Home is where the heart is. That’s the saying my mother liked, cross-stitched and hung in the hallway. Now I wonder—if I don’t have a home, am I heartless?
I was on the move, deciding to sleep in a real campground, not on a couch or in a doorway. I picked it because it was next to the ocean with a huge sandy beach. And it was close to the highway so Joey could find me.
I paid the park lady for one night with a pile of change, slipping in under the plastic divider like chips at the casino. She passed me a blue registration card. I wrote in my real name. Just in case. People here used to know me. My family came to this beach once.
She gave me the receipt, eyeing me like a social worker. My black spiky bangs, spidery tattoos. My ripped black clothes aren’t classic pastel beachwear, but that doesn’t mean I don’t belong.
The walk-in space was a big grassy oval with room for a dozen tents to set up on the edge against the bushes and the fir trees. The campers had all their stuff on display. Picnic tables with camp stoves and bottles of catsup and fluorescent floaty toys sat on the red checked plastic. Towels hung on sagging clotheslines strung between trees. Two campers had very small tents. Must be hard-core cyclists. The rest had massive tents the size of a bedroom. One site had two tents—one for sleeping and another with mesh sides for bug-free meals.
I pulled the tent out of my backpack. A gift from a do-gooder. I wasn’t sure how to set up this little home away from home. How hard can it be? I spread it on the ground. Then I walked over to a lookalike tent. I examined the rods, crossed over and snapped together outside the tent. Like an outer skeleton. Aha. Then I heard a voice.
“Hey, what do you want?” It was the tent’s owner, a man coming back from the beach with his kid. He sounded annoyed.
I wanted to curse him but caught myself. Don’t escalate the level of violence, they said in rehab. Always take a breath first.
“It’s a borrowed tent with no instructions, so I was looking at yours,” I said, pointing across the grass to mine lying flat on the ground like one of those inflatable Christmas characters after local teenagers pricked holes in them. Then the lawns looked like murder scenes.
While we were talking, his kid ran over to my space. We watched him raise my dome like he was in a race. I pulled out a crumpled fiver from my jean skirt pocket. I handed it to him after I made sure I had enough left for Joey. “Thanks kid,” I said. He skipped back to his father to show him the bill.
I was on my hands and knees unrolling the foamy with my bum sticking out of the tent flap when Joey arrived. “I know you,” he said, tickling my thigh. I backed out and we sat at the picnic table. He brought two takeout coffees and a small bag holding jelly donuts and, most important, the foil package. “Didn’t figure you’d be cooking,” he said.
I pulled a bill out of my pocket.
“Price has gone up this week,” he said. He glanced at the tiny tent. “How about we find a quiet place on the beach?”
I almost laughed and peeled off another bill. “Paid in full,” I said. “Maybe next time.” Sex and sand don’t mix for me, even on a blanket behind a log away from the volleyballers.
Miffed, he took off back to the highway, walking quickly like he was doing a paper route.
On my splintery bench I unwrapped the foil. Just a pill. Easily popped and no prep required. Whatever he had, I bought. A tutti-frutti order. When it started to kick, I unzipped the tent flap and dove in headfirst, my bare legs and black boots still sticking out.
Minutes? Must have been hours later. I felt a ball bounce off the side of the tent. Then the soccer ball hit my legs. And again a shot deflected off my boots. I got my legs under me, scrambling to stand up, wearing the tent on my head before I tore it off. It was almost dark, after the long summer twilight. One family sat around a campfire, singing softly. The mosquito-net family was playing cards under an LED lamp.
“My dad sent me to see if you were okay,” said a small boy beside me.
“By hitting me with a soccer ball?”
“I thought you’d kick me if I got too close.”
“You can get lost now. I’m alive.”
I shook my head to remember who I was. I had returned. Again. Exploring inner space, I called it. I took the path through the forest to the shower building and found a free stall. I took off my boots and my black skirt, and kept my underwear, socks and my scoop-neck top on. Personal hygiene and laundry all at once. I pumped the soap dispenser vigorously and lathered myself all over. To beat the timer, I stepped under the spray before the water was hot. Afterwards, I shook myself like a retriever and then draped over the hand blower near the sinks. I blotted my legs with paper towels. At the mirror, I reapplied my Cleopatra eyeliner and bruise-colored lipstick.
Time to take a stroll through the RV section, past huge motorhomes and small truck campers, past TV sounds, laughter, and the clink of glasses. I came to a middle-sized trailer, a retro Airstream, with folding chairs under an awning. A cigarette glowed red in the dark.
“Looking for a party?” A man’s voice.
“Maybe. You lonely?”
He dropped the butt into a can and stood up, bearded and bear-shaped.
“Let me show you my humble home.”
Susan Down is a fiction writer working on a historical novel. She lives on Vancouver Island.
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