The chunk on four-stubby legs doesn’t shy away in the least. Instead, Noodles waddles his blobby self over, snags himself a graham cracker with his tiny hands, and skitters back a little on just his hind legs, looking—if this is even possible for a raccoon—smug as all get out. At this point, anyone and everyone that is on the camp property right now is in hysterics.
Noodles, however, remains unaffected, his little jowls smacking away on a marshmallow. As much as I personally think they’re adorable, I’ve got to be the adult here and see him off–preferably unharmed. Evan, once again, comes to the rescue…
Well, hetriesanyway. First, he attempts to scare it off by approaching it with what appears to be Morgan’s softball bat. Where he found it, I have no idea, but it serves the opposite purpose, however. Instead of running, Noodles inserts himself into the group and starts darting around, collecting whatever other s’mores ingredients lay in his path. Kai is shrieking his fool head off, running around the property like the raccoon is chasing him specifically—which, spoiler alert, it’s not.
It basically just turned into a giant game of tag, you’re it.
I join in, trying to form a barrier with Evan, to encourage the animal to go the opposite direction. A couple of the other kitchen staffers, who stay on the property at night, join in. Finally, our child-wondersuperhero comes to our aid—Riley sprints from his cabin back to us, his balled up Iron Man sleeping bag in his arms. He passes it to me.
I cast the sleeping bag out, like a drag-net, and it lands on the animal. Evan dives in to scoop the now-encased critter up. As he stands, he holds the sleeping bag out like a filled dog-poop sack. Without a word, he stalks off carrying the wriggling catch away from the camp.
I follow along behind him. “Where are you going to take him?” I ask.
“I don’t know. You got any place you’d recommend?”
“Let me go get a head lamp. There’s an old hiking trail out behind here that leads to a brook. Do you think if I let him go beyond that, he’ll be less inclined to come back to where there’s easy access for food?”
“Sure, I’ll just, uh, wait here with my new friend,” Evan snarks.
I return a few minutes later, armed with my headlamp, my hiking boots, and Snarf’s cat carrier. I’m sure he won’t mind if I borrow it for a wayward raccoon. Snarf doesn’t particularly care for it anyway. He prefers to keep his daily adventures to a minimum: sunbathing on my bed in the mornings, eating his meals, mauling his catnip-filled mice, and sunbathing in the living room in the afternoon.
Must be nice to have that much free time to be lazy. Wish he could bottle some of that up and give it to me.
Noodles makes a few warbled noises and a couple of grunts, but otherwise allows Evan and I tobarelyget him contained and zipped up in the backpack carrier. His whiskers poke out, and he sniffs the air through the mesh. Thankfully, he doesn’t appear to be a sick animal—just one who is a little too comfortable with human interaction. I’m no expert, though.
“I don’t mind hiking him out. He doesn’t look like he’s going to give me much grief,” I tell Evan, who must be exhausted fromeverything today. “Noodles looks content to just go on a night hike with me.”
“I’m coming with you,” Evan tells me decidedly.
“Maybe you should stay here and thank your son,” I suggest instead. “I promise, I’ve got this.”
“I’ll tell him when I get back,” Evan rebuts, an agreement which I find myself seriously doubting. He nudges me along. “Come on, let’s go.”
Chapter Ten
I’m not sure why I have this overprotective streak when it comes to Brooks, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting him hike out here alone, at night, with a wild animal in a flimsy cat carrier slung over his back. I mean, I obviously have been told enough times that I am overprotective of those I care about, and I barely know Brooks—yet I feel some intrinsic need to stand sentry when it comes to him.
Okay, and yeah, there’s a tiny bit of hesitation on my part to just swallow my pride and admit that perhaps I was wrong about Colton. God fuckin’ damnit, why does Brooks have to be right about me not giving Colt the benefit of the doubt? Maybe I am too conditioned to see the glass half-empty, just like he told me earlier.
We hike along the neglected path, which Brooks touts is all within camp property, for what feels like a while—all in comfortable relative silence. Hell, I’ve done more opening up today than I have—ever, I think. It’s been an enlightening and exhausting day, all in the same token.
There is the occasional chittering from the backpack, when we have to climb over fallen trees in the path. After what has probably been a half hour or so, I hear the sounds of bubbling water cascading down over rocks. The trail gives way to a clearing along the banks of the stream Brooks mentioned. A cloudless sky and bright moonlight bathe the area with a soft glow, enough so that I don’t need my headlamp anymore.
Brooks slips the backpack off his shoulders and carefully sets it down. That’s the first time I’ve heard this damned raccoon growl the entire time he’s been in captivity. “Oh hush, Noodles,” Brooks chides the animal. “I’m just going to take my boots off, so I can carry your rotund butt across. Did you know these things could get so heavy?” he asks me.
“I offered to carry it,” I remind him.
His eyes give an appreciative sweep of my shoulders. “And I’m sure it’d have been no problem for you, either.”
“Next time, learn when to accept help then.” I shrug. Before he can balk, I toe off my own boots and strip out of my pants, down to just my boxer briefs.
Now, I catch his eyes giving me an appreciative sweep elsewhere. Not sure what compels me to do so, the water isn’t that deep, but I strip off my t-shirt as well. That appreciative sweep, once again, migrates elsewhere, and it’s then that I realize what compelled me to remove the shirt—
I like the way it feels with his eyes on me.
Before I can put too much thought into that, since my boxers won’t leave anything to the imagination if Idoput too much thought into it, I hoist the bag up and onto my shoulders and carefully work my way down the rocky bank, towards the water. When I get to the bottom, I dip my toes in first, scanning for the most shallow path across. Sincethere is a small waterfall above us, there is a ridge of river rock that has built up along the edge of the deep pool.
Tenuously, I tread out over the smooth rocks, worn by decades of water sluicing over them, on its way down to the lake. A lake that hasn’t warmed up to my liking yet, and if I thought that was cold, the constantly running water provided by this outlet is even colder. Ball shrinking cold.
