We get nearer, and I see that the dock is barely two feet higher than the plank I’m sitting on. The drop seemed so huge! Now I know what to do. The surfer guy will keep the boat steady. He won’t need to touch me. The other guy will sit on the dock. I’ll turn my back to him and push up with my feet; he’ll pull just enough to set my rear-end on the dock. I’ll be on something solid. Getting in the chair will be fairly difficult, but I know how. Pulling on a borrowed arm, I’ll get on my knees, then pull out one leg. Pressing that foot hard against the boards, I’ll rise up. Then plop! into my chair.

I visualize the process in the moment it takes them to tie up the canoe. But explaining it to these guys—if I could do it at all—would take a lot of words and a very long time. Easier to let them handle me the way they’ve handled every other spazzo all summer long. In just a few seconds it will be over.

*   *   *

After lunch, I stretch out on my cot. I’ve made it out of the canoe in reasonably good shape, but the ordeal still affects me. My body aches.

I watch Carole lift Sara onto her cot. Carole is petite and delicate-looking, the kind of girl guys carry stuff for, but in fact she’s strong. Of course, Sara is really tiny, a wraith. The easy pliability of her body always surprises me. When she’s up in her chair, talking, organizing things, she’s an unyielding personality, a person entirely separate and distinct. In Carole’s arms, those qualities melt away; she looks snug, even cuddly. Seeing her body mold itself to Carole’s hollows arouses not only my curiosity but also something like envy.

If I were floppy and soft like her, I’d be happy for that surfer guy to lift me up and carry me around in his arms. I’d curl up in his lap, fill his hollows, and let him paddle our canoe across the lake and deep into the woods on twisty black-water creeks. And we’d eat all the fish we’d catch.

Now Sara sits cross-legged on her cot, cuddly no longer, writing on typing paper. She fills a whole page with writing and slips another sheet out of the plastic package. Around then, heat and exhaustion and the relentless rhythm of the oscillating fans finally overcome my nerves. I join the others in sleep.

*   *   *

I am restless in arts and crafts. This isn’t my thing to begin with, and it’s a kind of torture to sit here with paint fumes hanging in the air. Getting back to the cabin is like being freed from jail.

Sara is going through her papers. “What is all that?” I ask.