This Is Only a Test by B.J. Hollars Page B

watch his damn mouth (“Or else”).
    That night, after a campfire spent fending off mosquitoes, the Apache tribe marched back through the woods to our cabin. Our counselor promised us a scary story if we could get in our sleeping bags without playing too much grab-ass (“Randall, Paul, I’m talking to you!”).
    We wanted the story so we did as we were told, peeling off sweat-soaked socks and shirts and curling—like Bobby—into spaces that were nearly too small for us. With the lights off, he told us about Buckethead, about Bobby Watson, about the refrigerator that clicked shut and did not open.
    Since I knew the story, I mostly just watched the expressions on the other boys’ faces. Across from me, Dennis’s eyes emitted terror, but not nearly as much as Randall’s.
    â€œWhat a crock of shit,” Randall grumbled, wadding up his pillow, though the tremor in his throat was unmistakable.
    The week dragged on—days spent shooting bows and threading lanyards and trying to steer our canoes to the safety of the shoreline. We learned songs and then forgot them, built fires and put them out. We dedicated hours to sand volleyball, took turns at tetherball, measured the arc of our piss streams by the cattails.
    Dennis couldn’t take part in everything, but most of us did what we could to make him feel a part of our tribe. We took turns sitting next to him at dinner, trying hard to anticipate his needs, our eyes focused on the eyes that couldn’t focus on us.
    A few days in, Randall said something to Dennis—don’t ask me what, it was all so long ago. Nevertheless, I remember feeling that his comment had seemed unnecessarily cruel, spiteful even, and though we were just innocent boys back then—still scared by the minnows that nipped our toes—we knew we had to retaliate.
    Later that day, while Dennis slapped his cane along the blacktop, four of us sprawled ourselves on the lodge porch plotting against Randall. We knew Buckethead was his weakness, so we figured we’d scare him. We wanted him to feel cruelty, too.
    As we tried to figure out how, I offhandedly mentioned the bucket beneath my bunk.
    â€œWhat kind of bucket?” asked Paul.
    â€œThe right kind,” I whispered.
    That night, after campfire, we marched through the woods to the shower house as we’d done every night that week. We were an awkward bunch—some of us less suited for the wilderness than others (“Something bit my butt!”)—and our three-minute trek always seemed to stretch on much longer. Somebody (usually me) was always dropping his shower caddy in the leaves, or getting his towel stuck in the craggy arms of the branches. That night, I broke a spider web with my face and felt terrible for what I’d done to that poor creature.
    Who knows where our counselor was, probably attending to a scraped knee or a poison ivy outbreak. Years later, when I was the counselor, I could confirm that these injuries were endless, that it was impossible for nine-year-old boys not to sprain ankles or stumble into wasp nests. Whatever our counselor’s alibi, it meant we were momentarily alone in that shower house, our mud-caked shoes tromping against the moldy tiles while we bit back guilty grins. The overhead lights gave us shadows, while a screened window invited in the summer heat. It was not hard to imagine decades of summers of boys just like us being baptized beneath those showerheads. Or if not there, then in the lake, or the mud, or half-drowned in the smoke around those campfires. I have seen black-and-white photographs from those ancient times, pictures of boys in war paint who—with the exception of Bobby (if there ever was a Bobby)—were lucky enough to grow to become old men.
    Yet we thought little of history or our place in it as we kicked our clothes into a pile and positioned ourselves beneath those showerheads. We thought little of the story we would