The Days of Bluegrass Love Read online

  “You guys hungry?” Gary said. They nodded and were led to a Burger King, where other recent arrivals were sitting at a long table—delegation leaders from various countries: Denmark, Ireland, Uruguay, all in their twenties and thirties. The kids they’d brought with them had already been picked up by host families. For the first day or so it would just be adults at the camp so they could prepare and get to know each other. Tycho sat down at the table and Oliver squeezed in beside him—even though there was more room next to the others.

  * * *

  THEY WERE CRAMMED HAPHAZARDLY into an air-conditioned van, much like their suitcases, which had been stuffed into another vehicle. There wasn’t enough room. Oliver was half-sitting on the lap of the Mexican delegation leader, and an arm from Josine, the leader from Martinique, was draped over Tycho’s shoulder.

  Gary drove and kept the conversation going. Everyone was tired, but they still tried to respond to things he was saying about Knoxville, about the city hall, the baseball team, the hefty fines you got if you threw candy wrappers out the window onto the highway. Before long they were tentatively comparing notes about the different rules in their various countries, while the air-conditioning mixed their breaths into one. Once they arrived, they found they had to mix again, this time with the group that had arrived earlier that day and had already explored the location of the camp: a public high school, empty for summer vacation.

  * * *

  IN THE VAN, MOST attention had eventually focused on Yoshiyuki, the leader from Japan.

  “Yoshi. Call me Yoshi,” he said, so they did just that. He was the one who, even though he seemed shy and perfectly polite at first, made things so much easier by starting conversations with each and every one.

  Days later, when Oliver and Tycho were recapping those first moments before bed, discussing who they’d seen doing what, they would conclude that Yoshi had been the one that, just by being friendly, had linked them all together—he kept practicing their names out loud, asking people where they were from, and what they liked, silently giving everyone the chance to go over the names and faces.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME EVERYONE had arrived, and all of them were drinking Coke in the cafeteria—the ten leaders, the junior assistants, and the camp staff—Yoshi had already single-handedly broken the ice of their Little World.

  John, the camp director, got up. He waited a moment for everyone to settle down. Then, he grinned and said, “Friends!”

  He gave a speech about “teamwork,” about “trust” and “love.” He explained why this camp was going to be special for all of them and said that he, Carol, and Gary already knew they would never forget these weeks. Everyone was quiet. Most were staring at the glasses on the plastic tablecloth, or at their fingertips. Or at someone else’s fingertips. But as the director spoke more about “spirit” and “fun,” heads began to pop up. He knew how to use words to kindle a flame. And he knew that a fire needed to be fed, because he ended his speech by announcing a pool party that same night, at the home of the Knoxville Little World CEO.

  Someone shouted, “Yeah!” and a few others even started applauding.

  “One more thing,” John said. “You’re all gonna have to turn in your cellphones. But you guys already knew that, right? You can get them back in your free period every other day. Here at Little World, we’re all about real, face-to-face contact.” He grinned.

  Yes, they already knew that. There was an emergency number for parents who urgently needed to get in touch, but that was more for the kids than for the four “juniors.” Tycho had promised his mother and father that he’d message them every now and then, but they knew he wouldn’t be spending all day glued to his phone or a computer. They didn’t do that either. And besides, their campsite had poor reception.

  “Let’s go!” John said—and everyone grabbed their suitcase and went off in search of a bed.

  * * *

  OLIVER AND TYCHO WOULD be sharing a supply closet.

  There were no more rooms. The twenty ten-year-old boys who were arriving in two days’ time would be sleeping in the art classroom. At the back of that room there was a door that led to a storage space crammed with pottery wheels, stools, screws, pliers, and even a loom—all carefully locked away behind see-through chest doors. Now a bunk bed had been squeezed in there too. Oliver claimed the top. His mattress would be the sky Tycho gazed up at.

  * * *

  TYCHO DIVVIED UP THE tiny wardrobe. Oliver was trying to pull the wrinkles out of a button-down shirt. “What do you think of them?” he asked.

  “Who?” Tycho said.

  “The girls.” The American girls, Sherilynn and Donna, their fellow junior assistants.

  “Oh, yeah. They seem like fun. Donna is sweet. She seems like the kind of person you can talk to.”

  “I’m sure we’ll have a great time, the four of us.”

  “Yeah,” Tycho said. “Yeah.”

  * * *

  THE FEMALE LEADERS WERE sitting together, except for Josine, the leader from Martinique, who was swimming laps in the pool with Carol. The male leaders were standing around the barbecue. The taco bar had been cleaned out. The camp director and Gary were drinking whiskey with the CEO from glasses piled high with ice cubes.

  Oliver and Tycho were sitting on the diving board, with Sherilynn—long, brown hair and eyelashes other people only have in beauty commercials—and Donna—tall and alive, with a face that was an open invitation to confide your secrets to—floating in the water around them. But if you glanced their way every few minutes, you’d soon lose count of how often that configuration kept changing—next time you looked up, it would be Oliver and Tycho in the water, and eventually everyone ended up in there. The CEO had someone get bathrobes for them, which they would shrug on only to take them off again moments later.

  “Looks like our junior assistants are getting along just fine.” John, the camp director, chuckled, and the CEO’s wife thought it was all “very sweet.”

  * * *

  IT GOT LATE. THEY’D lit tiki torches and the pool had underwater lighting. Here and there people were chatting. Somewhere in the house, Gary was strumming a guitar. Snatches of songs came drifting through the window.

  It was a warm night and Tycho was falling asleep now and then, fighting his jet lag. Oliver had discovered some deck chairs. They started tussling over who was getting one—there were only three—but then Sherilynn put one of them away and squeezed in next to Oliver between the armrests of deck chair number two. Donna grabbed Tycho’s hand and pulled him down into the other one. No one was paying them any attention, although every now and then the hostess would bring them another carafe of lemonade.

  Later, Tycho couldn’t quite remember what was real and what he had dreamed. Snippets of footage tugged at his mind: whispering in his ear, Donna’s soft hair, someone calling: ‘I found wine! I found wine!’ All of them drinking secretly, Oliver and Sherilynn kissing, a garden shed, an empty bottle clinking on some stones, Carol shining a flashlight and saying that it was late. Feet stepping into a car. Lights along the side of the road. Their supply closet. His fingers knitted together to help Oliver up onto the top bunk. Suppressed giggling. The pillow, so wonderfully cool. Then nothing.

  * * *

  WHEN TYCHO WOKE UP, he saw Oliver, puking into a plastic bag. His strong legs poked out from under his boxer shorts, white and shaky. After throwing up three times he turned around and said, “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” said Tycho. “Must have been the wine.”

  “Yeah,” Oliver said. “The wine. The whole night, really.”

  “Can’t believe we did all that,” Tycho said. “You?”

  “I hardly ever drink,” Oliver said. “I’m trying to be a responsible athlete, usually.”

  He started laughing, but choked. A strand of spittle shot out onto his chin. Tycho threw him a towel.

  Then there was a knock on the door, and they heard Gary’s voice, much too awake: “Breakfast!” Olive
r and Tycho groaned in unison, then burst out laughing at the stereo effect.

  * * *

  THE HALLWAYS OF THE school smelled clean and abandoned—but behind that smell there still was a whiff of sweat, the echo of giggling, worrying, indifferent students. The walls were lined with portraits of alumni. On their way to the cafeteria, Tycho thought for a moment that Nina was staring out at him from one of the frames. Nina, he thought, here? But then he walked into the cafeteria and looked around for Donna. She didn’t come over to join him. She was whispering with Sherilynn. Tycho surveyed the room. Oliver was sitting with the camp director.

  He ended up talking to Brahim from Egypt. There was a little stadium in front of the school: a rubber track and a small set of bleachers, eight or nine rows. Brahim had already been there. He’d gone jogging. He asked why Tycho wasn’t eating, but before Tycho could answer, they heard Carol’s voice over the PA system: “Time for the flag ceremony. Everyone to the flagpole.”

  Right, the flagpole. Tycho had forgotten the words to the song. He hadn’t practiced much back in the Netherlands. He did remember how they were all supposed to stand: in a large circle around the flagpole, with their arms crossed right over left, hand in hand with the person on either side of them. Feet firmly planted on the ground and head held high, eyes on the pole as the flag was being hoisted. And all together now—

  Learn a lesson, make a friend

  In these valleys, in this land

  Here we stand and think and talk

  Take a journey, take a walk.

  Little world for me and you

  Let this world be bright and new

  All of us can feel at ease

  spread the joy and

  spread the peace!

  Tycho looked around the circle—gingerly, not too fast, because even just moving his eyes hurt. Here I am, he thought, and I’m already beginning to forget what my room back home looks like. Already I’m confusing Nina’s face with that of a total stranger. That’s how easy it is: trading one world for the other. As long as you keep walking, flying, running around like everyone else.

  Donna, who had ended up next to him after all—just like that, almost by accident—squeezed his hand. Why? Because of what they were singing? “… for me and you”? What exactly had happened the previous night? Tycho racked his brain, but the hammering in his brain drowned out everything he turned up.

  * * *

  THEY GOT TO USE their phones, if they brought one, and Tycho texted his mother: All good here. Carol is the staff member in charge of us juniors. She’s really nice. The other assistant, Oliver, from Norway, is awesome. They keep using that word here: awesome. The girls are nice too. Hope you’re having fun in Southampton. Bye from the States.

  Her reply: Great. Have fun.

  His mother had probably wanted to write more, but Tycho knew she didn’t like typing on her phone. And the reception out in the countryside wasn’t great.

  X, he wrote.

  X, she wrote.

  * * *

  CAROL PUT TYCHO, DONNA, Sherilynn, and Oliver to work. One chore knocked into the next like a row of dominoes. The hours fell away and slowly all the items on Carol’s list were checked off. Tycho’s headache gradually disappeared, and a strange cheerfulness came over him. Last night was over. No more winks, no more fooling around by the pool. He taught Donna how to say good morning in Dutch—“goeiemorgen,” with that typical guttural “g”—and he and Oliver played a game of who-knows- their-national-anthem-by-heart.

  * * *

  THEY WERE SITTING EATING popsicles when some of the leaders started jumping up to look out the window, sitting down, then jumping up again, their chatter getting a little louder each time, like the rising line on a fever chart: the kids are coming! It was like forty different heads of state would be getting out of the host families’ cars in ten minutes’ time. The excitement was infectious—the juniors rose to their feet too. Oliver ran back and forth to the track, just to move around, and Sherilynn and Donna were giggling.

  There was something Tycho still had to do. Something he had to ask. Something he wanted to know for sure. He asked Donna to walk with him for a moment.

  “Why?” she said.

  “Just come with me a sec,” he said. Outside, in the bright sun, he asked: “What happened between us last night?”

  “Nothing happened,” she said, “nothing that would get in the way of us being friends. Just friends. I have a boyfriend, you see.”

  Tycho stopped and grinned. How silly to be standing there, grinning, he thought. But he was.

  She pushed up her sunglasses and looked at him. Pretty gray eyes. Soft hair. Freckles. Dimples in her cheeks. He gave her an amiable smile. Moments later, he thought: No, of course nothing happened. I knew it. I just wanted to know that she knew too. As they were walking back, he tapped two fingers against her cheek. Donna made as if to ruffle his hair.

  * * *

  CAR DOORS SLAMMED SHUT: host fathers and mothers for a day. Host parents to children they could barely understand half the time. Still, they were all saying goodbye with hugs and kisses. The leaders were happy, the kids impressed. In the midst of all the hubbub, Tycho, Sherilynn, Oliver, and Donna were running around lugging bags and shaking hands. Carol and Director John were talking to the host families—thank you so much, see you soon, is there room at the inn for weekend number two?

  Tycho helped a few of the boys unpack. Most of them had already disappeared: thrown their bags onto a bed, run three circles around the dorm, and then headed off to the stadium with Oliver and Brahim for their first international football game.

  * * *

  SIX THIRTY: DINNERTIME AT the camp. There was so much to see, so much to hear. Tycho’s attention zoomed in and out. He was standing behind the kitchen counter with Oliver, dishing out mashed potatoes. He looked from one child to the next, at what his own hands were doing, at what else was going on in the cafeteria. The line of children was splitting up into small groups that claimed tables by slamming down trays and pulling back chairs, the legs screeching against the floor. There were words in all sorts of languages. Utensils glinting in the light. So many voices, so many colors.

  But from up close they were just faces. Hands. Necks. T-shirts. The Swedish kids that Tycho had ended up sitting with were hyped up. They were fidgeting in their seats, wolfing down their food, and shouting—all at the same time. Tycho was flipping between talking to their leader and talking to them, trying to keep them from launching their string beans at each other.

  He looked around for Donna. She was braiding an Uruguayan girl’s ponytail. Oliver was sitting with the Irish delegation. Both of the boys were called Paddy, Paddy One and Paddy Two, and Oliver seemed to be talking about the offside rule: Tycho saw his friend’s fingers passing the ball in the air.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Tycho was just in time to intercept a spoon, on its way across the table toward someone else’s mashed potatoes.

  * * *

  EVENING CAME AND WITH it a new set of snapshots. Kids’ legs, pulled up into triangles, sprawled out on the floor, tucked under backsides, or stretched out so that you almost tripped over them. All the boys and girls were sitting on the tiled floor of the common room, leaning against each other and their leaders.

  Director John launched into a new speech, pausing now and then so the leaders could translate. Friendship, love, and understanding—they all seemed to use the same sort of sign language to get those concepts across. Next Carol leapt up. She did some kind of trick with a bag of confetti—Tycho wasn’t paying attention, because Sherilynn was tracing letters onto Oliver’s back, and Tycho wanted to know which ones. And why.

  Time for the song and the flag again: arms crossed, yes, like that, right over left, and then good night, sleep tight. Lights out in the dorms just past ten. Chatter and squeals of laughter coming through the doors. Two delegation leaders were on duty outside the girls’ dorm, two more were posted in front of the boys’. The others were chilling o
ut in the leaders’ room, drinking Coke and Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper, with Tycho and Donna operating the vending machine. Oliver and Sherilynn were outside somewhere. Where, Tycho wondered, where?

  It got late and everyone saw the Swedish leader start to make out with Virginía, the leader from Uruguay. Tycho heard Carol say that sparks always fly at Little World. He headed to bed. He wanted to talk through everything that had happened that day. With Oliver. But he guessed Oliver was out lying in the moonlight somewhere.

  The sound of Tycho’s feet trudging down the corridor: never mind, never mind.

  * * *

  ALL THE BOYS WERE asleep. Little sighing mounds throughout the classroom. Tycho tiptoed over to the supply closet. He didn’t turn the big lights on.

  “Hey!” Oliver said. He was right there, lying in the top bunk. His eyes open.

  “Hey,” Tycho said. “You’re still up?”

  “I couldn’t get to sleep.”

  “Too much … going on?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Outside?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Something like that.”

  Tycho wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. He took off his T-shirt. It was a strange feeling knowing that someone was watching.

  “I didn’t sleep with her, if that’s what you mean.”

  Tycho nodded and sat down.

  “Okay,” he said, “okay.” And waited.

  Oliver jumped off the top bunk and sat down next to Tycho—legs wide, his elbows planted on his knees, his hands already gesturing, as if the air had to be stirred for his words to rise to the surface.