Fort (5 page)

“Don't you like it?” Gerard said, sounding distressed. “It has my name in it.”

I hesitated, looking at Augie. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: it was an awful song. But Gerard was so proud of it, it would feel even meaner to ruin his enjoyment.

“Not everybody has a song with their name in it,” Augie said, finally.

“But I bet we can come up with an even better one,” I said. I didn't really think about this. It just sort of came out. “What do you say, Augie?”

Augie glanced at me uncertainly, but said, “Yeah. Sure.”

Gerard looked at us eagerly, as if he expected us to burst out with a new song right there on the spot.

“We're gonna need a little time to come up with something,” I said. “Meanwhile, don't sing that one. It is just not good enough to be your song.”

Augie shook his head. “No way,” he agreed.

“No way,” Gerard said, shaking his head.

“Ours will be way cooler,” I promised.

Augie nodded.

“Way cooler!” said Gerard happily.

“I mean, Gerardo isn't even your name,” I said.

I was thinking it was going to be hard to make up a song about Gerard because I didn't know anything about him, really, except that he liked gummy worms and his rabbit's foot. And fire. But we couldn't let him go around singing that other one.

“Okay, Gerard,” said Augie. “We've got to go now.”

“Where you going?”

“We're building a fort,” I said. Right away, I wished I hadn't said that. Maybe building a fort was something Gerard had always wanted to do, too, and nobody ever asked him. I felt bad about it as we pedaled away.

But the fort was Augie's and mine.

 

5

“Can you believe J.R. and Morrie?” I asked Augie when we were out of Gerard's earshot.

“Jerks,” he said. “It's bad enough they torture us, but picking on a kid like Gerard?” He shook his head disgustedly.

“Teaching him that song … Geez.”

“But how are
we
going to make up a better one?” Augie asked. He sounded a little desperate.

“I don't know,” I admitted. “We'll just have to think of some words that rhyme and put them together, I guess. I mean, J.R. and Morrie came up with two crummy lines. We can do better than that.”

“If you say so,” Augie said. But he sounded doubtful.

“We just have to get in the right mood.”

“Okay,” he said. “But first—the fort. I was thinking we'd use a tarp for the roof. But then I was thinking it'd flap around in the wind and probably leak. It would be better if we could get some sheets of tin or something like that.”

“Let's ask Al,” I suggested. “My dad told me he used roofing tin to build a fort when he was a kid. Maybe we can find some lying around.”

When we got to the junkyard, Unk's car wasn't there yet. We found Al sitting in the office at a metal desk, which was covered with piles of grubby papers.

“Come over here and look at this, boys,” he said.

Augie and I went around behind the desk and stood next to him. He pointed down at a calendar open to the month of July. “Now this,” he said, “this I understand.”

There was a picture of a lady wearing a red, white, and blue bikini, a cowgirl hat, and cowgirl boots, standing in the open bed of a red pickup truck. She was holding a flag in one hand and a bottle of STP motor oil in the other.

Augie and I looked, not sure what it was that Al understood, but willing to keep looking.

Then Al flipped past August, September, October, and November, and Augie and I caught quick glimpses of other ladies leaning against cars or getting in or out of cars, or pumping gas into cars, none of them wearing much. He stopped at December and said, “But
this
? This I don't understand at all.”

He pointed a greasy, stubby finger at the picture of a lady wearing a very small red bikini decorated with white fur, a Santa Claus hat, and white furry boots. She was standing by the open door of a car in about six inches of snow, holding a bottle of STP motor oil with a big red bow tied around it. She was smiling like mad, like standing around freezing to death in a bathing suit was about the most fun she'd ever had in her life.

It was so dumb, Augie and I both laughed. I figured Al was thinking the same thing we were.

But he said, “Boys, that right there is a 1957 Ford Thunderbird convertible, with the original Colonial White paint job, white
leather
seats, tricked out with white-walled tires and custom chrome hubcaps!”

Augie and I looked at him in surprise. I didn't know about Augie, but I hadn't noticed the car so much.

Al put the calendar back down on the desk with a thump, sending papers flying in all directions. “Now I ask you,” he said, “what in the name of your great-grandmother's girdle is that girl doing taking a car like that out in December with the ice and snow and all the lousy drivers, not to mention the salt they put on the roads? I mean, you gotta ask yourself, is she
crazy
?”

I had to admit Al had a point, even if it wasn't the first one to come to mind.

“Totally nuts,” I said.

“Insane,” Augie agreed.

Al tossed the calendar toward the overfilled wastebasket in the corner. It fell to the floor and he waved at it dismissively.

“So,” he said, “you kids gonna work on your clubhouse today?”

“Fort,” Augie corrected him. “Yeah. We got the sides up and we were wondering, are there any sheets of tin roofing or anything like that out in the yard?”

Al tilted his head back and closed his eyes. I figured he was going over every corner of the junkyard in his mind. After a while he sat up and opened his eyes. “I think there's something you can use leaning against the fence on the southwest side.”

Augie looked at me. “Let's go!”

As we headed for the door Al said, “Ya might wanna park your bikes behind the office here from now on. Keep those two jamokes Morrie and J.R. from seein' 'em and bothering you.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“Yeah. Thanks, Al,” said Augie.

As I followed Augie out the door, I watched him dip smoothly and, with one hand, pick up the calendar from the floor.

What did I say before? Augie's always thinking.

“Score!” I said as we moved our bikes.

Augie grinned, rolling up the calendar and putting it in the basket on his handlebars. “Gotta have something to read in the fort besides comics, right?”

“Totally,” I agreed.

Al's voice came booming from the office. “And don't think I didn't see ya swipe that calendar, smart guy.”

We wandered around Al's yard. It was interesting. I hadn't figured a junkyard would be organized, but it was. There was a section full of all different kinds of vehicles: a hearse, a Good Humor ice cream truck, a school bus, an ambulance, and a rusty old hippie van painted with peace signs. Along the wall nearby were washing machines, refrigerators, and all kinds of appliances. There was a whole area devoted to wheels: car, truck, tractor, and steering wheels.

I started over to check out some pinball machines and arcade games, but Augie said, “Over here, Wyatt!”

I walked past a car that looked like it had come from a fun house ride. It was sitting all alone, surrounded by weeds, its bright paint faded and peeling. I wanted to check it out, but Augie was pointing excitedly at a stack of corrugated metal sheets piled against the fence.

“Wow,” I said, “all we need is two or three of those babies, and we'll have a roof!”

“You bet,” said Augie. “So that just leaves the front. We could build walls and a door somehow, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, trying to picture how we'd do it. I had no clue, but probably Augie did.

“Or we could use a tarp for a flap,” he said.

“That sounds quicker,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Augie. “Come on, let's each grab a piece of this metal.”

We started dragging the metal sheets toward the entrance to the yard. They were pretty thin, so they weren't heavy. But each one looked to be about eight feet long and four feet wide, so it got kind of tricky maneuvering them through all the junk. Plus, we had to be careful handling the edges, which were really sharp.

When we finally got back to Al's office, Unk had arrived, and he and Al were setting up their checkerboard and chairs outside.

“Okay if we take these?” Augie asked Al.

“Be my guest,” said Al.

“And I took some rope,” Augie added. “Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, and do you have any tarps?”

“For cryin' out loud,” said Al, “what do I look like, a junk dealer?” Then he banged his palm against his forehead. “Oh, yeah, I forgot for a second there. I
am
a junk dealer!”

This amused him so much it took him a while to recover. “Tarps,” he gasped at last. “I think they're all being used. But, hey, ya want a tarp, ask a painter.” He gestured to Unk.

“Oh, yeah,” said Unk, rolling his eyes. “I got tarps. All sizes and shapes. Plastic, canvas, vinyl, you name it.”

“Awesome,” said Augie. “Could we have one? I mean, borrow one? We'll bring it back at the end of the summer.”

Unk echoed Al. “Be my guest. Go see your aunt. I think she's making brownies today.”

We decided to get the roof materials out to the fort first. It was even tougher dragging the sheets of tin through the woods than it had been moving them out of the junkyard. They kept getting hung up on the underbrush and low branches.

When we got to the fort and eyeballed the roofing material next to the wall, we saw we would need two more sheets, so we headed back to Al's.

As we were struggling along with our final haul, I felt the metal slipping from my sweaty grasp. I adjusted my hand to get a better grip, and felt a burning pain as the metal sliced open my palm near the base of my thumb.

Somehow I remembered, for Augie's sake, not to swear. Dropping the tin, I hollered,
“Mama mia! Ay, caramba!!!! Pasta fazool!!”

I was vaguely aware of Augie laughing hysterically as I sucked away the blood to get a better look. Immediately, I felt like puking. I was looking at the
inside
of my hand, like the
guts
of my hand, the stuff that's supposed to be inside the skin and out of sight because it is really, totally disgusting and gross.

Augie must have seen my face, because he got to his feet with a look of concern.

“Sorry, Wyatt,” he said, getting hold of himself. “Are y'okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, but I heard my voice coming out kind of wobbly.

“Is it bad?” Augie asked. “Should we go have Gram look at it?”

I hesitated. “I don't think so.” I wasn't sure, really. But we were so close to finishing the fort. We
had
to have our first sleep-out that night. “I just need something to stop the bleeding.”

Augie looked down at his T-shirt. “This thing is really old,” he said, and ripped off a strip from around the bottom. Pointing to my wound, he said, “Let me see that.”

I held out my hand and he wrapped the cloth around it several times, going around my thumb to leave it free. Then he tucked in the end. It was a pretty neat job, and it didn't hurt too much. Mostly I was just glad I didn't have to look at it anymore.

Using a little extra care, we got the rest of the tin to the fort. Augie sized up the situation and said we needed to add boards to the front walls to make them a little higher than in the back, so we did that. Then we laid a final board across the front and back to make a ceiling beam. We hoisted up the sheets of tin, and overlapped them so they'd fit, and so the edges wouldn't leak. If it rained, the water would run downhill in the corrugated ridges and off the back.

“Genius,” I said.

We nailed the edges of the roof to keep it from blowing away, then went to get the tarp at Unk's.

Aunt Hilda was kneeling on the ground weeding her garden when we got there. She waved and we went over. I was holding my hand behind my back so she wouldn't see it, because if she was anything like my mom, she'd make a ginormous stink about it and want to do the whole first-aid thing, or even drag me to the hospital.

Augie told her what Unk had said about borrowing a tarp.

“My hands are all filthy,” she said, waving them in the air so we could see. “You boys go on in and help yourselves to brownies and milk, and take any tarp you like.”

Inside, as we ate, I said, “Too bad we didn't bring that owl. We could sneak him back to the attic, no problem.”

“Yeah, no problem except for him not having a head,” Augie replied.

“Yeah. What are we going to do about that?”

“I'm thinking superglue,” Augie said confidently.

I wasn't convinced that superglue was going to work, but I didn't say anything. Maybe he was right. I hoped so.

On the way out, I forgot about hiding my hand. Some blood had seeped through the T-shirt bandage and Aunt Hilda spotted it.

“Wyatt, what on earth happened to you? Come over here and let me see that hand of yours.”

Augie and I exchanged a look, but there was no way out of it.

“It's not too bad,” I said.

She hustled us right back inside, asking a million questions about what had happened, and was the metal rusty (“a little”), and had I had a tetanus shot (I had no idea but said, “Oh, yes.”).

Aunt Hilda washed her hands at the kitchen sink and came back from the bathroom with her arms full of bandages, gauze, special little scissors, and a bottle of what I really hoped wasn't alcohol, but was.

She unwrapped the strip of T-shirt, scolding all the while about how it wasn't a proper bandage, but in a nice way. She picked up the alcohol and a gauze pad. Then she moved in very, very close, and bent her head down. Her giant bosoms were poking out over the top of her V-neck shirt, right in front of my eyes. They looked like two soft pillows nestled in there.