The Call of Lawanda

Avi had once chided him about the GPS. “You can’t stand having a woman tell you what to do.” That little remark, made with love and in jest, nonetheless upset Jason. Because his insights about valuing the contributions, intellect and intuition of women and others was part of what had made the two of them wealthy men.

So, Jason had grudgingly brought the GPS with him at Avi’s insistence, but he’d avoided turning it on until this afternoon when he realized he’d driven thirty miles in the wrong direction. He had been scheduled to speak at a high school in rural Pennsylvania. It was a speech Jason made dozens of times a year, in schools and churches and community centers all over the United States, after a young person took his or her life.

Jason was pleased that his presentation had gone so well. He’d also sold dozens of copies of his books, Bullying: Respecting Our Differences, which was required reading in many schools, and Helping Your Gay Teenager Survive High School. Avi should be pleased. Jason sat in the parking lot of the high school for a few moments and typed the coordinates of his motel into the GPS. He wanted to get there by nine o’clock, because Avi planned to phone him then. It was their nightly habit. The GPS informed Jason that he’d get there just after dark, in plenty of time.

On the road, Jason caught himself yawning. He spent several minutes trying to figure out how to program a search for a coffee shop into the GPS. No luck with a Starbucks in this part of the country, but he figured he might get a decent cup at an Arby’s.

The GPS led him to a shopping center a little way from the Interstate with a sign in the middle of the nearly empty parking lot that read, “Lawanda Plaza.” The name was familiar to him. Hadn’t it been the name of a black housekeeper on a 70’s sitcom? Or could there be a town called Lawanda? He didn’t remember such a place even though he had once worked around here when he was a teenager.

Jason bought a cup of coffee and walked to the railing at the far end of the parking lot to drink it. He looked out across a deep ravine at the Allegheny Mountains, spectacular now that autumn was here and the trees wore brilliant colors of gold and orange and crimson. Across the chasm Jason saw a sign sticking up through the trees, like a hand waving for help. A&W Root Beer. He had loved A&W root beer when he was a kid. He didn’t think they had them in Albuquerque, where he and Avi had lived for the last twenty years.

When Jason got back into his car, he realized he had forgotten to turn off the GPS. “Turn right on highlighted route,” the female voice said. Even though it seemed he would be heading away from 1-80 rather than toward it, Avi’s tease about the GPS burned him. “You just can’t stand to take direction from a woman.” So, Jason submitted.

He glanced down at the tiny screen at his projected arrival time. A pleasant surprise! He hadn’t realized he’d driven so far already! “In point-four miles, turn left onto Ridge Road,” his disembodied companion ordered. Jason maneuvered the car onto a curvy, wooded road. How could a motel stay in business so far from the Interstate? How could the A&W? Nevertheless, he followed the directions of the faceless voice.

The lane was close and lined with trees, and a beautiful drive. This is the time of year, he thought, and as if on cue, a white-tailed deer appeared from the underbrush and leapt gracefully across the road in front of him. “One is three,” said Jason. The wood-lore phrase stuck in his head. “See one deer, two are sure to follow.” It was the kind of thing they taught you at summer camp.

“Continue one-hundred feet to your destination, on right,” said the GPS.

“You’re kidding!” Jason said, out loud. He saw nothing before him except more of the narrow lane, crowded by trees and brush. But he remembered another time in upstate New York when the GPS had sent them through a wooded area like this, and he and Avi were sure they were lost. But they eventually ended up in the parking lot at the rear of the Ramada Inn.

He saw the turning and took it, but brought his car to a stop almost immediately. A faded sign hung from a chain blocking the road. Jason glanced to his left, where a tall wooden totem pole rose from the underbrush. At its top, a carved, grinning badger sat on the shoulders of something with wings. It appeared to Jason that the totem pole hadn’t been touched for many years. Funny. The tradition had been that before opening day every summer, the counseling staff always gave the totem pole a new coat of paint.

Jason sat back and stared at the scene. CAMP LAWANDA. How bizarre that he would end up here, of all spots? Tentatively, Jason opened the car door and climbed out. It was chilly, so he wrapped his arms around himself. He stepped over the chain and walked the few dozen feet to the cliff that looked out over the camp and the little lake behind it. To his right, dangerous-looking wooden stairs with their rickety handrail descended forty feet to the woods below. He could see part of the green metal roof of the mess hall, hidden behind the trees. Fire Lake, beyond, looked as black and uninviting as it ever had.

It probably should have been called Fire Pond, it was so tiny and weedy. Jason’s first job when he was seventeen had been as a swimming instructor here. A traumatic experience for himself and his students; it had been Jason’s task to force skinny, trembling kids into the frigid, dark water. There had once been a splintery pier that the campers had to walk down to get past the pond scum and duck weed to the open water. The pier wasn’t there now. Rotted away, Jason supposed. He looked across the lake and saw the A&W sign from a different angle. It too looked rotted. Decomposed.

Back then the root beer joint was the only action around. After campfire every night the counselors could do what they wanted, and they usually ended up sitting at the restaurant’s picnic tables, drinking root beer that was often spiked with liquor that Jeff Kennedy was able to obtain. Jason remembered all the other staff: Jeff and Linda; Paulette, the pretty exchange student who all the boys fell in love with; Mr. Peters, the camp director; and Lars.

Jason had worked with Lars on the lake. As much as he admired the gorgeous, Nordic-looking nineteen-year-old, he had at the same time felt repelled by him. The senior lifeguard seemed to enjoy torturing kids. At the evening campfires Lars told them about a monster with long hair that lived just beneath the surface of Fire Lake, waiting to grab swimmers by their ankles and drag them under. Telling spooky stories around a fire was a tradition, but Jason remembered how some kids had panicked the next day when their feet touched water weeds below the surface. A young camper named Hobart had pissed himself before even going into the water, and Lars teased him mercilessly. Though he had not joined in humiliating Hobart, Jason hadn’t stood up to Lars to demand that he stop. All these years later, Jason still felt bad about it.

Jason took one more look out over the place where the cabins had been, or might still be, hidden behind the brilliantly colored trees. He turned to walk back to his car, but he stopped again at that neglected symbol of his youth, the badger totem pole. There was a hole in the back of it where, if you left a note and a five-dollar bill in the morning, a three-dollar bottle of Mohawk vodka or cherry brandy would appear by evening.

He got into the car and fussed with the GPS. He must have accidentally reset the coordinates when he had programed his search for coffee. He typed in the address of the motel again and received a nice surprise. He had only 45 more miles to go.

“Turn right on highlighted route,” said the voice.

Jason turned on the radio, hoping to distract himself from the memories that had been conjured by his surprise visit to his past. But he kept thinking about the totem pole as he drove. About the spot behind it where the steep cliff provided a romantic, private view of Fire Lake. It was the preferred place to take a girl, or so said Lars, and Lars would know. The older boy was an expert on everything from the best make-out spots, how to make an elixir that he called “pussy juice,” that would get a girl to put out, and what you had to do to make sure she didn’t get pregnant.

That had been where Jason had taken Linda the final night of the camp that summer. After Lars had given her the mixture of root beer, sloe gin and cough syrup.

Remembering Linda with her curly red hair, her glasses and her braces, made Jason feel ill. It always did. He remembered her good humor and her happiness. Her crooked grin and her enthusiasm. Lars called her “metal mouth,” and said that she was fat and stupid. Jason didn’t think that was true, but he hadn’t defended her. Jason had been afraid that if he did, Lars would stop liking him.

That night at the A&W, Jason had wrapped a blanket over Linda’s shoulders and helped her stumble back toward the camp and the totem pole. She was giggling. She wanted to kiss him. She kept saying, “Kiss me, Sugar-puss!” Jason had spent the entire summer kissing her, though he didn’t really like doing it. Because she wore braces, she had to maneuver her lips into an exaggerated fish face. He kissed her because Lars said you had to kiss girls a lot if you wanted to get past third base and make a home run.

“Continue one-hundred feet to your destination, on right,” said the GPS.

“Shit!” said Jason. Once again, the grinning badger loomed above the trees before him. “God damn it!” he hissed. He picked up the GPS. Had he failed to take some step to enter the address of the motel? The stupid thing had sent him in a circle around the lake! Angrily, Jason entered the address again.

“Turn left on highlighted route,” it said.

Furiously, he started driving again.

He was aware that his anger wasn’t entirely because of the GPS, or because he was lost in the woods. He was angry at himself. How ironic that someone who wrote so much about guilt and forgiveness could remain tortured by one youthful mistake? He’d never been able to forgive himself for his decision to abandon the drugged girl behind the totem pole. He often imagined how humiliating it must have been for her to wander back to the camp that night, alone. It was a terrible thing for him to have done, but he also believed that his cowardly act was the point where his life’s direction had solidified. After that, he knew that what he wanted to do with his life was to keep people from taking advantage of others.

Linda had been so willing, so happy! Before he had managed to lay the blanket on the ground, she had tugged off her shorts. She said, “I never did this before,” and fell over. They kissed and she made moaning sounds, but Jason had felt revulsion even before she had rolled away from him and vomited. He remembered standing up and looking at her there, grinning giddily up at him. Naked and shivering, she leaned up against the back of the totem pole. She had lost her glasses somewhere, and yellow vomit had dribbled down her chin and was pooled in the sweatshirt wadded up in her lap. “Kish me, Sugar-push,” she said, and she giggled.

He ran away. He ran back to the barracks where he buried his face into his pillow. At day break that next morning he was the first to scramble onto a bus out of there. He hadn’t gone to see if Linda was all right. And even years later, when it might have been possible to seek her out on the internet to tell her how sorry he was, he’d never had the guts to try.

Jason glanced down at the GPS. It seemed to blink at him, sleepily. “In point-two miles, turn left,” it said.

“Are you sure?” he asked it. It seemed wrong.

“Drive two-point-six miles to Washcloth Road.”

“Washcloth? Do you mean Westcott?” Was it possible that the device’s battery was running down?

“Are you DRUNK?” he snarled and ripped the GPS from its holder. He tossed the device over his shoulder into the back seat. Twenty minutes wasted, and he knew the damned machine was sending him around the haunted lake again. It would be dark soon.

Jason banged his fist on the steering wheel. He took the next right fast, his tires skidding on leaves as he made a hasty three-point turn. He barreled back down the narrow road, while the GPS chirped, “In point-four miles, turn right—”

He frantically looked through the gaps in the trees over the ravine, hoping to see the A&W sign—hoping that might direct him back toward the Interstate. He felt lost and terrified; like Linda must have felt, stumbling around blind in the dark.

He felt overwhelmed with grief and guilt for the girl who had exposed herself to him, physically and emotionally. Did she later blame herself for his flight? Had she thought she wasn’t pretty enough? That she’d done something wrong? He wished he could tell her that his revulsion was at himself. In that moment he’d seen a truth he had long avoided and did not fully come to grips with until many years later. He ran from her when he realized that he would prefer to be lying on that blanket with Lars.

“Continue one-hundred feet to your destination, on right,” said the GPS.

Perhaps if had he not been distracted by the sight of the badger for a third time—if he had not been driving so fast—he might have noticed the motion in the woods. He might have avoided colliding with the deer and veering off the road, crashing through the trees and going over the precipice of the cliff. But he didn’t.

When he opened his eyes again, he lay on his back. He felt very cold, and stars sparkled above him. He lifted his head and looked around at the bits of glass that lay scattered on the damp, fallen leaves like diamonds that reflected the blue light of the full moon.

He could see that his car was overturned and that his torso, emerged partway from the shattered driver’s window, was twisted in a seemingly impossible way. He found he could move his arms but not his legs. Jason felt no pain and wondered if that was because his spinal cord had been severed, or whether he was simply in too much shock for his pain to register. He might very well be in unendurable pain very soon. That was frightening to think about, but a darker fear overlaid it like a weight. I'm going to die here.

Frantically, Jason searched for his cell phone. He didn’t know whether there was coverage in this God-forsaken place, but he had to try. He simply could not die without speaking to Avi. Without telling Avi how much he loved him. Without telling Avi one more time the thing they had said to one another every night of the last twenty years, “I love you. Sleep well.” He could see the cell phone lying next to his knee, just out of reach of his fingers. He needed a few more inches.

The GPS chirped. “You have reached your destination.”

“Shut up!” he whispered, fiercely. He hated that GPS! Hated that voice. When would it stop talking? Stop torturing him? When would its fricking battery die?

He looked around for something he might use to help him reach the phone, so excruciatingly close. He saw the end of a stick, poking out from behind a melon-sized rock. He nudged at the round stone to move it out of the way. But the thing that was not a stone rolled from its cradle of earth to face him. In dumb recognition Jason stared at the metal braces on the teeth of the skull.

“You have reashed yer deshtination, Sugar-push,” said the GPS. And it giggled.