He wants to get up and pee to prevent his thin mattress from stinking in the morning, but the soft chatter of his counselors binds him to his bed. He finds their hushed voices comforting, like a nightlight in the dark. His narrow bed is close to theirs, which are near the cabin door so they can enter at night without waking the six boys in their charge. He’s too young to fully understand what they’re saying, and memory is unreliable. What we choose to recall or forget or invent about the past always reflects our present needs. Still, as I picture David, the boy I was then, this is what I remember.

Art is talking in a low voice, barely above a whisper. “We rowed to that far bend in the lake, out of view of camp. There’s a little beach there, very private, that I discovered last year. A beautiful spot to swim and sunbathe…”

“And skinny dip,” Howie interjects.

“You’re rushing this. Going way too fast. I like to take things slow. We had all afternoon together. After we swam, we lay on our towels, drying in the sun. She was wearing that pink V-neck bathing suit that clings to her body. I watched drops of water slide down her face and neck and disappear between those lovely breasts…”

“You’re such a romantic,” Howie says.

“Well, it was a perfect moment. How many more will I have? She looked so beautiful. I leaned over and traced her cheek with my finger down her neck to her breast…. ‘You know I might not make it back,’ I said.”

“You told her that?”

“It’s true. Who knows what could happen?”

For a moment the only sound is the hiss of the kerosene lamp that casts Art and Howie in shadows.

“What did she say?” Howie asks.

“She started crying.”

“Of course she’d cry. What did you expect?”

“At least it gave me a chance to comfort her.”

David can imagine Art comforting another person. He plays the guitar and leads the singing in his mellow voice at the Friday night campfires; and Art’s kind to him when he wets his bed.

“Pretty soon we had our bathing suits off,” Art goes on.

“Finally!”

“I told you, it takes time.”

David has seen Art before without his clothes, but he can’t quite picture the naked woman with him. Perhaps she’s Annie, the swimming counselor; he’s seen Art with his arm around her.

“‘But we have no protection,’ she said. ‘I know that,’ I said, ‘but there are other things we can do.’ I took her hand and gently sucked one of her fingers. ‘You know how much I care for you,’ I said. ‘Maybe…maybe you could kiss it….”

“You didn’t?”

“‘This could be our last time alone like this,’ I said. ‘When I’m over there, at least I’ll have it to remember….’”

“You’re shameless,” Howie chuckles.

David doesn’t know why this could be a last time or why Art should be ashamed of kisses, but he doesn’t like hearing Howie laugh at Art. He’s caught Howie rolling his eyes before when he lets a fly ball glance off his glove, or when his sheets are wet in the morning. He turns his back to the counselors and pulls his blanket over his head.

*

At breakfast all the boys in the Iroquois cabin talk eagerly about what their parents will bring them this Sunday. David’s parents left for France and Italy shortly after they delivered him to Trail’s End and haven’t been back since. His mother mailed him picture postcards of the Eiffel Tower and Roman Colosseum and other “magnificent” sights they saw on their vacation. In return, he sent his parents the plain, pre-addressed postcards the counselors made them write each week. He carefully printed the same message on every postcard: “Dear Mother and Father—Everything is fine here—I miss you—David.” He hopes now the mailman lost them.

Parents start arriving in late morning while they are playing softball. There are three cabins of seven- to eight-year-olds—the Iroquois, Navajos, and Mohawks—18 Jewish Indians, enough to form two baseball teams. Whatever team he’s on, they stick him in the outfield. Today he’s positioned deep in right field, where few boys can hit the ball over his head. Before camp he had no interest in baseball; now he really hates it.

He watches the visitors trickle in from the parking lot. Most of his bunkmates’ parents are younger than his; they wear brighter clothes and drive flashier cars than his father’s black Pontiac, and they tote picnic lunches from Zabar’s, corned beef and pastrami sandwiches and chocolate babka and bags of candy his mother frowns on. He doesn’t want any of their treats or sweets; he wants his parents to pack his trunk and take him home. Since they’re back from Europe, they no longer need a place to dump him. He doesn’t care if the other boys call him “momma’s boy” or “’fraidy-cat” or “quitter.” He never wants to see any of them again.

The game is almost over when he spots them. While most of the fathers wear short sleeves and khakis, his father is dressed in pressed tan slacks and a blue sports jacket; thankfully he’s skipped the tie. His mother has armed herself against the sun with oversize sunglasses and a wide-brim, floppy hat that seems better suited for the jungle. He fears the other Iroquois will think his parents old and odd, another excuse to make fun of him. They wave at him in the outfield and sit in the rickety wooden stands to watch. Mercifully, no one hits the ball toward him. His team wins and they run onto the field to high five each other. He skips the celebration and walks to the stands.

His mother hugs him, smelling of the lilac perfume she wears when his parents go out at night. “I’ve missed you so much,” she says and holds him at arm’s length to examine him. “I think you’ve grown!” she exclaims. His father squints at him through his silver-rimmed glasses. “About an inch, I’d say.” He  pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. Baseball doesn’t interest him—he wouldn’t know Mickey Mantle from Roger Maris—instead he brings up  what he really cares about. “I’m eager to see you in the water,” he says.

David ignores the comment. His father will discover the truth soon enough.

Only half the boys in his bunk eat lunch in the mess hall; the rest are picnicking with their parents on the grassy slope leading to the lake. Since his parents have eaten on the road, they use the time to visit “Uncle” Chic, the owner of the camp, who came to their apartment to persuade them that a summer at Trail’s End was a “character-building experience” every city boy should have. David would hike, swim, come to love sports and the outdoors, and return to Manhattan stronger, healthier, and more confident. “Sounds great, doesn’t it?” said his father, who played no sports and rarely even ventured into Central Park, but he was pleased to provide David an opportunity his own parents couldn’t afford when he was a child.

“I thought your parents were gonna show up today,” Robbie Ungar says at lunch. Robbie is the best ballplayer in their group and his chief tormentor.

“They did,” he answers.

“How come you’re not eating with them? They too busy changing your sheets?”

Two other boys at the table snicker at Robbie’s lame joke. Robbie’s parents didn’t visit today or last Sunday, which may be why he’s picking on him again.

“At least my parents are here,” he says so softly that Robbie isn’t sure he heard. Robbie circles an ear with his hand. “What did you say?”

David changes his mind. “I said pass the potato salad please.”

“You say diapers? Pass the diapers please?” He piles the potato salad on his own plate, leaving almost nothing left in the bowl. “Bed-wetter,” he sneers.

If Art were at their table, David knows he would’ve stopped Robbie’s heckling. But Art has this Sunday off, so David can only pretend he hasn’t heard.

After lunch he meets his parents outside the dining hall and leads them to his cabin. His mother keeps running her fingers through his curly hair and rubbing his shoulders as they walk until he pulls away, afraid others will see her coddling and petting him. Inside the cabin, she inspects his bed and cubby and rearranges his clothes, which she carefully name-tagged at home to make sure they wouldn’t get lost in the camp laundry. She’s brought him a T-shirt from Paris with a picture of the Eiffel Tower and a package of new underpants, “in case you run out,” she says. The underpants make him think that Howie has reported that he pees his bed at night; if he has, she doesn’t mention it. Or maybe counselors lie to parents the same way he does.

When they exit the cabin, they find Howie quietly conversing with his father on the porch. Both men shift uncomfortably, as if caught saying something David shouldn’t hear. “You know Howard goes to the same law school I did,” his father says and looks down at his shiny, tasseled leather loafers. The fancy dress shoes his father wears to camp shame him as much as the conversation he suspects they’re hiding. He wishes Art were here instead of Howie.

His parents walk to the lake with him for the afternoon swim. Although there is no breeze this afternoon, David feels goose bumps rising on his skin. Every time he nears the lake, fear prickles the back of his neck. The second week of camp he fell—or was pushed—off the dock. Unable to swim, he panicked. Water flooded his nose and mouth as he gasped for air and thrashed his arms and legs to reach the ladder, kicking and kicking to keep afloat. Then darkness closed around him. The next thing he knew he was sprawled on the dock, coughing and spewing water, and gazing at the whistle dangling from the lanyard around Annie’s neck as she hovered over him in her pink bathing suit. “He slipped. I saw him slip,” Robbie kept yelling as David puked up the water he’d swallowed. Robbie’s nervous ranting made him wonder if he really stumbled or if Robbie pushed him.

 Because Annie feels responsible for his falling into the lake—even though she dived in to save him—she’s made it her mission to teach him to swim this summer. So far, she hasn’t succeeded. He’s still confined to the crib, a wooden enclosure for those who can’t pass the deep-water test. The crib has a wooden floor where he can stand and not worry about drowning.

His parents watch as most of the Iroquois head for the roped-in swimming area on one side of the dock and he and Lucas step into the crib on the other side. Lucas, a Mohawk who is a year older, can do the dead man’s float and dog paddle, but he isn’t a strong enough swimmer to leave the crib. David can float on his back when Annie’s with him, yet whenever he puts his face in the water and holds his breath, his lungs feel about to burst and he panics again. Today there are no lessons, just free swimming. He lowers himself to his shoulders and splashes around a little at the far end of the crib, clinging to the edge and kicking, hoping his parents will think he’s practicing his strokes.

At last, Annie blows her whistle and the boys emerge from the water, making way for the girls who will follow. As they dry themselves and put on their sandals, he sees his father walking toward Annie and knows he will ask why David can’t swim yet.

“You’re shivering,” his mother says, wrapping his towel tighter around his shoulders. It’s not the chill but fear of what Annie will say that makes him tremble.

He can’t read his father’s face as he walks slowly back from the dock. “Your swimming counselor says you’re making progress, that you’ll be out of the crib by the end of the summer,” he says as they climb the slope to his cabin. He looks at David for confirmation.

David can’t meet his eyes. He doesn’t know why his father thinks it’s so important that he learn to swim. There’s no pool in their apartment building, and they never go to the beach. In fact, he can’t remember ever seeing his father in a bathing suit. “How old were you when you learned to swim?” he asks.

His father doesn’t answer for a moment, glances toward the lake. “Actually, I never learned. That’s why I want to make sure you do.”

Hearing his father’s reluctant confession, David knows he’s doomed to repeat his failure.

Sensing his discouragement, his mother puts her arm around David’s shoulders again. “If the swim teacher is confident, so am I,” she says, refusing to accept her husband’s legacy.

His parents don’t stay much longer. They’ve talked to his counselor, heard what they wanted, ignored the rest, and are impatient now to avoid the Sunday traffic on their way back to the city. He’s relieved they won’t return until camp’s end. His father’s tasseled shoes and his mother’s floppy sun hat and excessive hugs only confirm his oddness.

*

A few days after his parents’ visit, Art takes him aside after arts and crafts, where he teaches campers to weave multicolored laces into lanyards and sculpt flowers from Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. “You remind me a lot of myself when I was your age,” he says.

“Did you suck at sports too?” David asks.

“Pretty much. Stickball was what we played. I wasn’t very good, always the last to be picked on any team. I was a skinny kid—‘broomstick’ they called me—and I got pushed around a lot. There was this bully, Marvin Firestone, who picked on me all year when I was in second grade. Marvin was really scary—he’d light matches and throw them at you, or walk over and suddenly punch you in the stomach. I was his favorite target.”

“I guess I’m Robbie’s favorite too.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

David shrugs. “Everyone has.”

“You know you don’t have to put up with it.”

David swallows hard. “What did you do?”

“I convinced my parents to get me boxing lessons. I wasn’t going to be Marvin’s punching bag any more. The summer after second grade, I spent a lot of time at the gym. I can teach you what I learned.” Art reaches beneath his workbench and pulls out a pair of red leather boxing gloves. “We’re going to have a tournament in two weeks and I want you to take Robbie on. In the ring.”

“But I’ve never hit anyone before.”

“Well, I’ll be there to step in if you hurt him too much.” Art grins and hands him the gloves. “Try them on. See how they feel.”

David gingerly slips his hands into the gloves, and Art tightens the wristbands.

“Go on, you can practice on me.” He holds up his hands for David to hit.

David tentatively punches with his right hand, then his left.

“Punch with your whole body, not just your hands. You have to throw your weight behind your fists.”

David punches harder this time. He strikes again and again, imagining he’s pummeling Robbie’s face. The counselor finally lowers his hands; his palms are almost the color of the boxing gloves. “You’re a natural,” he says. “You’re going to surprise everyone with how well you do.”

David’s hands sting as he takes off the gloves, yet he feels strangely excited. “Is this how you stopped Marvin?” he asks.

Art sighs. “I wish. When school started in the fall, I was ready. But the first day of third grade, I learned his family had moved away. I’d missed my chance to stand up to him. I don’t want you to miss yours.”

The next two weeks David careens between anticipation and dread. When the tournament is announced, all the Iroquois, Navajos, and Mohawks are amazed to hear he’s going to fight Robbie. “If you can’t hit a baseball, how you gonna hit me?” Robbie sneers as he bobs and weaves to prove the point.

“Your head’s bigger than a baseball,” David says with more confidence than he feels.

“We’ll see about that, bed-wetter.”

In the evenings after dinner, Art continues coaching David, teaching him to defend himself. “Don’t pay any attention to Robbie,” he says. “He talks trash because he’s scared. He only volunteered to fight because he thought no one would get in the ring with him. He hasn’t taken boxing lessons. No one’s punched him in the face before.”

No one’s punched David in the face either, and he isn’t eager for the experience. But he likes spending time with Art, shadowboxing and listening to his stories about Marvin and the tough girls and boys he grew up with in Brooklyn. “Boxing lessons taught me I was stronger than I thought. So are you. You don’t have to let anyone push you around.” Practicing with Art, David almost believes he can pay Robbie back for all his meanness. Lying in bed at night, though, he runs his fingers down his face, wondering if his nose and mouth will be the same once the fight is over.

A few nights before the fight, when the urge to pee wakes him, David overhears Art and Howie talking about the coming match.

“I don’t know why you pushed him into this,” Howie says. “Robbie’s just going to beat the crap out of him.”

“You underestimate the rage of the humiliated,” Art counters.

“Is this from some psychology book or your own experience?”

“Both,” Art says tersely.

David lies rigid until he’s sure they’re both asleep and then creeps to the bathroom to make sure his sheets aren’t damp in the morning.

The day of the tournament, he’s too nervous to eat. He keeps going to the toilet to empty his bladder or bowels. All that’s left inside him is a jangle of nerves. He’s sorry now he’s let Art talk him into this. Shadowboxing isn’t the same as real fighting. Even if Robbie is just boasting to hide his fear, he’s still bigger and stronger. If he does beat the crap out of him, he’ll keep on bullying him for the rest of the summer.

Whether they box or not, all the boys attend the matches. Girls are excluded because they’re considered too delicate to watch boys smash each other in the face. The ring is set up in the middle of the camp’s auditorium. The matches begin with the youngest campers and advance to the 14- and 15-year-olds. David’s happy that the first fight is between two Mohawks so he can see how hard they hit. He watches closely as they circle each other. They jab cautiously, mainly striking gloves or shoulders or elbows before they dart away. The brass bell rings, and the boys retreat to their corners. The second round, they are a little bolder, but both seem too afraid of being hit to do much damage. Watching them dance around the ring, David thinks maybe he can do the same and stay just outside Robbie’s reach. When the match ends, the counselor who is refereeing raises both their arms to signal a tie. They smile and bang gloves again, almost as hard as they did fighting.

Then it’s his turn. The pit in his stomach feels as if he’s already been punched there. Art is in his corner, Howie in Robbie’s. Art tightens his gloves and inserts his plastic mouth guard. “Remember, this is your chance, buddy. Show him who you are.”

The referee brings them together to tap gloves, then steps aside. David bites down hard on his mouth guard and assumes the boxing stance Art has taught him. Robbie mirrors his stance and rushes toward him. David wards off his first jabs with his gloves and backpedals. The light blows swat away his fear.

Robbie attacks again, as he has all summer. David raises his gloves to defend himself. Robbie punches him hard in the stomach. David drops his hands a second and Robbie hits him in the face. The blow glances off his cheekbone. Water blurs his eyes as he skirts away. Robbie glares at him, his face as clenched as his fists, ready to knock him to the mat the way he pushed him into the lake.

David crouches to protect himself. When Robbie lowers his fists to strike again, David swings wildly and smashes him squarely in the nose. Robbie’s head snaps back, his eyes cross momentarily. David hits him in the face again. He hears the cheers of the other campers and keeps thrashing, windmilling and side-arming Robbie in a frenzy of blows that seem to emerge from another person. Robbie hunches to cover up, his legs wobble, and he drops to a knee. The referee quickly steps in and raises David’s arm. Robbie swipes a glove at the trickle of blood dripping from his nose and looks at David incredulously. David is as astonished at his own explosion of fury. His eyes burn, his face smarts, he feels a wave of nausea as he stumbles to his corner of the ring. “What a puncher,” Art says as he pulls his gloves off. “You fought like Rocky Marciano tonight.”

David spits out his mouth guard. “I never want to box again,” he says.

“Then, like Rocky, you can retire undefeated.” Art massages his bony shoulders. “I’m so proud of you, David. You were very brave.”

David feels something stirring in his chest for which he has no words. No one has ever called him brave before.

Later, when they all walk back to the cabin, even Howie compliments David on the fight. If Robbie hears the praise, he ignores it. He jokes with the other boys, as if a bloody nose is no worse than a knee scrape. Still, when they undress for bed, Robbie skips his nightly warning to David to keep his pajamas dry. Art shoots him a pleased look as he turns out the cabin light, as if to say, “Didn’t I tell you?”

*

The next Saturday, when David returns from lunch, he finds Art packing clothes into a worn tan suitcase on his bed. “Where are you going?” David asks.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you….” Art stops as if searching for the words.

David’s stomach does a somersault. “Are you leaving?”

The counselor’s solemn, unshaven face confirms it.

Two boys bang the screen door as they enter the cabin and rush to get their baseball gloves. Either they don’t notice Art’s suitcase or don’t care that he’s packing to leave.

“But camp’s not over yet,” David protests.

“It’s not my choice.” Art closes the suitcase and puts a hand on David’s arm. “Come outside,” he says.

They go out to the porch and sit together on the creaky wooden swing. “You’ve heard of Vietnam?” Art says. “You know we’re fighting a war there?”

David nods. He’s seen planes dropping bombs and soldiers marching through the mud and jungle on TV.

“Well, the army needs a lot of men to fight there. And my number’s finally come up.”

An image of a helicopter lifting a wounded soldier on a stretcher flashes in David’s mind. “You’ll come back, won’t you?”

“I’m certainly planning to.”

He can hear the doubt in Art’s voice. It’s not the way he talked about boxing. Tears rise unexpectedly to David’s eyes. He clutches the lanyard around his neck to hold them back. He remembers what he overheard Art telling Howie. “Can I kiss it?” he says softly.

“What?”

“You know. What you asked Annie.”
The swing jerks backwards so violently that David grips Art’s leg to keep from falling.

“I want to kiss it too…so you’ll remember me.”

“Oh, David, that’s not something….” The alarm on Art’s face tells David he’s said something terribly wrong, a secret that should never be revealed. Art gently detaches David’s hand from his leg. For an instant there’s an agonizing silence. Then Art puts his arm around David’s trembling shoulders and pulls him closer.

“Of course I’ll remember you. How could I forget? The Rocky Marciano of our camp.”

David leans against Art’s chest and sobs into his Trail’s End T-shirt.

*

It’s a gray December Sunday as I descend the slanted stone path to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Despite the threatening rain clouds, the memorial is crowded with visitors, come to grieve and honor the more than 58,000 men and women lost to a war the U.S. should never have fought. The density of names on the granite slabs is numbing, as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics. I search for one name—Arthur Cohen. I find it in the middle of a panel on the east wall of soldiers killed in 1968. Like others who mourn, I run my fingers over the letters engraved in the cold, black stone. Standing back, I see my distorted image reflected ghostlike in the mirrored marble, hovering over Art’s name. I think of Springsteen’s song: “If your eyes could cut through that black stone/Tell me, would they recognize me?”

I’m 35 now, a Legal Aid lawyer in San Francisco, married with a four-year-old son I can’t imagine ever sending away from home as young as I was. Although this is the first time I’ve visited the monument, I often think of that summer with Art. The next year I refused to return to Trail’s End. I didn’t want to play baseball or box again or even learn to swim. I learned of Art’s death by chance, from an accidental meeting with Lucas in the dinosaur hall at the Museum of Natural History when I was 10. I remember standing underneath the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton when he told me. I was too stunned to cry.

The database of casualties says PFC Art Cohen was killed in a firefight in Gia Dinh Province at the age of 25. I wonder what went through his mind as he lay dying in that rice paddy. Was he thinking of Annie? Or Marvin, the bully he failed to confront as a child? Was he wondering if standing up for yourself meant you had to stand up for your country, too? I don’t even know if he believed Vietnam was worth dying for. “Sometimes you don’t get to choose,” he told me the afternoon he left camp. But that contradicted what he tried to teach me that summer. You always have a choice whether to fight back.

A middle-aged woman in a green raincoat kneels to place a wreath of flowers at the foot of the granite slab. Visitors leave all kinds of tributes to their fallen friends and loved ones: dog tags, photographs, letters, American flags, combat boots, helmets, military and religious medals, and other remembrances that the National Park Service collects each night. More than 400,000 artifacts stored in some giant warehouse in Washington. I’ve brought only a pair of shiny red kid’s boxing gloves to leave at the memorial.

The air begins to mist as I ascend the path and emerge into the pale winter light. I don’t believe there’s one experience, one defining moment in childhood, that shapes who you are or will become. I overcame my fear of drowning several years after Trail’s End and now enjoy the swimming I dreaded. I never boxed again, and I don’t watch fights on television. It’s not because Art helped me face Robbie, or because of the confidence that gave me, that I’ve come here today. It’s because he saw in me what no one else did then. I loved him for it, a love he generously returned.