Fort Duckabush
The last week of camp doesn’t arrive all at once. It leaks in.
It shows up in half-packed footlockers, in staff talking about “when I get home,” in the way everyone starts saying next summer instead of later. The schedule stays the same, but the tone shifts. Less urgency. More counting.
August and I stop pretending about nights.
There’s no announcement, no conversation where we agree to it. We just… don’t separate anymore. Once the lights go out in Banting, once the last footsteps fade down the hall, one of us crosses the room without asking. The bunks creak softly. The space between us disappears.
We’re still careful, no lights, no talking, but there’s less hesitation now. The knowledge that time is short has burned away the last of it. Sleeping tangled together becomes less about sex and more about waking up and knowing exactly where the other is. His knee hooked behind mine. My hand finds his wrist in the dark like it’s always lived there.
Morning always resets us.
Uniforms back on. Distance restored. Commissioner and Scoutcraft Instructor. Ben and August. Westcott stays grounded, saved for when the lights go out again.
Trails I’ve walked all summer start to feel like hallways. The waterfront echoes longer. Even Ander seems to move more slowly, like he’s already packing the season into boxes in his head.
We get careless, not enough to be obvious, but enough to be noticed if anyone were really looking.
August stands too close when we talk. I linger an extra second when I hand him something at dinner. Sometimes, when no one’s watching, he brushes my fingers on purpose and grins like he knows exactly how little time we have left to waste.
The night Brady almost catches us starts like every other.
Lights out in the campsites, quiet settles in layers. Someone laughs faintly from another room, then even that disappears. August slips across the room, bare feet soundless on the floor. He smells like soap, pine and the faint ozone of the kybo lights. He presses his forehead to mine before climbing in, a silent ritual now.
We’re half asleep when the sound comes.
Not a knock, more like a hesitant rap on the doorframe.
“Uh. Ben?”
My eyes snap open, and August freezes next to me.
The clock on my watch reads 22:47.
“Yeah?” I call, pitching my voice low and steady, already untangling us under the sleeping bag.
“I’m sorry,” Brady says from the other side of the door. “But do you have any AA batteries?”
“Hold on,” I say quickly.
August rolls away, silent as a mouse, back into his own bunk. I grab my shirt, jam my feet into slides, and step into the doorway before Brady can see anything he shouldn’t.
He’s standing there in mesh shorts and a camp hoodie, clutching a purple mini maglite like it’s his only weapon in a zombie apocalypse.
“Emergency?” I ask.
“Might be,” he sighs. “A kid at Mt. Turner broke out in hives after lights out, maybe an allergic reaction to something. Troop 89’s Scoutmaster wants a second opinion on whether to wake the nurse. My flashlight just quit as I got to the culvert.”
I suppress a sigh and reach into the plastic dresser by the door, my hands shaking just enough to notice. I pass him two batteries from the Kirkland box I packed from home.
“Here. Hope he’s ok.”
“You’re a hero,” Brady says solemnly, then pauses, squinting past me into the dark room. “Were you guys… asleep already?”
“Yeah,” I say easily. “Long day.”
He nods, satisfied. “Sorry again. See you in the morning.”
The moment his footsteps fade, I close the door and lean against it, exhaling hard.
From the other bunk, August lets out a silent, breathless laugh.
“That,” he whispers, “was close.”
I cross the room in two steps and sit on the edge of his bunk, pressing my forehead into his shoulder.
“Too close,” I swallow a breath.
He turns his head, lips brushing my temple. “Worth it?”
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
We don’t sleep much after that. Not because we’re reckless, but because we’re awake in the way you get when something is ending and you’re trying to memorize it. The sound of the trees. The smell of the room. The way his breathing changes right before sleep finally claims him.
The days keep ticking down until Saturday, when the troops in the last session go home, and we start packing everything up for the summer before the staff closing fire and Order of the Silver Marmot ceremony.
Friday’s closing campfire is for the scouts.
It’s loud, it’s scripted, it’s full of the same skits and songs we’ve done five times already this summer. The fire is big. The jokes land. The scouts cheer. Steve gives his final closing speech of the season, his voice carrying over the water, talking about legacy and carrying the spirit of Camp Parsons home.
I watch it from the edge of the circle, clipboard tucked under my arm, playing my part. It’s a good show. Memorable, even. But it feels like watching a play I’ve seen too many times. The emotions are broad, meant for a crowd of four hundred.
My mind isn’t on the fire. It’s on the toy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet on our windowsill, counting down its final days before deployment. It’s on August, standing across the circle with his Scoutcraft staff, the firelight turning his hair to copper and shadow. He catches me looking and gives me a small, private smile that doesn’t belong to this ceremony at all.
This isn’t our goodbye. This is the camp’s goodbye to the scouts.
Our goodbye comes tomorrow, after the last bus groans out of the parking lot, leaving behind a silence so profound it feels like a final curtain drop.
The camp doesn’t just get quiet after the campers leave; it changes state. The energy that hummed here for two months: the shouts, the bugle calls, the clatter of trays, vanishes; absorbed back into the trees and the water. What’s left is hollow, waiting for next year.
Saturday afternoon is a blur of practical unraveling. We become a strike crew.
I help Eddie and the waterfront staff haul canoes up the beach, their hulls scraping on gravel, and secure them on the racks. The sailboats look naked without their masts. August and Ryan inventory every axe, saw, and coil of rope in the Scoutcraft shed, their voices a low murmur through the open door. I pass them once, carrying a box of leftover merit badge cards to storage. August looks up, his forehead sweaty, and mouths “hey.” It’s all we have time for.
We work until our polos are damp with sweat and dust. There’s no schedule anymore, just a long, shared to-do list that slowly gets shorter.
As the sun starts to dip, casting long shadows across the main field, the work gradually stops. People drift toward the parking lot, but then, as if pulled by a shared instinct, they turn and head for Fort Duckabush instead. The purpose that held us together all day is spent.
The camp museum is louder than we expected. Voices spill out of the open doors. I find August, and we head toward the noise.
It’s not camp-loud: no whistles or shouting, but voices layered over each other, laughter bouncing off the low ceiling, the sound of people who know each other too well to stay quiet in a small space. Fort Duckabush always feels half like a museum and half like a family basement stuck in the 70’s, and today it leans hard toward the latter.
August slows beside me as we step inside, surprised. “I didn’t know everyone was in here.”
“Neither did I,” I say, scanning the bunkhouse.
And then we see them.
A whole knot of staff are crowded into a lower area where the Camp Parsons Staff History and Photographs live: a century of summers compressed into frames and plaques. Eddie is planted at the center of it, one arm braced against the wall like he’s a museum guide. A couple of younger staff lean in, listening. Someone laughs.
“Well,” Eddie is saying as we approach, “you can tell what year it is just by the shorts.”
He spots us and grins. “Hey! Look who decided to learn something today.”
August raises an eyebrow. “I was promised history,” he says solemnly.
“You came to the right place,” Eddie replies, already turning back to the wall. “Alright, gather round. This is important.”
The photographs march along the panel in neat rows: black-and-white at first, stiff smiles and long socks, then color creeping in, hair getting longer, shorts getting shorter, smiles loosening as the years go by. Each frame has a date, a list of names. Staff frozen mid-summer, forever young.
Eddie taps one near the middle.
“Here,” he says. “1997. That’s Steve.”
The boy in the photo is almost unrecognizable from the Camp Director we know: thinner, awkward in the way being 15 always is, a CIT patch crooked on his right sleeve. His smile is earnest, open, like he hasn’t yet learned how much responsibility that grin will someday carry.
“No way,” someone says. “That’s Steve?”
“That’s Steve,” Eddie confirms. “He did his first summer as a CIT. Never left.”
August smiles at the photo, something thoughtful crossing his face. “He looks… normal.”
We all laugh.
Eddie moves his finger along the timeline. “And here: 2016.”
He taps again.
Ander.
Younger, sharper, standing a little straighter than everyone else, even then. His expression is serious, like he already understands exactly how much this job is going to ask of him.
I glance at August. He’s studying the photo closely.
“He hasn’t changed much,” August says.
“Give it time,” Eddie replies. “Camp ages you in dog years.”
The group chuckles, drifting slowly along the wall, calling out names, pointing at people who came back for one summer or ten. Some frames are crowded. Others thin. Years with war, years with rain, years with record heat, all flattened into smiles and tan lines.
Then we reach the end.
The 2021 photo hangs last: lowered masks, spaced awkwardly apart, the strange, stilted summer captured in proof. And beside it:
Nothing.
An empty frame. A small brass plaque beneath it, already mounted.
2022
The space feels louder than it should.
August tilts his head. “That’s for us?”
Eddie nods, his grin softer now. “That’s for you.”
I stare at the empty space, feeling something settle in my chest. A place waiting. A rectangle of time not yet sealed. A version of us that will exist here long after the gates are locked and the docks pulled in.
“Photo’s Tomorrow morning,” Eddie adds lightly, like he hasn’t just pointed at the future. “Don’t mess it up.”
“Too late,” one of the kitchen staff jokes.
August steps a little closer to me, close enough that our elbows hit. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for me to feel.
He looks at the empty frame again. “All these American summers. And now we are here, at the end of ours.”
“Yeah, I say. I’ll never forget this summer.”
He glances at me, then back at the wall. “Do you think you’ll ever come back here to look at it?”
I imagine it: years from now, standing right here, pointing at a younger version of myself, explaining who everyone was.
“I think,” I say slowly, “you don’t really know what it means until you’re not in it anymore.”
August nods, like that makes sense. Like he’s already halfway home.
Eddie claps his hands once, sharply. “Alright, history lesson over. Someone go read about ol’ Impeesa, so this visit remains educational.”
The group disperses, voices rising again, but I linger a second longer with August in front of the empty frame.
Soon, it will be filled.
Soon, this summer will be flat, finished, and framed.
For now, it’s still ours.
The staff closing ceremony is smaller. That’s the first thing August notices. No troops. No Scoutmasters. No audience that needs to be impressed or reassured. Just us: sunburned, tired, smelling faintly of smoke and lake water, gathered in a loose circle where the fire ring waits.
Someone has rebuilt it carefully, stones reset, ash swept out. The fire is already going when we arrive, low and steady, not the roaring spectacle of a closing campfire for scouts. This one isn’t for noise. It’s for listening.
Steve stands at the edge of the circle, not elevated, not centered yet. He waits until everyone settles, until the last hushed conversation fades. Then he steps forward.
He doesn’t use the script.
“I’ve given this kind of speech a lot of times,” he says, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. “And every time I think I’ve finally figured out the right way to say goodbye.”
A few people smile. Someone snorts softly.
“I never do,” he admits. “Because a summer at Parsons isn’t something you finish. It’s something that finishes you a little. And then you carry what’s left.”
The fire pops, a sharp crack that echoes in the quiet.
Steve talks about the summer: not in events, but in people. Names come up. Mistakes, too. The Troop 273 church bus driver who tried to leave by Steve’s driveway and got the rig wedged between two cedars. A staff meeting that ran long because nobody wanted to be the one to say the hard thing. He thanks us, not as a group, but as individuals who chose to stay when it would’ve been easier to leave.
When his voice wavers, it surprises no one.
“You made this place live and breathe,” he says finally. “You always do. And tomorrow, when you drive out that gate, it will close behind you like it always does. But what you built here doesn’t stay locked inside it.”
He looks around the circle, eyes lingering for just a beat on each face.
“Thank you,” he says. “For giving Camp Parsons another summer.”
No applause. Just a quiet, collective breath.
Then Darren steps forward with a cardboard box.
“Socks,” he announces, unnecessarily.
August looks at me, confused. “Socks?”
“End-of-summer tradition I learned from my brother,” I whisper. “You burn the socks you worked the season in. Leave the summer behind.”
He looks down at his boots, over the very much still-on socks.
“Oh,” he says. “Right. Of course.”
Except he doesn’t sit down to pull off his boots and socks. He stands there, wobbling slightly as he balances on one foot, tugging at the heel. Someone snickers. Eddie makes a show of shielding his eyes, but I know those feet all too well.
“August,” Natalie says dryly. “You can sit down and do that, instead of flopping around like a pogo stick.”
August shakes his head, determined. He finally wrestles one sock free, then the other, holding them up triumphantly like he’s conquered something. The campfire catches the edges immediately when he tosses them in, fabric curling and blackening as the smell of burning cotton rises.
He watches them disappear, expression thoughtful. “That’s… oddly satisfying.”
When it’s my turn, I don’t hesitate. My old uniform socks are threadbare anyway. They go up fast.
Awards come next, passed out without pomp. Some are silly. Some are earnest. A lot of inside jokes that won’t make sense to anyone outside this circle.
Then Steve clears his throat again.
“One more,” he says. “This one matters.”
He gestures for August to come forward.
August blinks. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” Steve says, smiling. “Front and center.”
Steve holds out a small plaque: not flashy, just wood and brass, solid and permanent. The inscription is simple:
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE STAFF – 2022
For bringing the world a little closer to Camp Parsons.
August takes it carefully, as if it might break.
“This summer,” Steve says, “you didn’t just teach Scoutcraft. You reminded us that what we do here reaches farther than we think. We’re better for having you.”
August clears his throat. “Thank you,” he says, his accent a little thicker than usual. “I didn’t know what to expect when I came here. I just know… I’m taking a lot more home than I arrived with.”
Before August can return to his spot, Ryan rises from the log where he’d been sitting.
“Hold up,” Ryan says as he reaches into the deep pocket of his cargo shorts and pulls out a long, narrow roll of faded green canvas. He unrolls it carefully on his palm. Inside lay a polished stainless-steel marlinspike, its handle wrapped in dark, tight cord. The firelight glints off its tapered point.
A few oohs and aahs ripple through the circle. It was a serious piece of gear.
“This isn’t official,” Ryan says, his voice carrying easily in the quiet. “But you earned this as much as the plaque. Every good scout should have a proper tool.”
He holds it out. August takes it, his fingers closing around the cool metal. The weight of it looks substantial, hand forged.
“Dankje, Ryan,” August says, his voice thick. “This is… amazing.”
“Just remember one thing,” Ryan says, his mouth quivering into a wry, supervisor’s smile. “Put that in your checked baggage. I learned that the hard way in the TSA line coming back from Philmont.”
The circle erupts in soft, knowing laughter. August grins, shaking his head. “It will be buried deep in the suitcase. I promise.”
Ryan nods, satisfied, and claps him on the shoulder. “Good. Don’t be a stranger.”
After that, the talking stick comes out.
It’s an old piece of driftwood, smoothed by years of hands. You only speak when you’re holding it. You pass it when you’re done.
Stories ripple around the circle. Small moments. Big ones. Things that mattered only because they happened here.
When the stick reaches me, my palms are sweaty.
“Christmas in July,” I chuckle. “August and Steve tossed me off the pier at six in the morning for the Polar Bear Swim.”
Laughter breaks around the circle.
“I’ve never forgiven either of you,” I add. “But I stuck around. So I guess that says something.”
I pass the stick.
August takes it last.
He rubs it between his hands, thinking. “My first memory here,” he says slowly, “is the Salisbury steak.”
Groans ripple through the group.
“I didn’t know what it was,” he continues, smiling. “I thought it was a hamburger, but I was wrong.”
Laughter again.
When the stick comes back to Steve, he lifts his other hand.
“One more thing,” he says. “Order business.”
That gets everyone’s attention.
The joking energy fades. People straighten a little without realizing they’re doing it. The Order of the Silver Marmot isn’t flashy, but it carries weight: the kind that only makes sense if you’ve earned it.
Darren steps forward with another small wooden box. He opens it, revealing coiled leather lanyards, each one etched with a silver marmot on a leather square.
Timberline rank.
Steve clears his throat. “If you served your first full summer on staff,” he says, “this is the silver marmot, a mark that says you’re no longer just passing through. You are a resident here, in the Olympic Mountains.”
He starts calling names.
One by one, people step forward. Some grin. One girl on the climbing tower crew looks stunned. Each lanyard is slipped over a head, the leather settling against skin like it’s always belonged there.
Then: “Fransen, August.”
August blinks, then steps forward. He looks suddenly young again, like the first day he arrived with his suitcases and his careful smile.
Steve places the lanyard over his head, adjusting it so the marmot rests flat against his chest.
“You crossed an ocean to be here,” Steve says quietly, just for him. “And you made this place bigger than it was before you arrived.”
August swallows. “Thank you,” he says, voice steady but full.
He steps back into the circle, fingers brushing the charm like he’s memorizing its weight.
“Smeadstad, Ben.”
I step forward.
Steve meets my eyes, expression serious now. “You carried more than your share this summer,” he says. “And you did it without dropping anyone else.”
He lowers the lanyard over my head. The leather is warm from his hands. The silver marmot catches the firelight.
“Welcome to the Order,” he says.
When I step back beside August, our elbows touch. He glances at me, eyes shining just a little.
After Timberline, ranks climbed: Skyline for Natalie, Guide for Brady, Sentinel for Amir. Each step felt like another layer of the summer being sealed. Then Steve pauses, the fire crackling in the silence. “And finally,” he said, his voice shifting, “we have unfinished business.” He nods to Eddie.
Eddie groans theatrically. “I knew this was a trap.”
Laughter ripples through the circle.
Steve grabs a velvet sack this time and opens it carefully. Inside is a bolder emblem: a marmot set against a red field.
Marmot rank.
“For over five years of service,” Steve says, his voice clear over the fire’s crackle. “And for the fact that in your first year as an Area Director, you didn’t lose a single canoe. Edward Taglienti.”
Eddie steps forward, suddenly quieter.
Steve places the lanyard over Eddie’s head.
“For the record,” Eddie says, clearing his throat, “I did not cry when I got my Timberline.”
A pause.
“I am absolutely crying now.”
Applause breaks out, loud and genuine. Eddie bows exaggeratedly, then wipes at his eyes anyway.
When the clapping fades, the fire crackles again, settling.
That’s when it feels complete.
The stories. The recognition. The proof that this summer existed and that we did, too.
Only then do we walk together toward the trading post, flashlights bobbing. The building looks smaller without scouts clustered around it, pressing noses to the glass. Steve unlocks the door, steps inside alone, then comes back out and turns the key slowly.
The click is final.
“See you next summer,” someone says, reflexively.
Steve hands the key over to the Camp Ranger, but remains silent.
We stand there for a few more seconds, then drift apart. The way things always do at the end, no big exits, just people peeling away into the dark for one last sleep here, carrying their summers with them.
The walk back to Banting is silent, but it’s a full silence. Our flashlights cut twin beams through the deep dark, the camp around us now just shapes and memories. The click of the trading post lock still seems to echo in the air, a full stop on the season.
Inside our room, the quiet is absolute. August doesn’t turn on the light. He just toes off his boots and lets them thud to the floor. In the dark, I can just see the outline of him, the new, clean lines of his haircut.
Then he moves.
It’s not a walk. It’s a pounce. He crosses the two steps between us, and his mouth is on mine before I can even take a breath, his hands coming up to cradle my face. The kiss is desperate, hungry, a silent scream against the ending that’s already curling at the edges of our tomorrow. I kiss him back just as fiercely, my hands fisting in the fabric of his uniform shirt, pulling him closer until there’s no space left between us at all.
We stumble toward my bunk, a tangle of limbs and urgent, searching hands. Uniforms are pushed aside, fabric rustling in the dark. His skin is hot against mine, his breath coming in ragged gusts against my neck. This feels different. Not just hungry, but frantic, like we’re trying to memorize each other by touch alone, to press the shape of this summer into our bones.
As we sink onto the thin mattress, the reality of it crashes over me like cold water. This is it. Our final night. The last time we’ll ever share this room, this dark, this secret. After tomorrow, this becomes a memory we’ll have to carry separately across an ocean.
A wild, possessive thought takes hold. I don’t just want to be with him. I want us to be lost in each other, completely, at the same time. I want our goodbyes tangled into one single, shared feeling.
I pull back just enough to speak, my forehead resting against his. “Hey,” I whisper, my voice needy. “I want to try something. Tonight. Something new.”
He stills, his eyes searching mine in the faint moonlight. “What?”
“I don’t want to take turns,” I say, the idea forming as I speak. “Not tonight. I want us to… do it together. At the same time. I want to feel you… while you feel me.”
I can see the understanding dawn in his eyes, followed by a spark of intense, wicked curiosity. A slow, knowing smile spreads across his face, the one that always makes my stomach flip.
“Ah,” he says, his Dutch accent soft in the intimate dark. “You mean… six nine?”
The numbers hang in the air between us, clinical and crude and electrifyingly perfect. It’s a geometry of intimacy, a complete circuit. It’s exactly what I meant, but hearing him say it, so bluntly and with that hint of a challenge, sends a jolt straight through me.
“Yeah,” I breathe out, my heart hammering. “That. Do you… want to?”
His answer is another kiss, deep and promising. “Yes,” he mutters against my lips. “I want to. But, Benji… the top or the bottom?”
The question is so practical, so him, it almost makes me laugh. We’re about to attempt the most intimately tangled goodbye possible, and we’re negotiating positions like it’s a line-up at the shooting range.
“You choose,” I say.
He thinks for a second, then a mischievous glint appears in his eye. “You first. On the bottom. I want to… be on top this time.”
The way he says it isn’t about dominance; it’s about perspective, about seeing this moment from a new angle. I nod, my throat too tight to speak, and shift down on the narrow cot, lying on my back. The sleeping bag is bunched beneath me, the familiar scent of us and salt-stiffened nylon filling my senses.
August moves over me, his body a warm, welcome weight. He hesitates for a second, looking down at me, his face serious in the gloom. “This will be noisier, won’t it?
“No one will care,” I whisper back, pulling his head down for one more searing kiss. They’ll think we’re doing some last-minute packing.”
He nods, and then we move together, a practiced, silent dance in the confined space. We arrange ourselves, our bodies slotting into the new, unfamiliar configuration. It’s awkward for a second, a wrist here, an ankle there, and then it isn’t. Then it’s just us, inverted and aligned, the entire universe narrowed to the space between this bunk and the ceiling.
I feel him settle over me, and then his warmth is there, at my mouth. I don’t hesitate. I take him in, the familiar taste and weight a comfort and a devastation all at once. A moment later, I feel his mouth on me, hot and sure, and a broken sound escapes my lips, muffled against his skin.
And then there is only sensation, a feedback loop of pure feeling. Every touch of my tongue draws a soft gasp from him, which vibrates through me. Every suck of his mouth pulls a groan from my chest, which makes him shudder above me. We are giving and receiving in the same instant, a closed system of pleasure and grief. There is no past, no future, no plane tickets or empty frames. There is only this: the shared rhythm of our breathing, the slick, heated exchange, the unbearable intimacy of being inside each other’s pleasure so completely that you can’t tell where yours ends and his begins.
It doesn’t last long. How could it? The emotional charge is too high, the ache too deep. The climb is swift and dizzying, a mutual ascent fueled by the terrifying, beautiful truth that this is the last time. I feel his thighs tense against my shoulders, hear his breathing fracture into sharp, pleading gasps. The coil inside me snaps at the same instant, triggered by the feel of him coming apart in my mouth.
The world whites out in a silent, simultaneous detonation.
We collapse together, a heap of sweat-slicked limbs and shuddering breaths, still entwined in our goodbye geometry. Slowly, carefully, we untangle. August rolls off, lying beside me on the narrow cot, one arm thrown over his eyes. The only sound is our ragged breathing slowly slowing, syncing up one last time.
After a long while, he turns his head on the pillow. In the dark, I can barely see the glint of his eyes. “Benji?” he whispers, the call sign a soft intimacy.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to miss you… more than Bram.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. A tear runs down my cheek, and I squeeze his hand, holding on as if I could stop the dawn from coming. I can’t speak. I just squeeze his hand again, hoping he understands that a “me too” is the smallest, most inadequate part of it.
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