The leaves crackled and rasped as we climbed the hill, and I asked Jade where she was taking me, but she put her finger over her lips and said, “Shhh!” Then in a whisper, she said, “Try not to make so much noise. Sometimes they send boys out on patrol. I almost got caught twice.”
I wanted to ask her who was patrolling what, but I figured I’d get another shushing, so I kept my mouth shut. When we reached the crest of the hill, I looked down and saw we were standing on the edge of a bluff. I still heard the kids laughing and carrying on, but I couldn’t see anything but trees. Jade said, “Come on.” She led me along the bluff to a crevice where we climbed down to a ledge that couldn’t have been more than three feet wide. Judging from the tops of the trees, I guessed the drop to our left was sixty or seventy feet to the bottom, so I walked as close to the bluff as I could. We followed the ledge downward until it opened onto a flat limestone outcropping covered with moss, and Jade said, “This is where I come when I feel really sad.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see why.”
Below us a wide creek swirled and flowed to the east where it disappeared into the trees. On the other side of the creek was a pool, and not some lima bean pool in front of a motor court either; no, this was a half-acre of turquoise water surrounded by a concrete deck with lounge chairs and umbrellas and water slides, and in the pool was something that looked like an enormous inflatable pillow. At one end of the pillow was a tower with a diving board, and one kid would jump on the pillow and scramble down to the other end, and then other kids would jump on and try to bounce the first kid off. The kids were laughing and hollering, and a girl in a red swimsuit and visor stood close to the tower, and when she blew the whistle, the kids would look at her and then go back to whatever they were doing. In the shallow end, four boys had girls on their shoulders, and the girls were reaching out with their fingers like claws to grab the other girls. The girls were laughing and pulling at each other, and the boys dipped down into the water to flip the girls backward, and everybody was having a great time. One of the boys dunked a girl, and a muscled fellow in red trunks blew his whistle, and the boy stopped. The younger kids were going down the slides, holding their hands above their heads and slipping happily into the blue undulating water.
Then something else happened. Beyond the pool, horses came out of the woods, walking slowly with their ears up, and in front was a handsome cowboy wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sporting a fine mustache. Behind him boys and girls with helmets were riding horses—one, two, three, I kept counting more and more horses. How could any place have so many horses? Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. And more. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. Then came the last horse with the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, tall and swaying easily in the saddle, and she wore a cowboy hat, too. You could tell she knew what she was doing by how she held the reins.
Then Jade pointed and said, “Look!” and here came kids in canoes. The canoes were aluminum, and they shone like unbroken promises in the mid-morning sun. Older boys and girls paddled the canoes with a girl in the front and a boy in the back and sometimes a girl sitting in the middle of the canoe. One girl splashed water on the girl in the middle, which made the girl squeal, of course, but the boy steering the canoe was rigid with responsibility. And like the horses from the woods, the canoes drifted before us, one after another in a silvery flotilla, and they continued floating and paddling down the creek until they passed out of sight around the bend.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
“A place called Mort’s Landing. A bus brings them back.”
“What’s the name of this place?”
Jade took my hand and looked at me, and her eyes were blue-green like the water in the swimming pool. “Camp Onyx. I named Onny after this place. Guess what the name of the creek is?”
“I have no idea.”
“Onyx Creek.”
“Oh.” The significance of what Jade was telling me was becoming clear.
“That’s right, Otis. We were supposed to come here. Your story did sound crazy, but I knew it was true.”
I didn’t know what to say. Everything was coming together in a kind of random pattern or a meaning yet to be revealed.
“Over there, that’s Onyx?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Now the kids in the pool were batting a striped beach ball around. The horses were walking along the creek bank, and the girl on the rear horse was still sitting erect and confident. In the crook of the creek where the canoes disappeared was a green field, and the kids there were playing some sort of game. I turned to Jade, and she was watching them, too. She said, “I bet they’re having more fun now than they’ll ever have again in their lives. They look so happy.”
I put my arm around her shoulders, and we kept looking between the trees until she put her hand on my leg, and then she turned to kiss me. I kissed her back, and then we were all hands and mouths and buttons and knots untied. Desire—young, irresistible, and impetuous—overcame us and carried us away, while on the other side of the creek, the Camp Onyx kids were laughing and splashing in the bright cerulean pool.