I.
The counselors tried to keep the children calm before meals.  They lined them up by cabin in front of the dinning hall and preformed various stunts to pacify them until the tables were set.  Sometimes they sang songs with hand motions:

“Baby Shark do do do do do do, Baby Shark do do do do do do, Baby Shark.  Mama Shark do do do do do do, Mama Shark do do do do do do, Mama Shark, Daddy Shark do do do do do do…” The song continued to tell the story of a woman swimming who suffered a shark attack and flew to Heaven.  It was an annoying tune with gestures that involved little more than clapping your hands together in a vertical snapping motion.  The eleven-year-old campers loved it.  They sang it repeatedly when they got home and their parents cringed.

“JELLY BEAN!” someone called out, “tell us a joke!”

A short brown-haired counselor stepped onto a crate in front of the children.  “Do you really want to hear a joke?” she asked.

The children shouted back that they did.

Jelly Bean assumed the lisping oblivious voice of an idiot as she began, “I have a brother, he’s crippled, you know, and one day my brother said that he wanted to go see the Pope, so I took my brother, who’s crippled, you know, and we got on the bus to go see the Pope.  We rode and rode and rode the bus and finally we got to the Pope, and me and my brother, who’s crippled, you know, got off the bus.  And we went in to where the Pope was preaching.  And we went in to listen.  I helped my brother into a seat because he’s crippled, you know.  And then the Pope said he was going to cure someone in the audience, and he pointed to my brother.  My brother was so excited he took his crutches, because he’s crippled, you know, and walked up next to the Pope.  And the Pope took away my brother’s right crutch.  And then he took away my brother left crutch…and then do you know what happened?”

The children shouted that they didn’t.

“Well, my brother fell flat on his face, he’s crippled, you know.”

The children were shocked at first, was their very own Jelly Bean mocking the power of God?  Someone whispered that the Pope was Catholic, though, and everyone felt better and laughed.  This was a Christian camp.

Someone snapped a picture of Jelly Bean smiling at the laughter.

Then they went back to singing, “A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut,” their voices mounted and fell as they continued, “McDonalds, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut.”

II.
It was just a short walk to the ”Snak Shak” from the cabins.  Past the Chapel, through the field, and across the gravel road.  Next to the rec. center.  

It was a small stand, but oh! the splendor it contained!  Stacks and stacks of candy, lined up neatly in their brightly colored wrappers.  Butterfinger, Hershey bars, Carmello, Laffy Taffy, Abba Zabba, Skittles, 100 Grand, Twix, Snickers, Kit Kat bars.  Kids took the black wrappers of their Reese’s peanut butter cups and pressed them against their front teeth, saturating them with spit so that they would stick sufficiently and when they smiled it gave the illusion of being toothless.  They brought out the disposable cameras and showed off their black smiles for picture after picture.

Then there were chips.  Individual sized bags of Fritos, Lays, Ruffles, Nacho Cheesier! Doritos, Cooler Ranch Doritos, and new guacamole flavored Doritos that glow an unnatural color green.

You could buy a cup of iced Pepsi cola for a buck.

Each parent was requested to send twenty dollars per week with their child.

III.

The theme this summer was “the treasures of your relationship with Jesus.”  They made posters with a picture of cartoon pirate booty.  They gave them to each of the kids as a keepsake.  Everyone signed each other’s like a yearbook on the last day.  Only instead of “Stay sweet” or “Have a cool summer!” they wrote “Stay strong with Jesus!” or “Keep up your faith in the Lord!”

They continued to press the theme during five o’clock Bible study.  They had decided to do the opposite of the Catholics and talk about the glories of Heaven instead of invoking fear of Hell.

“Every soul who enters Heaven will be in their most perfect form,” the counselors told their cabin group.  “There will be no worries about weight or zits because the imperfections of the human body will have been left behind.”

“In Revelations John visits Heaven and comes back to tell us what it’s like.  There isn’t very much information but Revelations 4:2 gives us a slight visual.”

The children flipped through their Bibles so they could read along; their hands making the pages smell of bug spray.

“And immediately I was in the Spirit: and behold, a throne was set in Heaven and One sat on the throne.  And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.  And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.  And out of the thrown proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the thrown, which are the seven Spirits of God.  And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the thrown were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.  And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had the face of a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.  And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they rest not day and night, saying Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.”

“So there are animals in Heaven?” A child interrupted in one particular Bible study group, a little blond girl.

“No,” her counselor replied.  “Not like the animals on Earth anyway.  In order to enter heaven you must have a soul, and God gave the gift of the eternal soul only to man.”

“So my dog, Max, isn’t in Heaven?!” Another girl burst out.

The counselor tried not to contort her face with the panic of having to answer this.  After a beat she answered,  “…He will be with you in your heart.”

The girl’s huge eyes showed that this was not the answer she had wanted.

“Are there babies in Heaven?” another child asked.

“No,” the counselor replied, “you enter in your perfect form, which is fully grown.”

“What if I die now?  I’ll never have the chance to be a mom!”

“No one grows up in Heaven,” the counselor told them, getting slightly annoyed.

“What about all the aborted babies?” Another child asked, slyly.

“They enter as adults.”

The children wrinkled their brows.

“And all they do is worship all day?” A red haired girl dared to question.

“You’ll be perfectly satisfied, though,” the counselor concluded so that the subject would drop.

IV.
The last day was special.  Everyone got to skip five o’clock Bible study and dress up instead for the “last supper.”  The counselors brought their prom dresses or suits, the girls did each other’s hair and the boys actually showered.  Someone in each of the girls’ cabins would have brought a curling iron and everyone gathered around to watch the tomboy get her hair curled.  It was incongruous when it was finished, her short springy ringlets sitting on top of a large awkward body with bruised shins.  The other girls laughed and took pictures.

The dinner was mostly regular; they served overcooked spaghetti out of huge metal barrel-like pans.  The only difference was that the girl’s lips left little pink prints around the edges of their yellow plastic cups.  Everyone had passed around the same tube of cherry-red lipstick.  No one got herpes here.  Like the poster on the wall of the cabin said, they were saving themselves for the one God had saved for them.

On the last night after campfire cabins groups took night walks together through the surrounding woods.  “Just lift you feet,” the counselors told the kids, “if you don’t drag them you won’t trip over anything, even if you can’t see.”

They tromped through the forest like that, the darkness looming over them, assemblages of stars peeking through the treetops.  An owl hooted; something scurried away from them in the distance.

The kids weren’t sure what to think.  They were supposed to feel closer to God, but this was clearly the earth, these were soulless animals they were hearing, twigs snapping loudly under their stomping feet.

V.
Weeks later when all the photos came back from all the disposable cameras the children showed them off to their parents.  The rolls of film were nightmares.  Sacrileges to the art of photography.  Pictures of tongues and nothing else, blurry close ups of shiny braces.  Terrible portraits of each of their cabin mates, with fake, goofy smiles and greasy faces, off center, out of focus.  Six pictures of girls in mid dance moves, each of them basically the same.  Images of boys bending over, peeking through their legs, proudly smiling, showing off their butts.  Sometimes the kids had contests to see who could take the most embarrassing pictures of their friends candidly.  These turned out mostly similar, pictures of girls first waking up in the morning, boys in mid chop of their chocolate ice pops, mouths strangely contorted.

There were a couple of gems, one of two girls in pajamas on a top bunk, braiding each other’s hair.  One of four girls on a cot, their backs lying on the bed, their tanned legs pressed up against the wall.  
But the blue-eyed kids always turned out so demon-like, their pupils shinning like little red Skittles.

VI.
This place is an outdoor school in the off-season.  That explains the not-so-Christian things written on the bunks in some of the photos.  “Inner city kids,” parents scoffed.

Inner city kids that travel by school bus through frightening curves, through the woods; miles and miles of woods, dark, ominous, menacing, and breaking open suddenly into sunlit fields; stunning, the largest space of nothing you’ve ever seen.  A tiny house in the center, littered there, as though it fell from the sky.  Who lives here?  Who lives this far away?  Vietnam veterans with hand drawn maps of where each of their friends died in a dark tool shed.

They come to learn about botany, the weather cycle, wildlife, the acidity of soil.  They sing songs about the things you find on trees, “Freddie Fungus, Symbiotic, Alex Algae, Symbiotic…”

These children are taught to revere the “critters” in the creek and not stomp on things with their rainbowed rubber boots.  They call the water skippers by their name; they do not assumedly dub them “Jesus Bugs.”  At the end of the week they plant a tree to commemorate their stay.  Each child tosses a handful of soil in with the roots.

And the photos these children bring home depict fuzzy portraits of each cabin mate, yes, but also a view of the sky, littered by the tops of trees, and many out-of-focus images of a waterfall.  They are not the chosen proud white children of the suburbs.  They are the diverse species spinning in a great cycle of things beyond their understanding.  So they carve their name into a bunk bed, put a jagged heart around the initials of the person they are in love with, or write a profanity in an attempt to break the boundaries, find some gravity.