The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe (12 page)

“Hey,” Jack said to Billy Joe, “you ready for this?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Billy Joe groused. “But you and me could have found a lot of good things to do that wouldn’t make us have ta ride a bus all that far.”

“Ridin’ the bus is the best part of it,” Jack said. “We get to see a lot of new places and, they tell me, the bus will go right in front of the Capitol Building. I have only been in Jackson one time and then I was too little to remember much about it. All I can remember was havin’ a picnic on the Capitol lawn and eatin’ these giant size sandwiches and drinkin’ orange and grape juice.”

“I’ve never been to Jackson,” Billy Joe said, “but I don’t feel like I’ve missed much. Now, if we were goin’ to Washington where the real laws are made, I’d like to see that.”

Jack didn’t know how to answer that so he didn’t try to.

“Who’s ridin’ on this bus with us?” Billy Joe asked, meaning, what adults.

“Coach Jackson from the junior college and Mr. Shelly Martin from the Mississippi Power Company will drive the bus is what I’ve heard,” Jack answered.

“I don’t know anything about Mr. Martin but I know Coach Jackson is tough. He’ll probably make us be quiet all the way there,” Billy Joe conjectured.

“Here comes the bus now,” Jack said, pointing toward the yellow school bus pulling up in front of the courthouse.

The bus stopped and two men got off, Mr. Martin and Coach Jackson.

“Okay,” Coach Jackson commanded, “after I have checked off your name on the list”—he held up a clipboard—“I want you to get on the bus, sit down and behave yourself.”

The coach walked right up to where Jack and Billy Joe were standing and said, “What’s your names, boys?”

Jack and Billy Joe told him their names and he checked them off the list.

“Which one of you can climb best and is the strongest?” the coach asked.

Both boys said, “I am.”

The coach laughed and said, “Well, I guess I will just have to pick one of you.” He pointed at Billy Joe, handed him a length of rope and said, “Okay, climb up that ladder on the back of the bus and get on top. Then toss one end of the rope to Jack. Jack, you tie each piece of luggage so that Billy Joe can pull it up to the top of the bus and stack it in the luggage rack. As soon as everybody is here and all the luggage is stacked in the rack, both of you will get up there and cover the rack with this big canvas and secure it down. Then I’ll come up and make sure it’s tight and won’t blow off. Do you know what I want you to do?”

Both boys said, “Yes, sir,” together.

Jack and Billy Joe preferred loading the bus to just sitting on the bus and waiting. They loaded the bus with the coach watching closely and giving some directions when he didn’t think a piece of luggage was placed exactly right.

Finally, the last boy arrived, his luggage was loaded and, with the coach’s help, the canvas was pulled tightly over it and secured.

On the bus, Mr. Martin said, “Okay, boys. The ride is about two to two and a half hours. We are going to Laurel on US11, up to Bay Springs, over to Raleigh and up to Morton. Roosevelt Park is right outside Morton. I want any of you who need to go to the bathroom, go right now in the courthouse restroom. We can stop in any of the towns along the way or you can go in the woods anywhere. The less we have to stop, the sooner we will be there. Okay—anybody wanna go now—go.”

Nobody moved. They had all just left home and their mommas had made them take care of that there.

“Thought you said we would be goin’ through Jackson,” Billy Joe complained.

“I thought we would go to Raleigh, over to US49 through Jackson and east on US80 to Morton. I guess Mr. Martin likes little roads.”

“Here we go then,” Mr. Martin said as he slipped into the driver’s seat, started the engine and pulled slowly away from the courthouse.

The trip started with all the boys talking and laughing at once. Before they had gotten to Laurel, seven miles away, they had all settled down and were just talking to their seatmates in a much lower tone.

The coach had allowed this to happen. On all the trips he had made with busloads of football players, he had discovered it was better for them to get the loud talk and laughter out of their system. He would only stop them if they started to yell at people outside the bus. That couldn’t be allowed because it reflected badly on him, he felt.

By the time they reached Bay Springs, some of the boys were asleep.

Jack and Billy Joe were again detailed to a little job for the coach.

“Now that he knows our names,” groused Billy Joe, “we’ll catch everything.”

“Jack and Billy Joe will give each of you a ham and cheese sandwich,” the coach announced. “These sandwiches are courtesy of the ladies of the junior college kitchen.”

Then Jack and Billy Joe handed out RC Colas to each boy and the coach announced, “The RCs are courtesy of the Nehi Bottling Works. When you finish your drink, bring your bottles to the back and put them in the wooden drink crates. I’ll take those back to Mr. Putnam at the plant.”

The bus arrived at Roosevelt Park with most of the boys asleep, but they quickly awoke when the coach walked up and down the aisle saying, “Rise and shine, boys. We’re here. End of the line. Everybody off.”

The boys woke up with some yawning, some confusion and some already wishing they were back home in familiar surroundings. The coach knew how they were feeling from many years experience with boys. He knew that the answer was to keep them busy and to make them feel they were needed and wanted here.

“Jack and Billy Joe,” the coach said, “you are not through yet. Roll up that tarp covering the luggage and haul it down here. The rest of you boys claim your luggage and stay with it until I can get us all checked in.” He walked in the camp office door to get that job done.

Jack and Billy Joe climbed the ladder to the top of the bus and started handing down the luggage. “Now that he knows our names, we’ll catch all the dirty jobs,” Billy Joe complained again.

“Yeah, you said that but what kind of ‘dirty jobs’ can he give us in two weeks?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know, but you’ll see.”

The door to the office opened and the coach walked out. “Okay, guys, listen up,” he said. “Each group has to furnish two boys for KP every day. Does everybody know what a KP is?” He looked around the group and everybody was nodding their heads and several made groans of protest. “Since Jack and Billy Joe loaded and unloaded the bus, they will be on the KP list last. You will start tomorrow morning so Terry Watkins and Bob Kraft will report to that building”—he paused to point to the building next to the office—“at five AM. One of the staff will be up all night so if you will tell him where you are, he’ll get you up.”

“Okay, let’s go to our hut.” And he turned to walk toward the other buildings.

All the buildings except the office and the shower building were roofs held up by four corner posts, screens down halfway and masonite from the ground to four feet above the ground. They all had screen doors at each end. The buildings were obviously for summertime only and designed to keep the rain and mosquitoes out but to allow the air to circulate through.

Inside the hut, canvas cots were lined up along each wall. On each cot, there were two blankets and a pillow. At the end of the cot, there was a wooden locker that opened from the top. The top had a hasp for a lock.

“Okay boys, every day except Friday, you will make up your cot with both blankets spread evenly over it and the pillow under the top blanket at the head of the bed. You were each told to bring padlocks with two keys. Those are to lock your foot locker to secure your clothes, valuables or whatever. I will give each of you a tag with a string on it. You will write your name on the tag, tie one of your keys to the end of the string and give the tag with the key to me. I will hold on to them in case you lose the other key. We don’t have any special way for you to set up your foot locker like the army but we do want everything to be neat. You can decorate your area any way you want to as long as it’s neat. Anybody got any questions?”

There was a chorus of “No, sir.”

“Supper will start at five thirty and you can get in until six thirty. After that, you’re gonna be hungry until breakfast.” He turned and left the hut.

“This is not too bad,” Jack said to Billy Joe.

“It ain’t home,” Billy Joe said, being his normal complaining self.

“Let’s make up our cots, stow our gear in our foot lockers and look around a bit before supper,” Jack proposed.

They both got busy and had their areas shipshape in five minutes.

“Which way we gonna go first?” Billy Joe asked.

“I think I saw the lake down that way.” Jack pointed down the hill. “Let’s go down this path and see if it takes us there.”

As they walked down the wide path, they began to see blue patches of water through the trees. When they rounded a curve in the path, there was the lake with boats tied up to four wooden docks that jutted out into the lake.

As they got closer, they could see two floating wooden islands a few yards out from the docks that were obviously anchored to the bottom.

“Those must be swimming docks,” Billy Joe observed.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “and those boats are tied up but not locked. I wonder if you can use the boats or swim anytime you want to.”

“I bet they have some really strict rules about when you can swim or boat and you probably have to get permission every time,” Billy Joe complained.

The boys walked out on the dock to get a better look at the lake. It was not too big—bigger than any of the ponds at home but not as big as Bogue Homa Lake.

“Look over there.” Billy Joe pointed to the opposite shoreline. “With all those trees hanging down in the water, there’s gotta be some good bream, white perch and shellcracker fishin’.”

“Yeah, but I bet there’s not a fish hook in the whole camp,” Jack said.

“What’cha think that is?” Billy Joe said, pointing to some buildings similar to their camp but on the other side of the lake.

“I betcha that’s the girls’ camp. I heard there’s one over there,” Billy Joe said. “I heard the boys used to go over there and steal the girls’ panties.”

“What’d they want with girls’ panties?”

“I dunno but that’s what I heard.”

“It feels like it’s gettin’ close to supper time,” Jack said. “Let’s go see if the mess hall is open.”

They walked back up the hill and around to the mess hall. It was open so they went in. Coach Jackson was sitting at the front, obviously waiting for his boys. He checked Jack and Billy Joe off his list and said, “Just take a tray, some silverware and a bottle of milk and go on through the line. After you are served, sit at any table and eat.”

“Thank you, sir,” they both said.

They had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, string beans, cornbread or white bread and a half pint box of ice cream. Two men dressed in white placed the food on their trays when the boys held them out. One of the men said, “You can have seconds on anything, boys. Just bring your tray back up to the line.”

“I don’t much like string beans much but the rest of this looks pretty good—even the gravy on the taters,” Billy Joe said, being about as close to a compliment as he could ever manage.

“It all looks good to me,” Jack said. “And I’m hungry.”

The boys finished their supper—Billy Joe even ate all his string beans—and they walked back to their hut.

Pinned to the door of the hut was a circular that said, “BIG BONFIRE POWWOW TONIGHT. Everybody meet at the CIRCLE at 8PM. The camp counselors will brief you on what’s new and on what’s planned. BE THERE.”

“Where’s the Circle?” Billy Joe wondered.

“I don’t know but we better find it pretty quick,” Jack pointed out.

They knew it wasn’t down toward the lake so it had to be on the other side of the huts away from the lake. They walked past the shower building and through another row of huts to a driveway just like the one their hut was on. Since turning to the left would lead them into the woods, they turned right and walked up the road. At the same place the office building would have been on their road, there was an open grassy field with a big pile of firewood in its center.

“This has got to be the Circle,” Jack decided.

Billy Joe agreed and said, “I guess we’re very early. What we gonna do to kill time until the powwow?”

“Let’s just walk on around this road and see what there is to see,” Jack suggested.

They followed the road up to a place where it turned right and they could see the office building.

“I see,” Jack said. “This road comes in from the outside, goes all around the rows of huts with shower rooms in between them. The path to the lake goes off one corner and the Circle is on the opposite corner.”

“Yeah, that’s what it looks like,” Billy Joe agreed. “Let’s go on over to the office building and see what happens there.”

The office building was closed but the boys found a bulletin board on the wall on the porch. They read all the notices. Most of them were for the counselors and the leaders like Mr. Martin and Coach Jackson. They did find out that “Lights out” was at 10 PM and all hut lights had to go off then. They also read the schedule of events for the next two weeks, saw the menu for every day, saw which adults were on duty each night and found that Mr. Martin and Coach Jackson were both on the list to stay up all night and watch the camp. The schedule of events was of the most interest to them. There was a lot of time for swimming and boating with the huts competing against each other. There were also competitive dry land games held on the Circle. One of the things that interested Jack and Billy Joe was the all-day hiking on the trails around the lake. That and the boating were right up their alley.

The boys walked directly to their hut from the office building, completing the loop.

On this entire walk, they had seen very few of the other boys walking around. They didn’t understand exactly why. When they entered their hut, they noticed that all the other boys were sitting or lying on their cots, either sleeping or talking.

“Hey, Jerry,” Billy Joe said to one of the buys, “have you guys walked around to check the place out?”