Daddy bought a new, larger tent, one that had a privacy divider inside it. Once Rebecca stopped going camping with us, I shared a tent with Daddy. It was almost as good as being in my own tent, except Daddy snores like a chainsaw.
At the time, Daddy was working for Hillsborough County as the county administrator. Back then, I didn’t know for sure what that meant, but I knew he was important. I loved going to visit him at work and talking to people. Even at that age, politics and government excited me.
About three months after Rebecca stopped going camping with us, we went camping in the Withlacoochee State Forest. We’d never camped there before, but we were supposed to go canoeing the next day, and I was really looking forward to that, because I’d never been canoeing before. Ever.
Friday night, after camp was set up, we had dinner. It was well past dark by then. Daddy sent me to bed in our tent while he stayed up drinking beer with his friends.
“SusieJo,” he said—a nickname I only tolerated because he was my Daddy and he seemed to love calling me that—“donotleave that tent before daylight, no matter what, without me. Understand?”
I chafed a little at that restriction. He’d never told me that before. “What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
He pointed at our tent from where he sat in a camp chair by the fire. “You can see me from here. If I’m not in the tent, you call for me. I’ll hear you. If I’m asleep, you wake me up. It’s dark, and it’s a new campground you’ve never been to before, and I don’t want you getting lost out there. Plus, it’s hunting season. You wander off and get lost, you could end up shot accidentally. Understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.” I didn’t question it further, because he was my Daddy. And I had heard a few gunshots that evening, but none close to our campground. So his reasons did make sense.
I still thought it was kind of silly, but I was a fairly fearless kid and, again, he was my Daddy. Although we were kind of a ways from the campground bathrooms. Usually we camped closer to the bathrooms than we did this time, and it wasn’t like there weren’t other available campsites closer. Daddy and the men had picked a site at the edge of the campground, bordering thick woods.
There were maybe only four other groups in the campground that night, and none of them were close to us. There also weren’t any lights in the campground, so admittedly I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of traipsing around a strange campground in the dark and possibly getting lost.
I remember it was me, Daddy, Chris Norman—who was Daddy’s very best friend—another man named Morgan Wheedon—who frequently camped with us but who I didn’t like very much—and Chris Norman’s older brother, David. David was also a friend of Daddy’s, but he wasn’t in politics. He ran a chain of tire stores in and around Tampa. But David’s wife, Doris, worked for Daddy. She was his receptionist when he was the county administrator. Later, she would go on to work for him when he was elected to the county commission.
At the time, I didn’t think about the fact that Morgan Wheedon hadn’t been camping with us since the time Rebecca stopped coming. And also that weekend, Rebecca’s father, Edward Soliz, wasn’t with us, either. It was the first camping trip he’d missed in a while.
Morgan Wheedon had light blue eyes, red hair, and pale skin with lots of freckles. He had to use a lot of sunscreen or he quickly ended up sunburned. He always wore a really big straw hat, too. I remember he wasn’t married because he’d gotten divorced recently. It seemed like my parents had discussed his divorce in hushed tones, always growing quiet or changing the subject around me, so I suspected it wasn’t a good thing.
I fell asleep pretty quickly that night. It was a little on the cool side, meaning sleeping was easy and the bugs were practically nonexistent. A particularly close gunshot woke me up at some point in the night, but I didn’t hear anything else and ended up going back to sleep.
When I awoke early the next morning, Daddy was snoring like crazy and I hated waking him up. It was just past dawn, but thick shadows and damp mist lay low to the ground.
I crept around the divider and poked him in the shoulder. “Daddy, I need to go to the bathroom.”
He rolled over, glanced at his watch, then sighed. “Is it daylight?”
“Sort of.”
“Go on. Take your whistle. Blow it if you get lost or have a problem.”
“Yes, sir.” I wore it on an orange lanyard around my neck. It was one of Daddy’s rules, in case I ever got lost. So far, the only time I’d needed it was when a spider crawled out of hiding from behind the handle on the door after I was already in a campground latrine stall, and I’d been too afraid to try to get out.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever live that story down, but my Daddy had rescued me from the evil spider, laughing once he’d recovered from his initial fear that I was being attacked or something. He’d shoved a stick under the door for me and I used that to unlatch the door so he could yank it open and get rid of the spider.
My hero to the rescue.
I made my way through the quiet morning without incident, found the latrine, washed my hands really well, and made it back to find Daddy and the Normans starting to build a fire.
The men acted tired, but that was normal for Daddy before coffee. Once that had brewed, and they all got a mug in them, they perked up.
It was only once we started cooking breakfast that I realized what was wrong.
“Where’s Mr. Wheedon?” I asked.
Daddy and the Norman brothers shared a glance and then looked around.
“Morgan!” Daddy called out. “You want coffee and breakfast?”
“Or did you drink too many beers last night?” Chris Norman called out, laughing. But it sounded kind of…tight.
David Norman smiled, but his expression looked nervous.
