Saturn’s Children

(If you like this story, please check out my books, such as this collection of alternate history scenarios, this postmodern dirty-joke novel, or this straightforward suspense thriller,)

Any account I could give would be more notable for the incompetence of its narrator than for any fresh insight it might cast on the already over-documented events of that Thursday. Yet that I was present at what has proved to be one of the seminal events of the last twenty or thirty years may permit me to go on self-indulgently and at some length about my experiences. My grandfather, who churned the sand beneath his feet one June morning at Normandy has exercised a similar privilege in his day, and I can do no less than to follow in his example. And perhaps apologize to the future for being there at its conception, which is no less than our parents owe to us, and theirs to them.

It was an East Coast summer camp with a name that was, at the very least, well-intentioned. I suppose the whole camp was well-intentioned, the product of progressive thinking and intensive library research. If this were a longer or more ambitious narrative I would take pains to portray and individuate each member of its staff…but I would then be misrepresenting events. They were, in fact, nearly faceless, nearly identical, indeterminate even as to age and gender. They all had long silver hair, and were all, even the girls, named Harry. Their leader was an older man with a mustache, a doctor of philosophy and of medicine, named Mr. Kearn. He was a shadowy figure, they were all shadowy figures, speaking mainly to our parents and the press. In fact, there might have been only one Harry, multiplied in my youthful imagination (like the number of breasts my mother had; God help me I remember three).

There was, of course, a typical camp hierarchy, or at least a hierarchy I have taken for typical. There were counselors, who taught crafts and sent you to bed. The younger kids, K through third grade, had teachers, and spent all day in classrooms. There may have been several other hierarchical tiers I have elected to omit here. The camp had an ideology of some sort, but I have forgotten it, or they had: It wasn’t exactly emblazoned on the gates. I assume the camp had a ...