“Thank you,” says Judy.
Mrs. Clute nods.
Judy remembers Hayes’s words from earlier. She’s been making good notes, but she wants to be certain she’s gotten her facts correct.
“Mrs. Clute, would you mind if I did my best to write up everything you told me? You could look it over, and sign it if it’s correct.”
The woman looks at her, horrified. “Never in a million years,” she says. “I don’t regret telling you what I told you. But that’s the only help I can give.”
• • •
This, Judy thinks, feels more important than the map does at the moment. She walks down to the Command Post, looking for Hayes at the lead desk. Outside, two investigators are sitting on the steps, writing out statements on their clipboards.
“Hayes inside?” asks Judy, and one of them nods.
“Wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he says. “LaRochelle’s been letting him have it for ten minutes.”
Judy pauses. Muted yelling, through the door.
There’s no good place for her to sit.
“Would you tell him I’m looking for him when they’re done?” she asks.
“Sure, honey,” says the other. Not looking up.
“I’m Investigator Luptack,” says Judy.
“Great.”
• • •
While she waits for Hayes, Judy wanders the grounds of Camp Emerson, doing the work that LaRochelle assigned her that morning. She brings her pad of paper and her pen with her. She stops in front of every building she can spot, sketching its footprint, as if from above. She labels the ones whose use is clear.
When she’s finished, she turns northwest, toward a set of farm buildings that are no longer in use.
They’ve been searched thoroughly, she knows. And to the best of her knowledge, they aren’t used to house anybody.
Still—with nothing else to do until Hayes and LaRochelle are finished—she walks in their direction, pad of paper tucked under her arm.
• • •
There are four structures. Judy knows nothing about agriculture, but one seems to have been a dairy barn, its large doors open to the air outside. Inside, the standing stalls still have that animal smell, though they seem to have been abandoned long ago. Above the barn is a hayloft; a rickety ladder lets Judy climb high enough to poke her head into it, take in the remains of several hay bales standing against the walls.
She descends.
Next to the dairy barn is a small building set up on legs, windowless. Whatever its original purpose, it has since become home to rusting farm equipment. She enters it only briefly, then moves to the building to its west.
The interior of this third building, too, puzzles her at first: its floors are concrete and angle downward toward a drain. Perhaps, she thinks, this was where horses were sponged after exercise? There’s a smell in here she can’t identify, but it sets her on edge.
Then she looks up.
Five metal bars run from one end of the ceiling to the other. From these bars hang dozens of hooks in straight lines.
At last the smell makes sense to her: this was a slaughterhouse.
She stands there a moment longer, her body tense.
Then comes the noise: above her head, the sound of footsteps.
Tracy
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
Survival Trip was never announced in advance. It was, instead, sprung upon them in this way: with an air horn, at 5:30 in the morning, just after sunrise.
All summer, they’d been coached. When the air horn sounded, they would leap out of their bunks and into their clothes, no shower in between, and run as fast as they could to the flagpole.
Whoever arrived first was given extra provisions; whoever arrived last was given nothing at all.
Barbara was up and dressed before anyone else in the cabin.
“Put warm clothes on over your uniform,” she whispered to Tracy, and then she was gone.
Tracy was not last in her group to the flagpole, but she was close to it. And therefore she received, inside the backpack a counselor handed her, only four cans of beans, and a full water canteen. She looked around: Barbara and Lowell Cargill were inspecting tarps, compasses, Swiss Army knives. And the two youngest in her group, who arrived at the very end, opened their backpacks to find them entirely empty. Tracy watched their faces: they were trying to be brave, but their chins were tight with stopped tears.
T.J. Hewitt stood at the base of the flagpole, overseeing the chaos impassively. Once every camper was holding a backpack, she shimmied a small way up the pole and, planting the thick sole of her Danner boot on the cleat, lifted a bullhorn to speak.
“Survival Groups,” she said. “Your leaders will come to you shortly. But remember: they’re there only for emergencies. They will not help you in any other way. In general,” she said—here she looked around the meeting grounds for so long that it seemed as if she was trying to catch every camper’s eye—“you’re on your own. Good luck.”
