Around half-past midnight, two dudes walked into our camp. I heard them coming before they walked right through our non-existent front door, but that just meant that I was on my feet to greet the guests.
They didn't even notice Bob sleeping there when they stepped on him and moved forward to us. Bob apparently didn't notice them either, because he only gave a single grunt when they stepped on him. If he was woken up by that, he wasn't showing it.
I don't remember feeling any fear at first. I didn't see any weapons in their hands. They didn't look happy, but I didn't see any viciousness in them, either.
Schwifty also got to his feet, visibly shaking. Roseanna sat right where she was, sitting on top of that tarp we had. The tarp that we had found in Tom's trunk over a month ago. The tarp that we used at camp every single day since.
I asked these guys what was going on. The small guy did the talking and his bigger buddy backed him up. Guy #1 told us that they had just started camping in the Park, not very far from us. Guy #1 said that he left his bag in a bush nearby earlier today and now it had been stolen from him. I said, “Tell us what the bag looks like and we'll keep an eye out for it.”
I noticed that Guy #2 had moved behind Schwifty to get close to a pile of sticks. Schwifty yelled out for Bob to wake up right now. Without looking at Schwifty, I held my hand out to quiet him, and he shut up for the moment. I asked Guy #1 to please tell us what we could do to help him out. He said, “You could give me back the bag you stole from me.”
Roseanna barked at him right away. “Fuck you! We didn't steal your shit!”
I knew she wouldn't shut up with a wave of my hand, so I just kept talking to Guy #1 as calmly as I could. “Look man, we didn't take any bag out of any bush. You can see in my eyes that I'm not lying about this. Look around our place, do you see anything here that belongs to you?”
Guy #1 gave a little look around. He said, “I see that tarp you got there. I had a tarp just like that inside my bag that went missing. That's my fucking tarp.”
The three of us spoke at once. “You're mistaken this isn't your tarp.” “Fuck you we've never seen you assholes before get the fuck out of here!” “Bob wake the fuck up right now goddammit!”
Guy #2 yelled at us to shut up. He was swift when he moved over to face me. Even though I saw the big stick in his hand, I didn't flinch. I couldn't allow myself to feel fear. I instinctively followed the training I had received so long ago. I confronted these intruders without flinching or avoiding.
Guy #2 said, “We want to do things the nice way. We don't want to hurt any of you, unless we know that you're not playing nice with us. I don't know for sure if any of you took his bag, but he's saying that this is his tarp. Unless you can prove that this isn't his tarp, we're gonna have to take it. And I'll most likely be forced to hurt one of you in the process.”
He took a step back, indicating that he was done talking. I turned back to Guy #1 and said, “All right then. You have to agree with me that this is a plain brown tarp. There must be an infinite number of brown tarps that look exactly like this one. Now, if you look at this tarp closely, you will see a bunch of holes from all the cigarette burns we acci--”
Apparently I was taking too long, because Guy #1 yelled more, then he reached down and grabbed the tarp. Roseanna was still sitting on top of it. Guy #1 gave the tarp a yank and Roseanna tumbled backwards, hitting her head on the tree next to her.
That's when I moved my body over to Guy #1 and pulled him up to look at me. Guy #2 came at me with that stick raised above his head but I didn't falter. I let Guy #1 know that I was displeased with him. I was loud when I spoke, not angry. The best way I can describe what I did is that I impinged on him.
“I CAN'T LET YOU DO THAT TO A LADY. APOLOGIZE TO HER RIGHT NOW.”
I must have impinged on both of them. Guy #2 never attacked me. Guy #1 lowered his head and told Roseanna he was sorry. I glanced at her. Seeing the rage in her face gave me the only tiny bit of fear I would have that night.
I turned my attention back to Guy #1. I did my best to return to that calm state of beingness I had before. “You didn't let me finish. I want us to resolve this with no more mishaps. Is there anything significant about your tarp that will make you certain that you're looking at your tarp?”
Guy #1 said, “Yes, I put my initials on an inside corner. I used a regular pen to make an indentation in the fabric and then I traced over that with a Sharpie.”
“That is excellent to hear. Go ahead and look at every corner of this tarp.”
Guy #1 turned to the tarp. He saw that Roseanna was standing on top of it and he looked at me. “I don't want to do anything else to harm this lady here. But I can't look at the tarp if she's standing on it.”
I told him he should ask her nicely to move. He asked her if she could please move off the tarp. She cursed at him and he looked back at me for help.
I asked her very nicely, “Can you please step off the tarp so he can take a look at it?” She growled and shuffled her feet a little, but she hadn't moved off it. “Baby, the faster you move off that tarp, the faster this is all over with.”
She stepped off the tarp and Guy #1 inspected it. I kept my eyes on Roseanna. I saw what she had in her hand, held close against her leg. She had a strong grip on that knife of hers. That monster knife that she rarely took off of her right hip. That knife that she would sometimes sleep with.
I told myself that if shit hits the fan and she decided to use that knife tonight I needed to stay out of her way. I instantly made my “what if” plan. I would drop to the ground and roll through a gap in the branches next to me. I'd let her attack Guy #1 while I found a rock or some blunt object I could use. There was no doubt that she could overpower Guy #1 easily, so I needed to focus my strength on Guy #2, who very likely would already have swung his stick at Schwifty. As long as I could overpower Guy #2 before he did any serious damage, we might just be able to live through this. It only took me a second to see this potential future with precision.
It took Guy #1 the same second to see that this was not his tarp. He said, “Oh shit. My tarp is definitely bigger than this one.”
Guy #2 stepped next to Guy #1 and asked him, “Are you saying now that this isn't your tarp?”
Guy #1 said, “Yep. I was wrong.”
Guy #2 instantly dropped his stick and turned to me. He briefly said, “I'm sorry about this” and turned back to Guy #1 to tell him, “This was your fuck-up. You need to make this right. Goodbye.” Then Guy #2 was gone.
Guy #1 was almost on knees as he kept saying how sorry he was for making this mistake and what could he do to make it up to us and oh man he was so sorry that all of this happened. Roseanna yelled and cussed at him. I said, “Ok fine, you're sorry, now get out of here.” Then Guy #1 was gone.
It was over. We were safe.
Roseanna's rage hadn't lessened one iota. I tried to say something to calm her down but she screamed at me. “Fuck you! Don't tell me what to do!”
I turned to face Schwifty. He was crying and scared out of his wits. I put my arms around him and shushed his tears. I told him, “You're safe now. We're all safe. We're alive. Nothing terrible happened. Nobody got hurt.”
Roseanna yelled, “Fuck you! I hit my head against that tree! I got hurt!”
I said, “You're correct and I'm sorry that I forgot about that. How badly did you hit your head?”
“I don't fucking know how hard I hit my head! I just know that it hurts!”
I said, “I hear what you're saying. Will you let me look at the back of your head to see if you're bleeding?”
“Fuck you! I didn't crack my head open! I'm not bleeding! I hit my head and now my head hurts! Don't ask any more questions about my fucking head!”
I took a deep breath. “This whole thing could have gone so, so much worse. There's nothing I can say to take any pain away. I only ask that we all be thankful to be alive right now.”
Schwifty embraced me with a hug but Roseanna needed to yell “Fuck you!” again. Bob sat up in his bed. The first time he did or said anything since the intruders had stepped on him when they first arrived. I forgot about Bob. Holy motherfuck, how could he sleep through all of that and only wake up now?
Schwifty and Roseanna certainly never forgot about him over there. As soon as he sat up, they converged on him. They yelled over one another loudly, both essentially screaming the same things. “How the fuck could you sleep through all of that? We were attacked and you were asleep for it all! We could have died and you would have right slept right through it! All those times you talked about tough you are! You're a worthless old piece of shit!”
I yelled at the two of them to stop, which just added to the noise and confusion that Bob was finding himself in. Bob woke up enough to holler at them to stop. He flailed his arms to get them out of his face. There was quiet for a moment, so Bob asked what happened. Schwifty and Roseanna talked over each other and Bob flailed his arms more and told them to stop. Then he specifically asked Roseanna to tell him what happened.
Her brief summary of the events: “Two dudes came up here to camp accusing us of stealing their things. Then they tried to attack us and we fought back. Then they left. AND YOU SLEPT THROUGH IT ALL!”
I said, “Everybody, let's calm down here. The last thing we need to do right now is start attacking each other. We keep on calling each other family, for what reason? If we are a family, we need to stick together. We can't be at each other's throats like this.”
Schwifty said, “The three of us, we stuck together back there. Fucking Bob, he wasn't there with the rest of us.”
Bob said, “I'm still very confused about everything here.”
I told Bob I'd fill him in on the details in a little bit but I needed to make a point first. I made sure everybody was listening to me. “Yes, it is a fact that Bob was asleep during that entire incident. You know why he slept through it? He was up all last night tweeking with you guys, then up all day getting more fucked up on dope and booze. This is precisely what I've been talking about when I keep saying to everybody, hey you know what, maybe we do just a little bit too much speed and maybe it's making life harder on us.”
It came as no surprise that Roseanna would be the first to give a rebuttal on this. “Don't change the subject, don't start another bullshit speech about morality and honesty and all those other dumbass '-ology beliefs' you talk about. If you say one more smart word tonight, I won't be able to stop myself from hurting you.”
I took another deep breath. “Well, it's uh... obvious that continuing this conversation would be... harmful. So, I say we just the shut the fuck up for now. I won't tell anybody what to do ever, but I know that I'm... uh... I don't want to talk no more. I just want to pack up all our stuff and take it to the car. So that's what I'm gonna do now, and that's where I'll be the rest of the night. If y'all want to find me, I'll be in the car.”
I shut up and I packed up our shit. I asked for nobody's help but when Schwifty offered to carry a bag to the car I handed him the lightest bag of the bunch. I walked to the car and found it easy to not care if they were going to follow me or not. I held the keys to the car so that's where I was headed. If they wanted to come along that was fine and dandy to me. If they all wanted to stay back there and kill each other that was also fine and dandy to me.
When I arrived at the car I was fairly impressed that Schwifty stayed behind me the whole way. I didn't realize he was that close to me for that long. We easily completed our task of securing the bags in the trunk. I went to open the doors and let the cool night air blow through the Buick.
Roseanna and Bob approached the car. I was happy that they were walking side-by-side. I told Roseanna she could have the first pick of what seat she wanted to sit in. She wanted to sit in the back, with me next to her. I nodded and saw that she got into the car. I told Schwifty that he should sit in the driver's seat and let Bob have the passenger seat. These seating arrangements were fine and dandy for everybody concerned.
We all got into the car and sat in silence. Don't know how long.
Uncle Bob broke the ice by apologizing to everybody. He said he was ashamed of himself over what happened. He wanted to take a few days to himself, away from us. He started crying when he said he wanted to get his head straight before he did something worse that might really hurt everybody.
I told Bob that I didn't think it was a good move for him to leave us right now. Roseanna coldly said, “He obviously doesn't want to be with us, and I don't want him with us anymore either. We're better off with him leaving.”
Schwifty agreed with her completely. I groaned. Bob got out of the car and went off to be by himself. Silence washed over us once more.
I realized that over the course of these last two weeks, all four of us had left the group for at least one night to get away from everybody else. I left them at the motel and spent the night here in the car. Schwifty left in anger for a few days. Now Bob bounced on us. Roseanna usually spent at least one night a week at a friend's house, but I only remembered one such sleepover night so far this month. Shit, she actually had the best track record for sticking with the fam, at least at that moment in time.
Kyle's car was parked right next to us, as was the usual, and we heard his door shut when he got up in the middle of the night to take a piss. I opened my door and waved to him before he got back into bed. He came over to see what was going on with us. He saw our faces and said, “Oh shit, something happened didn't it?”
They let me do the talking. “I can fill you in on more details tomorrow if you wish, but basically what happened is that two guys came to our camp and accused us of stealing their stuff. Roseanna was the only one that got hurt, thankfully it wasn't a life-threatening injury. We all stood up to them and they realized we hadn't stolen anything of theirs, so they ran away with their tails between their legs.”
Kyle didn't know how to react. He told Roseanna that he was so sorry that this happened to her at the end of her wonderful birthday celebration. He said that he was tremendously happy that all of us were alive, because things could have taken a real bad turn. He asked where Bob was. I waited a moment to see if Roseanna was going to answer this one, but nope it was still me.
I briefly explained that Bob had slept through the whole thing due to fatigue and that he went off to be on his own because he needed to find forgiveness for himself, or some shit.
Kyle reiterated that he was happy to hear that we all kept our cool and didn't make things worse. He said he was going back to bed and he'd see us when the sun came up, but if we needed anything from him don't be strangers. We all thanked him and let him go back to his world.
The three of us felt easier now. I told Roseanna that she needed to lie down in the back seat by herself and rest her body. That was fine and dandy to her. I said that I wanted to go take a walk on the boardwalk, but if she needed me to stay in the front seat and not leave her alone, I'd stay however long she needed. She said she'd be all right by herself. If worse came to worse, Kyle was right there in the next car. I kissed the back of her hand and reminded her that I loved her.
I got out of the back seat so she could get comfortable. I was all prepared to tell Schwifty to come with me, but he didn't need me to say anything. He knew she said she would be fine by herself for the time being. And he wanted to take a walk with me anyway.
After a few minutes of walking, he nervously laughed and said how unusually quiet I was being. I shrugged and said I had voiced everything I had to say on the matter. Schwifty said that he needed to say something important. So I stopped walking and leaned against the boardwalk to listen to him.
“I can't believe how you stayed so in control the entire time. You were never scared of them. But not me. I was fucking paralyzed the entire time. If you hadn't been there tonight...” He couldn't hold back the tears. “...I don't even want to think about what might have happened had you not been there. I'm... I'm in awe of you. You really did save us back there. I was so scared. I just... I have so many violent memories from my past and they all came rushing forward the moment those guys came into our space. So... just... what I'm really trying to say to you is... Thank you for being there. Thank you for doing what I couldn't do. I love you.”
I gave him another long hug. I told him we'd talk more later. Right now we needed to enjoy the peace of the ocean. He agreed and wiped away his cries. We took a walk on the beach, not talking just drifting through the night.
Schwifty found half a pack of cigarettes in the sand, the highlight of the day.
~~~