Into the Great Wide Open Read Free

didn’t know which way he was hoping for. In between, undefined,
unknown
.

    They piled out of the vans at the Girl Scout camp, into the rain in clumps of two and three, wrestling their baggage out of the back of the vans and then racing for the shelter of the buildings. Junie was carrying a camera bag and a tripod, half-unfolded, like a broken umbrella. Kenny lost her in the chinese firedrill. He didn’t see Kim Nichols anywhere, though. He looked.
    All this through the window, waiting for Wentworth to come around. He was a committed sleeper, talented. Living in the same house, Kenny had him pegged for about twelve hours a night, fourteen when he tried. Even awake, Wentworth’s eyelids were heavy, his eyes turned inward, his breathing soft and regular. He might drop off at any second. Teachers hated him.
    “We’re losing,” Kenny said. “Everybody else is getting the good rooms.”
    Wentworth yawned, shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s all boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl anyway. Unless you brought somebody along?”
    “You, baby,” Kenny said. “You’re all mine, big boy.”
    Wentworth blinked at him, annoyed, and Kenny was momentarily sorry. Big, soft, pink boys like Wentworth were sensitive about fag jokes.
    “Mostly this is prearranged,” Wentworth said. “I mean that’s the point—to have a place to go. Little mommies and daddies. We’ll find somewhere to sleep.” He slapped himself lightly on the cheeks, looked reluctantly out at the rain. He was shy about physical discomfort, a delicate boy. “Sometimes you can get lucky,” he said, still looking out the window. “That’s what they say, anyway. I don’t seem to.”
    They ended up in the bunkhouse, a long dim single room with a permanent stink of mouse turds and wet paper bag. There was a wood stove at one end and about sixteen or eighteen iron prison beds, with the requisite gray-and-white-striped mattresses. It was them and two other boys, who stationed themselves at the opposite end, asfar from Kenny and Wentworth as possible. They radiated social failure. Kenny wondered if he did, himself. Like bad breath or something, you couldn’t smell it on yourself. He dug his raincoat out, a faded black thriftstore London Fog, and his Hanshin Tigers baseball cap.
    “You look like a flasher,” Wentworth said. “Where are you going?”
    Kenny knew where he was going, who he was looking for, but he didn’t want to talk to Wentworth about it. “Take a look around,” he said.
    “It’s raining out there.”
    “Right. I noticed that. Actually we were driving though it all day.”
    “Fuck you,” Wentworth said. “I don’t care if you get wet or not.”
    “Dude,” Kenny said. “Actually this is the only raincoat I’ve got. This is the Lone Raincoat.”
    Wentworth looked at it, Kenny shrugged: it didn’t matter. Poor boy, a long way from home. It gave him a kind of power, to know he could live through this. He went out into the weather, alone.
    It was still blowing, misting. He could feel the ocean somewhere close, out past the dunes. The camp was a scattering of cabins with green roofs, everything brown wood or painted brown. Outdoor signifiers, Kenny thought. Smokey the Bear. The cabins sat in a pocket of sparse, wind-whipped pine trees, a little valley in the dunes. The sound of the wind through them was constant and lonely. In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines …
    He went looking for her in the main building, where the vans were parked, a long bungalow of round brown logs. Inside, a fire snapped and smoked in the walk-in fireplace, rustic tables and benches, a half dozen of the fungible white children sitting around, playing dominoes, sipping cocoa, talking to one of the counselors.There was a stereo already playing on the mantel and the same Police tape going again. No Junie. The counselor spotted Kenny and stopped talking, looking up at him with a broad inviting smile. “Hi,” he said