The Little Friend

“Welcome, ladies,” he crowed, leaning into Edie’s rolled-down window. “Praise the Lard!”

“Hear hear,” replied Edie, who did not care for the more evangelical tone which sometimes crept into Dr. Vance’s conversation. “Here’s our little camper. I guess we’ll get her checked in and then I’ll be going.”

Dr. Vance—tucking his chin down—leaned in the window to grin at Harriet. His face was a rough, stony red. Coldly, Harriet noted the hair in his nostrils, the stains between his large, square teeth.

Dr. Vance drew back theatrically, as if singed by Harriet’s expression. “Whew!” He raised an arm; he sniffed his armpit, then looked at Edie. “Thought maybe I forgot to put my deodorant on this morning.”

Harriet stared at her knees. Even if I have to be here, she told herself, I don’t have to pretend I like it. Dr. Vance wanted his campers to be loud, outgoing, boisterous, and those who didn’t rise naturally enough into the camp spirit he heckled and teased and tried to pry open by force. What’s wrong, cantcha take a joke? Dontcha know how to laugh at yourself?! If a kid was too quiet—for any reason—Dr. Vance would make sure they got doused with the water balloon, that they had to dance in front of everybody like a chicken or chase a greased pig in a mud pit or wear a funny hat.

“Harriet!” said Edie, after an awkward pause. No matter what Edie said otherwise, Dr. Vance made her uncomfortable too, and Harriet knew it.

Dr. Vance blew a sour note on the clarinet, and—when this too failed to get Harriet’s attention—put his head in at the window and stuck his tongue out at her.

I am among the enemy, Harriet told herself. She would have to hold fast, and remember why she was here. For as much as she hated Camp de Selby it was the safest place to be at the moment.

Dr. Vance whistled: a derisive note, insulting. Harriet, grudgingly, glanced at him (there was no use resisting; he would just keep hammering at her) and he dropped his eyebrows like a sad clown and stuck out his bottom lip. “A pity party isn’t much of a party,” he said. “Know why? Hmn? Because there’s only room for one.”

Harriet—face aflame—sneaked a glance past him, out the window. Gangly pines. A line of girls in swimsuits tiptoed past, gingerly, their legs and feet splashed with red mud. The power of the highland chiefs is broken, she told herself. I have fled my country and gone to the heather.

“… problems at home?” she heard Dr. Vance inquire, rather sanctimoniously.

“Certainly not. She’s just—Harriet is a bit big for her britches,” said Edie, in a clear and carrying voice.

A sharp ugly memory rose in Harriet’s mind: Dr. Vance pushing her onstage in the Hula Hoop contest, the camp roaring with laughter at her dismay.

“Well—” Dr. Vance chuckled—“big britches is one condition we certainly know how to cure around here!”

“Do you hear that, Harriet? Harriet. I don’t,” said Edie, with a little sigh, “I don’t know what’s got into her.”

“Oh, one or two skit nights, and a hot potato race or two, and we’ll get her warmed up.”

The skit nights! Confused memories rose in a clamor: stolen underpants, water poured in her bunk (look, Harriet wets the bed!), a girl’s voice crying: You can’t sit here!

Look, here comes Miss Book Scholar!

“Well hay!” This was Dr. Vance’s wife, her voice high-pitched and countrified, swaying amiably toward them in her polyester shorts set. Mrs. Vance (or “Miss Patsy” as she liked the campers to call her) was in charge of the girls’ side of the camp, and she was as bad as Dr. Vance, but in a different way: touchy-feely, intrusive, asking too many personal questions (about boyfriends, bodily functions and the like). Though Miss Patsy was her official nickname, the girls called her “The Nurse.”

“Hay, Hun!” In through the car window she reached and pinched Harriet on the upper arm. “How you doing, girl!” Twist, twist. “Lookit you!”

“Well hello, Mrs. Vance,” said Edie, “how do you do?” Edie—perversely—liked people like Mrs. Vance because they gave her the space to be especially lofty and grand.

“Well come on, yall! Let’s head up to the office!” Everything Mrs. Vance said, she said with unnatural pep, like the women in the Miss Mississippi pageant or on The Lawrence Welk Show. “Gosh, you’re all grown up, girl!” she said to Harriet. “I know you’re not going to get in any more fist-fights this time, are you?”

Dr. Vance, in turn, gave Harriet a hard look that she did not like.

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