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  “Heck, yeah!” I said. I’d never hunted squirrels before. Or eaten one. But now we were really getting down to it. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d imagined you did when you had a fort. “How do we get ’em?”

  Augie reached into one of the giant pockets on his cargo shorts and took out a slingshot. “Meet the Squirrel-Slayer.”

  “No way!” I said. “You’ve actually gotten squirrels with that thing?”

  “Sure,” Augie said. “Ask Gram.”

  I didn’t have to ask Gram. If Augie said he’d slingshotted squirrels, I believed him.

  “Let me see that,” I said.

  Augie tossed it to me and I checked it out. It was a Y-shaped stick with thick rubber strips going from the tips of the Y to a leather pouch. “Did you make this?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “They’re thirty-four bucks at the store.”

  “Does it really shoot?”

  Augie grinned. “Shoots good.”

  I’m telling you. That Augie.

  Then I thought of something. “Why don’t we use your pellet gun?”

  Augie shrugged. “Too easy.”

  “For you maybe,” I said. “So, anyway, what do squirrels taste like?”

  “Good. Like squirrel.”

  “How do we get ’em?”

  “First,” said Augie, “we need ammo.” He leaned down and picked up a small roundish pebble.

  We continued walking, eyes on the ground, occasionally picking up a pebble with the right shape and pocketing it.

  “We should probably hurry,” Augie said, glancing up at the sun. “Squirrels are out in the daytime, not at night. Let’s hope they’re getting ready to have a little snack before they turn in.”

  He led the way to some pine trees and found a pinecone. “See how a squirrel’s been eating the nuts out of this? They love these things. We just have to be still and hope he comes back—with a few of his buddies.”

  We crawled under some low-hanging branches and sat.

  “We gotta stay really still,” Augie whispered. “We may have to wait awhile, so get comfortable. If you see one, whisper to me. Don’t stare at it, just kind of look at it out of the corner of your eye.”

  He got out the slingshot, pulled back the pouch, and tested his aim. Still whispering, he said, “Squirrels always pull the same trick. They run around to the side of the tree and freeze there where you can’t see ’em. So hang on to this.” He handed me a stone, about twice as big as the one in the pouch of his slingshot. “When I tell you to, chuck it to the other side of the tree.”

  “Okay,” I whispered back.

  We sat there, still and quiet as anything. I’d never really just sat in the woods like that, and it was pretty cool until a bunch of little flies started buzzing around my face. One landed on my nose. I wanted to swat it in the worst way. Augie must have read my mind because he hissed, “Stay still!”

  I sat as quietly as I could, remembering a movie I saw where Indians buried a guy all except his head, and ants came and crawled all over his face, and he couldn’t brush them away or anything, since his arms were buried. But he wanted to prove to the Indians he was tough, so he never twitched, even though they were biting ants.

  Next thing I knew, a line of ants was crawling on me! And even though my arms were free, Augie had said I couldn’t move. So I watched as they trooped right over my outstretched leg, like that was their usual route and whatever this thing was that was in the way wasn’t going to stop them from following it. They didn’t bite, but they did tickle like crazy.

  It seemed like a long time went by. Then I heard a rustle. Something was coming our way through the dead needles on the ground! Then it stopped. Then, scamper, scamper, scamper. Stop. Scamper, scamper, scamper. Stop. I slanted my eyes in that direction and, sure enough, there was a squirrel, sitting up on its hind legs, eyes darting everywhere, nose sniffing like mad. Then scamper, scamper, scamper, and jump! It leaped into the pine tree and quickly ran around to the other side of the trunk, out of sight, just the way Augie had said it would.

  My heart was pounding like crazy. I slid my eyes toward Augie and lifted my eyebrows in a question: Now?

  Augie raised the slingshot into position, gave me a little grin, and nodded.

  I threw the rock so it landed on the other side of the pine tree. I guess the squirrel thought we’d moved and could see it now, so it ran around to our side of the trunk.

  Augie let the stone fly—and the squirrel dropped to the ground and was still.

  I couldn’t believe it. It was like Augie was some kind of squirrel wizard or something, or like he had made a robot squirrel that did exactly what he told it to do!

  “Wooo-hoooo!” I shouted.

  We got to our feet and went over to examine the squirrel. It looked kind of peaceful, like it was sleeping.

  I examined its long bushy tail, its little clawed feet, and its rounded ears, and pushed open its mouth to see what kind of teeth it had.

  “Wow, check these out!” I said, showing Augie the four long, sharp front teeth, two on the bottom and two on the top. “They’re orange!”

  “Weird, huh? Like a beaver’s,” said Augie. “If you keep one for a pet, you have to trim those teeth or they just keep on growing.”

  This was interesting. “Really? Forever?”

  Augie nodded.

  “So, like, the teeth would just grow right up into its brain?” I said.

  “Yup,” Augie said cheerfully.

  “And the top ones would turn into giant fangs?”

  “Yup.”

  I was picturing that when Augie handed me the slingshot. “Your turn.”

  “Okay.” I’d never even held a slingshot before, forget about shooting a squirrel with one. But it had looked pretty easy when Augie did it—not that I’d actually seen what he did, it had been so quick.

  So we sat back down in our same positions, only Augie had the chucking rock and I had the slingshot.

  It seemed to take longer this time, and I was beginning to get restless and my stomach was growling so loud I figured every squirrel in the woods could hear it, when suddenly I heard the same scamper, scamper, scamper. Stop! Scamper, scamper, scamper. Stop! A squirrel was rummaging around on the ground. It found a pinecone, held it in its paws, pulled off the scales, and started chomping on the nuts.

  I looked at Augie out of the corner of my eye. Was I supposed to shoot now or wait until it went up the tree? Augie nodded and moved his lips soundlessly. Now.

  I had slowly slumped down while we were waiting, so I had to kind of wiggle up to get in position.

  The squirrel froze.

  I froze.

  After a long time, the squirrel began munching again, only it looked nervous.

  I raised the slingshot, real sneaky-like, and pulled back the pouch. It was harder to pull than I’d expected, and the Y part started wobbling as I tried to figure out how to aim.

  The squirrel turned and, I swear, it frowned at me for a few seconds. Then it was gone. Too late, my stone flew and landed about four feet away, nowhere near where the squirrel had been.

  “Geez,” I said. “That stunk.”

  Augie shrugged, putting the slingshot in his pocket and picking up his squirrel by its tail. “No sweat. You know how many times I’ve shot this thing? Come on. We’ll clean this at the stream.”

  We? I thought.

  Luckily, Augie cleaned while I watched. He took a pocketknife, cut off the tail, and then made a few more careful cuts. Then he tugged a few times and it was like he slipped the critter out of its fur coat, slick as a whistle. Then he pulled out the guts.

  The squirrel looked oddly human now. “It kind of looks like a pygmy,” I said. “A dead pygmy. A naked, headless, armless, footless pygmy,” I added.

  Augie laughed and started cutting the body into pieces for frying. He nodded toward the skin and guts. “Why don’t you bury those over there someplace.”

  “Sure. Hey,” I said
, holding up the tail. “Maybe I’ll keep this.” I was picturing attaching it to my bike’s handlebar, or to the back of a baseball hat, or even—“Hey, we could fly it from the fort, like a flag!”

  “We could,” said Augie. “We’d have to boil it and salt it, though. Or it’ll start to stink.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Like with mummies, right? Didn’t they use salt on them?”

  Augie shrugged.

  I decided to bury the tail. I didn’t have a shovel, and digging a hole with a stick didn’t work so great. Then I spotted a fairly big rock half-buried in the ground and got an idea. I pried it up, dropped the tail and the pelt and the guts into the hole it left, and covered it back up—sort of—with the rock.

  At the fort, we got set up. There were leaves and twigs on the ground inside the fort, and we brushed them out the doorway, and threw out all the rocks we could feel. Then we laid out Al’s linoleum, which was a little small, but covered a good part of the ground. When we’d spread out our sleeping bags and set up the orange crates with our other stuff, the place looked great.

  Then we gathered wood, cleared an area in front of the fort, and started a fire, which was easy with all the dry pine needles and twigs around.

  Augie took the empty gallon milk jug and a cup and headed toward the stream. When he came back, I saw he’d filled the jug with water, which seemed like a good idea what with the blazing fire and all.

  When the flames died down a little, we put two big rocks on either side of the fire and balanced the frying pan on top. I threw in a gob of margarine. When it was sizzling, Augie put in the pieces of meat and I sprinkled salt and pepper on them.

  The smell of the frying meat was incredible.

  We ate some cheese sticks while we stared hungrily at the pan, turning the pieces of meat from time to time.

  When I was about to die of starvation, Augie declared the meat done.

  We sat in the drifting smoke from the fire, gnawing squirrel meat off the bones and slathering slices of bread with margarine.

  “What’d I tell you?” Augie asked.

  “You said it would be good,” I answered.

  He looked at me, surprised. “You don’t like it?” He shrugged. “Oh, well. More for me, then.” He reached over and grabbed the remaining two pieces from the pan.

  “Not so fast!” I said, taking one of them back. “You said it would be good. But this … this is epic. This is the best meal I’ve ever had in my whole life. The. Best. Ever.” I stuffed a whole slice of bread in my mouth for emphasis.

  Augie grinned. “Yeah? I mean, you’ve been to some real fancy restaurants, right?”

  I nodded, but repeated with my mouth full, “Uh. Beft. Eh-er.” This cracked us both up, and when I laughed my whole mouthful of bread kind of shot out right at Augie. He threw it back at me, and I picked it up and finished it.

  We chewed every shred of meat off the bones, licked our fingers clean, and finished it all off with some Oreos and licorice.

  The nice white bandage Aunt Hilda had wrapped around my thumb was pretty dirty from all the work we’d done and greasy now, too, so I pulled it off and threw it into the fire. The cut had some dried blood on it, and still hurt a little, but not much.

  It had gotten pretty dark by then, so we piled more wood on the fire, and Augie got out the calendar he’d swiped from Al.

  Even with the fire built up, it was kind of hard to see. Augie got a flashlight and rummaged around for a minute. He came back with the milk jug filled with water and the duct tape, and pressed the lit end of the flashlight against the side of the jug.

  “Hold this here while I tape it,” he told me.

  The beam of light shining through the jug made the whole thing glow—“Like a lantern!” I said. “So that’s why you brought that stuff.”

  “Gram and I do this whenever the power goes out,” Augie explained. “Which happens a lot.”

  I sat back and admired the lantern. It seemed to me that Augie knew how to do everything—everything important, anyway. For a second, the question popped into my head: What am I good at? No answer came to mind. I shrugged the thought away.

  We sat by the fire, going through the calendar, month by month, examining the pictures by the light of the lantern. There was a lot to discuss. One thing we agreed on for sure was that when we were old enough to drive, we were going to own pickup trucks.

  When the fire died down we doused the embers until they were cold, then got ready for bed. We left the flap open and lay back on our sleeping bags, looking out at the stars shining through the tree branches and shooting the breeze. After a while we grew quiet.

  “I wish we could live out here all the time,” I said.

  “Mmm,” said Augie.

  I could tell Augie was just about asleep, and so was I. But I fought to stay awake, thinking how this was the best night of my life and I didn’t want to miss any of it.

  6

  It was great waking up in the fort, with the whole day and another whole night ahead of us. It was at that moment when I realized the real beauty of a fort. There’s nobody to tell you what to do or when to do it.

  I felt my hand throbbing a little, so I held it up to have a look. There was just enough early morning light coming through the trees so I could see. It looked okay. I remembered Aunt Hilda asking if I’d had a tetanus shot. I’d said yes, but I had no idea, really.

  Suddenly a book I’d read popped into my head. It was about some old-time explorers who were trying to find a river in Canada. They got totally lost and ended up spending the winter, which they didn’t plan to do, and they all died of starvation and cold, except for the guy who lived to write the book. And one of them got cut with a dirty knife and got tetanus, except in the book they mostly called it lockjaw.

  The book included gruesome, detailed descriptions of all the guys dying. The author really got into telling about the guy with tetanus: how his body spazzed uncontrollably, his neck muscles got all stiff, and how he died with a horrible grin frozen on his face because his jaws clenched tight and wouldn’t move.

  Thinking about all this gave me an idea for a terrific trick to play on Augie.

  I waited until he started squirming around in his sleeping bag, making little noises like he was starting to wake up, and I let out a loud moan.

  Augie squirmed some more and rolled over onto his back, eyes closed.

  I moaned again.

  “Mmmmmm,” said Augie. “Whazzzat?”

  I moaned louder and longer.

  Augie suddenly shot up to a sitting position, looking around in confusion. “What’s that?” he cried. “What’s going on?”

  I tightened my face into a horrible frozen grin, just the way I imagined the guy from the book looked. Keeping my neck stiff, I twitched in a series of shivery spasms. From between clenched teeth, I managed to gasp, “Ock-aw.”

  Augie stared at me in dismay. “What’s the matter with you, Wyatt?” he said.

  I made the whole length of my body go spazz again, and stared up at Augie all wild-eyed and crazed.

  “I can’t—” he said. “What are you—are you sick?”

  I held up my injured hand. “Et-us. Um a ut. Ock-aw.”

  “Wyatt, can’t you talk normal? I can’t understand you! What the heck is the matter with you?”

  “Ock-aw!”

  Augie looked at me, a mix of horror and frustration on his face.

  I spazzed again, then pointed weakly toward the notepad and pen which I had set on the orange crate shelf the night before. Augie jumped to his feet, grabbed them, and handed them to me. Keeping the upper half of my body and my face rigid, I took the pen, held it in a clawlike grip, and wrote, shakily, Lockjaw.

  Augie stared at the word, his own jaw dropping.

  Dying, I added.

  Augie’s eyes bugged. “What? No! Don’t die! Wait!” He stood stock-still for a second, clearly trying to think. “What should I do? Should I go for help?” He nodded. “Yes! You—stay right there! But don’t die
! I’ll be right back and—”

  I couldn’t keep it together any longer. Watching Augie freaking out was just too much. I started shaking with silent laughter. At first Augie looked at me with even deeper concern, no doubt worried that I was entering my final death throes.

  Then, when he realized that I was actually laughing—hysterically—at him, he fell to his knees and started pummeling me with his fists. He wasn’t really hitting me hard, and I was partly protected by the sleeping bag, so it barely even hurt.

  “I wish—” I said, gasping for air between bursts of laughter, “you could—have seen—your face!” In a high, shrill voice I cried, “Don’t die! You can’t die!”

  “You’re gonna die, all right, you little twerp,” said Augie furiously, grabbing both my arms and holding them. “Right now!”

  I grinned the horrible frozen grin at him and said, “Ock-aw!! Ock-aw!!!”

  At this, Augie cracked up, too, and we both rolled around for a while until we were able to get hold of ourselves.

  So, all in all, it was a pretty great way to start out our second day.

  7

  We lazed around for a while, then we dug for worms and headed to the creek with our fishing poles. Most of the stream was pretty shallow, but we walked until we found a place where some big boulders and a fallen tree had made a deep pool. We snuck up close.

  “Try this,” Augie whispered. I watched him cast onto the bank right near the edge of the water, then twitch the tip of his pole enough to make the worm drop in.

  Bam! A hungry little brook trout flashed out of nowhere and grabbed the worm. Augie flipped the fish up onto the bank.

  Then he took a piece of fishing line from his pocket and made a stringer, looping one end through the trout’s mouth and gill, tying the other end to his belt loop. That way, the fish stayed cool in the water but couldn’t escape.

  Neat.

  “Okay, so first we’ll catch the little guys hanging out near shore,” he explained. “Then we’ll keep casting farther out, and finally we’ll see if there’s any big ones hanging out in the middle, at the bottom of the pool.”

  “Genius,” I said.

  “Go easy,” Augie warned, “so we don’t spook them.”