Heading up the Hill

At this point, after throwing him on the ground, I was fully expecting Brandon to jump on Alan and start to destroy him.  I was only a half second behind him, but that would lead to a series of events that I did not want to see take place.  No matter what happened, the results would be bad.  Luckily for everyone involved, Brandon just stopped and stood there, starring at everyone, who were all staring at him.  There was a very tense silence for a moment, until I took charge.

“Brandon, don’t even move.  Slip, take your cabin up to Canteen.  Girls, head up to Canteen with Autumn.  My guys, follow Slip’s cabin.  NOW!”  So they all headed off, leaving me alone with Brandon.  “Alright, I am going to give you a few minutes to cool off, and think about what you just did.  Don’t go anywhere.”  With that I headed a few yards a way to watch Impact doing the MVP, to give him some time and space.  I kept an eye on him and was trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation.  It would probably be best to avoid Impact by taking him down the zip line path-.

“That little b***h stole my hat,” Brandon suddenly shouted, interrupting my train of thought.

“Relax!  I highly doubt that.  Look around for it.”

This was followed few moments later by a not so loud and intimidating “..ah yeah, it was in my pocket.”

“Alright, are you ready to go?  Let’s head out this way.”  I pointed towards the zipline.

“Heck no, I am going the exact same way that he did.”  Presumably he was talking about Alan.

“Hey hello?  This way.”  But there was no changing his mind.  He set off towards the bridge, and pushed his way through the Impact campers there to get to the other side.  As we left the ropes course, Mouth and MC-5 had just finished taking down the zip line and were in sight just down the road.  I jumped up and down waving to get there attention, which worked.  They hopped into the Mazda and drove over to try to cut Brandon off at the T-intersection as he started to head up the hill.  Mouth yelled out at him, “Is BullsEye trying to get you to stop?”

“No, its fine!” I interrupted.  “But we could use your assistance.  Just meet us at Canteen.”

So they headed off, and Brandon and I continued to walk up the hill, I was not too far behind him, a bit off to the side.

About half way up, he had calmed down and he began to speak, “So I assume my parents have been called?”

“Well that may not have happened quite yet, but I expect it will in the not too distant future.  You really need to start thinking before you act. Things that you do have consequences, many of them are totally natural.  That incident was very public, so this time everyone is going to know what happened.  Everything happening now could easily have been avoided if you hadn’t acted totally on impulse down there.”

When we reached the top, MC-5 had disappeared and Mouth was standing by the truck.  I wanted to have a word with him in private before we dealt with the situation, but there was no way I was going to leave Brandon unattended with Alan and a hundred other campers ten yards away, eating at the Canteen.  I remember having great difficulty deciding how to explain the situation to Mouth as we approached him.  I didn’t want it to seem like I was “telling on” him, because I wanted to maintain a level of free-standing authority with Brandon.  Also, telling Mouth about the blade issue in private is like a heads up, while doing it right in front of Brandon would be more like an accusation.  It also seemed important for it to appear to Brandon that my reaction was more than just one of reporting things up the line, since he usually would have to deal with me first in any situation.

I think Mouth spoke first, since I was still choosing my words. “So, what has been going on?  Has he been giving you trouble?”

“I guess you could say that” I replied, and then to Brandon, “Alright listen, you can’t go around picking a fight, shoving someone around.  You know that.  That is not how we operate here.  That is NOT okay.”

“So he was pushing someone around?  Did anybody actually see it happen?”

“Oh yeah, like fifty people.”

Mouth turned to Brandon, “So you want to talk about it?  Let’s go over here and sit down.”

They took a seat at the bench, and I waited around for a minute, long enough to figure out that Brandon was trying to spin it that he had hardly touched Alan.  I also could tell from the way that Mouth was steering the conversation that it was unlikely that Brandon would be sent home over this.  That left me with a whole list of things to do for damage control.

The first thing I did, was check on the rest of my cabin, to make sure that they had gotten there candy and canteen stuff squared away.  Slip had taken care of that, and they were fine, so I pulled went over to have a quick chat with Alan.

“So are you okay?”

“Yeah, I will be fine.”

“Well things like that shouldn’t happen here at camp, but Brandon is not the most predictable person in the world.  I can’t really explain to you why he is here, but just try to be careful around him.  It would be wise to avoid doing things that would aggravate him, if you know what I mean.”

With that, he headed back to his cabin mates.  Next I pulled Nicole aside.  I never really figured out how much she really knew about what was going on, but she definitely played clueless, so I played along.

“That was really weird, what happened down there.”

“Yes it was.  We try to avoid having things like that happen here.”

“Earlier in the week Brandon was always by himself, so I went and talked with him a few times.  But now he is kind of scary.”

“Brandon is not the most stabile person in the world, so you need to be careful around him.”  I was trying to figure out how to balance trust and respect, and a few other things.  What might be good for one camper might be bad for the other.  For example any time Brandon spent around normal people would probably benefit him, but time spent around Brandon might be having a bad influence on those other people.  I try to remain a bit neutral in that regard, and let things progress naturally.

At that point, MC-5 appeared, so I sent Nicole back to Autumn, and began to explain what had happened to MC-5.  I filled him in on the details he was missing from the Monday incident, and the things that had happened since.  I explained to him what had happened with Alan, and about the issue of Brandon having a blade.  I just wanted to make sure there was someone on leadership who knew the most recent details, in case I didn’t get a chance to talk to Mouth in private.  MC-5 assured me that he would make sure the information was passed on to the appropriate people, and I went back to deal with my cabin, so that they would have a counselor, sort of, at least for a little while.