jobs if you wanted to.”
“That’s not what I bloody mean, you.”
“I know. You’re going to miss this place.”
“I think what I’m going to miss is the people. I’ll have you, of course, but there are some great people here, even though we haven’t spent nearly enough time with any of them. But I guess what I’m really going to miss is the things we’ve done. In Chicago, we won’t be able to drive by the Borders we always go to or our Starbucks or the movie theatre.”
“We’ll have lots of other places, you know.”
“I know,” Sophie sighed and rolled over on her back. Miles smiled at the fact that he could graze his hand over Sophie’s breast so familiarly. “But these were the first memories and we’ll be leaving them all here. I mean, why else would we come back here?”
“I have a feeling we will. It will make those places even more special if we see them years down the road. If we saw them every day then we’d forget all about their significance. I’m not opposed to coming back here sometime. I think some people are even staying in the area. Gerri really likes it here, and Scott and Kyra are staying on this coast, anyways. I think they were looking at a place in Massachusetts for the next fall.”
“I suppose you’re right. I never thought I’d be getting misty over this place.”
“Well, like you said. It’s not the place, though it hasn’t been too bad, really. It’s the people. I mean, excepting the directors, our immediate bosses are even great. Except for a couple of people here, I don’t think you could ask for a nicer bunch of people.”
“Right again. Oh, maybe we should all do something together again.”
“I think the big bonfire idea is good. Why not end it in the place where it all started?”
“That sounds dangerously close to clichéd.”
“I’m sure it is. You know what I mean, though. Come to think of it, we’ve never really done anything here, socially. Why not give it a shot?” Sophie smiled and nodded. She closed her eyes and tilted her chin, which meant that Miles was to kiss her immediately. He followed orders.
Scott and Kyra walked through the door just late enough to keep a private display of affection from going public. Miles related Jabari’s in-camp idea to his roommates and received nods of approval.
“Do you guys want to go see a movie?” Scott asked. So much for staying in camp for a whole day.
“I don’t know what we were thinking,” Sophie smiled as they drove home as the sun set. “We can’t stay in camp on a day off any more than a minister can skip church.” Miles rolled his eyes and laughed.
“How’s that whole saving money thing going for you guys?” Kyra asked from the front seat.
“I’ve got enough for gas back to Chicago after all the fees and what have you.”
“When’s the wedding?”
“Um, we don’t really know. When, where, how, any of it.”
“Don’t worry. Most people spend more time planning a wedding than you two have even known one another.” Miles nodded.
“When we figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
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