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Arthur Shuey
What an odd mixture of habits we had, from shoplifting and minor vandalism to paper routes and routine household chores. I woke up before dawn one weekend day later that spring to head into the woods and watch the sunrise and ran into industrious Dirty Andy delivering papers in the Palms complex. Not to be entirely out of character, of course, he blew his nose in an issue before depositing it outside of an elderly woman's door and set fire to his leftover papers before stuffing them into the corner mailbox. In any event, I told him where I was going, and he said that he and his boys had also recently ventured into Kings Grant.
Again, King's Grant adjoined King's Forest, but was not yet connected to it by road. From where the path on the flank of Lemon Way Woods ended at the dead end of a King's Grant residential street though, one could see what looked like a meadow about three blocks east. Eventually, of course, we had to see what was there and, independently, we had. The meadow was a circular field, just a landscaping feature of the neighborhood, but from its far edge could be seen empty fields and woods, entered from a broad, cleared path suitable for dirt bikes in good weather. It was easy enough to take a quick tour of this area by bike, and we were delighted to find a small, apparently clean lake, two broad fields grassed to knee level, an adjoining, impassable, brackish marsh bordering the Lynnhaven River and, to the right, an uncertain width of hardwood forest. This was my destination when I ran into Andy on his paper route, and it was our mutually agreed destination the next Saturday dawn, when he and Ronny Gayle were to show me a new shelter they were working on.
I got there at the agreed time, and my canteen wasn't more than half empty before Ronny Gayle walked up with two shovels over his shoulder. Together, we trod the path along the edge of the field, turning two corners before cutting into the tall grass. The shelter he and Andy were working on was a dug one and as yet incomplete. The architectural plan was simple - a seven foot cube space with four coffin-sized arms extending from the wall centers at half of their height. Once completely hollowed out, this lovely dwelling was to be covered with plywood - one eight by four sheet over each of the three sleeping chambers and the entrance tunnel and two over the central space. The plywood would then be covered with the mandatory tarp stolen from a construction site, and this in turn would be covered with fresh sod. By midsummer, the whole affair would be impossible to see from any distance greater than ten feet.
I helped Ronny Gayle dig for a couple of hours, and then Andy rode up on his bike, carrying an old shotgun his father didn't know he'd borrowed, intent on quail. Not much else happened that day and I don't think anyone ever actually slept in what would have inevitably been a muddy pit. We continued to frequent "Queen's Lake," however, settling on a piney, tick-infested peninsula just across the water from houses as our next mass campsite.
It wasn't altogether a bad choice, really. It was as great a distance as one could go on the one Queen's Lake path from its one entrance, which would give us maximum warning if parents or the law came looking for us. It was right at a sure source of drinking and swimming water and possible source of foodfish. The brush was dense at the waterline and we could avoid annoying the homeowners two hundred yards away by banking our fires by day and not shouting. These simple precautions were beyond us.
It was at this campsite that I first smoked pot, though I'd ridden in enough cars full of dope smoke to have felt its effects more than once. J. C. Frye's parents came out to check on their boy, who of course was not supposed to be hanging around with most of us, so we hid in the bushes and had to remain silent, though we were high as kites, as the adults stirred our coals and said stupid adult things like, "I'd be a hobo, except for the rain." We were all carrying knives, too.
Yes, we were carrying knives. Mine was a Herter's Crooked Knife, with six-inch blade with two inch upsweep and comfortable rosewood handle, perfect for daily campsite chores from slicing through barbed wire to trespass on an innocent farmer's land to cutting neatly through a sleeper's hammock rope. It held a good edge and was fairly well balanced for throwing. The Crooked Knife lasted through two years of abuse before the blade shattered on a rock. On the trip now being discussed, I sliced the front of Jim Cannon's tee shirt while he was wearing it with that knife for no good reason.
Too many people at Princess Anne High knew about our camping trips, and we were visited when we next went to Queen's Lake by Dean Klein, one of the most feared delinquents in the school. I can't speak for the others, but I was afraid of the guy, figuring that he would at least drink and smoke as much our substances as possible, load his pockets with the rest and beat someone up before leaving. Worse yet, he might stay the weekend.
The call of the wilderness to go and explore combined with the call of discretion to go away from Dean Klein led me to pocket my pint of J. W. Corn and hit the trail shortly after his arrival. A couple of hours later, half figuring that Klein would be gone and half drunk enough not to care, I went back into camp. Inquiring of Jim Cannon where Dean Klein was, I was answered with a finger pointed at my tent.
"He's in there."
"That's about the size of it."
"What'd you let him go in there for? Our stuff's in there and we've got to sleep there tonight."
"Well, I figured you'd take care of it when you got back to camp."
"What's he doing in there?"
"I don't know."
Leaving unhelpful Jim Cannon in some trepidation, I walked near my nylon home away from home and addressed a massive pair of cheap work boots. "Hey Klein, what are you doing?" Imagine my surprise when I was answered by a series of quacks. It seemed that our hooligan visitor had picked up someone's bb gun and shot a duck in the head, stunning it severely. He had then leapt into the lake and caught the poor bird, become enchanted with it in its continued swoon, and was now intent on training it for the circus.
There is only one way to deal with a big, bad son of a bitch. Actually, there are two ways, drunk and aggressive. I have striven throughout my life to be both whenever necessary and was certainly so that day. "Klein, you stupid motherfucker, get out of that tent and take your goddam duck with you!"
I was lucky that day. I was lucky that
Dean Klein felt less at home and less secure in the woods than in the hallways
of our school and lucky enough to realize and reflect on the fact that he was
exactly my opposite in that regard; that the usual tables of intimidation were
to some extent turned there at the campsite. Lesson One was, "Get your
enemy on your own turf." Lesson Two was, "Get that goddam duck out
of that tent." Klein left, but he gave us all the incentive to look for
another squatting place.