Of course, now June is more or less missing.
She's still on campus, but is entirely involved in the children's camp. She's been increasingly wrapped up in it for weeks, but now that the campers are actually here, I think she's working 15-hour days. I had wondered how she got a year's room and board and a stipend paid for out of a couple of months of work. Now I know. She simply takes no time off except to sleep.
The camp has never had a full-time director before. Before last year, when June was part-time, it had never had a real director, but was run entirely by an ever-changing collection of student volunteers. I'm not sure what-all June is doing, but she says a lot of it should have been being done the whole time and wasn't.
I'm teaching some children's workshops for the campers, too--mostly tracking, though I've done some plant ID walks and some sensory awareness exercises--and I like what I'm doing, but last week's thoughts about being a master someday and what that would be like and helping to lead the school have all evaporated. I feel like a peon.
I don't want to be the kind of man who minds being out-ranked by his wife, and I tell myself I'm not, and that I'm grumpy and dejected now for other reasons. And indeed it is ridiculously hot, I'm working hard on many different projects, and very little that I'm doing has much in the way of satisfying pay-off. It's mostly long long-term stuff, and though the workshops for campers or students are short-term, the participants all seem to assume they'll go well, so nobody compliments me when they do. It's all sufficient to explain my mood. And yet.
The other day I did take a bit of a break. Raven and I were walking around together for no special reason, just walking through the gathering dusk, when we came upon Rick in the field near the grape arbor. We watched him for a minute or so, and saw that he was catching fireflies--he'd catch one, examine it closely, let it go and wait until it flew away, then catch another. All of his movements, catching and releasing, looked graceful, precise, and effortless. He was wearing his uniform, probably because he didn't expect to go back and change before Dead Poets' Society, and his cape swirled around him as he moved.
"Looks like fun," whispered Raven.
"I know," I replied.
"I kind of want to join him," she said.
"Me, too," I whispered back, "but he might not like it."
"I can hear you," said Rick, still dancing. "Catch them if you want to, it's a free country."
And so we joined in, the three of us catching fireflies and releasing them, none of us able to see clearly, and none of us, except Rick, having much luck. And then I realized there were four of us.
"Charlie!" I said, "when did you get here?"
"If you're not observant enough to notice when I show up, I'm not going to fill you in."
"Alright, why did you get here?"
"You looked like you were having fun."
And so we were, and so we continued. Charlie, too, had the trick of catching the insects in complete darkness, and at one point he assembled a collection of a dozen or so of them. Then he opened and spread his hands before his face and the insects slowly crawled out along his fingers, lighting his hands and his features intermittently as they went, until they flew away, and he was grinning the whole time.
And then it was almost ten o'clock and the others began to come in, collecting at the grape arbor for Dead Poet's Society, lighting candles and so forth. Raven and I ran back to the Mansion to change as quickly as we could. And then, just before the sprouts showed up with this week's miscreant campers (who think they are breaking the rules by coming) and the no prose-talking rule went into effect, Charlie pulled me aside.
"You think you can be Elven King tonight?" he asked. He meant would I lead the meeting. He'd never asked me before, nor had I ever known him to ask anyone else.
"Me?" I said, unable to help it, and Charlie rolled his eyes. "I don't know how to be mysterious and everything!"
"Neither do I!" he confessed, with a bit of his old growl. "If you think I'm mysterious, that's not me, that's something you bring to me. I try to make things make more sense." But then he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "If having a mysterious teacher is important, you're going to have to trust that they'll bring that to you, too. Be yourself."
And so I did it, I lead the meeting. It wasn't that different from leading a workshop or performing some of my poetry at Callaloo, or some similar event, but with my hood up and the candle-light casting shadows on my face and me being as tall and skinny as I am, I suspect I did seem suitably mysterious to our young guests. I hope so, anyway.
Afterwards, when I'd said good night to Raven and Charlie and the others and taken a quick shower, I slid into bed, tired, and there was June, waiting for me, her body all long and cool and smooth and asleep. She'd left the balcony door open, and the evening had cooled enough so that we could snuggle under the thin, pilling sheet. And so I wrapped myself around her, big spoon to her little spoon, and she made a comfortable little "nff" sound, and we slept.
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