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The Camel Who Liked to Smoke
by Peter Michaelson

At last Rodney Camel was starting high school. He had waited a long time to be a high-school freshman. It certainly didn't happen overnight. But the day had at last arrived, and he got out of bed on this warm late-summer morning feeling eager but a little scared.

In the bathroom mirror he saw that “fuzzies” of hair had popped up along one side of his head, looking as if they had stayed up and partied all night. He hated the way that made him look. He wet his hairbrush under the tap and slicked back the puffy hair.

For breakfast he had a bowl of buffalo grass and locust tree leaves. “Eat it all up, it’s very nutritious,” his mother said. She always said something like that when serving food that didn't taste too good. She watched over him to be sure he didn't sprinkle more than two cups of brown sugar on it. Then he headed off for his first day at Caramel High.

On the way he passed by Carrie Camel's house. She strolled out of her house wearing a silk scarf and the silver earring that Rodney had given her this past summer for her fourteenth birthday. She handed Rodney a mouthful of four-leaf clovers from the patch that grew in her backyard, and he munched on this as they headed along the sidewalk. The school buildings were visible on a hillside, a ten-minute walk from Carrie's house.

"I guess I'm a bit nervous," Rodney said, swallowing the last of the clover. "I'm not sure how a freshman is supposed to act. I just want to look like I know what I'm doing.”

"We'll stick together, don't worry," Carrie said. "This is all an adventure, Rodney. You can't have an adventure without some scary parts."

They arrived at school and headed to their separate homerooms. Rodney's homeroom teacher, Mr. Biff, told the students he intended to teach them important things and to make a positive impact on their lives. "If I do a good job, you’ll feel a real desire to learn more about the world and yourselves.”

The day passed quickly and Rodney found himself enjoying the experience. He spoke to many friends, some of whom he hadn't seen all summer. Almost a thousand students attended the school and he figured he knew at least a hundred by name. He began to feel that he really did belong here. "I'm pretty happy so far," he said at day's end to Carrie, who attended two of his classes.

Within a few days Rodney felt better organized after he got the last of the textbooks he needed. He was pleased with his teachers, and he knew he had a good chance to make the junior-varsity soccer team.

During his second week at school, a junior named Stew Camel approached Rodney after classes and said, "Hey kid, I noticed you around. Glad to make your acquaintance. Here, have a cigarette." He flicked one half way from his pack and stuck it close to Rodney.

Rodney wanted to say No thanks, but his tongue couldn't even start to form the words. Stew’s presence had a strong effect on him. Rodney felt unable to say no, as if he couldn’t think or act for himself. Instead of saying no, he leaned forward and took the cigarette in his mouth.

The cigarette had no filter, and Rodney’s tongue pulled back deeper into his mouth after discovering its sour taste. Stew flicked his lighter and thrust the flame in Rodney's face. Alarmed that he was about to look very foolish, Rodney snatched the cigarette from his mouth and blurted, "I don't want to light it up right now. I'll just save it for later. I'm not much of a smoker, you know."

"Yeah, I can see that," said Stew, his eyebrows wiggling together like caterpillars smooching. "Not much of a smoker. Not much of a barber you got either. That's an awful haircut. Just to let you know, Rodney boy, you look like a stubble-head. You wanna be friends with me and my friends, you gotta look just right. You gotta have a certain look, you gotta be a certain way." He paused, then added, "Otherwise, we got no use for you."

Rodney shuddered. "I . . . I understand what you mean,” he stammered. “I'd like to be friends with you."

"That's good, Rodney. Go home and practice in the mirror. Try to make yourself look respectable. Let's see if you’re really cool, if you really belong here."

Stew turned on his heels and sauntered over to a group of his friends. Shaken, Rodney walked away. He knew all along he didn't look cool enough. What was he going to do? Stew was right. He needed a new look.

He put the cigarette back in his mouth and brushed his tongue against it. One thing about that taste--it was strong, very adult and grown-up, not like the candy sweetness of Crackerjacks that little camels clamor for.

Walking out of the schoolyard, he joined up with Carrie. She looked at him in surprise. "Rodney, why is there a cigarette sticking in your mouth?"

"Oh yeah, right." He took it out of his mouth and stuck it behind his ear. "Stew Camel put it there."

"Stew Camel put it there? You mean you took it from him and put it there yourself."

"I guess so."

"You aren't going to start smoking, I hope."

"I'm thinking about it. He's a nice guy. I'd like him for a friend."

"I know about Stew Camel. If you don't look and act like him, he’ll try to make you feel invisible.”

"The thing is, I think I would look better as a smoker. Smoking will make me look like I’m . . . more of a camel. I’m sure I'll look more . . . interesting to others."

"Oh Rodney, I hope you don't start. It hurts your health and it makes your breath smell awful."

"Camel breath smells awful, period, even when we brush our teeth.” He felt annoyed at her. What right did she have to disapprove of what he needed to do? He smirked at her. “Have you smelled yourself lately? You might even smell better if you smoked. I wouldn't be surprised." The words had come out quite harshly, he knew, but he wouldn’t take them back.

"Oh, I didn't think my breath was that bad."

 A rift now opened up between them. They walked on in silence and when they came to her house they each said "Bye," and that was all.

That night Rodney studied himself in the mirror. He slicked back his hair and noticed that, with a cigarette between his lips, he seemed to stand taller. He tilted his head a bit to the right, with his chin pointed out, the way Stew Camel did. Without the cigarette, he noticed, his head and shoulders drooped and his lips lacked that rugged firmness he liked in Stew's confident expression.

Without doubt, the cigarette perked him up, not just on the surface either. It influenced how he felt about himself. He didn't have that nervous feeling. In the mirror he saw how others would look at him, as someone who played by his own rules, who didn't care what grown-ups said about right or wrong. The mirror reflected back at him someone who knew who he was and how he would live. Yes, he would be a smoker. And tomorrow he would thank Stew for inspiring him to become one.

Within two weeks, Rodney had graduated to ten cigarettes a day. It had taken some effort to do this because the cigarettes made him nauseous for the first four days. By the tenth day his parents discovered his new habit and pleaded with him to stop. But no arguments or threats could dissuade him. His mother smoked, so she had no right to tell him he couldn't. His father drank quite a lot of beer on the weekends and that wasn’t supposed to be so good for your health either.

"What do you expect!" he told his parents. "You always said I would have to make my own decisions one day."

"That's true," his father replied. "But we want those decisions to be in your best interest."

Rodney wouldn't budge. He would feel like a wimp to quit just because his parents had pestered him about it. When his mother realized his determination, she shrugged and said, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

At least once a day he got to say Hi to Stew Camel. He also became friends with Stew's friends and that made him feel he really belonged. Soon Rodney knew almost all the smokers in his freshman class, and he acknowledged them with the same respect, the same acceptance, he saw they gave back to him. Meanwhile, he changed his mind about trying out for the soccer team. He’d heard the coach didn't like smokers anyway.

Rodney maintained his consumption at ten cigarettes a day. That seemed to him a sensible number, paid for from his allowance plus twenty-five cents a day from his lunch money. He had gone to Stew Camel's own hair-stylist for a neat flattop that took care of all the fuzzies, and with fourteen dollars from his savings he bought a fancy steel lighter that flared and flamed in the wind.

Rodney resented Carrie Camel's refusal to become a smoker. Several times he had offered her one of his cigarettes and every time, always politely he had to admit, she said No thanks. He had begun to feel uncomfortable around her. To avoid her, he started taking a different route to school. But one morning he crossed paths with her at the school entrance.

"What's with you, Carrie? If you were really my friend, you'd be willing to smoke with me. You would do it because I asked you to. It makes me wonder if you think that maybe you're better than me."

"I'm not better than you, Rodney. But I think I feel better about me than you do about you."

"What?” His head and neck recoiled, forming a figure S. “What's that supposed to mean?"

"Rodney, it seems to bother you that I'm not copying your behavior. Why can't you just accept me as I am?

"Oh yeah," he sneered. "Why should I? I don't feel that you're accepting me. You seem so . . . so . . . critical of me."

"Rodney, I've always felt close to you. But you act as if you have to be extra-special to be accepted."

"You know, lately, you make me feel like there's something wrong with me. I don't know if we can be friends anymore."

"I don't make you feel a certain way," Carrie replied. "I'm just being me. I think you’re the one who can’t accept yourself."

"I don't feel good about you anymore, Carrie. So that tells me there's something wrong with you." He felt this statement settled the matter and that he had outwitted her.

"Oh Rodney, you don't even know me anymore. Even when you look at me, you see someone you think disapproves of you. You've always been afraid of that, Rodney, that people see you as if you're not good enough. That must be how you feel about yourself. That's why you were so desperate for approval from Stew and his friends."

"That's a lie! I've got lots of friends.” His nostrils flared and he scowled at her. “And I'm getting respect from my new friends. And I respect them a lot more than you!”

"If you had respect for yourself, you would value your health too much to be sucking on those harmful cigarettes."

He had a momentary impulse to bite her face, or even to spit at her. With a parting glare and groan of disgust, he wheeled off and strode onto the school grounds. She annoyed him so much. He hated her know-it-all attitude.

When classes ended, Rodney found himself smoking in the parking lot with a group of students. Stew Camel came by, muttering to himself. Angrily, he told them of the words he had exchanged with Mr. Biff, Rodney's home-room teacher, in American history class.

“Mr. Butt-head asked me why I'm not interested in learning my country's history.” Stew said. “‘Get real!’ I told him. What I’d like to know is why some teacher thinks he knows more than me, why he thinks he can tell me what’s important and what isn’t.” Stew got more sarcastic as he spoke. “I'd like to be a teacher around here. You know what I'd do? I'd put Mr. Butt-head in my class and flunk him every year. Soon he'd be an old man, old Rip Van Biff himself, sitting there in my class year after year for everybody to see what a dummy he is. Ha, ha, ha!"

That brought a big laugh from everyone, including Rodney, although Rodney felt a bit strange about it since he rather liked Mr. Biff, at least up until now. Before he knew it, he was saying to the group, "Carrie Camel is another one. She thinks she's so superior. She told me today I'm a sucker for being friends with you, Stew. She says you have no respect for yourself and that she's ten times better than you. I told her, 'Forget it. Stew's my friend. Don't talk about him that way.' But she did anyway."

Stew said nothing, just glared off into the distance. Others spoke quietly for a bit while Stew continued to brood in silence. Rodney didn't like the gloom that had settled over the group, nor the feeling that he had just said something so mean and so untrue. Soon, he and the others finished their cigarettes and headed off in different directions.

Rodney had a dream that night. Next morning he remembered how upset he had been in the dream. He was walking somewhere with Carrie and Stew, and Stew was bragging about all the great things he had done in his life. Carrie said something and suddenly, for no apparent reason, Stew lunged with his teeth bared at Carrie and tried to bite her. Carrie jumped back and stepped clear, while she and Rodney gaped in shock at Stew’s hateful expression.

In the dream Stew sneered, "You two, you're worse than nothing. You no longer exist as far as I'm concerned." Rodney pleaded innocent, saying how much he admired Stew. But Stew glared at him even more hatefully. He flared his nostrils and curled his lips in a way that left Rodney feeling worthless.

Rodney was thinking about the dream on his way to school that morning. Distracted, he took his old route past Carrie’s house. As he trudged by her front gate, she rushed out from the side of her house.

"Rodney, come quick and see what happened!"

She led him into the back and there he saw that someone had smashed her whole autumn crop of pumpkins, squash, and broccoli. A large rock, stained by green and orange blotches, lay in the garden. It had apparently been used in the attack. The vandals had also trampled her four-leaf clover patch, kicked it all up, exposing and tearing apart every delicate root and scattering soil into the adjoining grass.

"Oh, Rodney, I don't even know anyone who would be mean enough to do this. I looked all over, and checked in the alley beyond the gate, and there's no signs of who might have done this."

"Carrie, this is awful. I'm really sorry. I didn't know this would . . . uh . . . could happen."

Rodney moved over to the four-leaf clover patch and sniffed around at the damage. Almost everyone in town knew about Carrie's special clover patch and how much she cherished it. The seeds had come right from Ireland and the patch had been growing back here since the year she turned three. Whoever had done this had known how to hurt her badly.

As he was assessing the damage, he suddenly coughed harshly on the smoke from his cigarette. He took it out of his mouth, looked at it for a moment, and flicked it over the fence into the back alley.

"There's nothing we can do now," he said. "Come to school with me, Carrie. When we get home today, we'll come back here and clean up the mess and see if we can repair your clover patch."

Carrie sprinkled the patch with water from the garden hose, then she and Rodney covered it with a tarp. They didn't say too much as they walked to school. But Rodney was churning up inside with guilt and shame. Would he ever be able to tell her who he suspected of the crime--and why? In the hallway at school, he reassured her again that he would help her fix the damage.

"Thank you, Rodney, for caring so much."

That morning in class Rodney's stomach discharged a sour, bitter taste. His mind refused to give full attention to his teachers. Instead he saw himself in Carrie’s backyard stomping her garden and gouging at her clover patch with his hooves. In the throes of his horrible guilt, he imagined Carrie watching him from her bedroom window. Meanwhile, a dialogue had started up in his mind.

"Rodney, you really messed up this time," said a voice inside him. "You lied when you told Stew that Carrie had said bad things about him."

"It's true, I lied to Stew," responded another voice that was shaky and defensive. "But I never meant to hurt Carrie. I was upset that she didn't seem to like me anymore."

All morning voices talked in his head as he tried to sort out his feelings. After lunch Rodney spotted Stew among the students milling in the courtyard. Stew was laughing and smoking with a bunch of friends. Rodney hesitated at first, then willed his legs to move toward the group.

He walked up and told them, "Last night someone vandalized Carrie's garden and destroyed her fall vegetables and her four-leaf clover patch."

"What a rotten thing to do," said a camel named Jake. "Carrie's a good kid. Who would want to do that?"

"I think I know," said Rodney. "But I can't prove it, and so I won't name any names."

“Yes, naming names can be dangerous,” said Stew.

Rodney knew he had to own up to his part in this. He glanced at Stew, hesitated, and then said, "In my own way, I let Carrie down. I guess . . . I guess I even betrayed her.”

“Well, that wasn’t nice of you,” said Stew. "You’re supposed to be true to your friends. After this I don’t know if I can trust you to be my friend.” He glared viciously at Rodney.

Rodney saw in Stew's face a glimpse of a hard and sad truth, that some camels, probably Stew among them, are only a shadow of what they could be. A now-or-never moment was fast approaching, and Rodney timed his response perfectly. “You can trust me all right,” he said to Stew. “You can trust me not to be your friend. I’m going to find my friends among those who really care about me and what’s good for me.”

Rodney turned and left their company. A few mocking laughs followed him, though they sounded a bit forced. His heart rate was elevated, but he felt steady on his legs. Deep satisfaction pointed the way as he skipped up a curb and up the steps to his classroom. What Stew and his friends thought or felt didn't matter much anymore. He could feel good about himself without needing approval from others.

Walking home later with Carrie, Rodney realized he hadn't smoked since that morning when he had discarded his cigarette in her back yard.  He chuckled to himself. His sudden determination to stop smoking felt better than any cigarette could. On the corner where they waited for the traffic light to change, he threw the package with his remaining cigarettes into a sidewalk receptacle. Carrie smiled in delight. He wondered if he would ever tell her why her garden had been attacked. Was it important to do so? He would have to think about it. Anyway, he couldn’t help feeling good.

"It's not too late to sign up for soccer,” he told Carrie. “I'll do it in the morning.” A gust whipped along the street. He looked into the wind and drew a breath of  natural cool, pure and free.

“Hey, look at you,” exclaimed Carrie, pointing to his head and laughing. “Your hair is starting to sprout again.”

"I was going to get a haircut today. Now I'll wait. It's time for a new look."

“Your hair is standing taller, Rodney, just like you.”