The Order of the Silver Marmot
Christmas in July burned itself out the way camp traditions always do: loud, absurd, and then suddenly gone. The Christmas tree vanished overnight. The Santa suit returned to wherever Darren kept his other props. By morning, the mess hall smelled like bacon again instead of pine needles and candy canes, and camp life snapped back into its familiar shape.
The days that followed slid together. July tipped quietly toward August. Another set of troops rotated through, sunburned faces replaced by new ones, while the staff stayed put, anchored in routine. August and I settled into our routine from the earlier weeks, two, sometimes three nights together when the timing was right. Careful. Familiar. Still not taking risks we couldn’t afford.
By the end of the month, the camp itself felt worn. Flags went up a little slower. Staff meetings ran long. Program areas talked about breakdown instead of setup. Even Ander’s clipboard seemed heavier.
Then the notice appeared.
A printed announcement centered on the bulletin board outside the Silver Marmot Grill, stamped with the familiar emblem of a marmot crest.
ORDER OF THE SILVER MARMOT
2022 ANNUAL STAFF PHOTO & PROMOTIONS
INDUCTIONS TO FOLLOW AFTER STAFF CLOSING FIRE
People gathered around it in loose clusters, voices dropping without anyone needing to say why. The Order was Camp Parsons’ exclusive staff honorarium. After one summer on staff, you were inducted into the Order and promoted depending on your years of service. The title of Silver Marmot was reserved for Steve, the current Camp Director.
I found my name without meaning to. Smeadstad, Ben – Commissioner. Listed under Promotions & Inductions.
August stood beside me, reading over my shoulder. His finger traced the page once, then stopped.
“Fransen, August,” he said softly. “I guess that is… me?”
I smiled. “Looks like it.”
He stayed there a moment longer, shoulders easing as if the tension he’d been carrying finally let go. Whatever this summer had been: foreign, exhausting, exhilarating, it had counted. The Order didn’t forget him.
As the small crowd drifted away, my attention shifted to something else entirely. August’s hair had reached its breaking point: a bright, unruly mop of red strands that refused to lie flat no matter how much water or gel he threw at it. Sun-bleached at the tips, perpetually escaping regulation.
I tipped my head toward him. “You know we’re going to need haircuts for the photo, right?”
He snorted. “This is nothing. You should have seen it in June before I left.”
“I’m serious,” I said, smiling. “Staff photo. Promotions in the Order. Eddie’s getting his full Marmot. You’ll be a lasting impression of a Dutchman that’ll hang on the wall longer than either of us will be around."
He eyed me sideways. “So what are you going to do? Have Brady shave my head as he did to Amir last weekend?”
“On our last day off,” I said, already deciding. “Bremerton. We’ll both get cleaned up. And after…” I hesitated just long enough to make it matter. “I’ll take you to the Navy Base. Museum, carriers in port. The whole thing.”
His expression shifted; curiosity first, then something warmer. “You’re bribing me with battleships?”
“Absolutely.”
He laughed, bumping my shoulder as we started walking again. “Okay, Commissioner Benji. I’m in.”
Once the month changed, the jokes started immediately.
“August in August,” one of the Trading Post staff said at one of the tables in the dining hall, grinning as if they'd just invented it.
“Careful,” Eddie added later, passing us on the trail. “Too much August in August and the camp might not survive.”
August took it in stride, rolling his eyes hard enough to make the freckles on his nose shift. “You people have one joke now,” he muttered to me.
"Welcome to the Boy Scouts of America," I said. "Boys being boys. We'll run the joke into the ground by Tuesday."
August smirked. “Even with the girl troops? Steve said you’ve had them for a few years now.”
I shook my head. The old guard in the dining hall still grumbled about it over coffee. I’d grumbled too, once, as a Senior Patrol Leader, not at the girls, but at the loss of a simpler world, one where I knew how to hide.
“The name on the sign hasn’t changed,” I said. “To me, it’ll always be Boy Scouts.”
August considered my words, his head tilted. “That’s strange to me,” he said finally. “For us, it was never Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. It was just… Scouting. The idea that a name could hold so much of the feeling… that’s very American.”
I bit my lip and let it go: for him, it had always been that way. He grew up with girls in his unit from the start. My memory flashed to this past April: still masked in the crowded church hall with my dad and Evan’s parents, waiting for Evan’s Eagle Board of Review to finish. A board member walked a girl from a sister troop past us toward the review room door, her project workbook under her arm, in our uniform. She was on the same mountain as us, but she’d started her climb a decade after we had, and she was already at the summit. August wouldn’t understand how that sight, a stranger in my old uniform walking into the room that held my best friend, had changed the ground beneath my feet.
The days leading up to the weekend felt like a slow exhale. Camp didn’t change all at once; it softened. Troops started talking about advancement packets and ride times. Staff mentioned plans after Parsons more often than plans at it. Even the woods seemed quieter, the trails more worn down, as if the place itself knew it was nearing the end of its usefulness for the summer.
I kept doing my rounds. Kept ducking into tents with my clipboard, checking lines and sites, and doing the job I’d done for weeks now. And yes, I saw them. A few more North Face Cat’s Meows sleeping bags, scattered across camp like echoes. One from Lacey, WA. Another from Henderson, NV. Same blue-and-gray shell. Same soft crinkle when brushed by accident.
They registered, but they didn’t hit.
None of them carried the same weight the first time I saw Asher’s. None of them had Evan braided into their seams, or the smell of Fire Mountain sealed into their zippers. Those bags were just gear. Practical. Forgettable. The difference surprised me: how specific memory could be, how selective. It wasn’t the bag. It was the history trapped inside it.
By Saturday morning, the notice for the Order of the Silver Marmot was still pinned to the board, curling slightly at the corners. People walked past it with new awareness now, like it had shifted the air. Promotions. Inductions. A photo that would outlast all of us, tacked to a wall long after we’d scattered back to our real lives.
August kept brushing at his hair, tugging it back into some kind of order that never quite held. The sun had lightened it further, copper and gold at the tips, sticking up in defiance of every regulation.
“You’re really serious about this hair thing,” he said as we changed out of our uniforms in Banting.
“I am,” I replied. “This is legendary-camp-history stuff.”
He laughed. “You Americans. Always making everything permanent.”
Still, he followed me down the path toward the overflow parking lot without complaint.
The Subaru waited where it always did, a little dusty now, pine needles caught in the wipers. I tossed my jacket into the back and slid into the driver’s seat. Before starting the engine, I pulled my phone from my pocket and handed it to him.
“Pick,” I said. “Your call.”
He frowned at the screen, scrolling. “Pick what?”
“Barber. Salon. Hairdresser. Whatever you want to trust with your head.”
He studied my phone like he didn’t even know which way was north, then locked the phone and handed it straight back. “Take me wherever you go.”
I paused, surprised by how easily he said it.
“I don’t live in Bremerton,” I said, turning the key. The engine rumbled to life. “I live across the water, in the city, remember?”
He tilted his head, amused. “So where are you taking me, then?”
I looked back at the phone, “Great Clips,” I said. “Nothing fancy. Looks like there’s one in the Fred Meyer. We can have Starbucks and get you some Seahawks gear.”
August grinned, settling back into the seat. “Okay, but I’m still not buying you that ice cream.”
The Great Clips sat exactly where you’d find it at every Fred Meyer: wedged between a nail salon and the BECU ATM. Fluorescent-lit and faintly humming even from the parking lot. August takes it all in with visible skepticism as we step inside.
“This is… it?” he asks, glancing around. “This is where the American makeover happens?”
“Lower your expectations,” I say. “That’s the secret.”
We check in at the kiosk, the screen chirping cheerfully as I punch in my name. When it asks for a stylist preference, I hesitate just long enough to make it noticeable.
“You care who cuts your hair?” I ask, casually.
August shrugs. “I don’t know. Is that a thing here?”
“It can be,” I say. “You want a guy?”
He blinks at me, then smirks. “Yes. I think so. A guy.”
I tap the screen, suppressing a grin. “Alright. Guy, it is.”
We barely have time to sit before a voice calls out, bright and sing-song. “August?”
We both look up.
The stylist is short, slim, and impeccably put together: black hair swept back, glasses perched just so, movements precise and theatrical in a way that suggests he enjoys being watched. He’s already wearing a Navy-blue smock, and when his eyes land on August, something lights up.
“Ohhh,” he says, smiling widely. “Yes. Come with me, Sailor.”
August stiffens for half a beat, then laughs under his breath as he follows him to the chair. I drop into the seat opposite, cape already being snapped around my neck by another stylist, but my attention stays fixed across the aisle.
“So,” the guy says, circling August’s chair like he’s appraising art. “You in the Navy?”
“No,” August says carefully. “I teach outdoor skills. At the scout camp.”
The stylist hums, unconvinced. “Mmm. Red hair, tall, accent? I cut sailors all the time. You have the look.”
August catches my eye in the mirror, eyebrow raised, like see what you did?
I bite my lip to keep from laughing.
“What are we doing today?” the stylist asks, already combing through August’s hair. “Clean-up? Regulation? Or do we want to keep some drama?”
August glances at me again, just briefly. “Clean. But not… boring.”
The stylist grins. “Say no more.”
The clippers buzz to life, and red hair starts falling in soft clumps onto the cape. August watches himself in the mirror, head tilting as the shape changes, the wildness giving way to something sharper. The stylist chatters happily with August the whole time, bringing up how the Nimitz and Reagan are undergoing maintenance, about how the sailors in port always wait too long between cuts, about how redheads are “a blessing and a responsibility.”
Across from him, I’m pretending to listen to my own stylist while stealing looks over the top of the mirror. August looks younger already, lighter somehow, the summer sun stripped out of his hair bit by bit. He catches me watching and smiles, slow and private, like this is just for us.
When the stylist steps back at last, hands on hips, he beams. “There. Handsome. Very in regulation.”
August laughs, running a hand through his newly tamed hair. “You like it?”
I meet his eyes in the mirror. “Yeah,” I say honestly. “I really do.”
The stylist snaps the cape off with a flourish. “Tell your friend thank you for sending you to me,” he says, already turning away. “And if you ever do join the Navy: come back.”
August stands, still smiling, and leans close as he passes me. “You planned that,” he shakes his head.
“I absolutely did not,” I say. “But I’m not sorry.”
He laughs, soft and warm, and for just a moment, it feels like we’re not counting days before his flight anymore.
We eat at the teriyaki place in the same plaza, elbows nearly touching in the narrow booth.
August chews thoughtfully, then says, “You know, back home, everyone kept telling me I need to see Top Gun Maverick.”
“Have you?”
He glances at me. “Twice.”
“Of course.”
“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “Jet Engines, lots of explosions. Very American.”
“And?”
He smiles. “And now I’m sitting in the USA with a guy who promised to show me where these aircraft carriers come from.”
The Puget Sound Navy Museum smells faintly of polish and old metal, that particular museum-clean scent that settles into your clothes if you stay long enough. The front desk volunteer gives us a practiced smile and two paper brochures, but August barely glances at his before drifting away, already pulled by something deeper inside.
He clocks it instantly: Naval aviation.
I watch him stop short in front of a glass case filled with carrier models: Forrestal, Kitty Hawk, and Nimitz-class silhouettes frozen mid–flight deck operation, tiny planes locked into launch positions, deck crews forever caught in choreographed motion. His hands slip into his pockets, posture changing the way it always does when something truly has his attention.
“These are… in service?” he asks, leaning closer to read the placards.
“Some,” I say. “Some retired. Some are still out there.”
He hums, nodding, already moving on to the next display where a suspended F-14 model Tomcat hangs just low enough to feel imposing. His eyes trace the lines of the fuselage, the angles purposeful, brutal, and elegant at once.
While he’s distracted, I drift toward the desk again, lowering my voice.
“Hey, quick question,” I say to the staffer, a middle-aged guy with a lanyard full of pins. “Best place nearby to actually see the carriers? Without base access.”
He smiles like he’s been asked this exact thing a thousand times. “Charleston Boulevard,” he says immediately. “Down by the Bug & Reptile Museum. Or the staff parking lots if you don’t mind looking like you’re not supposed to be there.”
“Perfect,” I say. “Thanks.”
When I turn back, August has moved to a display of cockpit components: an aircraft instrument cluster mounted at eye level, dials and gauges packed tight like a foreign language. He leans in, fingers hovering but not touching, reading labels aloud under his breath.
“Altimeter. Airspeed. Vertical speed…” He says with his slight accent and glances at me. “It’s like… everything important is right here.”
I step beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. “My dad works on the modern versions of these,” I say casually.
He looks up, surprised. “Really?”
“Yeah. Avionics. Displays, systems integration. Stuff that makes this ”I gesture at the cluster, “look ancient.”
August’s mouth curves into something soft and genuine. “That’s actually cool,” he says. No teasing, no irony. Just simple approval. “My dad’s an engineer too, but… buildings. Factories. Big concrete rectangles.”
“Still important,” I say.
“If your dad designs avionics for the pilots in Top Gun, then you need a call sign like Maverick,” August says.
I snort. “No, I don’t.”
“Everyone needs a call sign.” He thinks for half a second. “Westcott, after your clipboard.”
“Absolutely not.” I retort.
He grins. “Too late. You’re Westcott, I’m Copper.”
All I can do is nod, and we move through the rest of the museum slowly. He reads everything. I skim, watching him instead: how he tilts his head, how his hands move when he talks, how easily his curiosity fills the space between us. Every so often, he catches me looking and gives me a small, knowing smile, like we’re sharing a private frequency no one else can tune into.
By the time we loop back toward the exit, the afternoon light has shifted, bright and slanted through the front windows. August folds his map and tucks it into his pocket.
“So,” he says, glancing outside. “You said something about seeing the real ones?”
I grin. “Yeah. Come on. I know a spot.”
We park in an abandoned lot beside the Bug & Reptile Museum, the asphalt cracked and sprouting weeds through old striping that hasn’t meant anything in years. After we get out without talking much, the doors thud shut and are too loud in the quiet. Across the street, past some jersey barriers and a bunch of parked vehicles, the water opens up.
And then they’re there.
The carriers sit in Sinclair Inlet like impossible objects, gray and immovable, their hulls stretching so wide they make the city feel temporary by comparison. Bremerton and the Shipyard look small from here: warehouses, cranes, low buildings huddled along the shore: everything dwarfed by steel that wasn’t built to be pretty, but to project force for decades.
I stop walking without realizing it.
I’ve seen them before as a Boy Scout, at Fleet Week, and on base tours, but today they hit differently. Maybe it’s because I brought him here. The island towers rise above the decks like blunt monuments, numbers stenciled on their sides large enough to read from shore.
August stands beside me, eyes narrowed slightly, taking it all in. “Which one is which?” he asks.
I lift my hand, pointing without thinking. “That one. The seventy-six on the island. That’s the Ronald Reagan.”
He follows my finger, focusing on the massive white numerals, committing them to memory. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. The wind comes off the water, cool and metallic, carrying the low industrial hum of the shipyard.
Then he shifts closer.
His hand finds mine: not tentative, not rushed. Just there. Warm. Solid.
“Thank you, Westcott,” he says quietly.
I look down at our hands, then back out at the carriers: at those vast, nuclear-powered engines of distance, silent in their home port. For one afternoon, they had done the only thing they were never designed to do: they brought someone even closer to me. I squeeze his hand once. “Yeah,” I manage, my voice raw against the wind. “Anytime.”
The drive back to camp is quiet, not awkward, not heavy. Just full.
The road unwinds through darkening trees, the Subaru’s headlights carving a narrow tunnel ahead of us. August watches the blur of evergreens slide past his window, one knee pulled up, hands folded loosely. I keep my eyes on the road, the day replaying in fragments: red hair on the Great Clips floor, the hum of the museum, the carriers sitting in the water as they’d always been there.
Nothing has shifted between us. If anything, it feels steadier, the kind of quiet you earn after a good day.
We pull into camp just as dinner service is winding down. The mess hall lights are still on, but the place is mostly empty: staff still scattered on days off, their last weekend being spent deliberately. Empty trays sit abandoned at the ends of tables, coffee urns still warm.
Ander is near a center table, bent over his clipboard beneath one of the lights.
“You guys made it back,” he says without looking up.
“Just in time,” I reply, pouring two waters from the drink dispenser.
August takes a long drink from his. “We saw the carriers,” he says, like that alone explains everything.
Ander finally looks up. His eyes flick between us, lingering for a half second on the way August stands a little too close, shoulder almost brushing mine. Whatever he notices, he doesn’t comment.
“Good, glad you enjoyed your time off,” he says instead. “Final week comes fast.”
We don’t stay. The hall feels too open for how full the day already feels. As we turn to leave, August claps a hand lightly on my shoulder.
“Ready for a shower, Westcott?”
The name hangs there: soft, casual, unmistakable.
Ander’s pen pauses. He glances up again, just briefly this time, head tilting a fraction. He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t smile. Just nods once and goes back to his notes, filing the moment away with everything else he’s chosen not to interrogate this summer.
Outside, August bumps my arm. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.
“Don’t be,” I answer. And I mean it.
Back in Banting, the room is dim and quiet, dusk settling blue against the windows. August drops his wallet on the desk, then reaches into his bag and pulls something out, grinning.
He sets a small toy F/A-18 Hornet on the windowsill next to his windmill, nose pointed toward the trees, gray wings sharp and confident in the fading light.
“Souvenir from the museum,” he says.
I stare at it for a second, already knowing the truth of it: that it will only sit there for six more days before it gets wrapped in a sock and carried across an ocean. A tiny, plastic-and-metal piece of our perfect day, destined to become a memory on a shelf 5,000 miles away.
“Looks like it belongs there,” I say.
He nods, satisfied, then grabs his towel. “You coming?”
The kybo is empty when we get there. No echoes of laughter, no slammed doors, no running water. Just tile and fluorescent light and the low hum of the building breathing to itself.
“It’s empty,” August says, with a hint of mischief in his voice.
“Yeah.”
He looks at me, the beam of his flashlight illuminating the freckles across his nose. “So?”
I didn’t need him to spell it out. The day had stripped away another layer of caution. The carriers had shown us the scale of what was coming; this was a claim on the time we had left, a small, defiant one.
“So,” I echoed.
We didn’t speak as we pushed through a stall door. I turned on the water, and the steam rose. August didn’t go to the next stall. He stood behind me, his hands at my hips, starting to undo my cargo shorts.
We undressed each other in the damp space between the door and shower, a silent, deliberate shedding. When we were bare, he pressed a wet kiss to the knob of my spine, then we stepped under the water together.
It was a tight fit. The spray was scalding. He took the soap first, washing me with a thorough, tender focus, an act of service. I did the same for him, mapping the freckled planes of his back. We took our time, as there was nothing to hurry for.
Then I sank to my knees on the gritty shower tile.
I took his bare foot, washing it slowly. His breath hitched, and August’s hand came to rest on my head, and his fingers ran slowly through my damp hair.
When I glanced up, his green eyes were looking down, water streaming over his face. His other hand was wrapped around himself. He gave one slow, deliberate stroke.
“Does Westcott,” he asked, his voice a rough rumble against the water’s roar, “like to fly at low altitudes?”
I silently nodded.
A slow, triumphant smile grew across his face. “Then get to work, wingman.”
The command sent a jolt through me. I leaned forward and took him into my mouth.
Target Acquired.
The world narrowed to the feel of him, the pressure of his hand in my hair, the deafening white noise. I lost track of everything but the rhythm and the building tension. When his grip tightened, and he came with a choked cry, I stayed with him until it was over.
He pulled me up. Without a word, he returned the service, sinking to his own knees onto the shower floor. He glanced upward, a challenge and a promise in his eyes, before taking me into his mouth. It was too much: the culmination of the entire day crashing over me. I fell apart quickly, my cry lost in the shower’s roar.
We stood there afterward, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same steam-thick air, until the water ran cold.
Finally, we turned the water off. The sudden silence was jarring, broken only by the drip-drip-drip from the showerhead and the distant hum of the kybo lights. We toweled each other dry with a quiet, focused tenderness, the rough camp towels scraping pleasantly over our sensitized skin.
The walk back to Banting was made in a deep, comfortable silence. The camp was dark, the paths familiar under our feet. In our room, the toy F/A-18 Hornet gleamed on the windowsill in the moonlight, a silent sentinel.
We didn’t speak as we climbed into our separate bunks. The air was cool now, smelling of soap and night. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, feeling the ghost of the water on my skin, the ghost of his hands, his mouth.
“Westcott?” his voice came softly through the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“That was…” He paused, searching. “A very successful mission today.”
A laugh, quiet and genuine, bubbled out of me. “Yeah,” I whispered back. “It was. Good night.”
“Sleep well, Westcott. Over and out.”
As I drifted to sleep, the ache in my knees from the tile and the fading heat humming in my muscles felt like trophies. The carriers, massive and distant in the inlet, had shown us the scale of our impending separation. But back at camp, in the steam and the silence, we had built something that, for a few more precious days, felt immovable.
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