Many people, after hearing Curt and me play together at the ghost camp earlier in the week, expected us both to grace the Quonset hut stage each night. I rarely had enough energy to shower in the evenings, let alone perform in front of an audience. This bummed out more than a few people.
I promised Curt that I’d jam with him on the eve of the first day off. And of course, being the perfectionist that I was, I worried all through the final day of the shift that my guitar playing would fall flat. But as usual, my nervous energy morphed into creativity, and after several shots of tequila from Debbie’s private stock, Curt and I produced some exceptionally stirring rhythms and melodies.
It was a wonderful scene in camp that night. The front panel of the Quonset hut had been unzipped and pulled away, extending our view from the stage down to the sauna and creek where a dozen naked bodies excitedly rotated back and forth between the hot and the cold. As the sun began to set, a large pile of wood was gathered and set ablaze. There was drinking, dancing, singing and laughter. Veteran planters on the crew couldn’t recall ever seeing spirits so high. After fulfilling my musical obligation, Debbie and I raided the kitchen for lemons and salt, cuddled up in front of the fire, and went to work polishing off the remainder of her pure blue agave nectar.
The latter part of that evening took on a warm and fuzzy quality. We talked about everything, from past relationships to our favourite pizza toppings. As the night wore on and people began drifting off to their tents, I summoned the courage to tell her how I really felt about her, but she interrupted me in mid-sentence, saying, “I need more time to think. I still have feelings for…” I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hurt. She was thinking more about him than me, at that very moment. It was more than my little brain could process emotionally. I abruptly rose to my feet and walked away, leaving her to gather up her things and clean up the mess we’d made around the fire with our discarded lemon peels, empty cups and bottle.
I wasn’t quite halfway to my tent when I suddenly realized what an idiot I was. I couldn’t allow her to navigate through the dark alone. I ran back to the fire, grabbed the stick that held the most flame and ran after her. She laughed as I attempted to light the way back to her tent, saying softly, “I know you’re one of the good ones, Non-Stop.”
It was the final week of May and the midday sun was unrelenting. My water intake increased to over eight litres per day as sweat gushed from every pore in my body. It had become so hot, I was unable to maintain normal eating habits. I couldn’t eat breakfast. Barrett, instinctively knowing how our appetites would change as daytime temperatures rose, shipped in two tons of Granny Smith apples from New Zealand. These apples were very high quality—individually wrapped in green tissue, thirst quenching, satisfying. My lunch breaks involved jamming a fist full of crackers into my mouth, chasing them down with several large gulps of tepid water, devouring an apple or two, core and all, and repeating the same drill over again. Lunch was usually over in less than five minutes.
The concept of staying in motion took on a new urgency at this time as well. In the early morning and evening hours, hordes of no-see-ums and mosquitoes swarmed us relentlessly. As the morning chill lifted and the temperature began to rise, clouds of blackflies descended on us, dogging our every move, taking particular interest in our faces. When the sun was at its highest point in the sky, sorties of horseflies and deer flies bombarded us from every direction—wave upon wave, determined to tear small chunks of flesh from our exposed arms and necks. There was no relief unless you were willing to apply 100 per cent DEET to your exposed skin, and even then, it was only effective if you didn’t sweat it off. I sweat my DEET off within minutes. People fashioned hijabs and other forms of headgear out of towels and shirts, soaking them in bug dope in an attempt to escape the torment.2 When an angry yell or scream was heard from across the block—and these were frequent occurrences—it was almost always bug related. Worst of all, no matter how vigilant you were in swatting insects away from your face, it was only a matter of time before a blackfly bit you on that special spot near your eye that caused your eyelid to swell shut, usually for the better part of a week, giving you the appearance of having just wandered off the set of a zombie flick.
People began to drop weight, often dramatically so. Even though I tried to make up for lost calories at dinner, I was shedding pounds faster than I could tack them back on. I began wearing a belt for the first time in years as my pants were falling off my hips.
By mid-contract, we had exhausted all of the ground within walking distance of camp. Sadly, my early morning escapades came to an end, but I kept working in the evenings. Barrett would leave a trike for me on the block—a trike that I had no trouble operating—allowing me to put an extra run in after everyone else called it a day. When I arrived back in camp later in the evening, I could always count on Debbie to greet me at the edge of camp, eager to get me caught up on all of the gossip she’d overheard at dinner. She’d sit with me in the Quonset hut while I devoured my dinner, picking away at her dessert and watching with incredulity as I inhaled one course after another.
One evening after I arrived back at camp a little later than usual, Debbie was nowhere to be found. Brushing aside vague feelings of abandonment, I used the opportunity to take a shower before dinner (the shower tent was nearly always empty in the evenings as people preferred to get clean immediately after work). Just as I was getting lathered up, I heard someone walk past outside and run a hand across the tarpaulin wall. Then the door opened and closed. I had company.
These showers were slightly more private than the setup in the previous camp. Rather than one large open space, there were three medium-sized compartments with two shower heads in each. A six-foot-high tarpaulin separated each compartment. Paying no attention to the person undressing in the next stall over, I gave myself a final rinse and reached for my towel. Then, suddenly, through the layers of mist and steam, a soft, sultry voice inquired, “How was your day, Non-Stop?” I remember wrestling with a temporary stammer as the honeyed tones of Debbie’s query pinged and echoed across every cell in my body. “Ah, ahhhh…good…great!” I finally managed.
Here was the one woman I adored more than any other on the entire planet, naked, showering a few feet away with only a thin sheet of plastic separating us. She asked if I wanted to try some of her shampoo, an intense mint-oil concoction that was popular among treeplanters back then. I accepted and stepped back under the generous spray. As she struggled to pass the heavy jug over our tarpaulin divider, I spotted beautiful chestnut brown freckles randomly and wonderfully distributed across her bicep and forearm. As I considered this exquisite little facet of her anatomy, I realized how much of a mystery she still was to me.
That may have been the longest shower of my young life, with Debbie occupying one side of the tarpaulin divide, me the other, each savouring the moist steamy environment, getting caught up on each other’s day. Of course, my mind raced, wondering if there was greater significance to the encounter—something more meaningful than merely washing away the day’s sweat and grime. One thing was for certain: if her intent was to drive me crazy, she had succeeded admirably. I hoped that this shower routine would become our “new thing.”
After our showers, as we were making our way to the Quonset hut, Debbie warned me that there was a scandal brewing in camp. Some of the treeplanters’ wives back on Cortes Island had been alerted that their men were sharing tents with some of the young ladies in camp (a number of people on the crew called Cortes home, including Barrett and my sister Lina). Apparently, one of the foremen who had been busted—a twitchy character named Ted—was livid, determined to find out who the whistleblower was. Rumour was, I was at the very top of his suspect