“The welcome banner fell. It hangs on these hooks.” She pointed to the ends of the sign. “And these are hooked to those.” She pointed restlessly about ten feet high on the building.
“Oh.” I looked up and saw the problem. The nail was loose, and the hole had gotten too big. “I’m going to guess that you’ve already considered a thicker nail.”
“The property owner won’t let us put any more holes in the building or expand existing ones,” she said, shaking her head. “We’ve been here for eighteen years, and they’ve remodeled six times since we’ve been here. Great for business; not exactly practical for a camp.” She pointed up. “The holes we’ve been using were sort of grandfathered in, so no holes, no banner.”
Now Sarah was the one who looked defeated. More than that, sad almost. I could tell from the aging outlines of the sign that it had been used for years. I wanted to help. Not for any self-interested reason, but because my heart went out to this woman who took pride in the camp’s old-fashioned and sentimental ways. Because to her, they were authentic, traditional. It was the probably the first thing the campers saw when the bus pulled up to the driveway, and this summer it wouldn’t be there. She didn’t have to say it. That much I understood.
I looked around. I was usually pretty good at thinking on my feet. I spotted a tape measure in her kit and reached for it. “How long is this sign?” I asked while measuring the width of it while it was folded.
“Twenty-two feet,” she answered, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes at me.
I turned to the driveway of where I imagined the buses would arrive. There stood two trees approximately that distance apart.
“Have you considered wrapping them around those trees over there? It’s probably the same distance, and just as visible when you drive up.”
She considered it for a moment. “The beach club manager offered to add a ‘Welcome Campers’ to their digital LED display board.” She half smiled as if she was starting to consider it.
I laughed. “That was his solution? He’s never been to a real camp, has he?”
“That’s what I said!” she exclaimed. “I only need it up until the campers get here tomorrow morning.” She looked at the trees for a moment and seemed to picture it. “What’ll we need?”
“Let’s see,” I started, eyeing the distance between the two trees and the folded-up banner. “A pair of scissors, some thick twine, and a ladder.”
“Have you done this before?” she asked flatly.
“Nope.”
“Okay, let’s give it a go.” She clapped once, lifted her supply box, and with a quick nod of her head, marched toward the trees.
It took a little effort, but the banner was up, and even with the light wind, it held nicely. As long as a hurricane didn’t hit in the next eighteen hours, we should be set.
“Done,” I said triumphantly after I’d put down the ladder and looked up at our work.
“Huh!” she simply said.
I looked over at her and smiled, pleased to be leaving on a good note. “Glad I could help, Ms. Thornton.” I turned back toward Bays House to get my things.
“Aren’t you leaving that folder?”
I’d forgotten that she’d asked me to leave it for her for next summer. Not that I knew where I’d be or what I’d be doing. I handed it to her, hoping that maybe she might catch me before I got too far out of town.
She opened the folder and looked through its contents. “You haven’t killed anyone, have you?”
“Is that a joke?” It took me a second to realize a background check was probably where she was going with this. “Oh!” I quickly straightened my posture. “No…I definitely have not.”
She smirked and looked up at me from the folder. “Okay, I just need an hour to confirm that and look through the rest of this. Don’t unpack just yet. I’ve already posted the schedule for this week, but I’ll recirculate it to the staff later tonight if all this checks out.” She held up the folder.
“Oh, Ms. Thornton, thank you so much! You will not regret this. I promise.”
“Sarah!”
“Uh…Amy, actually.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, call me Sarah. Jeez, you’re making me sound as old as Ruth.”
“Thanks, Sarah. I’ll see you tomorrow…first thing!”
“First thing,” she called back.
