The wide eyes and open mouths of children followed the ambulance as it climbed the dirt road. The sun threatened to burn into our vision, blinding us. The other children curled their fingers around their eyes creating funnels of darkness through which they could see, while I shifted from one side of the truck bed to the other; trying to see through the browning trees. Several other children who had been playing on the truck stood stiff in shock, their mouths emitting strange choked noises. My first reaction was to laugh. This was a joke…a game. People don’t need ambulances. People don’t die. Dying is for books, for movies. Death belongs to nightmares, not real life. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. He was here just a minute ago, smoking a cigarette, slouched in the chair next to the blazing fire, and now they were going through robotic motions, pounding on his chest, trying to bring him back. I leaned forward over the side of the truck bed, burning my hands on the hot metal. I glanced down at my red, scorched palms, curling my fingers, anticipating an increase in pain that never came.

The morning of that same day, before anything had happened, before anybody had been lost I stood with my mother.

“Will today be the day?” I asked.

“Yes, today is the day we leave,” my mother huffed as she strained to move a cardboard box. Morning dew still coated the grass as I walked out the door through the frosted air. For the entire summer, my family had camped here. We had befriended one family in particular, giving me a very good friend Shane, who was a year or two older than me and might as well have been my older brother. The wet grass clung to the ends of my pants and sneakers as I walked towards the community outdoor kitchen. The smell of burnt food and cigarettes swirled around my head, forcing me to crunch my nose.

“Whacha making?” I asked him while waving my hand in front of my face.


“Well, they were shrimp,” Shane’s father chuckled, sliding the charred batch into the trash.

“Shrimp for breakfast?” I asked.

“Well, I wanted to do something special for the last day, but I’m a little off beat this morning,” he replied shaking his head and taking out a new set of shrimp. When he turned his back, I snuck a burned one out of the trash. I put it into my mouth, expecting it to taste like his usually great food, just burnt. I quickly spit it back out. Nothing like the usual.

After everyone had eaten breakfast, the adults all went their separate ways, cleaning up for the season. I went behind the campers into a small wooded area. I often took time alone to sit in the woods and whittle sticks, scratching off their rough bark until they were smooth. I used sharp jagged rocks protruding from the ground to shape the sticks. This particular stick was about 2 feet in length and was the thickness of a free standing candle. After several weeks of whittling, I was almost completely satisfied with my work. I came out of the woods and sat at the fire pit in order to finish my project. I had whittled the end down to a nub on the rocks, but couldn’t reach the sharp point that I wanted. On an impulse, I held my stick into the fire reasoning that maybe I could burn it into a point. After several minutes, it became apparent that it wouldn’t work and that I had ruined all my work. I pulled my stick back out, the end was black and brittle. Upset, I drove the smoking end of the stick into the ground and stalked off to find Shane. From forcing it into the ground a crack had been broken up the center of the stick. In the end, I kept that stick for several years as a reminder of that day.

Later in the day, Shane and I moved to the field across the street. The grass had become brown and bristly from months of being under the unforgiving sun. We stomped our way across the field, listening to the satisfactory crunch of each step on the grass. We took out the soccer ball and started a game, sprinting up and down the field, diving across the dying grass to save a goal, and screaming and hollering until our lungs were as sore as our muscles. After we had finished playing, everything seemed to be on fire. We had played so long and hard that my face and hair were sweaty and my palms covered in brown and green streaks. My breath and skin radiated heat, even the ground and air seems to be ablaze.

The sun was still hanging overhead, casting an orange tint over our world. We had only a few hours until sunset, so Shane and I, along with some other local kids, climbed into the bed of a truck. We tossed a ball around enjoying the last hours of the day. Adults were milling around and hitching up their campers.

As the day closed, some people were quietly chatting as others were relaxed from the long day of work. The birds that had been singing all day suddenly became quieter, almost as if they were holding their breath.

Suddenly the eerie moment was shattered by an abrupt yelling and someone cried,

“Oh no! Oh my God no!” As I held the ball in my hand, I looked over the side of the truck towards the fire pit. My eyes traveled over the fire, which was crackling noisily, to the collapsible chair. His legs were slightly hung apart in relaxation. One foot rested on the edge of the fire ring, the other strewn on its side. His arms fell past the chair dangling down towards the earth, one of them brushing the grass. His torso and back held the shape of the chair, almost morphing them into one, and his head lay tilted back so his eyes stared into the sky, searching for something, or maybe watching something already found. The ball fell from my shaking hands as another adult dialed emergency help.

By the time the ambulance had arrived, it had been far too late. The paramedics dragged him out of the sun faded chair and lay him down on the faded grass. They continued to work on his until all hope was lost. His body melted into the dead and faded ground which until now had always supported him.

I found myself sitting on the camper couch next to Shane. His face was buried in his baseball cap, hiding the shame. I shifted noisily in my seat, staring at the wall in front of me. I glanced back every few moments to look at Shane’s heaving back and hear his muffled cries. How had the strong boy I knew this morning turned into this? My mom suggested that I go outside and play. I wanted to protest but saw something in my mom’s eyes that convinced me to leave. I stepped outside into the dimming sun and glanced at the dwindling fire. I glanced at the children who were playing in the distance and watched them in disgust. How could they play games like nothing had happened? I walked over and stiffly stood next to them. They called out to me, trying to persuade me to join them in their games. I refused, but they insisted and threw the ball to me. I caught it and cautiously threw it back. Before I knew what my hands were doing, I found myself playing along. My best friend was inside of my camper, crying over the loss of his father, and yet there I was playing ball. There is hatred inside of me, for those moments when I betrayed him. I had let a crack form between us.

That whittled stick is lost now. It was formed by a child who pain couldn’t reach. All humans feel pain, but with varying degrees. Babies cry out of necessity, while adults cry in grief and guilt. I was stuck in an age where I believe that I had some maturity but failed to feel it. Now I doubt my maturity but feel it all the more. I kept that stick, crack and all, until I was able actually process the feelings. Once I had reached that point, there was no need for material reminders of that day. The guilt was there and the pain as well. I took the stick to the edge of my own woods and let it be lost among the trees. It probably feels like a stranger, with its smooth skin in a forest of rough bark.