Heather Whited

The Rain and the Last Day of Camp

They were two boys, alone in the deep of the woods, miles from anything but themselves. They’d been alone since waking up that morning and finding that the rain, which had been going now for three days, had not stopped and that everyone else at the camp, the adults and campers and other counselors, was gone. 

Beds were left in states that gave Toby and Robert no clue as to what had happened to their friends. Some beds were made, some were not. Both imagined ghostly indents of bodies in the beds that seemed to have been occupied, but neither said anything to the other about it. 

They spent the first part of the day doing things in each other’s vicinity but pretending like they weren't doing them together. They dressed and brushed their teeth. They looked out the window at the dark of the morning, the bent trees in their arthritic twists. Toby went to the door of the boy’s cabin and opened it, but he waited for the sound of footsteps before going outside. Robert appeared behind him.

“Morning,” said Robert, though they'd been awake for hours.

“Morning.”

“Where are we going?”

“Don't know,” said Toby. 

The camp was flooded, but together they brought dry blankets from the girls’ cabin up the hill. They waded to the kitchen several times and secured all the food they could. All the while they did not speak. Neither tried the phones. The silence of all other life but theirs told them that they wouldn't work.

After a long morning of going up and down the hill to the boys’ cabin, which sat at the very top of the camp’s grounds, they both napped. The boys chose bunks side by side and turned away from each other to sleep. Toby dreamed of home, of a cold Christmas. He dreamed of fire. 

When Toby woke, Robert had made sandwiches for lunch. The cabin was lit with several flashlights sitting, balanced upright on their handles, on dressers, and on the floor. He stretched. A second blanket had been put over him. 

“Hungry?” asked Robert. He was on his bed with his knees drawn to his chest. 

“Yeah,” said Toby. 

“You might want another sweater. It’s getting cold.” 

Toby turned his head. There was one folded next to his pillow and he put it on. 

He went to Robert’s bunk and sat across from him. They joined hands, palms touching but their fingers tight together like soldiers in a row. They closed their eyes. Robert said the grace, his soft voice speaking the words in a way that tickled Toby’s skin, and they looked at each other for a long time when it was done and they had opened their eyes. 

“Thanks,” said Toby. He removed his hand from Robert’s. The prayer was a phantom in the air and Robert’s touch was another phantom, a feeling like they were still touching. Robert finally looked away. 

“Sure.”

They both finished their sandwiches in a few bites and looked around. Their eyes fell on the stack of canned food in the corner. 

“Let's have some of those green beans,” said Robert. 

“Sounds good.”

There was a moment of pause before Robert moved. Toby realized when Robert stood and walked over to the food they'd brought up that morning that he'd remembered a can opener and was grateful as he had only just thought of it. Robert opened the can of green beans and brought it back to bed.

Toby liked this bit of domestic pretend, the feeling of a sliver of adulthood as he ate alone with Robert, a meal Robert had made for them. A leak had developed in the roof and as Robert returned to the bed, he heard water drip onto the floor in the corner. I’ll have to fix that, Toby thought, and he smiled to himself.  

They set the can of green beans between them and ate with their hands. 

“Where do you think everyone went?” asked Toby.

“Don't know. Do you think it was the rapture?” 

Toby stopped eating. He raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“You don't believe that stuff do you?”

“Well,” said Robert, blushing, “It’s what Pastor Mark says.”

Toby withdrew his hand from the can they were eating from. His face was soft and sympathetic, like his mother’s when she had to break the news his cat had died when he was eight.

“Pastor Mark-”

“We weren't good enough,” Robert mumbled. A second too late, he seemed to realize the implication of what he’d said and his eyes got large. Two pink dots on his cheeks pushed his blushing into full bloom.

“I didn’t mean- Not you, of course.”

Toby shook his head but didn't say anything else. He didn’t want to embarrass Robert any more than he already had.

When they were done eating, they leaned back against the wooden wall of the cabin. There was a window just above them and its shutters shook with a fierce wind. 

“I think,” said Toby, “that we should go for a swim.”

“A swim?”

“What else are we going to do with all this water?”

Robert smiled. Robert smiled at him. A warmth like a summer dusk settled on him. 

They stepped outside together and at the same time, began to make their way down the muddy hill. Their feet slid and Toby soon lost a shoe and soon after that, he cut his foot on a fallen branch.

At the bottom of the hill, they stopped and stood reverent in front of the water. Toby was the first to peel his shirt off. He kicked away his other shoe. Robert followed. He put a foot into the water and Robert followed that as well.

Toby took his foot out of the cold current of the flood and stood still. He felt Robert just behind him, watching, and was compelled by knowing he was there, curious and timid. He slipped off his pants and left them in the mud and he waited, standing bare and goose bumped. Robert did the same and then took a step toward him. They entered the water. 

The flood was gentle enough. The water came to their hips and tugged but it wasn't forceful. Toby felt a hand on his back. Then another on his shoulder. After a second, he relaxed against Robert's palms and Robert dipped him back into the water and then pulled him back up. He came up spurting, ice cold.

“You?” asked Toby.

The offense on Robert’s face was clear.

“I'm already baptized.”

The water carried things by while they stood there; tennis rackets, duffel bags, hunks of trees ripped from the woods. Robert and Toby stood watching the parade, holding hands. When they had been standing there for several minutes, Robert let go slowly. Clouds further overtook the afternoon. Night fell quickly and early. Toby knew that was wrong, knew it was the last week of July, but he didn’t want to scare Robert.

They went back up the hill and back into the cabin. Toby shivered as he searched for dry clothes with shaking hands. Robert, quickly dressed in dry things, brought him a towel and Toby sat wrapped in it until he was steady again. 

The feeling of blood moving to his toes and fingers prickled underneath his skin. He felt, though he knew it wasn’t possible, each drop of his blood warming individually. His skin was overly pink, a combination of the cold still clinging to him and his body overcompensating with a bit of flair.

Fire, he thought. What I wouldn’t do for a fire. Just last week they had one, a huge bonfire. There was a spot on his arm still faintly red from where a stray ember had landed, singeing the hairs there and branding him. It was hard to think that he had hardly noticed Robert at all there that night.

Toby looked down at the floor and saw where he had streaked blood across the room and became flustered for a reason he couldn’t place. Robert followed his eyes and then looked back at him.

“Let's take care of that foot,” said Robert. He retrieved the first aid kit and washed Toby’s foot with antiseptic before wrapping it up with a few nearly maternal movements and a comforting pat to his toes before blushing and letting the foot drop. Toby remained with the blanket draped around him, staring down at the other boy and the rusty flecks of dried blood loosened from his wound as the antiseptic wash dripped down his heel. His chest was tight with held breath. A few dots in his vision. 

“There you go,” said Robert. “You rest now, okay?” 

Toby nodded. 

He watched Robert get dinner together, more sandwiches and a can of pineapple, and leave it to sit waiting for him before retrieving candles from an emergency kit and lighting them. He placed them all around the room and silken shadows popped up beside them and then he returned to the bed.

Toby wanted nothing more than to be there, in the space Robert had set aside for him. So he stood and let the blanket fall to the floor. He knew that Robert watched him, that Robert shyly studied his body with his face half turned away, fiddling with the food. Toby did his part and pretended he didn’t see. The frigid air was painful against Toby’s skin as he dressed. He wondered what had happened, how it had gotten so cold. Robert looked away finally from Toby’s bare body as he put on his clothes and Toby found that he was disappointed. The cold fire on his skin stopped when he was dressed. More sandwiches sitting knee to knee on Robert's bed. 

“This is nice, huh?” asked Robert, as cheerful as the flames on one of the candles. He wore two sweaters and his cheeks were red. “Like, I don’t know, like adults never existed.”

“I was thinking the same earlier.” 

But worry had already settled on Robert’s face. 

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. That wasn’t very nice.” 

“You worry too much,” said Toby. 

“Well, I guess I do.” 

Without thinking, Toby patted him on the knee. 

Toby was the first to kiss. He'd expected resistance, but there was none. Neither had shaved that day, but Robert’s face was smooth. The chill of him, how Robert’s skin gave like velvet against his fingers, reminded Toby of the water. Robert kissed him back. There wasn't any resistance either when he lay Robert back on the bed. 

The rain didn't stop that night, but they fell asleep in the bed together and in the morning, each was still where the other had left him. Each stretched self-consciously as he woke. 

Toby sat up in the bed and Robert turned on his side toward him. 

“You can stay there,” Toby said. He put on the first clothes he found when he reached out; a shirt of Robert’s and his own pants from yesterday. 

“What are you going to do?” asked Robert. Today they could see their breath. Each word froze as he spoke it.

“Just some fixing up. That leak is driving me crazy. I’ll get breakfast in a bit. You stay there.” 

Robert yawned and pulled the covers to his chin and was already asleep again. 

Toby took a shower curtain from the bathroom and returned to the dorm. He moved a dresser to the space under the leak. Water dripped on his face as he climbed up and put the plastic curtain into place over the wet portion of the ceiling. He wiped the rain on his forehead away with the sleeve of Robert’s sweater. Toby secured the shower curtain tightly in place with a hammer and nails from the toolbox the counselor had kept under his bed. He was as quiet as possible but the noise woke Robert and when he turned, Robert was watching him intently. 

Toby climbed down from the dresser and, as he had said he would do, he made breakfast. It was the last of the bread and some jelly from the kitchen. The boys ate in silence and then when the food was done, they sat together on the bed, each wondering what to do with the day ahead but saying nothing aloud for some time. 

“How’s your foot?” asked Robert eventually. 

“Okay,” said Toby. “You did a really good job.”

Robert crawled to the end of the bed, took Toby’s foot in his hand, and pulled the bandage back. 

“I’ll change that,” he said. He reached for the first aid kit, which sat beside the bed, and changed the dressing on the long cut across Toby’s heel. Toby remembered how last night Robert had been dressed and he hadn’t and he liked that today when Robert cared for him again it was the other way around. Robert returned to Toby at the head of the bed and covered himself against the freezing morning. 

Toby lay back next to Robert and covered himself as well. It was a minute before Robert took his hand. 

“You’re very handsome,” he said to Toby. 

Toby wasn’t sure if the compliment needed to be returned, but he didn’t think it did. He wasn’t good with these things anyway. He could have said something about the softness of Robert’s skin, or his disarming smile, but he didn’t.

“Was last night… was that it?” Robert asked. 

“No,” said Toby. “I mean, I don’t want it to be.”

“Me either.”

Robert pulled himself up and kissed Toby. They stayed in bed for the morning enjoying the gift of each other. 

It was evening soon. Dinner was three cans of cold soup, drank straight from the tins as they back against the headboard, feet touching under the blankets. As if nothing at all had happened over the last few days, they talked about television and movies. Robert acknowledged finally that in the emergency kit, there was a battery-operated radio and wondered if they should get it out.

“What?” asked Toby. Sudden images of the world that had that they had left or that had left them. A world where there was noise and people but no Robert. 

“Yeah,” said Robert in a whisper. 

It took them an hour to decide to retrieve it and turn it on. 

They turned the dials and at first, there was only static. Both smiled a little and both were surprised at their own smiles and then at the smile of the other boy that met him when he looked up. Robert moved the dial again and there was a single cracked word that cut into the quiet of the cabin. One of Robert’s hands rested on Toby’s wrist and Toby’s pulse quickened. 

“No,” said Toby. He put his hand on Robert’s over the dial.

“Toby…” 

“No.”

Robert pulled his hand away from Toby’s in a gentle movement and turned the dial back slowly. Toby began to shake. 

The voice was more clear this time. They managed to make out instructions, and news of rescue teams. They heard the name of the town close to the camp. 

The boys looked at each other. Tears welled in Toby’s eyes and Robert switched the radio off. 

“I don’t want to see that thing anymore,” said Toby, mumbling as he turned his face to hide the tears that he tried to control. So, Robert crawled down from the bed and put it away, hiding it at the back of a dresser. 

When he came back to bed, Toby was crying openly. 

“Do we have to leave?” Toby asked. 

“Of course not.”

Robert took him into his arms and again, they slept.

Heather Whited graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2006 with a BA in creative writing. She lived in Japan and Ireland before returning to her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee to obtain her graduate degree. She now lives in Portland, Oregon. She has been published in the literary magazines Straylight, Lingerpost, The Timberline Review, A Door is Ajar, Allegro, Foliate Oak, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Windmill; The Hofstra Journal of Art and Literature, Chantwood Literary Magazine, Cricket, Storm Cellar,  Forge, Gravel, The Hungry Chimera, The Broke Bohemian, The Arlington Literary Journal, Wax Paper, Projected Letters, Borrowed Solace, Edify Poetry, Evocations, Fleas on the Dog, Change Seven, Splash!, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Dillydoun Review, Gold Man Review, Delay Fiction, The Bangalore Review, Syncopation Literary Journal, Half and One, Litro Literary Magazine, and soon The New Plains Review. In 2015 she was an honorable mention in Gemini Magazine's annual short story contest and in 2018 and 2020 she was a finalist in the Adelaide Literary Award contest. In 2021 she was a finalist in The Tatterhood Review's Novel Excerpt contest (now Landing Zone). In 2022 she was a semifinalist in Driftwood Press's annual short story contest, and in 2022 she was a finalist in Quarterly West's short story contest. She is a contributor to The Drunken Odyssey podcast and Secondhand Stories Podcast.