Nature Lovers

On the bus ride back from the Nature Lovers Club campout, Vinny’s nose is broken by Phil in this account of unrequited desire and rampant debauchery in rural Arkansas during the late nineteen fifties. Phil, the only child in a wealthy Protestant family, and Vinny, the unexpected fifth child in an Italian-American Roman Catholic blue-collar family, were the best of friends. They spent every moment after school riding their bikes, doing homework, or simply hanging out together. They enthusiastically joined the Nature Lovers Club at school, participating in meetings and weekend outings sponsored by the group. Why then−at the age of eighteen−did they brusquely shun each other and end up in a bloody confrontation? Something unconceivable in those times occurred in the bedroom during a sleepover at Vinny’s on the eve of a long-awaited camping trip with the school’s Nature Lovers Club that tore their friendship apart.