“So he’s fine?” I asked.
“Yeah, just a little sore,” the nurse replied.
“Are you sore from smashing your sack on that limb or from what your new nurse friend did to you in the back room there?” I asked Dirty.
“That’s not funny, man.”
“Well, you were back there all alone with him for nearly an hour,” I pointed out. “Did it take that long for your examination or were you enjoying his manly hands cusping your nuts?”
“Kiss my ass.”
“Pick a spot—you’re all ass.”
Dirty lunged at me with a swing. I stepped aside, just as he grabbed his crotch in pain.
“Now who’s the puss?” I taunted him.
Returning to camp, Dirty told his tale of busting his nads on the tree limb. He left out the part about why he was up in the tree to begin with. I personally theorized that he was trying to spy on me while I was evacuating my bowels but I did not share this belief with the other Scouts.
I was awakened the next day by Kmart Cowboy yelling into my tent. “Hey, get up! My dad found a badger!”
I hurriedly got dressed and followed Kmart Cowboy outside of my tent. His father, one of the Scoutmasters of our troop who worked in unison with my own father, was seen standing beside a garbage sack that he had elevated off the ground with a rope. A small mammal was spotted running through the underbrush, darting away from the garbage area. “Was that it?” I asked Kmart Cowboy while pointing at the fleeing animal.
“Yeah, I think so,” he replied. “Hey, dad, was that the badger?”
“Sure was,” Kmart Cowboy’s father asserted. “Don’t go over there. Those things are mean.”
Kmart Cowboy and I remained in camp as instructed. We woke up Dirty and proceeded to have breakfast. After we finished eating, we decided to go looking for the badger, despite our Scoutmaster’s admonition to the contrary. The three of us gathered up some large stones for hunting purposes and investigated the area where the badger was last seen.
“Hey, what are you boys doing over there?” Kmart Cowboy’s father asked us, after he observed the actions of me and the other Scouts for a few minutes.
“We’re just looking for the badger,” Kmart Cowboy replied.
“You don’t go looking at something with rocks in your hands. Get back here and leave that animal alone! And put those rocks down.”
My friends and I dropped our rocks and proceeded to mill around the camp for the rest of the morning. “Man, I wish I had my rifle or something,” I said, after nearly an hour of being bored. “We could go blast that badger. I haven’t killed anything in about a week. It don’t feel right.”
“I tried bringing my pellet gun,” Kmart Cowboy reported. “My dad wouldn’t let me, though.”
“You can’t have anything like that here,” Dirty advised. “They’ll take it from you if the staff find out.”
“I brought my sling-shot,” I confessed.
“Yeah, I got a wrist rocket too,” Kmart Cowboy avowed.
A brief pause followed and then Dirty said, “Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Squirrel hunting,” Kmart Cowboy stated.
“Where’re we going to do that?” I inquired. “There’re staff all over this place.”
“Let’s just wait for the morning merit badge activities to start and then we’ll hike out of here,” Kmart Cowboy suggested.
“Okay, where’re we going? Dirty and I explored all of the surrounding areas when we were out looking for bugs. I don’t remember seeing any squirrels around here.”
“We can go to the pine forest,” Kmart Cowboy said.
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a couple miles north of camp. There’s a trail that leads right to it.”
“And there’s squirrels there?”
“Oh, shit yeah! Lots of them.”
“Well, then, let’s go hunting,” I said. “Let me get my tool.”
I returned to my tent and located the slingshot that my father had made for me during the prior deer-hunting season. As he had done as a child, my father selected the crotch of a willow tree and cut out a Y-shaped pattern from the forked branches, the base of which was used as a grip and the two branching legs as supports. After he whittled the willow crotch to the desired dimensions, my father fastened a very thick rubber band to each of the leg supports. He then secured a piece of leather to each end of the rubber band, making a pouch with which to hold projectiles. Although the makeshift slingshot did not look like much, it could easily outperform a professional wrist rocket if used correctly. I snatched up the slingshot and stuffed it into my rear pocket. I then joined Kmart Cowboy and Dirty on the perimeter of our camp. Fire Crotch had since joined them.
“Can I go with you guys?” Fire Crotch asked me as I regrouped with my friends. “This merit badge stuff is boring.”
“Sure,” I said.
“We aren’t going to be back for awhile,” Kmart Cowboy pointed out. “And we have to be a little sneaky so we won’t get caught leaving the troop together.”
“That’s okay,” Fire Crotch replied. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Let’s do it then,” Dirty remarked.
We waited until our two Scoutmasters were busy speaking with the other kids in our troop before we made an exit from our campsite. Once the two men were out of sight, I left the perimeter of our camp, together with Dirty, Kmart Cowboy, and Fire Crotch.
To reach the trail that lead to the pine forest, we had to circumvent several of the initial campsites that formed a perimeter around Scout Lake, the central landmark of Camp Maple Dell. After nearly half an hour of hiking through the surrounding mountainsides to avoid contact with other Scouts, my friends and I found several of the remaining camps abandoned. This saved us time in reaching the trail, as we could then walk the main paths through the empty camps and not have to worry about being detected. Finding the abandoned campsites also provided opportunity for looting, one of my favorite pastimes.
“Damn, check out the size of that grub box!” Dirty stated, rushing over to a large, wooden box that was positioned atop a table in one of the rival troop’s campsites. We all quickly infiltrated the site and began looking through the available equipment and belongings of the other Scouts.
“I wonder what they have in this thing,” Kmart Cowboy stated, examining the secured padlock that sealed the grub box.
“They must have stashed all of the food in that box over there by you guys,” Fire Crotch announced, as he was looking through the rival troop’s camping equipment. “I can’t find anything over here!” He next began rifling through some of the surrounding tents while my other two friends and I explored the main eating area.
“I’m kind of hungry,” Kmart Cowboy said, as he continued to examine the grub box. “How are we gonna get this thing open?”
“Look out!” I warned, stepping toward the grub box with a large stone in my hands.
“Whoa!” Dirty called out, moving aside.
I brought the stone down hard upon the padlock, smashing the hinges of the metal