Blake and Caleb wouldn’t let up on Donnie with their da-da-Donnie routine to mimic his stuttering, and the angrier Donnie got the more he stuttered – which seemed to pump them up with more sadistic glee.

The worm on his pillow two nights ago sent him into spasms of anxiety and agitation. The next morning, while walking back from breakfast, he told me what had happened, saying, “Hal, they w-w-were all laughing when I went into my b-b-bunk and found the worm.”

Donnie was 12, top range of the boys in my cabin of kids 10 to 12.  Being older gave him no privileges of seniority nor the slightest edge, seeing that he was shorter than most of his bunkmates, had a large moon-shaped baby face, a skeletal frame and a shyness that made eye contact painful.  Worse, he had poor reflexes and hand-eye coordination for any of the sports in camp.

I landed this camp counseling gig for the summer to pick up tuition costs and even some play money, with a little luck.  Just finished my sophomore year at community college. My parents were divorced.  My dad pled poverty when my mom brought up the subject of giving me a little help with college. To tell the truth, I really didn’t want his money anyway. He was always cheap, like the time he made me pay him back for the ticket he got for the Yankees game he’d invited me to in the first place.

So, loving the outdoors, I knew that working at a summer camp had to be better than working fast-food or check-out at Walmart – and would pay more.  Not that I really minded working at those places.  I’d already earned my keep working summers and weekends during high school.

Camp Arrowhead, located in Litchfield in the Northwest corner of Connecticut, had everything a kid could possibly wish for. It was on a lake with docked sunfish sailboats, catamarans and kayaks. There were several ball fields; tennis, volleyball and basketball courts; a large restored barn for crafts and applied arts activities; and yet another larger barn with an outdoor and indoor stage for musical and drama performances. Campers had access to the internet, as most had the latest cell phones and I-pads.  Large-menu meals were provided at two huge screen-enclosed pavilions adjoining a log cabin kitchen facility. 

My assigned cabin accommodated ten boys. There was one other cabin for this age group and two for the others 8 to10.

 An open green separated the sexes.  The girl’s cabins were arranged similarly in age groupings and in the layout of cabins. 

To the campers I was Hal, and the bolder ones liked to tease me with, “Must be Hal for halitosis, Hal,” followed by bursts of laughter, and my usual retort being, “You guys will have Hal to pay for that.”

Donnie’s working-class family just happened to luck out in a non-profit agency’s raffle for full coverage of costs for the six weeks at Arrowhead.  Donnie had regretted telling the other boys about “winning the lottery.”  

I was pretty sure that Blake and Caleb were behind the worm episode.  A slip of the tongue from another camper had me convinced.  I approached them after breakfast the next day, and they admitted to it, to my surprise.  If I had to guess, I’d say it was only because they knew there was a cabin full of witnesses.  I insisted they apologize to Donnie – and that they did, though giggling all the way through their sorries.

I took Donnie aside one day between activities to have him talk about his stuttering.  I’d remembered reading somewhere about speech therapists getting stutterers to pause before speaking and slowing down their delivery. A lover of poetry, having changed my major from sociology to English last semester, I got this crazy idea of adding a bit of poetry into the exercises in elocution.  Couldn’t hurt, I thought, and I had a strong hunch he’d work with me.

“Hey Donnie, can you tell me about your stuttering?” I asked next day.

“Started in kindergarten. My t-teacher at school recommended a s-speech therapist for it.  My m-mom was all for it.  I w-went for only one s-session.  The guy c-creeped me out,” he said, “pushed too hard.”

“Okay, Donnie, no big deal, if hiccups can be stopped, so can stuttering.”

I then told him that he could start by pausing a few seconds before speaking or responding, then taking a deep breath before speaking, and when speaking, slowing it down, way down, being sure to concentrate on the words as they were forming – being very, very aware of his tongue, lips and teeth with each word and phrase.

Donnie listened politely.  I could see the doubt in his eyes at first – but he quickly brightened with, “What the heck, what’s there to lose.”

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do, Donnie.  We’ll start with an exercise, a poem, to be memorized and said aloud or in your head, got it?  You will hold onto every word and syllable and mentally sway with the rhythm, as if everything depended on it.  It’s the same rhythm of the sea, the stars and the planets, which cry out to you to follow along.”

First assignment was a poem by Dylan Thomas, one I loved.

I wrote down the stanza and asked Donnie to hang on to it for daily reference and practice.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Camp life moved on quietly for Donnie and my campers for the next few weeks.  I checked in with him during “free time” on Wednesday and Sunday to see how he was doing with the “stutter project.”  He kept telling me he started doing the pause-and-slowing thing before speaking and he’d memorized the lines of verse and was practicing several times a day in his head and recited aloud when sure he was alone.  I heaped lots of praise on him but careful not to overdo it.

Marie, the theater director from the female side, stopped at my cabin to see if any of the boys would like to take part in the camp musical production of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”  The other male counselors were right – she was a knockout. I asked her if the musical had any non-speaking roles, because I had someone in mind. 

“Oh, absolutely,” she said, “we need boys for chocolate factory workers.  He’d only have to follow a few cues and join the chorus on an Oompa-Loompa song.”

Marie then commented that she hadn’t seen me at the Saturday night socials for counselors.  I told her something about being tied up with other things – which must have sounded awfully lame.

I encouraged Donnie to sign up, that it might be just the thing to give a little boost to his self-confidence. Half-heartedly, he agreed to give it a try, that he could always quit after all if it was more than he could handle. 

Weeks later, I attended the first showing of the musical.  As attendance was optional, most of the boys in the cabins opted for the campout, where they’d have a large campfire with s’mores, pre-rehearsed counselor skits, ghost stories and a huge raffle at a dollar a ticket offering 15 generous prizes, after which they’d camp in four-person tents for the night.

I attended the musical. Have to say, Donnie seemed to be in his element and was singing his heart out in the chorus. The musical was a success, attracting loud applause and two curtain calls.  I went backstage to congratulate him, and there he was, exuberant in the circle of cast members hugging one another in their excitement. This was another Donnie I was seeing.

Catching my eye backstage, he ran over to me, exclaiming, “I always d-d-dreamed about getting on stage, but always thought I’d m-make a fool of myself.”

This could be a small milestone for him, I thought.  Next day, he mentioned in our practice session that two boys complimented him on the show.

About a week later, Donnie woke me up in the middle of the night, very upset and agitated, and had trouble collecting himself enough to tell me what had happened.  I got up and walked him outside so not to wake up the other campers.  I managed to calm him down, giving him a few minutes to take some deep breaths before telling me what was on his mind.

The evening before when it started getting dark, Blake and Caleb cornered him behind the cabin and started calling him a “girly-boy” who’d rather be in a musical than doing real boy things like camping in the woods.  They shoved him a few times against the giant oak in back.  In a panic, Donnie crashed through the cabin’s back door, grabbed a sheathed hunting knife from his backpack by his bunk and returned to confront them.  He waved the still-sheathed hunting knife at them, telling them he’d use it if he had to. 

“It worked,” he exclaimed, “they took off – but I hope I didn’t get in trouble.”

“Bring the knife to me now, Donnie,” I demanded in a stern voice.

He went straight to his backpack and handed it over to me. 

“I’m going to hang on to it,” I informed him, still recovering from the news.

“Did anyone else see what happened, Donnie?”

“Nobody, I’m sure.”

“Please, Hal, don’t tell the camp director, please!”

“Where’d you get the knife?”

“I got it at Walmart before coming to camp, just to give me a feeling of being safe, Hal. I’d never hurt anybody with it. I never even took it out of the sheath, just waved it around, wanted to scare them a little – that’s all.”

Unable to sleep, I thought about it the rest of the night in bed.  If the camp director found out I didn’t report it, I could be harshly disciplined, or fired.  In my favor was that Blake and Caleb probably wouldn’t report it because it would implicate them for bullying and harassing a fellow camper.  I had no doubt that Donnie would be let go from camp if the owners found out about the knife.

Well, word got out.

Two days later, Donnie was called to Director Endicott’s office. I was called in by Endicott later that day. He knew I’d known and yet didn’t report it.  Having no defense to offer, I expected the worst.  The worst was what I got – fired.  Of course, Donnie would have to go, too. Blake’s and Caleb’s parents would be notified about the incident.  Reprimands and “teaching moments” would be left to them at their discretion.

But the two boys would stay.

Next day, there we stood, Donnie and I, out in the parking lot on the far end of the green, our luggage beside us.  Donnie’s mother was coming to pick him up.  My unpredictable, very pre-owned Ford Taurus was parked in the counselor’s designated area on the other end of the lot.

Blinking back tears, Donnie kept telling me how sorry he was to get me in trouble.

“No, you didn’t get me in trouble, Donnie, I got myself in trouble.  I made a decision not to tell, knowing it was a gamble.  I believed you when you said you wouldn’t hurt anyone with the knife.  For you the situation was different.  You’re only twelve; I’m an adult. I’m not excusing you, but a guy can only be pushed so far until all he can see is red and a high ledge behind him.”

“Can you talk to my parents to explain the whole story?” he pleaded.

“Will do, Donnie.  And by the way, here’s your hunting knife.”

I opened the side-pocket in my bag and handed it to him.

“You can hold on to it or give it to your dad for safekeeping.  It’s up to you.  I know you know that violence doesn’t work, doesn’t solve a thing,” I said.

With that, I reached out to shake his hand.  He shook my hand and with the other arm gave me a half-hug while muttering something about having memorized all 22 lines of the poem – and not just for stuttering practice.

The last goodbyes said, I slowly walked over to my car, and while loading my bags in the trunk I realized I hadn’t thought much about his stuttering given all the recent drama. But as I was pulling out of the parking lot, it occurred to me that he hadn’t stuttered or stammered once since he woke me up the night before last.