The Summer of Our Discontent (8 page)

“That sounded like another threat.” Faith took the steps two at a time and walked into the mess hall, slamming the door in Rachel’s face.

*******

“Hello, cruel world, I’m back,” Rachel said lowly as she walked into her cabin, if it could be called that. It was a tiny room walled to about her waist. The rest was screened to allow a breeze to circulate. There were shutters in case of bad weather to keep the rain out; otherwise it was wide open, allowing very little privacy. The bathroom was miniscule with enough room for a sink and toilet. She tossed her duffel bag onto what could loosely be described as a bed, a six-foot box with drawers and a single bed mattress tossed on top. The only amenity, if it could be called that, was the lone electrical receptacle that allowed her to charge her phone each night.

She frowned as she looked out the window and noticed that Faith was in the cabin next to hers. She could actually spit and hit her if she was so inclined, and she was. Instead, she took out a can of bug killer and began spraying the ceiling and around the baseboards. Large roaches lived in the bark of the surrounding trees, and when the cabins were dormant, they took up residence there, too. She’d learned to evict them the first day or they’d be sharing her bed at night.

Squeals of joy turned into shrieks of terror. Rachel dropped the can and took off running. As she rounded the cabins, she noticed two scouts with their arms outstretched keeping the younger girls back from something near one of the cabins. One of them was pale as a sheet when she pointed and said, “Snake, a really big ugly one.”

Faith flew around the corner of one of the cabins and skidded to a halt. “A what? What did you say?”

“Uh, okay, we’ll handle this.” Rachel tried to smile. “Where is it?”

“By the steps of the blue cabin,”
Ashlyn
Riley, the scout assigned to Kaycee and Sophie, said nervously. “It looks like an anaconda.”

Rachel moved toward the cabin, silently praying that the snake was gone, and peeked around the steps. “Whoa, okay…why don’t y’all head on down to the lake? Faith and I will handle this.”

The girls heard lake and were off like a pack of wild dogs wearing swimsuits with the scouts chasing after them.

Faith put her hands on her hips. “Tell me she was embellishing.”

Rachel shook her head. “It’s a nine-foot-long summer sausage.”

“You’re on your own. I hope you brought your gun.” Faith threw up her hands and turned to walk off but noticed that Sophie and Kaycee hadn’t joined the others. They looked horrified as they clung to each other.

“That was a big snake,” Kaycee said, teeth chattering. “It could eat my mom.”

No such luck, Faith thought as she bit her bottom lip. “I was joking. I’ll help her get rid of the snake. You two go on down to the lake and don’t forget your sunscreen.”

Faith walked back over to Rachel as she watched the girls go. “Is it still there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“They’re normally more afraid of us. Why isn’t it running away?”

Rachel looked disgusted. “Because it ate something…I
dunno
, maybe a cow.”

Faith moved closer to Rachel and got a good look at it. “
Mothe
—”

“Strict rule about profanity here,” Rachel warned, raising a finger.

Faith reverted back to their school days when they’d substituted words for things they weren’t allowed to say. “Monkey farmer, that’s a big bootie snake.”

Rachel nodded as she continued to stare at it. “
Floatin
’ A. Do you think it’s poisonous?”

“I can’t really tell, and it’s not coiling up or anything. Then again, that’d be hard to do with a cow inside of it.”

“We could get some really long sticks and try to pick it up,” Rachel said as she looked around.

“What? I’m not going at an anaconda with a stick. Get your gun.”

“I’m not allowed to use it here unless it’s an absolute emergency, and as ugly as that monkey farmer is, it still doesn’t qualify.” Rachel picked up a branch and tested its strength before she handed it to Faith. She picked up another and prepared for battle. “We’ll get it up on these sticks and drop it in the trash can. Then we’ll dump it somewhere like Montana.” Rachel took a step toward the snake, then looked back at Faith. “I can’t help but notice that you’re not moving with me.”

“That’s because I’ve lost all the feeling in my legs.”

“Poon.”

“I think that qualifies as a bad word.” Faith took another step back.

“You’re a firefighter. I thought y’all weren’t afraid of anything.”

Faith jutted out her chin. “If the monkey farmer bursts into flame, I’ll handle it.”

Rachel rolled her eyes and slowly approached. Poisonous or not, there was no way she was going to leave it to hang around. She exhaled slowly and tried to slip the stick beneath the snake, but as she lifted, the mouth flew open and it bit at the stick. Rachel dropped it, ran backward, and collided with Faith. They landed on the ground with a thud.

“Oh, my God, do you have that snake?” Faith yelled as she thrashed beneath Rachel.

“Stop hitting me.” Rachel rolled off of her and came face-to- face with a sandal. Her gaze trailed up a pair of orange
capri
pants as Keely glared down at her.

“I told you two that I wasn’t going to put up with your bickering. Y’all haven’t been here two hours, and you’re already going at it.”

“We’re not fighting, we’re trying to get rid of that snake,” Rachel said as she got up on her knees and pointed.

Keely’s
jaw sagged. “Funky butt
lovin
’, that’s one big snake. Handle it,” she said as she took off in the other direction.

Faith rolled over on her hands and knees. “You elbowed me in the boob.”

“A fortunate accident. Now get up and help me get rid of this thing. It’s good and pissed off now.”

“And you still want to go at it with a stick,” Faith said as she brushed herself off. “You’re brilliant.”

Savannah Daigle, one of the scouts, came jogging over. “Mrs. Keely told me there was a snake,” she said as she tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear.

“Yeah, you’d better stay back, it’s already struck at me,” Rachel warned.

Savannah looked around the steps. “Oh, that’s just a water snake, they’re not poisonous. Hand me the stick, please.”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said, looking at Faith. “You could get bitten.”

“I live on the bayou, Ms. Rachel. We see these all the time. That’s why Mrs. Keely sent me over here. I usually take care of the snakes.”

Faith stepped up and handed her stick to Savannah, who put it across the snake’s head, pinning it down. “It just ate, and it’s hard to move, that makes them kind of aggressive,” she explained as she grabbed the snake behind the head and picked it up. “I’ll take it down to the marsh and turn it loose. See y’all later.”

Faith and Rachel watched her go. “We were just shown up by a girl with hot pink fingernails and a bow in her hair. This is a very sad day,” Faith said and hung her head.

Rachel nodded. “Sad indeed.”

Chapter Eleven

“That’s it…sit…right there. Sit, sit, sit…damn!” Rachel whispered as she sat alone away from the campfire, disgusted that Faith had narrowly missed sitting on a charred marshmallow. It would’ve made a disgusting mess on the back of her navy blue running shorts.

Rachel wanted to take the high road and put petty differences aside, but if she wasn’t making a conscious effort to push ancient history from her mind, it seeped back in quickly. One of Faith’s favorite insults came leaping out of the recesses—“you buck-toothed, bunny-faced bitch.” Rachel had worn braces for two years to correct the overbite. With bright red hair, freckles, and teeth that could chew corn through a picket fence, she had a lot to be self-conscious about, and Faith exploited every one of her tender places. Rachel only had one card to play, and that was Faith’s weight, but in their senior year of high school, Faith seemed to grow smaller with each passing day. By graduation, she was slim and trim, and Rachel was fresh out of ammo.

The summer after graduation, Faith’s mother died suddenly of a heart attack. Faith didn’t frequent the hot spots anymore. At the creek where almost all the high school crowd hung out to cool off and drink pilfered beer, Rachel had looked over her shoulder, but her tormentor wasn’t in sight. Nor did she show at the diner where all the teens hung out on weekend nights. Faith had virtually disappeared. Rachel went off to college that fall and on her visits home never crossed paths with her nemesis, but she heard of her exploits. It seemed the chubby girl had morphed into somewhat of a Casanova and gave the gossip circles plenty to talk about with her activities. Faith Leblanc had come out of the closet and had ripped the door off the hinges.

Rachel’s gaze moved over to where Keely and the rest of the chaperones sat together. Just like high school, Rachel wasn’t part of the inner circle. If she tried real hard and laughed at all their jokes and feigned compassion when they bitched about their husbands, she might be welcomed to sit with them. But she knew the second she walked off, they’d be whispering about her. She’d caught them on several occasions, usually commenting on how gross they thought it was to be with another woman. And what was worse was when Rachel found herself alone with a few of them, the feigned revulsion went by the wayside.

The previous summer, she’d been in the bathhouse and had just emerged from the shower when Sharon Crawford cornered her. Completely naked, Sharon had asked her to look at a bug bite on her inner thigh. That might
not’ve
been out of the norm for most straight women, but Sharon wrapped her arms around Rachel’s neck and had hiked a leg over her hip before Rachel nearly climbed the wall to get away from her.

So she kept her distance and sat opposite the group at the fire. The children were gathered around the large stones that surrounded the fire pits roasting marshmallows and making
s’mores
. She smiled at Kaycee, who held an empty stick over the flame, her hair still wet from a recent and heavily protested shower. Occasionally, she’d look up at Faith and nod at something she was saying. The smile slipped from Rachel’s face. She didn’t like the idea of Kaycee chumming up with the dark horse.

*******

“I have never been away from my baby more than a day since she was born,” Patty said, her voice sounding tense. “I miss her. Is she okay?”

“She’s having the time of her life. I just tucked her into bed.” Faith sat outside of the mess hall on a picnic table watching the bathhouse. She’d been headed for the shower when she noticed Rachel walking in ahead of her, so she waited and used the time to call Patty.

“I’m off work tomorrow, call me during the day so I can talk to her.”

“I will,” Faith said with a yawn.

“Are you getting along with Rachel?”

Faith sucked her teeth. “You didn’t mention that she was a chaperone when you were talking me into this trip, but you knew, didn’t you?”

“It…uh…probably skipped my mind…I thought you knew.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t. I’d have never agreed to this if I’d known that up front. You’re gonna be doing my laundry for the next year, maybe two.”

Patty’s mumbled “sorry” sounded anything but contrite. The laugh seconds later set Faith’s teeth on edge.

“Ass. You know how I feel about her. If one day you see a mushroom cloud rising from the west, that’ll be us.” Faith noticed Rachel leaving the bathhouse. “I’m going to take a shower now and plot out all the evil things I’m going to do to you.”

“Oh,
Faithy
, I love you, too.”