What Happens at Camp Creek, Stays At Camp Creek.

Even when it’s this hot, he won’t leave the truck running when we gas up. I’m the driver, but he’s the boss. He’ll tsk and reach his long arm across the vinyl bench seat to switch off the key. “Son you can’t do that. We’ll blow up. It’ says so right there on the pump and if you can’t read all those letters yet, there’s a little picture too.”

I’m standing out the door now, pumping. I don’t roll my eyes. I just say,

“How many years have you been down here Red Sox?”

I can see him through the back glass. He takes off his cap. Sweaty, auburn curls stick to his temple, but other little bundles stick straight out like grass that grew too long and too coarse before you whack it down. He doesn’t move his head. That means, “Whatever you are getting at, it’s not worth me moving my head to look at you and probably not worth hearing.”

So I speak up and exaggerate my words to make sure he hears me,

“Finally. Finally. I’m so proud. So proud. Yes sir. I heard it. A perfect placement and use of the word ‘son.’ I could hear your frustration in the way you said it. Yet I could also hear how much you love me. With that little word, you spoke volumes.”

He kept looking straight ahead at a crooked Chinaberry tree and didn’t say a word, but I knew he appreciated the compliment. He’d been trying, but the subtle semantics of that word “son” used by southern men had confounded him for years. Depending on inflection and placement, “son” can indicate friendly chiding or be as bonding as “bro.” It can convey a world of personal disappointment and love that’s tough to vocalize. Once I heard him try to include it only to be made fun of by the guys on the crew, and later, he told me it hurt his feelings because he had an English degree and thought he ought to be able to figure out things like that.

We’d worked together, practically lived together, sat in hot trucks together for enough years that we knew some of each other’s secrets. We knew enough that lots didn’t need to be said anymore. Through the truck window, I could see Ryan was still looking at that tree. He liked Chinaberry trees, but I knew he was imagining that gnarled thing with its dense umbrella canopy as some lone survivor, clinging to life on the volcanic field of this gravel parking lot. I knew he was probably tying it into a story from Robinson Crusoe or Lord of the Flies.

“Whatever. Let’s stop at Camp Creek for a swim.”

Another thing I knew about Ryan was that back in the 70s, way before we knew each other, we both liked The Dukes of Hazzard. One night over beers, he’d told me some convoluted fantasy of him and Daisy in a meadow by a river. He passed long, snowy nights, hiding in his bedroom with a tiny tv, whacking off to Daisy Duke. I don’t recall the details, but I know every time I say anything about swimming in a river, his mind goes straight to Daisy. I”m not making fun. My mind goes straight to Bo and Luke. Bo with his crooked grin and mop of hair that made me think about where else he had black curls.

Ryan does it again, “Son. Quit thinking about Bo Duke and crank up this truck.”

I smiled, touched by his familiarity and by how well he’s using southernisms. When he said “son” just now, I could hear in that little word, “We were sad, geeky horndogs.” I’m so proud of him. He even said crank. I slide back into the truck.

Ryan taps his fist on the front seat between us. Twice. Tap, tap. That’s his little signal; he’s telling me to pay attention to something. I look down at his veiny arm to see a thick, dirty finger extend, pointing ahead and left and he says,

“There’s your new boyfriend. Want me to ask him to come swim with us?”

At the other pump, a muscle-bound fella lights a cigarette, in bright yellow Crocs, camo-shorts, and a T-shirt that reads, ‘’What happens at Deer Camp Stays at Deer Camp.’

I would have rolled my eyes, but Ren swings open our truck door, pushes Ryan to the middle, and in her slowest, movie drawl says,

“Ahh believe you’d call thy-at a Whiyattraeshhautflash! My Oh My! And here I stand with the laaast’a two six-packs of good beer. We really oughta shay-ere. Yallwonna en-vought those fellas to the creek?”

We’re a traveling construction crew based in Columbia. Which, compared to this backcountry spot, is practically a center of modern urban life. In Columbia, hillbilly, lesbian, vegan Ren can be butch and use her spot-on Low-country-boy drawl all she likes. Ryan can be an intellectual Boston boy bemused by the locals. And, there, I can be a typical, queer construction worker guy with a real low country accent.

We’re an odd crew. We have in common a few things that make us work well together. First, none of us worked well on the normal traveling crew of rednecks and Mexican machos. We all analyze things, ask questions, challenge norms. In other words, we’re pot-stirrers. So, a tip-top manager in the company put us all together. We get sent out on small jobs that require figuring out little problems, then mapping out a solution for us or for some other crew to come back and implement. It’s still outside construction- based work though, dirty and hot and hard. Normally, we’d be out in other small cities like Spartanburg or Beaufort, staying in a Red Roof Inn. The company would give Ren her own room because she’s a female. She doesn’t complain about the silly irony of that situation. But in any case, we three end up spending all our time together, finding a decent restaurant at night, then taking our little cooler to sit by the empty pool till ten or so. And doing it all again the next day.

But this time, since we’re way off the beaten track, near the endless hell-hole of a black water swamp where I grew up, we had to figure out other accommodations. I called on an old family friend and found us a very cool place to stay. It’d be called a “farm stay” if it were on airbnb, which it will never be. A little dirt road dips through a pasture taking us down, cows on both sides, so we see the tin roof first. There’s a tiny screen porch with two rocking chairs on the front, a central kitchen with a Formica table, two bedrooms with bunk beds, and a bath off the kitchen.

That’s it.

Ren was excited as she’d planned to go out picking weeds to cook for supper every night. But the farmer couple who’d loaned it to us said they thought Ren would be more comfortable in the main house with them. I understood that to mean a girl staying with two men was just more than this little town could handle. So she hung out with us, picked her weeds, and walked up to the big house to sleep, then back down before sunrise.

We’d worked long days, knocked off by 4, and stopped at the Hebron Marquette on the way home. The only store for miles, it offered gas, groceries, a real butcher section, and a food counter with things like fried chicken or hot dogs rolled up in white bread. We call it the Markett-tee. Ryan spun a tale about how this solitary store got its French name complete with a sign in what someone must have thought was a French font.

The Market-ee always had one or two six-packs of a decent beer. Ren, still going on about the yeehaw fellas in the yellow crocs, reminded us that something, some womyns intuition told her to go on and buy two today. Normally, a six-pack would do us.

Beer being already cold, us being very hot and none of us being modest, we agreed to go right to Camp Creek. I’m pretty sure we anticipated the same thing, shared a similar fantasy of what the afternoon would be like. A cleansing. By beer and black water.

Off the paved road, broom straw, purple-top and goldenrod grows up the middle of the track and some sparse, lanky longleaf pines give a little bit of shade. What used to be a road now is two white sand tracks. Even from inside the truck you can see the course, angular sand like it’s the beach or the stuff they used to put in ashtrays. You wouldn’t turn down this parched road looking for a swimming hole in a million years. Still, there’s a chain across it with the lock fake locked.

Just past the chain, the tracks go down a slope and end at a long wooden table. No chairs. This is where you park and the journey begins.

The path behind the table descends into an iron green grove of trees. It’s cooler as you walk but not just because of the shade. The air changes. It’s charged soft, caressing but sharper. Thick vines lace the trees together. They swoop down toward the rich black ground. Red buckeye, green ash, and yellow-wood bend around us, then massive silver cypress trunks shoot straight up. We’re inside it and a part of it; we push through a chest-high curtain of dwarf palms. An open grassy spot big enough for 8 or 10 people. Three sides of dwarf palmettos walls frame the spectacle.

Camp Creek is more than a stream. It’s a little river. Swift, deep water, just wide enough for a quick swim over to the other bank and back. Look upstream and black water rolling toward you disappears into gray trunks and green canopy. Downstream, a hard-right curve takes it into a sunny, willowy marsh.

That water slithers. Powerful, muscular, silent. But this water speaks to me. In Daddy’s deep voice. I don’t so much hear it or think it; it’s like when people say their life flashed before their eyes. Every time I step up to this water, I feel Daddy repeating a few sentences, each capturing a moment of my life.

“One day son, one day you’ll be strong enough to jump in and swim with the men,” he says with empathy to a boy. Then with an encouraging yell just before my childhood ended, “Push hard now! You wanta launch far up-stream son!” So much excitement and pride I can feel it on my back. “Careful over that way. I hear there’s a meth trailer off the road to the creek. What’s this world coming to, son,” he’s tired, confused by it all. In that little three-letter word I hear something new; I hear him need some comfort. From me. Finally, “Just bring me a cup of water from Camp Creek spring. Son, you remember your Momma always said it’d cure anything?” Now that little word says, “I know it didn’t cure her. And it won’t cure me. And you’ll go on without us.”

All my life and still today, Camp Creek reigns as the thrill ride of country swimming holes everywhere. Inviting but dangerous. A huge black gum trunk lays horizontal partway over the water, the perfect plank leading to a knotted rope hanging from an oak. To get a swing, you have to work your body. Jump, push with your feet, hold on, and pass the log a couple of times pushing off the log as you pass and that will give enough movement to launch and land way upstream. A second of heartbeat, ear pressure, breath-holding then cold, black, powerful tumbling, wrestling, giving in to a place of no words, no old sayings from Daddy, no planning. A bronzy moment of thrill.

The same color as whiskey, the water will change the feeling of your day faster. Wake you up. Wash away the worries. Then suddenly you breathe, bob up, and realize you better start swimming back upstream, back toward the black gum and your friends and Daddy’s voice says, “Get at it son, you’ll end up around the bend with the cottonmouths.”

The cold, the cleansing and the physical exertion to get back take a lot out of you. Teenagers do it twice. Today, we all took a turn, then reclined and opened beers. Ren isn’t really supposed to have beer because of the vegan thing, but she makes an exception for the comradery of the crew.

I’m straddling the log, looking at them on the bank thinking this is the closest I have to a family right now, when this beast of a dog runs through the picture, onto the log with me, and launches into the water. Head up as the current takes him slowly downstream. I needed a dog moment. My old Jack died last year and left a big hole. So I get up and walk along the bank while big black eyes track me. At the muddy willow flats, he pulls out, shakes off, and leans against me; I’m pretty sure we’re in love. “Where did you come from? You must be from around here. You know the routine.” He shakes those black curls and takes off upstream like he’s gonna go for that ride again.

Just as I come up into the clearing from the willow side, someone else descends from the path, parts the palmetto curtain, and steps into our clearing. Ryan jumps up and steps back, stands beside me to assess. We’ve never seen anyone, not even a sign of anyone, here before. Ren keeps her reclining position, holds up her beer, and casually greets this surprise visitor,

“Hey is this your dog? We wondered where he’d come from?”

“Yep, Duke’s with me. If y’all’ll share your swimming hole, I’ll share my watermelon.”

Ren and this woman launch into a conversation like they’ve known each other their whole lives. But that can’t be true. She’s younger. She has a local drawl, but it’s tinged with something Gullah. She says “dat” for “that.”

I also recognize the phrases, the tones as conversation two women have when they’ve only been around guys for a while and are relieved to have found another woman to talk to.

Ryan and I stand back watching, comfortable now that she is not from the meth house. Definitely Not. She’s lithe, muscled, tanned, glowing, and just as comfortable as if she came here to see us.

Ryan and I stay back. Staring. What I haven’t told you all is that this woman looks exactly like Daisy Duke.

She’s got the smile. She’s got the legs and cut off jeans. She’s got on an American flag bikini top, casually pushing forth perfect breasts and a fantasy inspiring cleft. All framed by flowing hair the color, and the power, of this river.

She’s got one of those round watermelons under her arm. With a big kitchen knife stuck in it.

Ryan looks at me. He knows what I’m thinking, “There’s your new girlfriend. Want me to offer her a beer?” I glance down at him to make sure he’s not sporting wood. After all, we are standing in the woods, by a river. With stunning Daisy Duke. In our boxers.

Eliza sits down right beside big old hairy Duke. She props her beer by his back leg and, right on the ground, whacks the melon into parts. Dog trust; he didn’t even look up, didn’t tip the can. Within a few sentences, we connect that her Dad was a few years behind me in school. They called him “Bo Peep” because he had a pet sheep. Now, he has the only sheep farm on the coast and ships wool to artisans across the country. But she’s not interested in southern talk. After she and her brother ran off to schools in the North, they’d ended up in New York, then New Orleans together working on his dream. A film, with a screenplay written by Eliza. Ryan said he had heard of this obscure film.

The writing talk and the woman fascinated him. He’d always said he was a writer with a day job as a carpenter. They get into a deep discussion, making Ren jealous, and me, well, I didn’t care much, but I did feel for a second like the little boy who wasn’t yet big enough to swim with the men. So Ren leads Duke and me on a hunt for something she’s been dreaming about. When we get back and open a new beer, Eliza says,

“You’re a forager? That’s cool. What did you find that we can snack on?”

This woman has seduced Ryan and now Ren. We punch little holes in spotty pawpaw skins and suck out the golden pulp. Tropical, cantaloupe, banana pulp in our mouths, a powerful black water charging the air, compatriots, outsiders doing an insider’s thing and end of day sunshine sneaks in to warm us.

Duke presses his curly neck against my thigh not knowing he’s the part of the story. Eliza believes in immersion. She lived in the swamp outside New Orleans with a creole family and some sort of friendly hairy beast. Details, realism, accent, truth, and myth. Tomorrow, seeking that for a new idea, she’s leaving this creek, stopping in New Orleans to pack, and signing a new film contract. Then seek. She talking about magic, a road trip, and moving to Montserrat. Ryan is mesmerized. A breeze blows her hair around. I noticed some pawpaw fiber on her lip, but they go on dreamily about this island where a volcano erupted and groups of children set up their own society in a world half verdant and half raw.

It all starts tomorrow. For the first time, she really puts on a low country drawl, “My family thinks I’m crazy. They see me running away. But I’m dancing to music they can’t hear,” says Daisy Duke, almost to herself.

She gathers up her watermelon rind, calls Duke,

“He can’t go. I was hoping to find some family here who’d keep him. But no luck.”

We put on our pants, climb the path, up, through the green cathedral, the red buckeyes, into the dry scraggly pines, and we plop stuff down on the wooden table and say goodbyes. Now, I understand the table. This is the end of the journey. It’s also where everyone looks muddy and cut-off jeans seem tired. Our new company flip-phones start dinging again.

Ryan got her number.

And used it.

He was the first to quit work. He followed her to New Orleans. It honestly didn’t surprise me; that’s how he’d come to South Carolina, following a beautiful woman. Doing some pick-up carpentry, he met a different woman, a priest, got married, and settled down in Picayune. He’ll text a couple times a year, “Son, beer sho’ is high out here.”

Ren planned her move. She got an assistantship at Tulane and moved on to New Orleans to study chemical composition of black willow bark. A twist of location unrelated to this whole Eliza story as far as I know.

All along, she’d kept me updated. So I planned a departure from the company to coincide. But I still do the same old thing on my own now. Everybody loves an independent contractor. I do the same sort of project problem solving as before but in my own truck. I bought a new one with a backseat. That old school bench seat that Ryan, Ren, and I used to share just wouldn’t cut it for me and Duke. Black curls aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, especially on these work trips when it’s the two of us in the truck, and I need my laptop out on the passenger seat anyway. He sprawls out on the back seat. While I’m working, he’ll sit up in the bed of the truck looking out. Total trust that I’ll be back. I find a shady place to park, and he’ll sit there all day, rain or shine.

Mostly we drive, thinking up stories, or listening to podcasts.

Today, this guy on the SundanceTV & Film podcast described a new movie called Wendy. He said it’s a re-telling of Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan, full of magical moments under crooked trees that somehow kept growing, clear rivers that somehow kept flowing all through a desolate volcanic island. One day we’ll watch it but without broadband out here on the farm, I just have to dream.

I remember that magical scene, black water silent and powerful, childhood fantasies, watermelon, and pawpaws. I hope she found a way to include that day, somehow to have written it beautifully, like a fantasy. But then I think, nah, probably not, Eliza’s from around here. She’s seen the t-shirt. She knows the rule. What happens at Camp Creek Stays at Camp Creek.