What is the matter, I think? It’s too juvenile to tell her that I had dreamt my father showed up drunk and angry. That in my dream he had every intention of harming us both. That I was the only one who could prevent it, me and all my sixty pounds and what others have called buggy-whip arms.

She sits up, her tired face puffy with sleep.

“Nothing,” I say. “I have to use the bathroom.”

I exit the tent and urinate on the side of a tree twenty feet away. When I finish I tiptoe to the road and look in both directions. No cars, though in the diagonal lot, I notice the burning embers of a cigarette. An old man with a pinched, wrinkled face and gray hair. He lifts his hand. I wave back, then return to the tent. My mother is already asleep. I lie on my back staring at the top of the tent. It takes a very long time to fall back to sleep.

When I wake, my mother is gone. Judging by the heat and the light I assume that it’s close to noon. I find her sitting on the same log as the day before, drinking a cup of coffee, her dark haired pulled back. The bruise on her cheek has darkened and she’s again staring blankly at the woods across the road as though waiting for an answer. She looks my way and smiles.

“It’s going to be hot today,” she says. “I was thinking we could go swimming.”

“That’d be awesome.”

“You hungry?”

“Starving.”

I build the fire and she cooks bacon and eggs on a cast-iron skillet. Bicyclers pass and most wave while we eat in silence. A lazy wind pushes through the trees causing dapples of sunlight to dance at our feet.

“Do you want to shower?” she asks.

I shake my head. I’m camping in the middle of a forest; I have dirt beneath my fingernails; my hair is a mess. Today we’ll hike trails and swim and row a boat into the middle of a lake. I’m living a kid’s dream. The dirtier I become the better.