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kid with more years on him, more muscles, a denser perm. He wore a spoon medallion. His name was Steve, or maybe Ivan, and his stroke trunk was deep. When we got through the first batch he hauled out some more. These were magazines that didn’t even have real magazine names. They just said what was in them, the way creamed corn at the market just said creamed corn on the can.
    Steve-Ivan called Van Wort Van Wort Hog. Or Fat Fucking Shit, for short. He was the one who told us to piss in Van Wort’s canteen. It was the best canteen in the bunk, brand new, fuzzy wool, a cavalry sleeve. We took turns pissing in it and dipping it down in the Port-O-San hole. We left it under his short-sheeted bed.
    When he found it his eyes went dark, his great arms started wibbling, wobbling on his knees. The canteen, he told us, was a gift from his dead father.
    â€œIt’s just a joke you fat fucking shit,” said Steve-Ivan. “We’re your friends.”
    â€œReally?” said Van Wort. He looked as though he was ready to believe this, or wanted to be ready.
    â€œSure,” said Steve-Ivan. “Just don’t be a Van Wort Hog and run crying to Mr. Marv.”
    Van Wort stopped crying and he didn’t run but he went to see Mr. Marv. Steve-Ivan was somebody’s cousin near Canada, though. The whole thing blew, as they say, over.
    I got damn good at boxball during this period. I was, if you will, the boxball king. Maybe it’s not crucial to the story of Van Wort, but I think people should know.
    We did a camp-wide Capture-the-Flag. I wasn’t in Van Wort’s unit, but I can tell you things got pretty hairy out there. What happened to this one girl in the beet field was a shame. We never did know what the rules were, or which kids were still living or dead. My unit just marauded around. We laid waste to Mr. Marv’s azaleas and tied a boy to the tetherball pole. Then we lucked into view of the flag, this dinky fluorescent thing like the kind for a sissy bar, planted on a hill. Mr. Marv was up there with some other campers.
    â€œDon’t let the heathens flank us, you curs!” we heard him shout.
    We flanked them hard. We flew up along a ridge near the tennis courts. Van Wort appeared out of nowhere with a croquet mallet in his hands. Some of us batted the mallet away and beat Van Wort to the dirt. I led the rest of the unit on the resumed flanking maneuver. I didn’t want to know what they were doing to Van Wort.
    Mr. Marv noticed our wild charge a little too late.
    I lowered my head, took flight.
    â€œThe day is lost!” he said, as I hit. “Our Lord has forsaken us for vile Moors!”
    â€œVile Moors,” he kept saying, which I didn’t get at the time, but I see now was because we had Black Sean with us and it was Black Sean who took the flag.
    Then the agony of having your nuts crushed by an airborne boy, it must have suddenly arrived on Mr. Marv. The man shut up.
    Victory equaled a sack of candy bars, to be divided evenly among all living members of our unit.
    Van Wort spent the night in the infirmary, though a boy who was there for a spider bite said there were no visible marks.
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    We played Freeze-Please every breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Steve-Ivan would say “Freeze, Please” while we were eating and we’d all go stone-cold statue. Whoever moved first was Admiral of the Swiss Navy, which meant you had to scrape and stack the dishes, bus them over to Black Sean’s mother in the kitchen.
    The Swiss have no navy, but who knew that then?
    We called Van Wort the Commodore because he couldn’t hold still. I think it was unfair, really, because it wasn’t so much him as his fat that was moving, if that makes any sense at all. Study a fat kid hard and it might.
    â€œWell, it looks like another lucky day for the Hog,” Steve-Ivan said one morning.
    â€œI’ll help him,” I said.
    Everyone gawked, as though I’d been