Fort (3 page)

When Aunt Hilda answered the door, I again tried but did not succeed in not looking at her bosoms. When we gave her Unk's message, she directed us to the basement.

“Man,” I said, looking around. “Your uncle wasn't kidding.”

There were homemade shelves covering one whole wall, filled with gallons of paint, rollers, rolling pans, brushes, spattered tarps—the works. Luckily, we didn't have to go by the weird names they give to paint colors because the cans had all been partially used, and dried paint drips showed on the side of each one.

Aunt Hilda seemed to favor Easter egg colors, including one that could have been called Pink Palace. We avoided those. Finally, we each picked two cans that looked likely. I took a rolling pan and roller, and Augie grabbed a couple of brushes.

Aunt Hilda fussed about how we would be able to carry it all on our bikes, but we put the brushes and roller in my basket and the pan in Augie's, and hung a paint can from each handlebar. Calling “Thanks, Aunt Hilda!” we started off.

If you've never ridden a bike with a paint can hanging from each handlebar, let me just say that it isn't easy. Actually, it's pretty much impossible. With every turn of the pedals, my knee crashed into a paint can—“Ow!”—causing me to jerk sideways, causing my other knee to crash into the other paint can—“Ow!”—back and forth—“Ow! Ow! Ow!”—and throwing me all off balance. I was lurching and wobbling along, feeling like a real dork, hoping nobody was watching, especially J.R. and Morrie, when I noticed Augie was having the same problems. I stopped and stood straddling my bike.

“This is stupid,” I called to him. “I don't know about you, but I'm walking.”

Augie, looking relieved, got off his bike, too. We stood for a minute, looking at each other. Then I cracked up. After a few seconds, Augie did, too.

We began pushing our bikes down the road, laughing our heads off, Augie imitating my cries: “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

It took us about a half hour to get to my house, where we wolfed down some peanut butter sandwiches and milk. Dad wasn't home during the weekdays. He was teaching summer classes at the local college. We had a rule that I was to be home for dinner on the nights Dad was home, home by dark on the nights he taught the late class.

Dad was cool that way, so different from Mom. She'd freak if she knew how Augie and I ran around doing pretty much whatever we wanted. It wasn't like we did anything bad. But Mom would want to know
where
and
when
and
are there any adults home
and
did you put on sunscreen?

Dad said a boy needed a little room and he trusted me to use common sense. He didn't even make me carry a cell phone. He called them electronic nannies, and said kids shouldn't be plugged into gadgets all the time. “How are you going to learn to think for yourself if you call me every time something happens?” he asked.

So I'd only used my cell to phone Mom on Sunday nights. She probably thought Dad was checking on me a couple of times a day, like she did, but that wasn't Dad's way. He often said things like, “Maybe this ought to be our little secret, eh, Wyatt?”

We bungeed a cardboard carton onto the rack behind the seat on the back of my bike and put the paint cans into that for the ride back to the junkyard. Al gave us a screwdriver to pry off the tops of the cans, and we started mixing. We ended up with a pretty decent sort of muddy color, which Unk immediately named Duck Droppings.

 

3

We made pretty quick progress painting. There were twelve boards lying in the gravel yard, drying quickly in the sun, when Augie straightened up for a second to stretch his back. He looked at the boards that were left and the remaining contents of the rolling pan and said, “I think we have a problem.”

I paused and looked at him.

“Not enough paint,” he explained, gesturing at the stack of pink boards.

I examined the situation and set down my brush with a sigh. “You're right,” I agreed. “We're not going to make it.”

“We could go back to Unk's and get more, I guess,” Augie suggested. He didn't look thrilled at the prospect.

“Man,” I said dejectedly. “I figured by now we'd have the fort half-built. If we stop to get more paint, the whole day will be gone before we even hammer one nail.”

We stared at the ground for a while.

Finally, I said cautiously, “I might have an idea.”

Augie looked at me with hope.

“We could just paint squiggles on the rest. You know, like camo.”

“Pink camo?”

“Pink
and brown
,” I said. “The brown would, you know, break up the pink.” As soon as I said it, I tried to picture it.

I couldn't.

Then I could.

“Never mind,” I said. “Stupid idea.”

“Hold on,” said Augie. “It might not be as stupid as it sounds.” He thought for a minute. “Deer don't see colors,” he went on, sounding a little more enthusiastic. “That's why hunters can wear blaze orange. As long as something has a pattern on it, so it blends in with trees and bushes and stuff, it doesn't matter what color it is.”

“So, wait. You're saying we don't want
deer
to see the fort?” I asked.

Augie shrugged. “Or anybody else.”

“But,” I said, “people can see color.”

“Well,
duh
,” said Augie. “But the human eye can be fooled, you know what I mean? Like one of those crazy pictures where you think you see one thing, but it's really something else?”

“An optical illusion?”

“Exactly! I mean, anybody would see a big pink board out in the middle of the woods, right? But the camo pattern will make it confusing looking, like maybe it's
not
a big pink board. You know what I mean?”

“Kind of,” I said, even though I didn't, really.

Augie shrugged again. “I guess it's a dumb idea.”

He looked so downcast and sheepish all of a sudden, I wanted to cheer him up.

“No!” I said. “You're right. There's not, like, a
rule
that says camo has to be green and brown. And, anyhow, it'll take forever to get more paint, and I want to get going on this fort.”

“Me, too!”

“I mean, we only have two weeks 'til I have to go home.”

“Let's do it!”

We started painting like mad, me with a brush, Augie with a roller, making squiggly lines and crazy, random patterns.

“This is a lot more fun, anyway,” I said.

“Totally,” Augie agreed.

Al and Unk had been playing checkers all afternoon, arguing about the best breed of hunting dog (Al favored the pointing breeds, Unk the coonhound), the right way to grill bratwurst (Al said 'til they bust open, Unk said you had to take them off
just before
they bust open, so they stay juicy), and the correct method for dealing with a skunk living under your porch.

While they agreed that a skunk under the porch was a very delicate situation, Al maintained there was no good solution. “Face it,” he said. “You're doomed. Ya just gotta live with the stink until the skunk decides to go somewhere else.”

Unk said he knew a guy who had success using a live-catch trap baited with cat food. “But ya gotta use a small trap,” Unk warned, “so it can't lift its tail. It can only blast you if it can lift its tail.”

I'd been only half listening to them all afternoon, but this was a new and interesting piece of information.

“So
then
what do you do?” I asked. “Once you got a live skunk in a trap?”

Unk shrugged. “The guy didn't tell me the rest of the story.”

Al snorted. “Here's the rest of the story: the guy opens the trap, the skunk comes out, lifts its tail, unloads on the guy, and runs back under the porch.”

This amused him so much I thought he was going to choke, but he finally recovered and took a swallow of beer. Then he held up the can and shook it. “Empty,” he announced. He looked at Unk. “You?”

Unk drained his can and stood up, and the two of them headed into the office, I guessed to get more beers.

Augie and I kept painting. Suddenly he groaned quietly and murmured, “Oh, man. Don't look now, but Morrie and J.R. are coming.”

Of course I looked. Sure enough, the two older kids were riding down the road toward us on their bikes.

“They already spotted us,” I whispered.

“Hey, look!” called Morrie. “It's Lame and Lamer!”

“Looks like Wimpy and Wimpier to me,” said J.R.

They pedaled hard toward us, then braked suddenly, purposely spraying us with gravel and dust from their rear tires.

“Aww, look at that pretty pink wood,” said J.R.

“Whatcha making, girls?” Morrie asked.

“Nothing,” said Augie, without looking up from his painting.

I admired how casual and nonchalant he sounded. Meanwhile, I stood frozen, not wanting to call any attention to myself.

“Looks like a lot of work for
nothing
,” J.R. observed. So quickly I never saw it coming, he grabbed the brush from my hand and dropped it on the ground.

Morrie, seeing this, lunged for Augie's roller, but Augie held on tight. They struggled for a moment, but Morrie was bigger and stronger than Augie. He twisted Augie's arm so the paint-covered foam end of the roller mushed up against Augie's cheek, leaving a big brown streak. Then the roller, too, hit the ground.

“Ew, gross,” said Morrie. “What ya been eating, Augie? It's all over your face.”

J.R. snickered. “Looks like—”

He didn't finish, because suddenly Al and Unk were standing right there. They moved pretty fast and sneaky for two old guys.

Al looked a little bit like somebody you wouldn't want to mess with, with his bulk and his sudden, fierce scowl. But Unk was pretty scrawny. And, in his plaid hat and yellow-and-red-checked Bermuda shorts, with black socks and giant beige sneakers at the ends of his spindly white legs, he didn't exactly inspire fear.

“This here is private property,” Al said, his arms folded over his substantial stomach. “And this is a private party.”

J.R. and Morrie tried to cover their surprise at seeing Al and Unk. “Like we'd want to come to your loser party,” Morrie murmured, just loud enough so Augie and I could hear it, but not Al.

“So,” said Al, “the two of ya—make like a tree and leave.”

Morrie looked at J.R. and smirked. “Ooh, I'm scared, J.R. How 'bout you?”

J.R. pretended to shiver with fear. “Petrified.” He gestured toward Unk. “'Specially of him.”

They both laughed, but they got on their bikes. As they rode away, Morrie looked back over his shoulder and called, “Sorry we can't stay and play, girls, but you have fun with your pink boards.”

The four of us stood there for a minute. I was mad. And, for some reason, I felt kind of embarrassed and ashamed. Which didn't really make sense, since Morrie and J.R. were the ones who had acted like jerks.

Almost as if he'd heard me, Augie shouted, “Jerks!”

“Guys like that,” Al said with a shrug. “Coupla punks. Don't let 'em get to you.”

“Sooner or later,” Unk said, “they'll come up against the wrong people. They'll pay.”

I wasn't so sure about that, but I hoped it was true. And if it was … boy, did I wish those people could somehow be Augie and me.

But how? J.R. and Morrie were bigger, stronger, and older than us. They were on the football team. I wasn't a major nerd or anything, but I was better at geometry and chess and computers than I was at sports.

Glumly, Augie picked up the roller and I got the brush. We walked over to the office and rinsed off the dirt and gravel, and Augie wet his hands and scrubbed at his face. I wasn't used to seeing him all down like that, and it made me think what a drag it must be to have to live near Morrie and J.R. all year round, not just for the summer.

“Hey,” I said, to get his mind off those guys. “Let's finish up this painting fast. While it's drying, we can go to the woods and scout out a good place for the fort.”

“Yeah,” Augie said. “Maybe we can even get some boards up.”

I nodded. We made a quick job of the rest of the lumber, then cleaned up all the painting supplies.

“Just put everything in my car,” Unk said gloomily. “I'd tell you to throw it all out, but lately your aunt's got her eye on the bathroom.”

“I hear they got a new color for that,” said Al. “It's called You're in Yellow.”

With Al's chortles following us down the road, Augie and I headed across a big open field that led to the woods.

Al's junkyard sat on the edge of a big state forest. The forest was named after Ferris Findley, some rich dead guy who used to own it, but Augie and everybody else just called it the woods.

There was an official entrance to the forest on the main road. I'd been there with Dad. There was a lake where you could fish and rent canoes and kayaks, and there were some campsites and trails. But, as Augie had explained to me, hardly anybody ever made it to this side of the forest. There was a really deep gorge right through the middle of the woods. People got there, stopped to look at the gorge and the falls, and turned back.

“So nobody ever comes into the woods this way?” I asked as we approached the trees.

“Nope,” Augie said. “There's no road in this way and people don't think of coming through the junkyard.”

“Which makes this part of the woods
ours
!” I shouted.

“You bet it does!” Augie shouted back.

We high-fived, then stepped into the woods. After just a short way, it got all dark and shadowy and the air was cooler and piney-smelling. It was real quiet. All we heard was the wind in the tree branches and, once in a while, the chirp of a bird or chatter of a squirrel.