Omnivores

Omnivores

         Twenty minutes later I stopped crying. My cousin Ethan punched my arm and told me to be a man between sobs of anguish.
         This was the dime-sized boil on the forehead of my vacation. Summer camp.
         As Ethan and I walked up to the registration desk, I felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted off of me. This was likely because I laid down all four of my suitcases.
         “You're the fresh meat, eh?” The receptionist asked, “Let's see where we can put you.”
         “They can put me out of my misery,” Ethan said.
         Ethan was one year younger than me, but three inches taller. He was born short to short parents, but managed to defy the gene pool. The nature of his growth spurt had bewildered all of us, although many believe that he may have meditated on tall thoughts twice daily, like clouds or basketball. He was widely interested in manly things, like cars and R rated movies and metal bands with unintelligible lyrics.
         The receptionist broke out into a long, low laugh, rising in pitch and enthusiasm until it seemed her lungs might go the way of a Firestone tire. I have a pretty diverse sense of humor, but I just couldn't determine exactly what was so funny.          She slid a piece of paper across the table to me, the words “Cabin 13” written on it.
         “Wow, she was in a good mood,” I said as we climbed the hill leading to cabin 13. It seemed that the trail had ended half a mile back, but clearly this was just a part of a camp-wide dedication to realism. A complete immersion in the wilderness helps customers walk away satisfied with their camping experience, I reasoned. Twenty minutes later, however, I was beginning to worry much less about the leg cramps and the commute back to the group camp and considerably more about things like heat stroke, inexplicably crossing state lines, and the fact that even my most desperate screams won't carry for two miles.
         The cabin came into sight several minutes later, as if called from the distance by our collective whining. An embattled nameplate on the door read “Cabin 13.”
         “Is the window broken?” Ethan asked, displaying his unmanageable negativity.
         “No, stupid,” I said, remembering when I shared his childlike naivety, “It's a cabin. There are no windows.”
         “What about the door?”
         “What about it? Duct tape will fix that.”
         “I'm just saying,” he whined, “Shouldn't there be one?”
         The interior of the cabin was laid out in a very contemporary style, with much open space and sharp angular edges. I didn't realize just how sharp the edges were until the first time I cut myself on the furniture – sadly, it was the mattress. Scratched-wood graffiti and hardened gum lent an urban flair to a manner of design that I would have otherwise labeled “Spartan minimalist.”
         Fortunately, there was more than enough room for my luggage. It's not like I needed the entire bed, anyway.
         “Did you pack enough?” Ethan asked, dropping his backpack of clothes on the floor.
         I motioned toward the suitcases at the foot of my bed. “These two are just food – in case the camp food sucks.”
         The camp food sucked. The hot cereal for breakfast was a faithful ode to the gruel of Oliver Twist, and the meat was half breading and half barbecue sauce. It was a peculiar flavor I'm sure they'd appreciate in a third world country, vaguely reminiscent of horse or raccoon.
         The camp had many things to keep us busy. We could clean the cabin, clean the kitchens, or clean the bathrooms. It was mostly Ethan and I spending time on these things, not because we were the only two planting cherry bombs beneath the firewood before the nightly campfire, but as a result of being the only two who were caught planting the explosives.
         Neither of us admitted where we had gotten the cherry bombs. In reality, this was a response based more on fear than honor, as the guy in our cabin who had brought a briefcase full of illegal fireworks also maintained a collection of knives so complete, the only thing that wasn't well-rounded about it were the blades. If slobs had colored belts like karate, they'd have to invent one after black just to categorize him. He insisted on leaving his luggage in the middle of the room and changed between his two sets of clothes every other day. He'd smoke early into the morning on the bunk beneath mine and I'd contemplate lung cancer. His name was Ben, and he scared me more than the whole Ukrainian mafia.
         One night, Ethan and I returned from campfire to find our cabin door ajar. I assumed that one of the other campers had beaten us back up the hill, and I hoped it wasn't Ben. If it was, then it'd just be the three of us...two-on-one...and he had a knife for every finger Ethan and I possessed.
         “Hello?” I called.
         The door shook and a black streak bounded through and out into the woods, shaking the trees with the terrible shriek of one dying. No, wait, that was just me and Ethan.
         We peered inside, but the damage became real to us only after flipping on the white-and-yellow fluorescent light. Junk food and candy wrappers were strewn everywhere about the floor, while crumbs of food dusted the sheets of every bunk. It looked like Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve, or, for that matter, Johnny Depp's hotel room. A travel-size tube of toothpaste sat on Ethan pillow, a fine row of bite marks punched through one side. I picked it up and turned to Ethan.          “Raccoons.”
         From that night onward, Cabin 13 was on lock down. Every man closed and locked the door behind him, windows were closed at night and no one – no exceptions – could keep food.
         Or at least, they weren't supposed to. Ethan made himself the exception, and I didn't tell. His diabetes required him to keep sugar on hand, and what the other campers didn't know wasn't going to ransack their belongings.
         Ethan and I became celebrities. The way I saw it, karma owed me some admiration for what it took from me in junk food. For a day-and-a-half, we were like Lewis and Clark. Batman and Robin.
         Ethan moaned. “Someone left the door cracked.”
         It was the next-to-last night of camp, and Ethan and I had just hiked back from campfire. Then I remembered that I been the last to leave the cabin, and that I had closed the door tightly.
         Knowing it is bad to project fear when in the presence of the impressionable, I went along with him. “It's nothing,” I said, “Go on in.”
         I followed Ethan into the dark cabin and rubbed the wall where the light switch should be. I found it – click.
         The room filled with margarine-colored light. Scud...THUMP.
         I jumped a little.
         “Wow,” Ethan exclaimed, “I know you're tall, but I really thought that light was out of your reach. Amazing how it supports your weight.”
         “Ethan, I think we might not be alone.”
         I took a flashlight in hand. Then I gave it to Ethan. “We're going to need to look underneath the bunks.” As he got down on his knees, I reassured him, “I've got your back.”
         “I'm about to kick yours,” he growled. He clicked on the flashlight.
         As an aside, boys do not squeal, we holler. So no matter what anyone else might tell you, when the silver-green eyes lit up in the beam of Ethan's flashlight, we hollered as we jumped from one side of the room to the other, falling over Ben's luggage in our unchecked panic..
         We climbed our bunks to the sound of the creature's claws on the concrete. Our bunks were the top two and the furthest from the door, and now the bandit-eyed monster was between us and escape.
         I reached to arm myself, and found a can of mosquito repellent. My other hand gripped what I thought was the handle of one of Ben's knives on the shelf, but as I brought it up over the ledge I found a Bic lighter.
         Scutter...clack clack clack. Ethan warned me not to hyperventilate, but I couldn't understand him because his fetal position muffled his voice. I flicked the lighter and a tiny flame appeared.
         With an agility and ferocity normally attributed to wildcats, the raccoon appeared over the edge of my bed and charging toward me. I panicked. Throwing my weapons to the floor, I hurled myself across the gap into Ethan's bed.
         The two of us huddled together, sure now that we were going to die by omnivore. I remembered the bite marks in the tube of toothpaste and wondered how many of them I would have when the coroner arrived on the scene. If they ever found us.
         “Ethan,” I panted, “There are two of us and only one of it. If we run, one of us might get out.”
         He nodded. “On three.”
         “On three,” I agreed, distracted by the smell of smoke.
         “Three!” He yelled, and broke for the door. I closed my eyes and jumped down after him, flailing and punching as I sprinted toward the door and the darkness outside.
         We collided, rolled, ducked, and covered like soldiers under mortar fire. I opened my eyes once and saw the beady eyes of the creature glowing back at me from atop Ben's luggage.
         Ben's smoking luggage.
         Fweeeeeep! A golden burst erupted from one bag, sailing through an open window and out into the trees. BOOM! The night sky turned purple and red.
         More flashes of color followed as the fireworks lit each other, rocketing out of the bag and into the forest. Pale colors mixed in every direction inside the cabin, sparks pouring out of every window and hole in the ceiling. The rockets burst like thunder on a techno beat as a rave of colors shot into the clear sky. Ethan and I covered our ears and watched as the cabin fired battery after battery of rockets, while every explosion sent shockwaves through our bodies where we lay.
         The following morning, the camp served a meat suspiciously similar to raccoon. It certainly tasted well done. Ethan ate three...he called it the revenge diet.
         This was the dime-sized boil on the forehead of my summer...a boil larger than what's left of my mortal enemy, the raccoon.