A story by Stanton Fink

Image: Untitled by Stanton Fink

Amy felt his bigger brother grab with big, big hands to jostle him awake. Amy peeled his yellow eyes open to see his bigger brother’s great, anxious, chestnut fur-trimmed face hovering less than an inch away from his own. “Hey, Amy! Please, please, please wake up! I need your help!”

“What is it now, Barbatos?” Amy grouchily yawned. Something was obviously bad, as he started to gag on the foul notes of fearful anxiety in his big brother’s musk.

“Those suit people from town are back! Help me make them go away again, please, Amy? Please, please, please?”

“Fine, fine, FINE, I’ll make the suit people go away again, BUDDY.”

With that reluctant vow, Amy shucked himself of his cherished cotton comforter in the order to begrudgingly sit up in his worn-out, creaking, springy bed. He scratched his thin, velvety plush chest with long, sharp, sharp nails, then raised his flagpole arms up high for his eldest brother Buddy to swiftly put a pumpkin colored teeshirt over his disheveled head. That done, Buddy shoved his groggy younger sibling into a dusty pair of jeans. And with that done, Amy completed his human camp counselor disguise by sinking his needly talons into his wild mop of oil-dark hair to sculpt his do back into that sleek, obsidian duckbutt.

And with that done, Buddy promptly hooked his big, bearpaw hands underneath his littlest brother’s armpits to carry Amy out of bed, out of the camp staff dormitory, down a hall and into the camp’s front desk to plop him into a chair behind the front desk. Amy put on a pair of horn-rimmed bifocals handed to him by Buddy, and then both counselors looked up to smile warmly at the trio of stony-faced, business-suited lawyers seated before the front desk in lawn chairs. Amy wondered if it were a mistake leaving the puffin rookeries.

“Why, hello there again, good sirs! Have you nice guys finally come back to enroll your lovely children in Camp Meteora’s July program, after all?” Amy cheerfully inquired. Buddy’s sincere smile crinkled as he found it hard to cringe or snarl at his little brother’s blatantly sardonic tone of voice. One of the lawyers, a toupéed gargoyle named Gougan, answered the counselors’ smiles with a tired frown.

“You wise guys know why we’re back,” Dougan loudly grumbled. Buddy snarled at that. “Our client still insists you accept the initial offer, as originally worded, to buy the land Camp Meteora is on.”

Amy’s smile contracted into a scrunched grimace, his expression becoming uncomfortably egglike upon hearing Dougan’s reply.

“And our client is adamant about how the only response he is willing to accept from you is ‘yes,’” the second lawyer, a greasy haired gym rat in a tight suit, Enrique, harumphed. Buddy broke out in hot, freshly musky sweat in response, trembling as he tried to keep from sneering or screaming. (Or biting) Big, hairy, corncob fingers nervously scratched and smoothed damp, suddenly smelly, chestnut arm fur.

“Furth-”

“Furthermore,” Amy interjected, interrupting the third lawyer, a sour-faced, milquetoast toad, Emil. “Please don’t insult my coworkers and I by arrogantly insisting we all live in some sort of cartoon show where your client rules as an omnipotently lawless bully who can browbeat taxpaying citizens by royal fiat into accepting devil’s bargains that even a desperate vagrant would find offensively insufficient.” Buddy’s not-smile stretched thin and taught, just like the fabric of his musk-soaked pumpkin colored tee-shirt.

“How dare you!” Emil furiously ribbitted. “I’ll have you know Weyland Yatsude is a great, no, the greatest philanthropist of our time, of this century! A veritable Mother Teresa of the business world!”

Amy’s scrunched grimace scrunched a little harder for a moment. Buddy was almost afraid his littlest brother would implode again.

“First off, Emil, honey, please don’t mention that lady’s name in the presence of actual childcare professionals who actually care about competently providing children with genuine care.” Amy then held out his outstretched hand just as Buddy placed a smartphone into it. “Secondly, your allegedly saintly employer’s incessant haranguing us into accepting his egregiously miserly offer not only marks you as a confabulator, but also suggests you have several screws loose.” Amy activated the smartphone in his sharp-taloned hand. “So, unless you nice folks can either cough a bunch of children in your care to enroll into Camp Meteora right now, or toddle over to the Camp Meteora gift shop next door to buy some souvenirs, please leave immediately, or we will summon the police to have the lot of you escorted off of Camp property.

“Police? Police? Police???” Buddy frantically whispered.

“Yes, police,” Amy hissed back. “Are we clear, gentlemen?”

The three lawyers shared a wordlessly angry murmur as they reluctantly rose from their lawn chairs.

“This isn’t the last you’ll see of us!” Enrique erupted.

“Unless the stipulations I just mentioned five seconds are are met, actually, yes, this will be the last time we’ll see of you.” Somewhere in the office, fabric rent as Amy’s egglike countenance remained uncomfortably smooth and enigmatically shelllike. “I mean, I would hope you aren’t dumb cartoon antagonists, after all, right?”

Buddy happily jogged over to the front office front door to let the trio of habitually disgruntled lawyers out, big, chestnut hindpaws leaving no footfalls. With a wide smile, the eight foot tall camp counselor slammed the front door, and jogged back to the front desk to clap his squealing littlest brother on the back.

“That was fantastic, A-Bro Bear!” Buddy congratulated. “You really skewered those meanie beanie fofeanie shysters good good good goody good this time!”

Amy plucked off his bifocals and plonked his head onto the desk face first. He dug his long, pointy fingers deep into his duck’s buttocks.

“This is the tenth time this week they were here, Bud,” Amy whined. “Why are they paid to be this annoying? What are we going to do when they come back again, and I have no more big words to club them with?”

“It’s BudDEE,’ Amy, ‘BudDEE,’ ‘BudDee,’ ‘BudDEE,’” Buddy fangily enunciated as he wiggled his big fingers for emphasis. Amy raised his hand, motioned for his bigger brother to lean in closer, and, once in range, yanked on Buddy’s dangly goatbeard goatee, then popped Buddy’s hazel contact lens from his vermillion left eye with a dangerously pointed fingertip. “Hey, hey, HEY!”

“What do we do when they come back, BARBATOS?”

Buddy growled and hummed, letting his immense, immensely long forked tongue snake out and dangle from his tooth-barbed mouth as he fiddled mightily to reinsert his tiny contact lens with his boulder-like fingertips without crushing it or blinking. That finally done, the bigger brother sighed before slapping his enormous chest to momentarily quell the writhing muscles slithering underneath his tee-shirt.

“Hmmmmm… Um, um, ummmmm. Maybe we could go with ‘Plan D’?”

Amy lifted his head up off the desk in shock. Buddy finally remembered to retract his tongue with a long slurp.

“‘Plan D’??? Christ on a piecrust! In front of the younglings???”

“Language, language, language, Amy!” Buddy chided. “We wouldn’t do it in front of the kiddies, obviously. After Bedtime.”

“Oh, after Bedtime… Okay,” Amy phewed. Now mollified, Amy motioned at the tattered denim loincloth figleafing his bigger brother’s great and wooly crotch. “Are you going to wear pants today, or are we going to try another au naturale day, again?”

Buddy looked down at his fluffy treetrunk hindlegs, and tsked as the wispy cotton remnants of his jean shorts continued disintegrating off of his wide, fur-upholstered hips.

“Nnnnn… Cheapstuff, cheapstuff, cheapstuff, Amy,” Buddy self-scolded. “Don’t let me buy garbage off of the internet again.”

Amy got up and caught hold of his bigger brother’s big, swishy tail.

“Maybe if you tucked this in better?” He carefully wound Buddy’s tail around Buddy’s big waist, and watched the appendage sink into chestnut belly fur. “Much better. Want me to fix your hair, too, while we’re at t?”

“Nah, nah, nah.” Buddy wiped his hair back with a smooth swipe of his bear paw hand. “Besides, you’re the counselor with the fancy hair.” Amy smirked as he followed his bigger brother back to the counselors dormitory.

Back in the dormitory, Amy puttered about inside the closet, searching for which of his many pairs of shoes to wear before hunting for the right pair of sweatpants Buddy wanted. And after handing Buddy his camouflage fatigues, Amy grunted loudly as he hauled out his eldest brother’s right workboot. Fatigues on, Buddy’s right monstrous hindpaw shoed, laced, and disguised as a large human foot, Amy slogged back into the closet to retrieve the left boot. And once he finished tying bandannas around both of their necks, Amy clopped out of the dormitory, heading off towards the mess hall to help Jam with breakfast (and sneak some ice cream before lunch). Buddy silently skittered over to the dresser, took out the camp flags from a drawer, and grabbed his bugle off of the dresser top. 

The walk from the counselors’ dormitory to the camp flagpole was short, but briskly exhilarating. The crunch of pine needles beneath his boots, the blended perfume of spruce, fir, and lodgepole filling his big nose, and the songs of amorous, bickering birds. Just utterly magnificent.

A twig loudly snapped underneath the sole of his boot. Buddy realized he had stepped into the noose of a snare. A rope stretched taut for a couple seconds before the branch it was tied to broke off. Familiar tittering giggles emanated from the bushes as Buddy’s smile relaxed into a crookedly asymmetrical sneer of disappointment. He reached with his long, long, apeish arms to pluck a towheaded boy and a cotton bale-haired girl out of the bushes. The head counselor glowered at his two would-be assassins.

“Camper Archmedes and camper Erzebet,” Buddy tsked. “What what WHAT did I tell you two troublemakers about building traps on camp grounds?”

Archimedes wiggled shamefully while Erzebet ummed for a minute.

“Uh… Ummm… When building a snare trap, uh, always make sure it’s sturdy ‘nough to restrain the target,” Erzebet finally said. Buddy smiled warmly.

“Good girl!” and then he plonked both children onto his broad shoulders even as he stooped down to retrieve his bugle and bundle of flags. Erzebet swayed back and forth while Archmedes hugged Buddy’s head to keep himself from sliding off of his counselor’s shoulder as Buddy stood before the camp flagpole.

“Counselor Buddy,” Archimedes timidly asked. “What are we doing today?”

“Good good good question, camper Archmedes!” Buddy answered. “After Breakfast and Morning Exercises, you guys and the rest of the Swan Cabin kids are coming with me for a run around Lake Kyutora.” Then he ran up the last of the five camp flags.

“That’s it?” Erzebet interjected.

“No,” Buddy replied as he tied the flagpole rope securely. “Counselor Amy’s having the Merganser Cabin kids make pinecone candles, and after Lunch, Counselor Jam’s taking everyone on a nature walk to show you guys which leaves are edible and which leaves are poisonous.”

“That’s it?” Erzebet sighed. “You promised to teach us how to build a deadfall!”

“Aw, come on, campers!” Buddy pleaded. “It’ll be fun fun fun! We could have a s’mores toasting tonight, too! What’dya say to that?”

“Could we have gingersnaps instead of graham crackers?” Archimedes eagerly inquired. Erzebet smooshed her face against Buddy’s bushy sideburns.

“Oh, oh, or maybe chocolate chip?” Erzebet asked.

Buddy smiled as he twirled his bugle in his bear paw hand.

“I can ask Jam and Amy to whip up a big big big batch of cocoa shortbread, too.” The two campers stared greedily at each other.

Buddy inhaled as he put his bugle to his lips. Archimedes could swear his counselor’s chest swelled to four, maybe five times its size right before Buddy began playing “Revelry.” Erzebet gave her fellow camper a swift punch to the shoulder to remind him to cover his ears.

The buildings, the windows, the beds, the furniture, the trees, the campers, everyone and everything in Camp Meteora, and even in the Shakespeare camp across the lake, vibrated to Buddy’s strains of “Revelry.” Thus duly summoned, the meteora campers, aside from Archi and Ezra, woke up, got dressed, and filed out of Swan and Merganser Cabins to gather around the plaza of the flagpole to let Head Counselor Buddy lead them in morning exercises.

As much as Buddy would have dearly wished for his brothers to join him and the campers not riding on his shoulders in doing jumping jacks, Jam and Amy needed to finish preparing breakfast for the camp. In the Camp Mess Hall.

Amy fitted between the kitchen and the cafeteria getting the jars of silverware, stacks of trays, and the buffet read while Jam manned the stoves, simmering a 30-gallon soup pot of multigrain millet porridge, scrambling eggs, sauteing breakfast sausages, and frying pancakes.

This work was featured in issue #14