Bennett The Brave

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Steadily, from just before Halloween and on, snow piled up in the valley surrounding the lake. In my brief years I have seen big snow but it normally arrived in storms all at once. This time, it came in regular, but relentless, dribs and drabs. By December, at least three or four feet covered the ground and it was not going anywhere.

The effect of all that snow on the valley is magical; the tall pines loom above, laden with white and the lake looks like a vast plain of wind-whipped confectioners' sugar. Dark roads meander through the woods, snaking around the frozen lake and disappearing into the blanketed forests, punctuated by the odd cabin or home, warmly lit from within, smoke drifting lazily into the crisp air from a chimney. Old photos from the time when the camp was first built did not look much different, except for the horse-drawn sleighs pulling residents and visitors to the local shop for provisions.

Garret Evans was helping me and Dad as we made ready for "Christmas in the Pines". A pretty ingenious idea dreamed up my father about four years earlier, CIP, as we called it, brought a large group of families from several churches downstate for a solid two weeks of celebration, food, fellowship and prayer during the holidays. Ever since Dad inherited the property from my grandfather, he looked for ways to make the camp profitable again. Christmas in the Pines turned out to be a watershed event because families that came during the winter often fell in love with the place and returned for the following summers.

Dad, Garrett and I put in a lot of hours sprucing up the cabins and lodges so they were very comfortable and inviting. It was also a time of great joy for me. In addition to the glorious anticipation that Christmas is for every kid, it also meant an influx of children that I could play with and enjoy winter activities. The remoteness of the lake meant that most of my peers did not live close enough to play with regularly beyond recess time at school. That left evenings and weekends to either work with Dad and Garrett, or amuse myself. During those alone times, I would read or draw, or go outside and explore among the tall pines until I got too cold and came inside again.

We reached that lull in between preparation and the arrival of the guests, so I had little to do. Walking around back of our cabin, I looked up to the tree house where Neal and I had gone so many times during the summer. It seemed so far away, a lifetime Mayebe, when we climbed up to our not-so-secret lair to giggle and gasp as we poured over the cache of dirty magazines. Sighing, I grabbed the ladder and ascended. I don't know why I wanted to go up there, it was really frigid and the only shelter the tree house could give was against the wind, and not much at that.

Once inside, the interior felt cold and hollow. Every boot scrape against the wooden floor, every movement of my bulky clothing seemed amplified ridiculously, making it feel even emptier. I sat on one of the old sofa cushions on the floor, it felt stiff and unyielding, and I stared out the cobwebbed window to the forest beyond. Snow was drifting lazily down and in the stillness I could see my breath crystallizing in the air and almost hear the tiny flakes of snow hitting the ground.

After zoning out for what seemed like a long time, I reached around to pull out one of the magazines and opened it to somewhere near the center where I knew the good pictures would be. Some of the pictures were set in a tropical zone, where it seemed I was peering through a window from my cold environs to the warmth and humidity of that place. It struck me as odd, shivering in the cold as I was, to be gazing on these bronzed and naked bodies, entwined in such a way as to maximize the display of their conjoined genitals for the camera.

It one picture in particular, a man of impossible proportion hunched over a woman's back, his face a portrait of concentration and effort, sweat beading his shoulders and brow. The woman is facing away from the camera and the focus is entirely on the man, whose position and expression conveys that he is deeply penetrated into her body and on the verge of ecstasy. He appeared frozen there, at the point of greatest pleasure, afraid to move lest he feel his release too quickly, wanting to keep the moment for as long as possible.