Chapter Three: Bartley the Brat
After the campfire that evening, Kacey and the other counselors helped the kids to get ready for bed. Once everyone was tucked in, Kacey joined her friends in their tent at Hawk’s Nest.
“Whew! What a day!” Emma exclaimed, flopping down on her cot, “Those kids wear me out!”
“Yeah, they’re all pretty energetic,” Kacey agreed.
Ava said, “Since these kids have special needs, I thought that they’d be less active, but I can see I was very wrong. They’ve got just as much energy as healthy kids!”
Emma added, “I was worried that I wouldn’t sleep well in this tent, but I’ll sleep like a rock tonight!”
The others agreed, but they all decided to head back to the main lodge to hang out with the other counselors before turning in for the night.
There they found Tasha roasting two giant marshmallows over the fire in the hearth.
“Hi, guys!” she greeted them, “Grab one of those long sticks on the table and help yourself to the marshmallows!”
The girls decided to join her and found some pillows to sit on in front of the fire. Soon, their marshmallows were puffed up and golden brown.
“Be careful,” warned Tasha, “They’re pretty hot.”
The girls tested the marshmallows before eating them and enjoyed their gooey sweetness.
“How did your day go?” Tasha asked them. The three girls took turns telling her about their experiences. Afterward, Emma asked,
“How was your day, Tasha?”
She shrugged, “Not bad, except for the kid who kept trying to pants the others underwater during swimming lessons. I spent half my time pulling swim trunks back on, and the other half trying to keep the boys from trying to pull down each other’s trunks. We didn’t do much actual swimming today.”
The others laughed.
Kacey said, “I hate to remind you, but we have to figure out what act we will do for the talent show on Saturday night.”
“Please!” groaned Emma, “Don’t remind me!”
Ava said, “Hey, there’s a piano over there. Why don’t you play, Kacey, and we’ll sing along with you?”
Kacey found the old upright piano in the corner.
“Okay. What song should we do?”
“Let’s do a song the kids will like. How about ‘Davy Crockett’?” Ava suggested.
“No! No songs that talk about killing bears!” Emma declared.
“What about that one we learned in school when we were kids,” Ava said, wracking her brain, “The one about the meatball?”
“Oh, you mean, ‘On Top of Spaghetti’” Kacey said, “I think I can play that one. It’s pretty simple.”
Kacey went over to the piano and began playing the chords to the song. Ava joined in singing the words:
“On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball,
When somebody sneezed.
It rolled off the table,
And on to the floor,
And then my poor meatball,
Rolled out of the door.
It rolled in the garden,
And under a bush,
And then my poor meatball,
Was nothing but mush.
The mush was as tasty
As tasty could be,
And then the next summer,
It grew into a tree.
The tree was all covered,
All covered with moss,
And on it grew meatballs,
And tomato sauce.
So if you eat spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball,
Whenever you sneeze.”
Emma and Kacey laughed, saying, “I can’t believe you remember all the words to that song!”
Ava shrugged, “It was my favorite camp song. I sang it all the time when we were kids!”
Just then, the screen door opened and the counselors Matt, Jack, and Andre came running into the hall.
“Hey! Guess what! We just saw a bear!”
“What?” the girls exclaimed. Emma cried, “No! Please don’t tell me that! I hate bears!”
Jack, who taught canoeing, insisted, “No, really, we just saw a bear down by the lake!”
“Was it a big one?”
One of the guys with him answered, “He was huge! All black and furry! I think he must weigh about three hundred pounds!”
“Oh, no!” Emma cried, “Is he still out there?”
“Probably. Do you want to see him?”
“No!” she screamed, “Just keep him away from me!”
“I’d like to see him!” Ava said, getting up to go to the door.
“I’d better go out with you. It’s pretty dark out there,” said a tall, dark-haired young man.
“By the way, my name is Matt. Matt Stephens.”
Ava said, “Hi,” and introduced herself. Together, they went outside to try to see the bear.
Crickets sang madly in the dark woods. Kacey noticed how much darker it was here at the camp than at home in Westfield. There were no streetlights or lights from stores, and the night was almost completely black except for a moon like a slice of lemon. She looked up and was in awe by the millions of stars that she could see.
“Hey, look, you guys,” she said, “Look at the stars!”
The others looked up and agreed it was an amazing sky.
Soon, Tasha and Kacey decided to join them, along with Jack and another guy, Andre.
As the group headed down toward the lake, Jack reminded them to be quiet so they wouldn’t scare the bear away.
“He was right there,” Jack whispered, pointing to the beach with a flashlight, just beyond the swimming area. There was no bear in sight, but Kacey suggested that he may have run into the nearby woods.
“Probably,” Jack agreed, “Hey, look!”
“What?” asked the girls.
“On the beach! I see tracks!”
He led the way to the sandy beach, and the group followed. Near the edge of the water, there were huge paw marks in the wet sand.
“Look! See? That’s where the bear was!” Andre insisted.
“Let’s see where the tracks go,” Ava suggested.
The group followed the bear’s tracks along the sand, which led into the shrubs along the edge of the woods.
“He’s probably in the woods somewhere,” Matt said.
“If we’re really quiet, maybe we can find him,” Ava whispered.
Kacey shook her head, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Ava. Bears do attack people occasionally, and I don’t want this to be one of those occasions.”
Matt agreed. “He’s probably long gone by now, anyway.”
The group decided to go back to the main lodge and get some snacks.
Soon, they were all back inside and munching on chips and drinking sodas. They talked about the day they had with their kids. Kacey learned that Jack, Matt, and Andre had been counselors at the camp for the last three years, and were best friends.
“We come here every year,” Matt explained, “It’s a lot of fun.”
“Yeah, last year we had a fire and had to evacuate all the kids during the middle of the night. That was awesome!” Andre laughed, “It turned out that one of the counselors had been smoking in bed and dropped her cigarette on her blanket when she fell asleep.”
“I thought counselors weren’t allowed to smoke,” Emma said.
“That’s why she was smoking in bed...under her covers!”
“Was she hurt?” asked Tasha.
“No, nobody was hurt because she woke up when she smelled the smoke and started screaming, and then somebody pulled the fire alarm which woke up the whole camp. One of the counselors tried to put the fire out, but it had spread to the side of the tent. The whole tent went up in flames...whoosh!” Andre lifted his arms and spread them in a comical gesture.
They all laughed at the thought and
Jack added, “Yeah, something crazy happens every year. I wonder what it will be this year.”
Because the camp rules said that they all had to be in bed by eleven o’clock, the group put out the fire in the hearth and headed back to their tents. The boys said they would accompany the girls back to their tents to protect them from bears, but mostly they wanted to find out which tent the girls slept in.
“See you tomorrow!” they called to each other.
The girls were soon in bed. They practiced singing “On Top of Spaghetti” a few times, and then fell asleep serenaded by the music of crickets and frogs.
The next morning after breakfast, Kacey met her group of campers on the large concrete patio area where several picnic tables were set up. Another counselor, who introduced herself as Wendi, asked Kacey to assist with the arts and crafts project that the children would make. She showed them models of rock animals and characters that some of the other campers had made the day before.
“We have lots of things you can use to make your character, like all these colorful pebbles, felt, pipe cleaners, beady eyes to glue on, sparkles, markers, and paint. Look at this really cool poodle that someone made yesterday. She glued on a red felt tongue and googley eyes. I really like the tail that she glued on that was made from a pipe cleaner. You can glue the pebbles together to form the shape of an animal or person, and then decorate them any way you like.”
Wendi told them that the pebbles had come from the lake, which gave them a very smooth surface.
Soon the children were busily engaged in choosing their pebbles and gluing them together. Bartley was disappointed when someone else got the large pebble that he really wanted, and he began to complain and sulk.
“I don’t want to make anything if I can’t have that one!” he insisted.
Kacey dug through the box of pebbles until she found one almost exactly like the one he wanted.
“Here’s one just like it, Bartley. Let’s try it. What animal are you making?”
“I’m not making an animal! I’m making the Incredible Hulk!”
Kacey shrugged, “Okay; that sounds cool. Let’s find some pebbles for his big, strong legs.”
Soon, Bartley was involved in gluing his character together. Kacey helped the other kids to glue characters together and cut decorations for them.
Bartley finished his character and became bored waiting for it to dry. He watched the other kids putting their characters together and made snide comments.
“That doesn’t look like a rabbit! It looks like a turd pile!” he laughed. Keisha, the little girl who was making the rabbit told him, “Shut up! Your character looks like a big pile of potatoes--rotten ones!”
“It does not!” Bartley argued.
“It does so!” she cried.
“Hey, kids! Let’s not criticize each other. That isn’t nice,” Kacey said, “Just have fun making your own character. Once they’re finished, they will all look great.”
When Kacey turned her back, Bartley stuck his tongue out at the little girl, and Keisha did the same to him.
“She’s doing something bad!” Bartley cried, and Kacey turned just in time to see Keisha with her tongue out.
“Hey! That’s not nice,” Kacey said.
“He did it first!” said Keisha.
Kacey turned to Bartley and said, “You shouldn’t do things like that. It isn’t nice. Here, let’s go through these pieces of fabric and find some material for the Hulk’s pants.”
Bartley pulled the pieces out of the box, leaving them all over the table. He finally found one that he liked, and Kacey helped him make the pants and glue them on.
“There. He’s looking more like the Hulk every minute. Once he dries, you can paint him green and paint his face. Please put the fabric pieces back into the box, Bartley.”
Another child asked for help, so Kacey left Bartley to give assistance to her. As soon as Kacey left, Bartley picked up the glue bottle and began playing with it. He liked the way it squirted out when he squeezed it. Then he got an idea.
Bartley waited until Keisha’s head was turned, and then he squirted glue toward the back of her head. He was amazed when the glue squirted all the way across the table and landed on the back of her head. He started to laugh.
Everyone was so busy that no one had seen him do it. Bartley looked around and saw that Pedro was reaching across the table to get some paint. As soon as Pedro stood to reach the paint, Bartley placed the open glue bottle on the seat under him. Then Pedro sat down on top of the glue bottle.
“Hey!” Pedro cried, with a look of confusion. He stood up and looked down at his seat. Glue was all over the seat and on the back of his shorts.
Bartley burst out laughing when he saw the glue all over Pedro’s shorts. It wasn’t hard for Pedro to figure out what Bartley did.
“Kacey! Bartley put glue under me and then I sat down on it!”
“What?” Kacey asked, and came over to see Pedro’s shorts covered in glue. She looked at Bartley, who was laughing hysterically.
“Look at the back of Keisha’s head!” cried Anna, another camper, “She’s got glue all over her hair!”
Kacey turned to Bartley, “Did you do that?”
“Me? No!” Bartley said innocently, shaking his head.
Kacey kept her cool even though she was furious. Keisha started crying about the glue in her hair and Pedro began complaining about his shorts. Kacey told him he could go change and bring the shorts with glue back to her so she could wash out the glue before it dried. Wendi took Keisha to the bathroom to wash out her hair.
As soon as they returned, Kacey said, “Bartley, you’re coming with me.”
“But I wanna finish my Hulk!” he cried.
“Not today. I will take care of it for you and maybe you can finish it some other time. Let’s go.”
Kacey took him by the arm and led him to the camp office where Mr. Shillings was working at his desk.
Kacey told him what Bartley had been up to, and he told the boy to sit in a chair.
“Thank you, Kacey, for bringing him to me. I will have a talk with Bartley. You can go back to your team.”
The other children were glad that Bartley was gone. They worked on their projects without further disruptions, and enjoyed themselves. Pedro returned and gave Kacey his shorts to wash. While they were cleaning up, Pedro said,
“I don’t like Bartley. I’m going to call him Fartley!”
The kids all laughed, “Yeah! Fartley the Brat!”
“No, no, you mustn’t call him names!” Kacey exclaimed, “Name-calling isn’t nice. Remember the camp creed: ‘Do everything with joy, respect, and kindness to all.”
“But he wasn’t kind to us!” Pedro insisted.
“He wasn’t trying to be mean,” Kacey explained, “I think he was trying to be funny. But what he did was wrong. I’m sure he’ll be sorry for what he did. But you mustn’t call him names. Promise me you will not do that.”
The others looked sheepish, and finally Keisha said, “Okay, I won’t.”
The others said nothing, but finished cleaning up and then ran to the main lodge for lunch.
Mr. Shillings brought Bartley back to her after lunch and he asked Bartley, “What do you have to say to Kacey, young man?”
Bartley hung his head and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
Kacey crouched down before him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Bartley, but the people you need to say this to the most are Keisha and Pedro. They’re the ones who you did things to.”
She called Keisha and Pedro over to her and asked Bartley if he had anything to say to them. At first he scowled and looked up at her in defiance, but she stood patiently waiting for him to speak. Finally, he said,
“Sorry.”
“There, was that so hard?” Kacey asked, “Now, you three shake hands and go back to being friends. What’s the camp creed?”
All three of them replied, “Do everything with joy, respec
t, and kindness to all.”
“Right. So let’s try to do that, okay?”
Keisha asked, “Can we go now? I’m going to be late for swimming because I have to go get changed.”
“Yes, you may all go now. And remember what we discussed.”
They ran off in different directions.
“You handled that very well,” said Mr. Shillings, smiling appreciatively.
“Thanks. I’ll keep an eye on Bartley.”
“So will I,” Mr. Shillings said, “He needs watching.”