THE LAST NIGHT by Gini Moreau

ON-LINE WITH PASTOR DALE
A Monthly Magazine

FEBRUARY 2001 ISSUE

THE LAST NIGHT

(The following is a fictional account of a wild and forbidden last night of Children’s Church Summer Camp. As time goes on, my mind has forgotten the negatives and exaggerates the positives. So, to those of you who were there, please forgive the exaggerations. This is the night as it has settled in my mind. And, oh - the names have been changed to protect the, umm...guilty.)

Jenny sat on her portion of log in between Mattie and Kirsten. A night breeze raised goose bumps on the skin underneath her flannel shirt. With each warm blast from the campfire only six feet in front of them they scrunched closer together, Jenny scooting her Bible on the ground between her feet. Kirsten’s Bible lay open across her lap, Mattie’s clasped shut between her knees. Each campfire song brought with it assurance of warm friendships and close knit spiritual family ties.

Jenny, a long haired brunette, age 11, found summer camp to be the highlight of her summer each year. Nicknamed, “The Wilderness Woman,“ by her camping buddies, Jenny enjoyed hiking into unknown territory with Pastor John and other “elite“ hikers. She also enjoyed swimming in frigid water, and discovering new and edible plants in the forest. Mattie and Kirsten, both short-haired blondes also liked to come each year to play with friends and experience spiritual renewal. Mattie, nicknamed “Bubbles,“ was also age 11, and had streaks of brown mixed in with her blonde. She was the shortest of the three and also the “bubbliest” - all smiles, all giggles, even during the most inappropriate times. Kirsten, age 12, was tall and slim and didn’t have a nickname but was always around to lend a listening ear, or give advice to the confused. She had a maturity beyond her years - most of the time, that is. Unfortunate for all three, this would be their last year at Children’s Camp. Next year, instead of playing with their friends they would be “hanging” with the dreaded TEENagers at Youth Summer Camp.

“We - e are stan - ding, on holy gro - ound...
“And I know that there are angels, all aro - o -und...,”

they sang into the night, eyes closed, swaying back and forth together on their log. And as the mood became richer, friends all around the campfire began to put arms around each other’s shoulders. And a wave of swaying and glorious singing to the heavens filled the skies and certainly spread joy across the faces of those angelic beings all around who were given charge of these incredibly spiritual children - such wonderful examples of God’s creation.

Jenny’s eyes were closed and head down when Mattie swayed just a little too hard, bumping Jenny so that she, in turn, bumped into Kirsten, who lost her balance for just a moment. Kirsten whisper-giggled but didn’t open her eyes. Jenny shot a glance Kirsten’s way, saw Kirsten regain her balance with the whisper-giggle and then both became reverent again - until Kirsten who had lost her rhythm was swaying the wrong way and bumped into Jenny, whose eyes popped open. Still singing, Jenny bumped back, knocking Kirsten’s Bible off of her lap. Both girls giggled. Kirsten quickly nabbed her Bible and slammed into Jenny who slammed into Mattie who squealed.

“Sh! Sh!” they all three heard. Jenny muffled her giggles by squeezing her lips together as Mattie came at her full force. Kirsten didn’t wait to be slammed but pushed Jenny back toward Mattie. Mattie squealed again and toppled backwards over her log. All three girls laughed out loud.

“Girls!” said counselor Sandy’s voice. “You’re being anything but reverent!” she said in feigned anger and with a face that couldn‘t hide its amusement.

“Straighten up, Mattie!” said Jenny.

“You’re making WAY too much noise!” yelled Ronny from behind as the song finished.

Kids all around the campfire became restless until finally came a word from Pastor John.

“Y’all listen up now!” he yelled. “We’ve had loads of fun this week. We’ve all made some new friends and had fun with old ones too. You’re a good bunch o’ kids! I love ya, each and everyone a whole bunch! Y’all know that. HOWEVER....” Here he paused. “This IS the last night of camp. Lemme tell ya right now that me, Brother Ken, counselor Frank and a few other tough guys will sit RIGHT HERE, by this campfire till late into the night. We’ll be watchin’. Girls - you stay away from the boys! Boys, I’ll sick my dog, Tracker, on ya if I even see ya thinkin’ about it!”

Whispers and sniggers traveled around the campfire.

“And to the person or persons who stuffed my long johns and ran them up the flag pole this morning ...,” Here he paused again as accusations flew. He looked directly at Jenny who held her breath. “I’ll getcha next year!” he said with a wink.

“Jenny, was he looking at you?” asked counselor Sandy. “No,” lied Jenny, “he was looking at Kirsten.” Sandy laughed. “Well, I just know that none of MY girls would do anything like that.”

“No! We wouldn‘t do anything like that,” echoed Jenny, Kirsten, Mattie and other cabin mates who were catching up with them as they ambled through the forest to their cabins.

Moments later they all stood with jammies on in front of the bathroom mirrors brushing teeth, washing faces, and combing hair.

“I have a couple cans of shaving cream,” said Kirsten.

“I’ve got some really stinky perfume,” said another cabin mate.

“I’ve got two shakers of Baby Powder,” said another.

“And whatcha’ gonna do with Baby Powder?” asked Sandy who stepped into the bathroom.

No one answered.

“Well, I’m just wondering because I’ve got a big bottle of baby oil. Thought you might be able to use that too. I mean, if you’re planning what I think you’re planning.”

“You’re going to help?” asked Mattie.

“You don’t think you’ll get past the campfire guards on your own, do you?”

“I can’t believe you’re helping,” said Jenny.

“The best way to get around that campfire is to circle around the entire campground and come around to the main entrance,” instructed Sandy.

“You mean go through the forest and out to the highway?” asked Jenny.

“Right.”

“In our pajamas?”

“Why not? It’s not that cold.”

“Here,” said the voice of someone not from their cabin, “I’ve got a couple rolls of TP. I want to come.”

“Me too!” said another. “I’ve got lotion! I wanna get Ronny‘s cabin really good.!”

Soon the bathroom filled up with eager participants anxious for a night raid on the boys‘ cabins.

“How many do we have?” asked Jenny. She assessed the crowd as it spilled out the bathroom door.

“Maybe 20, 25 or so, Jen,” said Kirsten. “Hey, are we really doing this?”

“Let’s go for it!” said Sandy. “What about flashlights? Everyone needs to buddy up with someone who has a flashlight.”

Jenny, Mattie, and Kirsten headed off through the forest, Mattie holding the flashlight with a trail of slippers and nightgowns following. The followers tried to form a line, although in the forest’s darkness, with a host of bushes and trees that mysteriously appeared along the trail, girls scattered themselves and tried their best to follow a voice in front.

“Mattie, it’d be more helpful if you’d quit swinging the flashlight,” said Jenny.

“Sorry,” said Mattie who walked behind Jenny. She shined her flashlight on the ground directly in front of them. As she focused on the lighted ground ahead she noticed every few seconds, the tips of someone’s toes at the light’s edge.

“Jenny, you don’t have any shoes on.”

“I know.”

“We might have to run, you know.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you wear slippers?”

“I didn’t bring slippers,” said Jenny who picked up the pace. “Why would anyone bring slippers on a camping trip? Besides, it’s easier to run without them.”

“Where’s Sandy?” asked Kirsten.

“She’s at the back of the line,” came a voice from behind.

“At the very back? Oh, boy, I guess we’re on our own,” laughed Kirsten. “The highway is just up ahead!” yelled Jenny, “so we need to be a little quieter!” As they approached the highway Jenny looked back to determine how long the line was. What she saw were groups of swinging flashlights scattered back beyond her vision. Adrenaline pulsated through her body. She grabbed Mattie and Kirsten by the arms and shook them in her excitement. When she could see their faces clearly she laughed a high-pitched, wild-eyed laugh.

“You’re scaring me,” said Mattie with a wary smile.

“Oh, my gosh, Jenny, control yourself,” said Kirsten.

“THIS, will be a night to remember!” said Jenny. “Let’s take a jog!” And with that she pried the flashlight out of Mattie’s fingers and stepped onto the road. She started to jog.

“I can’t see anything!” yelled Mattie who fell in behind.

“Just follow the light!”

“Here!” yelled Kirsten who came up alongside Mattie with another flashlight. “The group behind us had three so they gave me one.”

“Kirsten?” asked Mattie.

“Yeah?”

“We’re running down the highway in our pajamas!”

“Did you just figure that out?” asked Kirsten, breathing heavily. “Just wait till a...

“HO-O-ONK! HO-O-ONK!” blew a semi’s air-horn as it rounded the curve to find a flock of girls and one lone counselor spilling out of the forest, running down the highway in their pajamas.

The trucker turned on his inside cab lights. He slowed and rolled down his window to survey the situation and then waved as he saw that most of the girls were waving and laughing.

“I want to die! This is so embarrassing!” screamed Mattie.

“Hi!” yelled Kirsten, waving to the perplexed trucker.

Jenny looked over her shoulder at the confused, but thoroughly entertained driver who had a Cheshire Cat grin. She rolled her eyes and kept running until he passed. For several minutes they jogged through the night, being careful not to veer off the shoulder, their slippers slapping pavement and bathrobe sashes flapping in the wind. In a night filled with screams and sniggers and other noises that girls usually make when running down a highway through the dark in their pajamas, she could see the parking lot entrance about fifty feet in front of her and suddenly realized the monumental task before her was to quiet everyone down. She ran on until she was within a few feet of the parking lot and then slowed down turning to face the motley raiders.

She deliberated, then started jumping up and down with one finger to her lips and the other arm flailing like a cheerleader’s.

“S-s-sh! S-s-sh!” she whispered as dramatically as she could. “Pass the message back! We’ve got to be quiet now!” she said just above a whisper to Kirsten who was the first arrival. Kirsten turned to a giggling Mattie as Mattie ran into her.

“Ouch! Hell-O!”

“Whoops! Sorry,” said Mattie, full-volume.

“Sh!” reminded Jenny. “You’re supposed to be passing that message back!” “Oh, sorry,” said Mattie, out of breath but still laughing.

And as the message traveled down the line Jenny pressed on with the stealth of a mountain lion. She came to the main entrance which led into a parking lot on her right. As she looked into the parking lot she saw that straight across it about fifty yards up was the campfire surrounded by the silhouettes of several men drinking coffee. She recognized the unmistakable, high-pitched laugh of Pastor John. She looked until she spotted him poking the campfire with a long stick.

“Flashlights off until we’re in the boys’ area,” whispered Jenny. Kirsten passed the message on down the line and lights began to shut off. “There’s a lot of darkness between us and them. If we keep it down we’ll make it.”

Cautiously, Jenny crossed the entrance of the parking lot and began climbing up a small hill that led to the boys’ side. On all fours, in bare feet she really did feel like a mountain lion. She ascended the hill with a line following behind. Once on top she let others pass her as she stood only 30 or so feet from the boys’ cabins. She looked out over the small hill across the parking lot over to the campfire. Gloating over her victory she laughed quietly at the men by the campfire who hadn’t a clue that she was watching their every move. She looked back out to the highway to see a long line of raiders still coming.

“Yes!” she whispered, raising her hands in victory.

And as she turned to cross over into the cabin area her heart suddenly sank. She heard a sound that turned her victory into a scramble for survival.

“HO-O-ONK! HO-O-ONK! HO-O-ONK!” blasted another air-horn as a semi passed the parking lot.

Suddenly, all flashlights around the campfire pointed to the hilltop. “Holy... Jenny, is that you?” came Pastor John’s voice.

And with that she lost her composure and screamed, “Run!”

Girls scrambled in every direction, screaming, laughing, crying and using words that weren’t allowed at church camp. Some girls ran back out onto the highway; some, deep into boy territory. Jenny followed the latter, running down a wide dirt path into a row of cabins, some of which were built two or three feet off the ground with plenty of hiding space underneath. She ran past the first couple of cabins and dove under the third. There she crouched, catching her breath, watching feet pass. Some whizzed by, some shuffled. Some passed by in groups. Some were slippered, some were not. Some were lighted by swinging flashlights, some stumbled in the moonlight.

One large group of feet gathered by cabin number two. By eavesdropping, Jenny gathered that this group was on a sort of “suicide mission,” to seek out and destroy cabin number two at all costs. Bottles popped open, toilet paper unraveled, perfume caps chinked as they were pulled off like pins from their grenades. As the cabin door swung open she listened and watched the frenzied action from her foxhole. Girls cried their battle cries as in all the scuffle and clamor she could hear angry boys’ voices as their sleeping bags and cabin floor were dusted, squirted, sprayed, and TP-ed. Her heart was ready to explode when suddenly a pair of slippered feet slid down next to her, showering her face with pebbles, dirt clods and other fuzzy things that develop underneath boys’ cabins. Jenny spit dirt from her mouth and wildly brushed off her face and neck. She took a second to shine her flashlight into the intruder‘s face.

“Oh, Jen!” said Mattie, who, although breathing heavily, spoke in her usual, bubbly voice. “Glad I found you. Where’s Kirsten? I lost her after that semi blew. I think we‘re in trouble!”

“Don’t know where Kirsten is, but, sh! Look! Someone’s coming with big feet.”

The band of Jihad warriors dispersed leaving behind bottles and empty toilet paper rolls. The big feet stomped up to the mess surveying the area with a high-powered flashlight. Unfortunately for Jenny and Mattie, Mattie had a habit of laughing uncontrollably when she was nervous. And suddenly she became nervous.

“Mattie, stop! This is not funny!”

“Whoever’s under there, you come on out now, you hear?” said an older, husky voice.

Jenny grabbed Mattie by the arm. “Come on! We can out run him!” she said as they slipped out from under the back. They ran behind a cumbersome, bear-like man who was still looking underneath the cabin. On toward the parking lot they ran, passing Sandy and a couple of others whose faces stuck out from behind a row of bushes.

“You’re not deserting us, are you?” yelled Sandy.

“Yes!” they replied in unison and ran on down the trail.

Men were scattered along the pathway rounding up the few who were unlucky enough to be captured. Both Jenny and Mattie glided by these to the hilltop. Here they slid down as quickly as possible and scampered back out to the highway. Although they dared not stop running as they tried to catch up to others on ahead, they began to laugh aloud.

“This is the funnest night I’ve ever had at church camp!” said Mattie. “Told you it’d be a night to remember!” said Jenny.

Finally they came up alongside Kirsten who was running with two others. “Hey guys! Did you get to raid a cabin?”

“I did,” said Mattie. “We really got’em good too. Ronny’s sleeping bag was right next to the door and he was in it - all zipped up and everything. I think I squirted most of my lotion on his head.” The running pack gave Mattie a round of applause. She bowed as gracefully as she could still trying to keep in stride. “What about you, Kirsten?” asked another runner.

“We tried to get Doug’s cabin, but somehow they bolted their door shut. So we just ran around the cabin screaming and banging on their walls. Then we ran away.”

“No fair,” said Jenny. “You guys had all the fun. All I did was hide-out and listen to all the action.”

“Well,” encouraged Kirsten, “someday you’ll be married and have ten children and then you’ll be able to tell them all about what you saw.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Jenny, “I’d rather have sprayed Ronny in the face with my hairspray.”

The girls came to the section of forest that led to their cabins and turned into it. As their eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, Jenny realized that they had been running down the highway in the moonlight, without using their flashlights. Now, in the forest, the moonlight disappeared and everyone turned on the flashlights. With five flashlights all shining in the same direction they began to run faster. Soon it turned into a race. As the night air whipped through Jenny’s long hair she felt a burst of speed welling up inside her. Soon she was in the lead and for a moment took her eyes off the trail, upwards to a patch of clear sky through a small opening in the trees. All at once, quick and painless as a goodnight kiss, Jenny’s foot caught a log. Instantly, she was airborne and flying parallel to the ground. She had been running at such speed that her flight seemed to go on until she thought, hoped, that she would never land.

Thud!

She lay, sprawled, face first, on a flat piece of ground. She couldn’t breath. And for the second time that night, she tasted a mouth full of dirt.

“Oh, my gosh, Jenny! Are you alive?” came the questions along with stomping feet running to her aid. “Talk to us! How did you do that? Did you see how high off the ground you were? Jenny? Can you hear us? Why won‘t you answer?”

“I - can’t - breath!” mouthed Jenny as she sat up and tried to rid her mouth of its gritty contents.

“What?” asked Mattie. “You can’t breath? She can’t breath. What should we do?”

Everyone felt compelled to start slapping. They slapped her chest, her shoulders, her back. Finally, someone accidentally knocked her in the head with a knee. She fell over and gave a huge gasp for air. She was breathing! Oxygen had never meant so much to her. She rolled over on her back and signaled for them to stop slapping. As she took in deep breaths she finally had enough air to spit and cough out the remaining dirt in her mouth. Such a fit of coughing and spitting had never been heard in that forest and as she finished, she became aware of how stupid she must look to her audience. Out of embarrassment she laughed.

“Are you OK, now?” asked Kirsten. But all Jenny could do was laugh. So everyone else did the same. Soon they were roaring so loud and hard, rolling on the ground, falling over themselves, that the forest’s night creatures must have watched with bewilderment, those who were given by the Creator to rule over them on this earth.

30 years later, as counselor Jenny sat up in her sleeping bag shining a flashlight into her face, she relayed this story to a cabin full of attentive eleven-year-olds. Each girl listened intently as she sat next to a friend on her bunk, or snuggled up onto counselor Jenny’s bunk, burrowing into her sleeping bag.

“So the next morning,” continued counselor Jenny, “Kirsten and Mattie and I went back out to see where I had my crash landing.

“Didn’t you break any bones?” interrupted one who had burrowed in next to Jenny.

“Nope. I didn’t break any bones. Didn’t even cut myself. And THAT is truly amazing, because when we went back that morning to check everything out, we saw the spot where I had landed.”

“Did you make a dent in the ground?” came another question. “Nope. The only evidence of my landing was part of my flannel nightgown that must have snagged on a stump. And all around where I had landed were sharp rocks, prickly bushes, tall trees and broken logs. Right in the center of them all was a smooth, flat stretch of ground, just big enough to catch me all sprawled out!”

“How close was the tree?”

“Inches away from my knee.”

“How close were the sharp rocks?”

“They were all around my landing spot, but I didn’t land on any of them.”

“God must have been flying through the air with you that night,” said one wise one.

“Yeah... You’re right,“ said Jenny. “You know, sometimes, we decide we’re going to do something really wild and crazy, and maybe even a little stupid. And even though our decision may not be wise, we decide we’re going to do it anyway. Maybe we do it because everyone else is doing the same thing, or maybe because we just get going and can’t seem to stop, or maybe just because we’re plain ol’ stubborn. And sometimes God just says, ‘OK...’ and lets us go on and do what we’ve made up our minds to do.

“And then He waits and watches. And when the time is just right, He gathers some angels and says, ‘OK guys, this one’s goin’ down. Time to prepare for a crash landing.’ And then He let’s us fall. And as messy, and painful as that fall may be for us, He’s always there, protecting and teaching. And hopefully, once in awhile, we learn a lesson or two!”

“So,” came another wise one, “what you’re saying is that if a bunch of us decide to go raiding tonight everything will turn out just fine? And even though it’s a stupid idea, God will protect us and send angels to fly around with us and stuff like that?”

“No, no,” answered Jenny waving a disapproving finger. “That’s NOT at all what I was saying.”

“Yes, yes,” begged the girls. “A night of raiding! It is, after all, our last night!”

“I’ve got a big can of my dad’s shaving cream!”

“I have a gross bottle of my grandma’s perfume!”

“And I have LOTS of Baby Powder!”

And with resignation, Jenny looked out the window to the heavens above, threw her hands in the air, and said, “Oh-oh, here we go again...”

Our own Gini Moreau is a wonderful author, reporter and poet. This month she delights us with a fictional account of a wild and forbidden night at a Children’s Church Camp long past. Anyone who has ever been to camp will recognize themselves and others along the way.