Team-Building

We were retreating. Or rather, on retreat, though some of us weren’t sure there was a difference, as we were regressing to the woods to shelter in primitive structures with only a few hides – well, ok, blankets – for warmth and the pastiest of instant foods to boil and consume in the name of going all tribal and bonding for the tough year ahead. A tough year of what? some of us wondered, some of us who had never before served in any organization of a nonprofit nature, never endured the sheer pronking combat, the biological struggle for dominance that is the group-writing of a mission statement, the designing of programming, the developing of mailing lists, the plotting of donor seductions. 

We would teach them: young Mary, with the gaze of innocent trust she’d soon lose to Ellen’s slick, remorseless backstabbing; and cocky little Adam, the self-anointed problem solver whose hubris would dissolve into pulp as sodden as the tear-soaked tissues he’d be clutching by the time Melanie had worked the magic of her self-contradictory, obstinate ignorance on him. We were a team of such superpowers, boldly striding as one toward danger in our capes and tights and hand-woven Peruvian boleros and sensible Clarks walking shoes, each with a special role to play, a unique task to fulfill. We would take to the filthy bunks, the tick-filled grass, the splintery picnic furniture, the slimy, stinking latrines to perform them.  

Rosamund, our Leader, opened the games with her customary assertion of rank. 

“I’m taking both bunks by the window, top and bottom,” she announced. “Assuming no one objects? I need the extra one for all the materials I brought.”  

Object? When have we ever (to her face, in full voice, maturely) objected to her self-indulgent depredations? Did we ever confront her about the tin of holiday petit fours, sent to all by an abjectly and deservedly grateful arts council, that turned up in her credenza drawer, empty? Never. Did we speak aloud (except amongst ourselves, after hours and after two chocolate martinis) our suspicion that the office-wide Mystery of the Disappearing Umbrellas on Inclement Days could be solved by a quick and violent rifling of her coat closet?  We did not.  

We smiled winsomely. Waved our fingers with a feathery flourish, as if wafting butterflies out the torn and dirt-caked window screen. Of course not! we replied. We, your minions, know your need though you heed not ours, O Rosamund. Boosting the unattended is your great gift. Long may it work on undesignated county-government grants.  

The rest of us claimed the least-soiled berths with dispatch and dignity, unless we must count the brief, surreptitious bout of hissing and hair-pulling over the only unstained mattress, which Adam won like a champion. In retaliation, we promptly commandeered all the dead-fly-covered shelves in the shower shack for ourselves; the sticky top of the recycling bin would do for him. Nyeh. 

Territory staked out, dehydrated foodstuffs cached, we massed in humid light at the picnic area, girding ourselves for the battles ahead with cups of pump water and baggies of Tasha’s homemade granola, seated with the grim mien of warriors at our rectangular Round Table. We eyed one another and our armaments – sharpened pencils, unsheathed pens – and fixed upon the giant easeled pad of parchment, tantalizingly blank, next which Rosamund stood. In her shadow sat young Mary, a fan of highlighters in her fist, to play the scribe. A weighty silence grew upon us, from fear or whole-grain fiber we knew not which.  

“Guys,” spake Rosamund in her pungent Jersey patois, “we need to cook up some kinda schmancy global collaboration if we’re gonna suck some bucks from the Ford Foundation. Go!” 

We went. Into trending issues and data and models we charged, ’cross capacity-building and institutional knowledge to economic impacts and community development, wading through the marshy muck of anecdotal research to lay siege upon the cliffy shores of funder requirements and good grant fit. Heated grew our nibs and nerves and sweaty grew our brows. Alliances formed and broke like algae rafts on the nearby pond. In sweet and bitter rite did downy Mary second Ellen’s idea to convene local and international stakeholders around the clean-water-technology piece and take the lance of Ellen’s up-kissing defection to Rosamund’s fair-trade proposal through her saddened little heart. We mended her with secret chocolate chips in melty handoffs ’neath the bird-poopy planks. And much we thought, though we said naught, ’cuz we need the freaking paychecks. But were there justice in this league, more than Ellen’s ears would burn. 

Twilight and spirits fell. Melanie serenely star-gazed, misidentifying the constellations. Tasha lit the Coleman to make Kraft Mac & Cheese. Dazed by Melanie and mosquitoes, Adam wandered toward the road in search of service, doing digital CPR on his lifeless phone. The bottle of Chardonnay vanished along with Rosamund. In the dark, Ellen colonized Rosamund’s top bunk. And we others, the core of the corps, lit citronellas in a ring around the table, drawing Mary across this scented equator and into our magic circle, in retreat no longer, but advancing on the night in our diverse unity to promote the collective good of our particular community through kindness and sense and cookies, however unfunded.

CAROLYN JACK

Carolyn Jack won ALSCW’s 2016 Meringoff Prize for Fiction and The Westchester Review’s 2016 Flash Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Great Lakes Review, Literary Matters, and Pen + Brush in Print. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she holds an MFA from Columbia University.