Outdoor Amphitheater

My two boys and I owned this horse, Wilbur was his name, a sort of convoluted character, a stutterer when he was scared, which was mostly. He possessed, at the same time, a neurotic passion predestined for adventure, no matter how comical he appeared in the end.

A steed, say, for Don Quixote off tilting toward windmills, if Rozinante charged another direction.

Wilbur was our talking fictional character, who appeared in bedtime stories I imagined with my first-and-second grade boys. On the night of our family’s first camping trip, Wilbur, a horse already familiar with suffering, really took one on the chin.

Immediately downwind from the latrine on a holiday weekend, following an afternoon of great adventure, I told my boys we had forgotten the flashlight, so there was no way to read together.

Your Dad forgot the flashlight, my wife was quick to clarify with what I perceived to be a tone. Even a novice like me should have known, flashlight as Excalibur, the sword every camper uses to slice penetrating darkness.

Robbed of our communal experience of Harry Potter, my wife took Annalyse, our fifteen-month-old daughter, to one of our tents; I retreated to the other with our sons, Taylor and Ethan.

By a neighbor's campfire, I saw Annalyse, discovering the tent floor to be blue, doing something like the breaststroke while lying on her stomach squealing:  I sweeming, Mommy, I sweeming. 

While Melanie softly sang lullabies to pacify little Miss Mark Spitz, I decided to resurrect my boy’s favorite character -- poor, old, funny, arthritic, pot-bellied, breath-stinking Wilbur and watch him squirm for his dear life. 

Tonight, stuck in a boring darkness, on our family’s first camping trip, my boys were in no mood to show any mercy.

Rules for Wilbur stories were quite simple.

Rule #1: Each boy chose two enemies each--human, animal or cartoon--to bring Wilbur to his four shaking knees.

Rule #2: The deadliest weapon on earth (and space) was an unintentional fart released by Wilbur during a moment of deep duress.

Pursued by an array of enemies, night after night for three years, our boys slept soundly in the same predetermined ending: the toxic gas of a deeply disturbed horse never failed in its execution of cosmic justice.

Dying fires hissed around us as I asked my boys the standard question.

What enemies do you choose?

Taylor, my eldest, chose:

Darth Vader and Porky the Pig.

Ethan, a year younger and into Pokemon, chose:

Pikachu and Raichu.

For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with Pokemon, a pristinely campy cartoon, specifically created to cause parents seizures during movies and fork out a half-of-their-life savings on collector cards, I can best describe it as proof the Japanese never really got over World War II.

From the childhood of our boys, we own these cards, the creatures Ethan had just unleashed on our beloved and feeble Wilbur.

Turns out these cuddly fuzzy animals, on a whim, could strike an opponent with gazillions of volts that would knock the Legion of Superheroes on its collective butt. 

Along an horizon of fading campfires, the story of Wilbur's next grand adventure began the same, each of us reciting, in goofy voices, the beginning together. 

Wilbur is out in the field eating grass, hyuppitty, hyuppitty, hyuppitty. 

Shortly after my sons began to bellylaugh, my wife crouched by my tent;  even in pitch darkness I saw the whites of her eyes. When she began to speak, I could tell she was doing her best not to hiss.  

Hey, you want to keep it down in there? Can’t you see I’m trying to get our future Olympic star to go to sleep? 

I can’t see anything, I tried to joke.  

I mean it, keep it down.  

I heard the loud zip of her tent, my daughter repeating over and over 

I sweeming mommy

I sweeming mommy

I sweeming mommy

I sweeming mommy

like Jack Nicholson at a typewriter. 

Already injured by an earlier argument we had that same morning, I could imagine my wife's exhaustion. 

•

We had almost not come to Shady Lake Campground because of a reason I no longer recall. Best guess is that I had felt offended in some small way, and I was aggressively nursing a grudge, like each of us is bent to do.  In some form of comic pride, having found a reasonable reason not to go, a half lie, I threatened to call off our first family camping trip.

As I continued our most recent episode of the Mad Adventures of Wilbur, I reminded myself of what we might have missed. 

Out of respect for their mother, I asked my boys to keep it down and began to whisper a new story. 

Out of the blue, Pikachu, in adorably cute disguise, wallops Wilbur with more radioactivity than Chernobyl. Like someone standing in the shower with a toaster, Wilbur suffers through multiple seizures, horse drool splashing, backlit into colorful prisms by a setting sun.  

Just when Wilbur stops barking neighs, Raichu follows with an even more toxic blast. Knocked on his back unconscious, four legs spasm, in his defense, Wilbur can’t even begin to muster a fart.

When Wilbur finally wakes up a couple of hours later, night has fallen. He manages to limp to his barn where he smells and hears his own stinky panicked breath. 

Or so he thinks.

Emerging from darkness, Darth Vader stands before Wilbur, in all his majestic and intimidating darkness, speaking, a sibilance extending over long distances between dark words. Like only Darth Vader can. 

With my best James Earl Jones impression, I continued.  

You       want       to       know     what      evil      is?

A river of pee runs down one of Wilbur’s back legs.  He begs for mercy with the same voice a 50s sitcom horse might use.

Well, sir, ahh, I j-j-j-just want to eat gr-grass-sss in-in the field.  Couldn’t I j--just go back to doing that, oh D-D-Darkest of Lords?

In the camp’s darkness, I paused for effect. Untended fires whimpered and hissed, throwing coals only occasionally now, trailing red sparks angled against black night.

Returning to our story, Vader continued.

I      will       show        you       what      evil      is.

I paused again, this time to set up a plot twist.

Shining his lightsabre in the direction of a  fire burning near Wilbur’s barn, Darth Vader invites him to take a look.

Over a barbecue pit, Porky was sweating like a pig

I quoted his famous last words.

For the longest time, my boys didn’t know how to react.

When they both began to laugh, I had to quickly shush them before reaching the inevitable end of Wilbur’s latest adventure.

Having suffered thousands of volts, hours of drooling unconsciousness, and now forced to witness the barbecuring of our nation's most iconic cartoon character, Wilbur could do nothing but fart -- an unprecedented loud and stinky explosion of radioactive gas, Nagasaki notwithstanding.     

A fart toxic enough to free Porky Pig from binding ropes, chase evil Pokeman creatures back to Japan, and defeat Darth Vader like a Jedi son in a lightsaber duel. 

Wilbur saved, justice restored, our boys said their prayers and fell asleep to the sound of fires dying around us. 

I said a prayer, too, for hurting my wife, resting finally after Annalyse fell asleep, exhausted from hours of practicing the breaststroke on a blue tent floor. 

On the last night of our family’s first camping trip, just before watching a family movie projected onto an outdoor amphitheater, I put my arm around my wife and apologized again.

Sorry for threatening not to come, for forgetting the flashlight, for not helping with our daughter's sweeming lessons. Always eager to forgive, she smiled at me, tears running down her cheeks, pink clouds skittering along twilight horizon. 

We spoke of joy we experienced together. 

We cheered brilliant Taylor, always troubled by hand-eye coordination, as he hit the ball hard, shoulders squared, proud of what he had never done well before.

We chased Ethan, our laughing bullet of a son, racing him downhill, all of us breathless with laughter.

We smiled at Annalyse, wearing a crooked Pooh hat, refusing our hands to navigate a shallow creek bottom by herself.

For the teat of a grudge, we almost didn’t come.  After years of attempting to follow Jesus into his strange kingdom, I learned that weekend how beautiful repentance is.  When sorry and forgive marry, we, too, can show one another grace. 

*

That night at the campground, they showed Sleeping Beauty.  I couldn’t help but tear up, following a deep sleep, she rose to a beloved kiss, a fatal curse broken when true love invades.  

•

Wilbur, of course, ends up back home, adding to his potbelly in a field ripe with grain, soaking in warm light, somehow content, even when he knows the next onslaught is never far away. It could begin with a whisper falling from the sky, an adventure terrifying, comic, and grand at the same time.