“D
ad, can I join Cubs?” The request came from the back, where Dmitri sat looking out the window with a word search in one hand and a donut in the other. The appeal took Clark by surprise, and he evaluated his son in the rearview mirror.
“Sure, buddy. Where’d you hear about the Cubs?”
“There was a thing from school. The date passed, but you can still sign up. Sam is in it.”
“Okay, just wipe the chocolate off your face before we get home.”
Who could say no to such an entreaty? The kid didn’t want a cell phone or video game system; he aspired to be a Cub Scout.
That night, after Dmitri was in bed, Clark loaded the dishwasher while Aimee leaned against the counter, picking at a candle. She had reservations: the Scouts were a homophobic, retrograde paramilitary organization with a history of sexual abuse.
Clark explained that the Scouts no longer discriminated against gays, and the idea had been Dmitri’s. The Cubs weren’t so bad; after all, he’d been one himself as a boy, and it was fine. Nobody had laid a finger on him, and he’d turned out okay, hadn’t he? Plus, he could give a shit about the Cubs; the point was that Dmitri was making a friend, Sam. Perhaps this would lead to further friends and being, well, a more regular kid. And no, he wasn’t saying there was anything wrong with Dimitri—goddamn, now he was on the defensive—just that it wouldn’t hurt for the boy to have a pal. And what was he going to do, tell him he couldn’t be a Cub Scout after he’d already said yes? Unless she wanted to nix the Cubs.
“No, I don’t want to do that,” replied Aimee. “That’s why I wished you’d checked with me first. Why should I be the bitch? You put me in an impossible position.”
Oh God. He’d put her in an impossible position. Who would be ferrying Dmitri to and from den meetings and standing in front of Home Depot hawking overpriced caramel corn? Not Aimee, that was for sure, but now it was like he owed her one.
Clark visited the Scouts’ website for details on meetings, badges, and the Cub Scout motto: “Do your best.” It was abbreviated as DYB, and he remembered the acronym from his own time as a Cub; it formed part of a call and response in which DYB (pronounced “dib”) was volleyed back and forth three times in tandem with DOB (“Do our best”). That was okay—corny but inoffensive. The Scout promise was something else. He would have to keep it from Aimee and hope that Dmitri didn’t spontaneously declaim that he was bound “To do my duty to God and my country, to help other people, and to obey the law of the pack.” Helping other people was good, but duty to “God and my country,” was suspect, and obeying “the Law of the Pack” irredeemable.
It wasn’t all scary stuff, as the Cubs actually did things. They went on hikes, visited lighthouses and monuments, marched in parades. Moreover, they were civically engaged and stewards of the environment. And there was a further aspect to the Cubs: networking. Not just for Dmitri, but for Clark. He had recently been downgraded to “contract” and was no longer a full-time employee. No health insurance, no vacation or sick time, no nothing. And who knew how long the contract status would last anyway? His employment situation was tenuous, and the Cubs could be ideal for cultivating contacts in an uncontrived manner.
Weekly den meetings were held in the all-purpose room in the basement of St. Michael’s. He’d been at St. Kevin’s as a boy, but the venues were near identical: fluorescent lighting; metal folding chairs; bright, biblically inspired felt wall hangings; mottled red-and-green floor tiles. In the utility closet were more chairs, a percolator, a cylindrical stack of Styrofoam cups, and a musty white string mop protruding from a two-chambered metal bucket. Nothing had changed, and it seemed a miracle that the Scouts, along with such fellow travelers as Little League, had survived the 1960s and ’70s and were still breathing in the digital age.
He and Dmitri found the all-purpose room (the APR it was called) and were greeted by the den leader, a chubby woman with a Bluetooth affixed to her ear. Dmitri pointed out Sam, who yelled a promising “Hey, D,” but then flitted off, his Cub Scout cap flying from his head as he raced about the room.
Initially they’d had difficulty locating Dmitri’s den because another den, led by a bearded man, held its weekly meetings at the same time but in “the annex,” a different area of the massive church. Accordingly, the bearded man had no record of Dmitri and was flummoxed by the mix-up, which was only resolved with the intercession of a Cub Scout mom, a comely woman in jeans who directed them to the APR.
The monthly “pack meetings,” which united several dens, were different than those he recalled from decades ago. In his day, he had been deposited at the door and picked up an hour and a half later. Cub Scout meetings were conducted by men for the development and benefit of prospective men. The Boy Scouts, and their junior extension, the Cubs, were the province of the males of the species, and the Girl Scouts and Brownies were a pallid ladies’ version. Now families clogged the parking lot with their vans, and preschoolers poured through the church’s side entrance. Few men were even present at these gatherings; perhaps they were working or, more likely, out of the picture entirely. In his day they would have scorned the presence of toddlers at a Cub Scout meeting, but now it seemed normal to have little tots staggering around. During the meeting, these multigenerational onlookers would color or tap at screens of varying sizes. When they had exhausted these entertainments, they would mill about the perimeter, occasionally implicating themselves in the action.
At the small den meetings, Dmitri’s group and the “annex” den often joined together for games and activities. He noticed that Dmitri spent more time talking to the woman in jeans—she was the assistant to the annex den leader—than he did tugging rope or relay racing. Once after dropping off Dmitri, he’d overheard a few words of their conversation, or rather the monologue his son was imparting to the jeans woman. It was on a troika of subjects that had recently caught the boy’s interest: Egyptians, hammerhead sharks, and black holes.
“Wow, those Egyptians sure were smart, weren’t they?” offered the woman.
“Oh yeah, they even figured out how to build …,” and Clark lost the conversational thread amid the din occasioned by a round of “ankle fights.” Oh, the relentless exposition of the grade-schooler, and the ceaseless patience of these women who opened their eyes wide and asked for clarification on coral reefs, the NFL playoffs, Coco the beagle’s mange, Mrs. Meyer the art teacher’s collection of stuffed pigs, and Pokémon.
Was Dmitri chatting the jeans woman up? Surely he couldn’t be aware of such things at his age. It was possible, however, that without being a mature sexual being, he was aware of the female form; after all, the boy did have eyes in his head. Apparently even babies can appreciate beauty, smiling when pleasing symmetrical human features are placed before them.
Clark was almost tempted to take the boy aside and tell him that if he wished to make proper inroads with a woman, he needed to ask her how her day had been, that sort of thing. But it might be academic anyway, as he suspected that the boy was gay. He wasn’t troubled by his son’s putative homosexuality; it might be an asset, as it did seem that gay men did well financially, although he did not know if there was any data to support this anecdotal observation. Aimee would be thrilled if the boy was gay; it would further elevate him in her eyes, placing him in opposition, presumably, to the dysfunctional straight-male culture embodied by sports, guns, Wall Street, video games, and fart jokes. Yet it was also possible, in fact probable, that Dmitri was not actually gay but occupied that worst of all possible worlds: a hetero who passed easily for a homo.
Dmitri made little effort to spend time with Sam, the raison d’être for his joining the Cubs in the first place. Sam was to have been the boy’s entrée into the circle of young male comradeship, yet Dimitri preferred to chat with his fetching lady friend about Viking ships, tsunamis, and Tasmanian Devils. Had the friendship with Sam been illusory to start with? Was the boy so far gone that he thought he had friends when he did not?
A month after Dmitri joined the Scout Movement, his den leader gathered the parents together and announced what had become increasingly obvious: that she was expecting. She was still working and was finding the meetings at the end of the day a real drain. She was going to step aside if someone was able to … There was a lengthy pause—a pregnant one, even—and, desperate to fill the silence, Clark volunteered.
Instantly he regretted it. He did not want to be a Cub Scout leader, even with his reduced employment situation. The boy was attending Cubs to make friends, not so that his father could be suckered into supervising a bunch of dim-witted, hyperactive kids. But there was no turning back, and no sooner had the words left Clark’s mouth than the pregnant den leader handed him a bulging red binder from which several dog-eared pages were hanging, plotting their exit.
“Guess what,” he said to Aimee that night while scrubbing a blackened pan. “I’m a den leader.”
“Just like that? No test or anything? Don’t let them have you doing anything weird. Get everything in writing.”
“Well, I have to be certified and get a background check. There’s an overnight next month at Camp Howlett.”
“Dmitri’s not going.”
“Why not? It’s fun. They get to pitch tents, use a compass, learn about the stars, all that stuff.”
“Well to start with, Dmitri is allergic, and I don’t need him traumatized sexually.”
“What, you want him traumatized in another fashion?”
“It’s not a joke.”
“The kid has hay fever, and there will be no sexual abuse. I’m going to be there, as will several other parents, including mothers. You’re welcome to come.” He threw that last zinger in there expertly, strategically, knowing that such a gauntlet would never be taken up. The matter lay dormant for several days, and ultimately Dmitri was permitted to attend Camp Howlett as long as Clark agreed to keep a close eye on him.
Three weeks after Clark had acquired the red binder (whose pages he had streamlined and whose information he had entered on spreadsheets), Dmitri begged out of a Cub meeting on medical grounds. “My stomach feels weird,” he said as Clark bid the boy ready himself before they left the house.
“You don’t want to go?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“I don’t think I should.”
And Dmitri did not go. The following week, he again complained of a queasy stomach, then a headache, and thereafter Clark knew not to ask. He could not force the issue as Dmitri held a card in reserve, one that he had acquired the previous winter. Prior to an outing to the Y, Dmitri had said that his stomach hurt, but Clark had nonetheless propelled the lad out the door. He told him that if he didn’t feel well, they could come home, but they should get going—otherwise, they’d be late for indoor soccer. As he backed the car out of the driveway, the boy delivered, vomiting on himself as well as the car door, floor, seat belt, and rear of the seat in front of him. They went back inside, and Clark received a terrific scolding from Aimee, who’d already taken Dmitri’s part when he’d said that he didn’t feel well.
Clark had to return to the vehicle armed with noxious cleaners, paper towels, rags, and plastic bags to remove the vomit that was rapidly freezing in the January cold. Unaccountably, some of it had even lodged in the seatbelt’s locking mechanism. Upon reentry to the house, Clark was on the receiving end of a bitter stare from Aimee and a smug, passive gaze from Dmitri. This episode, where the boy had stated that he felt poorly and his father had arrogantly pooh-poohed him, had now given Dmitri carte blanche to evade any and all outings at his discretion.
With Dmitri out of the picture, Clark weaseled out of the overnight at Camp Howlett but stayed on as den leader. As he readied himself for meetings, donning his Cub Scout leader’s regulation long-sleeved tan shirt, blue kerchief, and olive trousers, Clark tried not to resent his son, who always appeared extremely relaxed, and even slightly amused, as Clark scurried about the house prior to departure.
Clark diligently read the Cub Scout Leader Book, learned to employ the words den and pack unselfconsciously, and accepted that conversation with the Cubmaster and other leaders was to be conducted in a non-ironic fashion with only limited forays into non-Cub matters, chiefly the fortunes of the local professional sports teams. Dmitri remained at home during meetings, playing chess on the laptop, reading Manga, and, at the behest of his cookbook-peering mother, operating a mortar and pestle (like an old-fashioned druggist) and a small battery-operated scale (like a newfangled drug dealer).
The Cubmaster, a tall, bony man, implored Clark to recruit new Cubs, yet also noted that “it was all about retention.” Clark nodded knowingly; it was hard not to feel shame that his own son was a Cub Scout dropout. He did, however, intimate to the bony Cubmaster that there were many—perhaps too many—options for kids these days. When he and the Cubmaster were young, there was no soccer on Mondays, computer animation on Tuesdays, violin on Wednesdays, Taekwondo on Thursdays, and so on. The Scouts and maybe a sport or two—that’s all there was back in the day.
Clark immersed himself in the Cub world. With the occasional help of his assistant, Jarred, a fifteen-year-old Venturer Scout, he counseled youngsters on matters of badges and flag ceremonies. He also delivered the needed encouragement, direction, and strategy so that his den could triumph in games of capture the flag that pitted them against their in-house rival, the “annex” den. “How are we going to beat these guys?” demanded Clark. “By using our heads, right, gentlemen? Right.”
And prevail they did, in capture the flag, kickball, and tug-of-war. Badges were collected, lessons learned, and core Scouting values imparted. Meanwhile, his own badge-less son read magazine articles about lizards, medieval knights, and Michelangelo, or so he was informed when he got home, drained from an evening spent in the company of a gaggle of nine-year-olds.
Regrettably, the Cubs did not seem to attract the demographic needed for proper networking. Mandarin lessons were no doubt siphoning off the high achievers. He learned that his fellow Cub parents included a FedEx guy, a realtor, a car dealership service manager, and a wedding photographer. Hopeless, with one exception: Matt Dickinson. Clark had met him only once when they’d briefly chatted in the St. Michael’s parking lot, but that was enough to gather valuable intelligence. His son was in the annex den, and the man himself sported a The Zeus Group (TZG) jacket. According to an Internet investigation Clark conducted later that evening, Dickinson was vice president for digital marketing at TZG. This was a guy to sidle up to and spend time with on some Cub-related project, and then, ever so subtly, segue into discussing the world of work. A couple of days later, perhaps he would email Dickinson an article of interest or extend a LinkedIn invite. Real casual, no desperate, forced stuff.
One of the items Clark had found buried in the red binder was a notice about the pack’s April beach cleanup. Clark had been told that all he had to do was put the finishing touches on the preparations for this event, but he soon learned that nothing had been arranged; there was not even a location or a date. He felt bitter toward the pregnant former den leader for dumping this on him, yet at the same time the cleanup represented an opportunity for him to make his mark, to rise above his status as a dutiful foot soldier in the scouting movement. This was his hour to shine, to convert a desultory shore cleanup into a marquee event, a triumph of can-do environmentalism.
He chose as a site the no man’s land that lay in between the modest town beach and a series of docks, landings, and jetties hosting utilitarian marine-related businesses. It was a murky section of shore typically burdened with plastic bottles and decayed pieces of netting. He surveyed the scene on a raw, wet, March morning, noting the stew of repellent detritus—empty potato chip bags, weathered flip-flops, tampon applicators, six-pack rings—nestled amongst the blighted shoreline shrubs.
The area didn’t even have a proper name, but since it was south of Blackamore Cove, perhaps it could be called Lower Blackamore Cove, or LBC for short. His mind went to the flyer, the PDF attachment to the email, the Facebook LBC Cleanup page. He could email Matt Dickinson the materials, get his expert opinion, and casually follow up with a chat. (Oh yeah, LBC—it stands for Lower Blackamore Cove, kind of a branding thing I thought I’d do.) The implication would be that this is what he did for kicks—brand shit. That was how you networked, and he would surely deepen his acquaintance with the TZG VP as the two of them leaned down to pick up the same discarded plastic six-pack holder. These noxious items, Clark would note wistfully, are a nightmare for sea turtles and shorebirds, an environmental aside that he would drop and let lie there, having already established his branding and leadership bona fides.
At the pack meeting, each of the eight Cubs in his den participated in a presentation about the cleanup. Clark closed with a brief talk imploring parents to invite friends and family to participate in the rejuvenation of the LBC. The Cubmaster beamed at Clark approvingly, and after the meeting Dmitri’s girlfriend, the woman with the jeans, approached and said that she and her husband Matt would be glad to help. The lightbulb went on. Naturally the jeans woman would be Dickinson’s wife—who else among the Cub Scout moms would a TZG VP take for a bride? And equally she required someone of her station, and that would be Dickinson. It was all fitting together, and while it was regrettable that she was married, at least it was to someone of Dickinson’s renown.
Clark deputized Sam’s father—who had a pickup and a seemingly endless reservoir of time and goodwill to devote to the Scouts, Pony League baseball, school marching band, and youth soccer—to haul away the post-cleanup trash. Clark also obtained the requisite materials, paying for gloves and heavy-duty garbage bags, and refused the Cubmaster’s offer of reimbursement. Not a word did he say to Aimee or her confidant, Dmitri, about the project.
Five days before the event, he could contain himself no longer. He approached his family gingerly and deferentially, clutching an LBC flyer. Aimee was rolling dough, and the boy was reading. He lay the flyer between them on the table.
“I hope you guys can make it. I kind of organized a shore cleanup for the Cub Scouts down at LBC, you know, Lower Blackamore Cove.”
“Where is that?”
“Just past the beach and the rocks, that kind of junky area. A lot of trash washes up there. It’s really a shame for the birds, and for people too, I guess.”
“Sure, when?”
“Saturday morning.”
“Next Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“Dmitri and I were supposed to do yoga Saturday morning, but maybe we could do the afternoon class. What do you think, Dmitri?”
“Okay.”
They were in. His wife and son. They would see what the Scouting movement was about: teamwork, stewardship of the environment, life skills—all of it! And Aimee had consented willingly; she hadn’t even made him feel guilty about moving her yoga class. He would try not to say anything further, just let her see him expertly commandeering the LBC Cleanup troops on the big day.
On Friday afternoon, Clark tied up loose ends. He made a final round of phone calls, reminded a reporter from the local paper about the event, talked to the Cubmaster, updated the LBC Cleanup Facebook page, and stopped in to see Sarkis at Tony’s Pizza to confirm Saturday’s order. Finally, he loaded the car with supplies and reviewed the forecast, which promised clear skies and pleasant temperatures.
He slept poorly that night and woke early the next morning. He donned his Scout uniform in the bathroom so as not to wake Aimee, left the house at six, and repaired to Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee, cruller, and scan of the morning paper. At 7:30 he arrived at the parking lot that lay above the town beach and sat in his car looking out at the ocean; it was a beautiful April day, already almost fifty degrees. It was hard to ask for better conditions. Sam’s father, who was going to help with the placing of fluorescent orange cones and unloading of supplies, texted that he was running late and wouldn’t be there much before nine. No matter—Clark had plenty of time and would just as soon be alone with his thoughts than engage in banal Cubs-related patter anyway. He fielded a call from Aimee, who said she was proud of him and that she and Dmitri would arrive a little early to help out.
He took a stack of cones and garbage bags from the trunk of the car and began the trek to the LBC. To get there, one followed a zigzagging concrete ramp down to the town beach and then traversed a rocky area for about a quarter of a mile. He plodded along, thinking that he would arrange the cones, which would mark the outer limit of the cleanup area, then go back up to the parking lot to greet people. The rocks were slippery. A hazard? Should he have considered that? No, he should not have. For God’s sake, if rocks on the beach were too much for a bunch of fourth graders, then what was the point? Everyone might just as well stay home and play video games. But that would be bad for their eyes. Hazards are part of life.
He passed the rocky stretch and then walked the length of the LBC. The water was placid, and the beach was surprisingly clean. It was immaculate. There were no plastic bags on the scrubby bushes near the cliffs, no soda bottles, beer cans, fishing line, or pieces of Styrofoam wedged among the rocks. Nothing, not even driftwood. He marched further along the shoreline; perhaps the tide had deposited the trash elsewhere. But no, the entire LBC, previously awash in refuse, was now pristine. He doubled back and found, near the rocky area and close to the bluffs, a wooden stake with a sign:
Brownie Troop 622
Spring Beach Cleanup!
Flowers drawn in Magic Marker adorned the borders of the sign, which also included messages: “I ♥ seals,” “It was fun, but the garbage was gross!!!,” and “Keep It Clean!”
Fuck—he vaguely remembered something in the paper about the Girl Scouts or Brownies and a cleanup. Bitches. They must have done this the previous week. Of all the places, why did they choose this one? And why had nobody thought to tell him? How about a heads-up, a goddamn FYI from someone? What was wrong with people? These girls already have it made in the shade with the cookie thing, but evidently that’s not enough. No, it’s always more, more, more.
He knew he had to work quickly. He raced up the ramp to the parking lot, grabbed two large green trash bags, and scoured his car for granola bar wrappers, old coffee cups, gum wrappers, anything. He then surveyed the lot for trash containers, but there were none; they must have been removed for the colder months. At the far end of asphalt stood his only hope: the Lobster Claw’s dumpster. He tried to push open the lid but raised it only an inch. Locked. Fuck. He walked around to the side of the restaurant, and there, standing against the wall, were two large black garbage barrels. He donned his gloves and scooped out what he could into his trash bags. He looked at his watch; he needed more time. At any point a chipper early bird could show up wanting to be put to work. He tipped over one of the cans and shoveled the rubbish into the bags with his hands. It would have to do.
He sped back down the zigzagging ramp, danced over the slippery rocks, reached the Cove, and held the bags upside down, distributing the trash about the shore. His stock of garbage, heavy on empty, restaurant-sized bags of chicken nuggets, was exhausted only a short way along the cove beach. It was a pitiful and inadequate display of litter. With the good weather, there could easily be forty to fifty people showing up. What would they do? How would it look when they realized that the cleanup was redundant, that the girls had beaten them to the punch?
He had to remove the sign they’d used to mark their territory. It was on lime-green poster board, and he ripped it from its stake and tore it into pieces. It was tempting to use these shards as trash, but if a fragment was examined closely, it could prove damning. He stuffed the scraps into his coat pocket. He drove the stake well into the beach grass–covered bluff.
He needed more garbage and sprinted back over the rocks. At first, the bluffs obscured his view of the parking lot, but as he approached, it came into view: there were cars there now, and Aimee was at the top of the zigzag ramp. Dmitri was behind her. A small mass of people was milling about the parking lot. Christ. He could see Sam’s father’s pickup and a sleek car at the end of the first row—a BMW, something like that. Was that the jeans woman in a purple vest emerging from the passenger side and Dickinson from the driver’s? Please, God, let it not be the Dickinson vehicle, but who else would have a car like that?
Dmitri and Aimee waved and began their descent. He needed more time. He raised his right arm weakly and fluttered it, “Hey, guys, great to see you. Hold on; I’ll come up.”
He couldn’t tell if they had heard him, and they continued advancing. Behind them, small waves of people began washing down the ramp: the former den leader with her baby in a front pack, Sam and his father (who was toting additional garbage bags in one hand and an oversized bottle of hand sanitizer in the other), the bony Cubmaster, and Dickinson in sunglasses, lightly touching his wife’s elegant, purple-vested back. Following this initial group was a healthy supporting cast ambling down to the shore, relishing the salt air and sunshine while reveling in the fact that they were doing good.
Why did it have to be sunny? The rain date was the following weekend; with a solid storm and lots of runoff, the beach would again have been full of garbage. Even a drizzle would have been helpful—it would have at least dampened attendance. He squinted in the glare and held up both his hands, palms facing outward, to indicate Stop, but there was no holding them back. They were on a mission, and not to be denied. 
