If I close my eyes for a moment and concentrate my memory on that tent, I can almost smell the thick, pungent scent of the thick, waxy canvas, it’s pervasiveness coating the interior like new paint on a wall; I can hear the zipper whinge as I pull it quickly up and then back down, careful to keep out the bugs; I feel the hot air through the netting and the sun’s warmth inside the tent that has been collecting all morning; and there are the tall lanterns with their crisscrossed hangers, unlit matches and burnt out ones strewn carelessly beneath the lamps, there, the rumpled sleeping bags, bright plaid flannel interiors exposed to the filtered daylight that streams through the walls and floats as you head into its atmosphere, hovering all around you as though you are underwater in a faintly murky, silent new world.
And there are the books, the latest batch brought home last week, due in another; I have to be quick about the whole business of choosing one and settling down to read, a decision based primarily upon the picture on the cover’s appeal – Miss Tuttle be damned – and how aptly it illustrated what was suggested by the book’s never terribly fascinating title. I must also be mindful of the time because Mark and Charles, the ‘big boys’, (not to be confused with the ‘little boys’, Max and Tony, who have yet to graduate to the tent) are off being boys somewhere along the shore, or in the woods, hunters and foresters as they are. I know that they’ll be gone a while because they are always out and about during these mid-day hours, when it’s too early for the beach and too late to stay in bed. They’ve taken with them their bone-handled hunting knives, the terrifying ones sheathed in tooled leather, their prized possessions.
When I lie down to read, I don’t know which sleeping bag belongs to which brother, but I do know that they will be back soon and that their reaction to my having infiltrated their lair isn’t always predictable, so I have to get down to business immediately. Some days I am welcome to be there – others, not so much. To tell you the truth, I am as interested in the lives and adventures of the Christie boys as much – or more – as I am the Hardys; entering their tent is as close as I can get to them, and all their fascinating boy-ness. So I am looking for clues in that tent – spent matches, GI Joe comics, shards of flint – things that will reveal to me a little bit about the mysterious world inhabited by my big brothers.
