Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2022 13:29:53 +0000 (UTC) From: James Breitbart Subject: Skinnydip Creek Chapter 13 Thanks to a provision in the original endowment, every student at Ramsey was required to take a religious education course. It was designed to provide formation in the Christian faith and the specifically Episcopalian liturgy while being respectful to all faith traditions, which were represented by guest speakers over the course of the year. Mary and I happened to have the class right before lunch, taught by Reverend Greg. He asked us to stay back after the lest of the class left. "I was a little disappointed at the number of students who showed up in chapel last week. Do you think there's anything the First Frost Club could do to get that number up?" "I guess technically we can order initiates to attend," Mary said, "but I'd feel comfortable pressuring someone into if that's not their religious background." "We survey first-year students about their beliefs in the first class of the year," Reverend Greg reminded her, "I can show you the students who responded that they were Protestant if that would help." We received emails with the survey results to our school accounts that afternoon and brought the matter to the next Steering Committee meeting Tuesday afternoon. The committee voted to delegate the matter to the Subcommittee on Religious Affairs, led by Isaiah Crowder and Kristina Cash, whose members fanned out to ensure that every initiate received an order to attend the service of the religion they'd indicated on the survey, barefoot of course, and to sit towards the front. The next Sunday saw much better attendance, with the first few rows of the chapel crowded with barefoot first-years. I had the week off from acolyte duties and sat in the very back, directly across from Mackenzie Norman. As the congregation was filing out after the service, I leaned over to each of the male first-years and ordered them to wait for me on the lawn, which I knew had just been mowed again. Mackenzie did the same for the girls. When all the first-years had assembled we set out in separate directions, the girls toward what had now been nicknamed `Girls' Creek' and the boys toward Skinnydip Creek. I had decided that it would be a good opportunity to introduce the first-years to the creek, and once we got there I ordered the boys to strip off and jump into the water. We were joined a short time later by a group of Catholic students led by Frank Austin, and a Jewish delegation that Ben Sapir had rounded up after the Shabbat service held in the basement of the chapel Saturday morning. As the sun was starting to go down, we ordered everyone to repeat the procedure the next week. With the first week of classes out of the way, school began to settle into a routine. I went out for the fall production of Oliver! and landed a part as a workhouse boy/pickpocket. The Spanish Club and the League of Future Women Voters launched their registration drive, and Ramsey beat Christ School 23-21 in the varsity football season opener. Beginning September 15, a boarding student was dispatched to the quad every morning at 5:00 a.m. to check for frost. By this point, I had been lulled into a false sense of security, but the wild events of the summer had one more surprise in store. Mayor Atkinson and Chelsey came by the house after dinner the first day of October. From the looks on their faces, I could tell it wasn't a friendly social call, and I politely excused myself to wait upstairs while they talked in Dad's office, not asking him what the matter was until the next morning. "Sarah Watkins told Chelsey last week that her period was late, and Chelsey bought a pregnancy test, which Mr. Atkinson found." He sighed heavily. "It came back positive, and she thinks Scott's the father." That was certainly plausible, although I knew of at least two other candidates. "Does her father know?" "No, but she wants an abortion, so she'll have to get him to consent. I called Cecil, and he's coming down tonight." Mayor Atkinson and Chelsey went with Sarah to tell her father the next day. Unfortunately for Sarah, the church secretary overheard his reaction, which involved screaming at her that she was a whore, and the rumor was all over town by Monday morning. When the DNA test confirmed that Scott was the father, Reverend Watkins demanded that he "do the right thing" and marry Sarah, but Uncle Cecil was adamant that he wasn't going to let this ruin his son's life. Reverend Watkins was equally adamant that he wouldn't allow Sarah to get an abortion or live under his roof with a bastard child, and literally exiled her from the home, leaving her staying in our guest room until a more permanent arrangement could be figured out. Things reached an impasse until Dad remembered the Watkins' oldest son. Barry Watkins, age 27, had ended up living in San Diego, where he made a living as an adult film star under the name Vance Seamann. Dad was able to contact him through the studio, and when he explained the situation, Barry caught the next flight to Asheville. Dad and I picked him up at the airport, and I explained what had happened on the ride back, including both the circumstances of the child's conception and his father's crusade over the creek. There was a tearful reunion with Sarah at our house, and after a long evening of conversation with Sarah, my father, and Reverend Whaley, Barry decided that it would be better for Sarah if he moved back to Bartlett than if she had to uproot everything and move to San Diego. Uncle Cecil agreed to pay child support and set up a trust fund that would support the kid once they turned 18, and Dad offered Barry a job at the mill. He ended up getting a better offer. A chance encounter with John Rice's son Matthew, who was a couple of years younger than Barry and remembered him from the creek, led to a discussion of Barry's new career. Matthew happened to be in charge of accounting for the Rice family's operation and realized that the pornography business would be the perfect vehicle to launder money. They could record each transaction as a purchase of adult entertainment and include a DVD with the product to make the number of blank discs they paid for match the number of sales recorded. Any suspicious behavior or unusual financial activity would be easily explained as customers not wanting their interests revealed to significant others, and if the highway patrol stopped a shipment to Mr. Rice's contact in Fayetteville, they would open the trunk to find boxes of porn that the driver could sheepishly explain were for his boss's adult bookstore, sending the officers on their merry way with a funny story to tell back at the station and no inkling of what was in the second row of boxes. Mr. Rice was so confident in the plan that he offered Barry double what he'd been making in San Diego to shoot a picture titled Return of the Prodigal Son opposite Matthew, and to direct solo scenes with the other two adult Rice sons. Barry took out a mortgage from the First Bank of Bartlett (owned by the Murchison family since we bailed it out during the Depression), counting the anticipated child support as income, and bought a three-bedroom house a little ways outside of town. Reverend Watkins refused to publicly address the rumors, but everyone in town knew what was going on, and Dad reported that more and more of his congregation were showing up at St. Joseph's every Sunday. On October 26, the student responsible for checking the quad discovered a thin layer of frost on the grass. In keeping with tradition, they made their way through the dorms, banging on every door and shouting "First Frost." The new initiates were thus notified that they had the choice to wear shoes that day and assembled on the quad again after classes to receive their membership badges from the club officers. That Friday, the First Frost Club held its annual business meeting, at which officers were elected. All the officers from the previous year were reelected, and Adam Fritz was elected as the male representative of the first-years. Halloween that year was a subdued affair for the teenagers of Bartlett. After the news about Sarah Watkins, parents were more reluctant than ever to let their kids attend any sort of unchaperoned co-ed party. Matty and I escorted Amir and a group of his friends trick-or-treating. Seeking barefoot-friendly costumes, we'd both gone as hobbits from the Lord of the Rings movies, and after the younger boys had finished collecting their candy and been sent off to bed, we stripped off our costumes and shared a joint before making love. Matty came over again on election night. We were rooting for different candidates in the Presidential race, but both happy about the local results. Turnout in Wray County was up two percent from the 2000 election, and it looked like they were our voters. Mayor Atkinson, Sheriff Pollard, and the two town council incumbents were reelected, and all four of our candidates won school board seats. The next Sunday, Reverend Watkins announced from the pulpit that he was leaving his post to take up a position as a missionary in Zambia. His hasty departure sparked a nasty round of infighting in the congregation, which gradually dwindled away to nothing. At the same time, Bartlett fell on hard times with the '08 recession, which, combined with Mr. Farrelli's lawsuit, bankrupted the lumber mill. This made the Farrellis unpopular in town, and they moved to Washington for Mr. Farrelli to take a lobbying position, leaving Amir and Sophia to finish up their time at Ramsey as boarding students. They divorced a couple of years later, and their children have gotten to the point of being able to tolerate one or two visits a year. Sophia was able to find an outlet for her activist tendencies in setting up Ramsey's Gay-Straight Alliance, and Amir blossomed into a tech whiz. He ended up going to Princeton and getting a job in Silicon Valley, but still comes back to Bartlett for the holidays. Uncle Cecil decided not to run for reelection to Congress, fearing that the news about Scott's child would turn into a public scandal. Levi Hatch Murchison was born May 22, 2005, and just started his senior year at Ramsey. His mother raised him along with Barry and Matthew Rice, who got married shortly after it was legalized, and Scott mostly sees him on holidays. Sarah works in an art gallery that Mrs. Fritz set up in the First Baptist Church building, and Barry and Matthew Rice are still making porn. Their studio, Mountain Men Productions, has evolved into one of the largest producers of gay and straight porn in the United States. It split off from Mr. Rice's other business after North Carolina legalized marijuana last year, thanks to some imaginative legislating by Mr. Atkinson, who switched parties after the auto bailout and is now a state senator. Robbie runs the car dealership now, Wyatt went to Davidson and got a job in business consulting, and Chelsey married Adrian Concepcion after they both graduated from Carolina. He works in marketing for the Nashville Major League Soccer team, and she teaches preschool. Matty and I both went to Carolina, following Murchison family tradition. After graduating, Matty pursued a career as a professional photographer and has had his work exhibited all over the world. I decided that I wanted to do something that would help revitalize Bartlett and opened Skinnydip Creek Distillers, which produces craft moonshine, bourbon, and hard cider. We employ over 50 people and have the top rated moonshine in North Carolina. Matty and I got married in April 2016 at St. Joseph's. Reverend, now Bishop, Whaley officiated, and Mary was my Maid of Honor. We decided to have a child by surrogacy and ended up with twins: Patrick Raymond Cox Murchison and Colin Thornton Anthony Murchison. We all live in the old Murchison family house with Mom. Dad and Uncle Jack built a place across the street when I started college, so the boys have three doting grandparents within walking distance. It's a good thing to -- they manage to keep all five of us busy. Thanks to the scandal over Sarah's pregnancy, Ramsey decided to improve its sex education classes, with the new model implemented beginning in December. It ended up being copied in schools all over the country, but that's a story for another day.