Fort (10 page)

Starting with the tip from Al, we checked out a lot of different sites.

We kept on reading and looking at pictures.

Augie started getting excited. “Hey, we can do this stuff! No problem.”

I nodded. I was getting excited, too. Possibilities were already forming in my head. All we'd needed was a nudge in the right direction.

We got some wicked-good ideas. Using a piece of scrap paper and one of those stubby little pencils you only see in libraries, I made a list of things we were going to need.

I filled four pieces of scrap paper with notes.

We finally had the makings of a real plan.

“This is going to
totally
mess with their minds!” said Augie.

“Roger that,” I said. I thought the circumstances called for some of the official-sounding military language we'd been reading online. “Our mission is to create panic, fear, and humiliation in the enemy, leading to flight and utter defeat. Of course, we will be aided in this enterprise by the element of complete surprise.” I paused and added, “We didn't start this. But we are going to finish it.”

Augie looked impressed. “Yeah! Like you said!” He raised his hand and we grinned and high-fived.

The lady at the checkout desk looked over at us and raised an eyebrow, but she smiled when we walked by. “Did you boys find what you needed?” she asked.

“You bet,” I said.

 

12

Augie and I rode to my house, where I got the twenty-five dollars Mom had given me for emergency money. She had warned me not to spend it frivolously, so I'd left it in the little pouch in the main compartment of my suitcase where I wouldn't see it all the time and be tempted.

“But if this isn't an emergency, I don't know what is,” I said to Augie, who totally agreed.

I also took a bag of balloons that had been left in one of the drawers in the living room cabinet. Then I opened the refrigerator and held up a package of hot dogs. “In case we're too busy today to go hunting or fishing?” I asked.

“Good thinking,” said Augie.

I grabbed some rolls, too.

Then we rode to Cooney's Hardware. My dad was crazy about the place, so we were there a lot. Dad said it was like hardware stores ought to be, not like Walmart, he said, where you had to buy a plastic-wrapped package of one hundred different-sized screws when you only needed one, and where nobody knew anything about hardware.

We said hi to Mr. Cooney, the owner. He looked about a million years old and shuffled around the store in felt slippers and baggy pants held up by suspenders.

Wooden bins lined the walls, filled with nuts, bolts, nails, hooks, screws—you name it—of every size and shape you could ever want. Rolls of wire and rope leaned against the walls. The middle of the long, narrow room was filled with tables piled high with what looked like a totally random assortment of stuff. Some of it was what you'd expect to see and some of it was weird. All of it was interesting.

“Check this out, Augie,” I said, laughing, holding up a bottle of something called Predator Pee. Reading the label, I said, “It's pee from coyotes and foxes. It keeps deer from eating your bushes.”

I expected him to laugh, too, and crack a joke. But instead he said, “Aw, you don't have to
buy
that stuff. Gram gets hers from a guy we know.”

That Augie. He wasn't kidding. There were about a hundred different questions rushing into my head, beginning with,
You actually know a guy who collects pee?
Followed by,
How the heck does he get it?
I pictured a guy with a bottle in his hand, sneaking around behind a coyote, waiting for just the right second.

I didn't get a chance to ask Augie any more about it, because Mr. Cooney shuffled over then and asked if he could help us.

I took my scribbled notes from my pocket. “Um, we need some of these,” I said, pointing to a little sketch I had made.

Mr. Cooney nodded. “Seven-eighths-inch screw eyes. How many?”

I looked at Augie.

“How much are they?” he asked.

“Three cents apiece.”

“We'll take thirty,” said Augie.

Mr. Cooney nodded again. He headed slowly toward the back wall and, without hesitating, reached for a bin full of just the little doohickeys we wanted. He counted out thirty and put them in a small paper bag.

“What else?”

I showed him another sketch I'd made.

“One-inch screw hooks,” said Mr. Cooney, nodding again. “How many?”

“Thirty of these, too, I guess.”

After he'd gotten the screw hooks, we went through the rest of the list: a large spool of one-hundred-pound test monofilament fishing line, another large spool of thin metal wire, and a box of heavy-duty rubber bands.

When we left, I had $16.32 left in my pocket.

Next we stopped by Augie's house, where we grabbed a large jar of honey from Gram's pantry. This, too, they got from “a guy we know.”

“But this guy keeps
bees
instead of
pees
,” I said, and finally got a laugh from Augie.

Next we went to Al's, where Augie asked Unk if he had any old empty paint buckets.

“Heck, Augie, I got about a hundred of 'em. They're out in that shed in the yard, you know where I mean?”

Augie nodded. I knew, too: it was the shed we'd hidden behind when we “borrowed” Herkimer. With everything going on, I'd forgotten all about the owl. An idea tickled the back of my brain.

When Augie asked if we could take some buckets, Unk said, “You'd be doing me a favor. Your aunt's been after me to clean out that shed.”

Augie grinned and turned, looking like he was about to hop on his bike and leave.

“Ahum-hmmm,” I said, clearing my throat loudly.

Augie kept on walking.

“Ahem,”
I said, louder this time.

Augie turned to me with a puzzled expression. “What's the matter with you, Wyatt?”

“I hope you're not getting one of those summer colds,” said Unk. “They can be a real bear.”

I bugged out my eyes at Augie, but he just stared, confused. Obviously, he'd forgotten this part of our plan.

Finally, I said, “Didn't you have something else you wanted to ask your uncle, Augie?”

Augie's face cleared as he remembered. “Oh, yeah. Hey, Unk, does Aunt Hilda have any nightgowns that are, like, you know, kind of see-through? Or—what's the word you said before, Wyatt?”

“Um, flimsy,” I said in a low voice, suddenly thinking maybe this hadn't been such a good idea after all.

“Yeah, that's it,” said Augie. “Does she?”

He looked expectantly at Unk, whose eyes, I was dismayed to see, had grown narrow. “What kind of smart-aleck question is that?” Unk asked. “Why, I oughtta—” He stopped, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as he tried to think of what he oughtta do to us.

“What'd I say?” Augie asked, looking bewildered.

Al broke in then. “Now, Heinie, settle down a darn second here, will ya?”

Heinie?
Had Al really just called Unk
Heinie
? I guess it was the obvious nickname if your parents were clueless enough to call you Heindel. Any other time I'd probably have been rolling on the ground, dying of laughter. But just then I was too nervous.

Al spread his arms, palms to the sky. “Don't you kids know anything? Ya don't ask a guy about his wife's unmentionables! That's why they're called unmentionables: 'cause ya don't mention 'em, ya got it?”

“Aw, Unk,” Augie said. He looked crestfallen, a vocabulary word I'd never really understood until that moment. “We didn't mean anything you're not supposed to mention, did we, Wyatt?”

I shook my head.

“It was just part of our plan to prank J.R. and Morrie. But never mind. I didn't know the rule about unmentionables. Just forget it,” he pleaded.

Al turned to Unk. “Okay, so they didn't know. Now they do. They didn't mean nothin' by it.”

Unk nodded. “All right. It's up to your aunt, anyway,” he said. “You go ask her.” He added with a weak smile, “Just tell her what you want it for, okay?”

“Sure thing!” Augie said quickly.

“Thanks!” I called as I ran to my bike.

“Man,” said Augie as we rode off. “That was weird.”

*   *   *

We got to Aunt Hilda's house, and she was happy to give us all the empty paint buckets we wanted. Which were, lucky for us, a lot easier to carry on a bike than full ones. Plus, we each had a cardboard box bungeed on the racks over our rear wheels because of all the stuff we'd been hauling back and forth to the fort.

“If you need more, you know where to find them,” she offered. “Now, you said this is part of a trick you're playing on some other boys?”

“J.R. and Morrie,” I answered. “Do you know them?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “They're the ones who smash up my nice pumpkin decorations every Halloween. I know boys will be boys, but that just seems so—unnecessary, don't you think?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “Which is why we were wondering if you could help us out with something else?”

“Why, certainly,” said Aunt Hilda. A little sparkle showed in her eyes and she winked. “I'd be happy to help you teach those two a lesson. As long as no one's going to get hurt,” she added.

“Oh, no,” Augie said. “We already decided. No injury. No death. No dismemberment.”

Aunt Hilda laughed. “Well, that's a relief. So what can I do?”

Carefully, we explained about the nightgown. Aunt Hilda clapped her hands with delight. “I have just the thing!” she said. “Hang on. I'll run and get it.”

She returned, holding up a long white nightgown that was exactly what I'd been picturing. “It's kind of sheer,” she said, “but that's what you're going for, right?”

“It's great!” Augie said.

“Perfect,” I agreed. But then I had a thought. “Is it, you know, your best, most favorite nightgown or anything? I mean, what if it gets dirty or torn or something?”

“Oh, heavens,” said Aunt Hilda. “I'm not worried. It's been hanging in my closet for ages. I'd forgotten about it. I can't even remember the last time I wore it. I think it was getting a little tight on me.”

I looked away from both Aunt Hilda and the nightgown, trying not to picture her and it together, wondering why my imagination came up with stuff like that at the worst possible moments.

Beaming, Augie said, “Thanks, Aunt Hilda.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I managed to say.

We were on our bikes, almost out of sight of the house, when Aunt Hilda came running after us calling, “Boys! Oh, boys!”

We went back. She had something in her hand, which she held out to me. Her eyes had that mischievous look again.

“I was thinking you could use this,” she said.

I looked down at the bottle, which was made of fancy cut glass and had a gold cap shaped like a swan. The label said
Floral Fantasy
.

“It's perfume,” Aunt Hilda said. “I suddenly remembered a trick we played on my brother. Oh, he was so mad at us!” She giggled, remembering. “What made me think of it is, he was a football player. J.R. and Morrie are on the school team, aren't they?”

Augie nodded.

“I thought I saw their pictures in the paper,” Aunt Hilda said.

I looked at the perfume bottle again, stumped. I looked at Augie, who shrugged.

“Um, what are we supposed to do with it?” I asked.

“Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something,” she said innocently, and turned to go.

Augie and I stood there, speechless.

“I want a full report afterward, you hear?” she said with a laugh.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

Augie and I made two trips out to the woods with all the supplies we'd gathered so far, and put them in the fort. Then we took a couple of Unk's buckets and collected black walnuts. Augie told me that when they were ripe, they fell to the ground, but since they weren't, we had to shinny up into the trees to get them.

By then it was getting dark, so we hung out at the fort cooking hot dogs and talking over the details of the plan.

We still needed to get Herkimer.

And Herkimer's head.

There was one more big problem to solve. If Gerard was going to be there to watch the operation go down, we were going to have to figure out how to get his mother to let him come with us.

And she thought we were the rotten guys who had made Gerard cry.

 

13

The next morning, I was awake before Augie. My mind was already racing like crazy. The second I heard him yawning and stretching and moving around in his sleeping bag, I said, “So today we go to Gerard's house, right?”

“Right,” said Augie.

“I was thinking you should do the talking.”

Augie frowned. “Why me?”

“You know them better than I do.”

“Nice try, Wyatt. Come on. We've gotta do it together. We're a team, right?”

I sighed. Neither of us was looking forward to seeing Mrs. DeMuth after what had happened the last time. “Okay,” I said. “Deal.”

“Let's get it over with,” Augie said.

As soon as we'd eaten some bread and peanut butter, we left the woods, got on our bikes, and headed for the DeMuths'.

Gerard and his mother were out in the yard when we pulled up. She was weeding, and Gerard was staring down at the concrete path that led from the street to their front door. Something really interesting had his attention, and he didn't even look up as we parked our bikes. Mrs. DeMuth did look up, and was glaring at us in a definitely unfriendly way as we walked closer.

Soon we could see that Gerard had two worms lined up next to each other, and was watching them carefully like he was waiting for them to do something.