Fort Page 9

  Anyway, I noticed something as I was lying there. When you’re sleeping out in a fort—only you’re wide-awake, not sleeping—you hear a lot of strange noises. Besides the ones your snoring friend is making, I mean. These noises all sounded like they were made by something big. Something sneaky. Something sinister.

  That night, every rustle of a leaf, every crack of a twig, every grunt and squeak meant that we’d figured it wrong and J.R. and Morrie were right outside the fort’s walls, ready to pounce. It just didn’t seem fair that I was the only one on high alert. I needed backup.

  “Augie!” I whispered, jabbing him in the side.

  “Zzzzz-snrkx-zzzz.”

  “Augie!” Another jab.

  “Mmmm-waa-glrg-zzzzzzzzz.”

  “Augie!” Major jab.

  “Wa-aa-mmm-zzzzzz.”

  “Fine,” I muttered. “You go right ahead and sleep. I’ll just lie here awake so I can save your sorry butt when disaster strikes. No problem.”

  * * *

  The next thing I knew, a bug or something was crawling across my face. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it wouldn’t go away. Finally, I swatted at it and opened my eyes, only to see Augie’s grinning mug five inches from mine. It was morning.

  “Rise and shine, dude,” he said, dangling the Slim Jim wrapper he’d been using to tickle my cheek. “We’ve got stuff to do!”

  I groaned. “I can’t believe you’re waking me now after keeping me up all night with your snoring.”

  Through my half-closed eyes I saw Augie’s look of dismay. “I do not snore!” he said.

  “I got news for you, Augie.”

  “Whatever you heard, it wasn’t me.”

  “Oh, so there was a dying warthog over there in your sleeping bag with you?”

  “Don’t you think I’d know it if I was snoring?”

  “Actually,” I said, trying to be reasonable, “no. Because you were asleep.”

  “I know stuff, even when I’m asleep,” Augie said.

  “Look, I’m just telling you: you were snoring.”

  “I bet you were asleep and you were dreaming about me snoring.”

  “Augie, I wasn’t asleep. That’s the point. I was awake. You were asleep. And snoring. As Al would say, ‘end of story.’ What is the big deal?”

  “I don’t want to be a snorer,” Augie said in a low voice.

  “Why not?” I asked. I had been feeling exasperated, but now I was mystified. And curious.

  “I just don’t.”

  “No reason?”

  “I don’t like thinking I did something and I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

  I thought about that.

  “It creeps me out,” Augie went on. “Like my body was taken over by an alien or something.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I kinda see what you mean.”

  Augie brightened up. “So I wasn’t snoring after all?”

  I decided to forget the whole thing right then and there. Augie was my right-hand man. We had a mission ahead. I didn’t want him to be distracted. “No,” I said. “You weren’t. I must have dreamed the whole thing.”

  Augie nodded. “I thought so.”

  Geez. I was glad that was settled. It was time to get down to business.

  16

  “There’s something I thought of during the night,” I told Augie. “What do you say we get that big sign that used to be on the old ice cream stand, the one that was torn down and got junked at Al’s?”

  “The Pink Palace sign? What would we do with that?”

  “Put it up here at the fort.”

  Augie’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. “J.R. and Morrie made a lot of fun of us when they saw the pink boards we were using.”

  “Exactly. But now we’ve got this awesome fort. I bet they wish it was theirs. So instead of being all embarrassed about it being pink, we make it, like, a—”

  “A badge of honor!” Augie said.

  I knew Augie would get it.

  “Al already said we could have the sign, remember?” Augie went on.

  “Yeah! I was thinking it would look really cool”—I crawled out the front of the fort and Augie followed—“if we attached it right there,” I finished, pointing to the main support next to the door.

  “Totally,” said Augie.

  We got dressed real fast and went through the woods down to Al’s. The yard wasn’t open yet, but the wood and the sign from the old ice cream stand had been dropped off after hours and were still lying in the driveway.

  The sign was bigger than I remembered, about ten feet tall and six feet wide, with the words The Pink Palace outlined in metal, with empty sockets where lightbulbs used to be. We each grabbed one end and lifted it. Not too bad: it was more awkward than heavy.

  Stopping to rest every couple of minutes, we made it to the fort. For the time being, until we figured out how to attach it more permanently, we leaned it against the side, where anyone coming the usual way would see it.

  “Good, huh?” I asked.

  Augie nodded solemnly. “Gram would like it,” he said. “She likes finding uses for old stuff.”

  We goofed around for a while and had some breakfast. After that, we checked and rechecked all our preparations. We were as ready as we were ever going to be.

  Then we played some poker. I had a run of really lousy cards, and my mind wandered to meeting up with Gerard that afternoon. I started getting nervous.

  All of a sudden I wasn’t sure having him with us was such a great idea. After what J.R. and Morrie had done to him, I had really wanted him to be there when we got them back. He deserved to be there. But still …

  His mom had said Gerard just wanted to be like other kids. But he wasn’t. Not exactly.

  “Augie,” I said, “what if Gerard starts to act … I don’t know … weird?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, what if he freaks out because he’s scared of the dark or loses his rabbit’s foot or something? I bet he’s never spent the night away from home in a strange place. He’s not used to going places and hanging out with his friends. Because—”

  “He doesn’t have any friends,” Augie finished.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We were quiet for a minute.

  I felt bad about Gerard not having friends. I would never torture him and tease him, like J.R. and Morrie, or call him rotten names. But did I want to be his friend? I had a sudden fear, not of him, exactly, but of being responsible for him, even for a night. I couldn’t explain it to myself and I sure wasn’t explaining it very well to Augie.

  “Well,” said Augie after a while, “remember that night he was in your driveway? He was by himself and he wasn’t scared of the dark then.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  “He’s been out here to the fort before. And he wants to come back.” He laughed. “He wants to come back really bad!”

  I remembered Gerard’s grin as he nodded his head yes. “Also true.”

  Augie shrugged. “So I think it’ll be okay. If it’s not, we call his mom.”

  “Hey,” I said, suddenly remembering something. “We never made up a song for him.”

  “Maybe he forgot all about it,” Augie said hopefully.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I doubt it. Once Gerard gets something in his head, he seems to stick with it.”

  “Well, there’s no time now,” said Augie. “We gotta go.”

  When we got to the junkyard, we shot the breeze with Al and Unk for a while until Mrs. DeMuth pulled up. When Gerard got out of the car, smiling hugely, holding his squirrel tail in one hand and his rabbit’s foot in the other, Al and Unk pretended to concentrate on their checkerboard, but I could tell they were busting to see and hear everything that was going on.

  Mrs. DeMuth got out of the car, too, and we helped her unpack a sleeping bag, a backpack, and a giant cooler. By then Al and Unk weren’t even pretending not to stare.

  Gerard
was talking a mile a minute, while his mom was asking us all the same questions she’d asked before. She looked really worried and uncertain. Suddenly she put her hand to her mouth and said, “Oh, dear. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.”

  I couldn’t blame her. I’d had the same feeling, and I wasn’t Gerard’s mom. I mean, she sort of knew Augie, but she didn’t know me much. And Gerard was her only kid. He’d been made fun of a lot. He’d never done anything like this before.

  But Gerard was ready. “Let’s go! Can we go now, please? To the fort? I’m all set, right, Mom? I got everything I need, don’t I, Mom?”

  To us, he said, “Can we go now? I got everything I need. I’m all set!”

  Augie and I looked at Mrs. DeMuth. Her mouth quivered a little bit, but then she gave Gerard a big bright smile.

  “You are all set, lovey,” she agreed. To Augie and me, she said, “You’ll call?”

  We nodded.

  She gave us a long gaze followed by a nod which said without words, I’m counting on you two.

  Then she got in the car and drove away.

  I handed Gerard his backpack. He put it on and picked up his sleeping bag. Augie and I looked at the cooler. It was one of those enormous rectangular ones, with handles on the sides.

  “What’s in that thing?” I asked.

  “Food. And drinks. Growing boys need food and drinks,” said Gerard. “That’s what Mom said.”

  I opened the lid. “Wow.” The cooler was packed. I saw wrapped packages of sandwiches and fried chicken, bottles of juice and chocolate milk, and there was a lot more stuff underneath that I couldn’t see.

  My mouth watered, looking at the fried chicken. Roughing it was great, but there was something to be said for Gerard’s mom’s approach to camping.

  As Augie and I examined the monster cooler, trying to figure out how to carry it, Al and Unk came strolling over. They both were carrying things, but I couldn’t tell what.

  “Tonight’s the night?” Unk asked.

  “We think so.”

  “You boys be careful now,” he said. He looked worried.

  “We will.”

  Al jerked his head ever so slightly in Gerard’s direction and asked, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Augie and I looked at each other. “Yeah, I guess,” Augie said finally.

  “Keep an eye on the matches,” Al warned in a low voice.

  If Al thought Gerard wouldn’t hear him, he was wrong.

  Gerard’s eyes grew big. “Gerard does not like matches!”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Al.

  “Here,” said Unk, holding out a foil-wrapped package. “Hilda made snickerdoodles and brownies. She said to wish you luck.”

  Augie took the package. “Wow. Tell her thanks.”

  Then Al held up something else.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He brought it to his mouth and said, “Ain’t you never seen a bullhorn before?”

  We all jumped at the sudden blare of noise. Then Gerard started laughing like crazy. I guess he thought bullhorn was a pretty funny word, because he kept saying it over and over.

  “It’s been lyin’ around my office for years,” Al said. “You can have it if ya want. I even put in new batteries. It might come in handy.” He shrugged. “It’s loud, anyhow.”

  I took the bullhorn, pressed the button, and hollered into it, “It sure is, Al!”

  Wow. It really was. I’d just about blasted my own eardrums out. It wasn’t only loud. It distorted my voice so it sounded sort of tinny and alien-like, which was very cool.

  “Smart guy,” Al said, sticking his finger in his ear. He smirked and said, “Maybe I won’t give ya this second thing I got here.” He held his other hand behind his back.

  “Aw, come on, Al,” said Augie. “Let’s see it.”

  “Yeah, come on, Al,” I said. “What is it?”

  Al teased us for a while, keeping his hand behind his back and looking from Unk to us and back again while we begged. “What do you think?” he asked Unk.

  “Aw, give it to ’em,” said Unk. “It’s no use to us old geezers.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Al. But he brought his hand out from behind his back, and there was a calendar with a smiling girl on the front holding up a blue bottle of STP motor oil.

  “It’s from 1997,” Al said. “But some things never grow old, right, boys?”

  “Right!” Augie and I said together. Augie reached right out to take the calendar before Al could decide he wanted to reexamine the STP bottles of yesteryear after all.

  “Thanks a lot, Al,” we said.

  “Can we go now?” Gerard asked impatiently.

  “Yeah, we can go now,” I told him, laughing. He was big, but he sure sounded like a little kid sometimes.

  “You fellas watch yourselves,” said Unk.

  “I hope you scare the diapers off those two stronzos!” said Al.

  “Those two whats?” I asked. I knew who he was talking about, but I liked the sound of the word and I wanted to know what it meant.

  “Stronzos,” Al repeated disgustedly. “Cretinos. Idiotas. Testa mutos.”

  “Jerks,” explained Unk. “Idiots.” He rapped his knuckles on his head. “Dumbheads.”

  If you ask me, Italian has it all over English when it comes to insulting people.

  “We will!” I said.

  Augie and I each grabbed a side handle on the cooler and hobbled along with it, stopping to rest about every ten steps.

  When we got close to the fort, Gerard ran ahead. By the time Augie and I got there, panting and sweating, he was already unrolling his sleeping bag. He carefully laid out the squirrel tail and the rabbit’s foot on top of the bag, along with a plastic baggie of gummy worms. He sat, looking contented.

  All I could think about was fried chicken. “I’m starving!” I said.

  “Me, too,” said Augie, opening the lid of the cooler. He pulled out a pile of sandwiches, the package of chicken, and three bottles of chocolate milk, and passed them around.

  My mouth stuffed with chicken, I said to Gerard, “Man, this is the best fried chicken I ever had in my whole life.”

  “Totally,” agreed Augie. “Even better than Gram’s, but don’t tell her I said that.”

  Gerard looked pleased and said, “Man, this is the best fried chicken Gerard ever had in his whole life, too!”

  While we were stuffing our faces, we told Gerard we planned on getting back at J.R. and Morrie that night. At the mention of their names, his face got all squinched and scared looking.

  “Stronzos,” he muttered.

  I laughed, surprised. Gerard didn’t miss much. “Yeah, well, we’re gonna show those stronzos they can’t mess with us—or with you—anymore.”

  His face brightened up a little, and when Augie and I told him about some of the things we had in store, he got a huge kick out of them. He kept on repeating everything we said, laughing his loud, sort of goofy laugh.

  “Hey, listen,” I said. “It must be close to five o’clock. You said football practice lets out at four on Fridays, right, Augie?”

  Augie nodded. “I was thinking they’ll probably eat dinner first, but they could surprise us. They could be here any second.”

  “We want them to know we’re here, so we should build a fire like we usually do,” I said.

  I stood up and started to gather some small sticks for kindling.

  Augie said, “What’s the matter, Gerard?”

  I looked over, and Gerard’s face had made one of its amazing transformations. A minute before, he’d been happy and laughing. Now his face was white, his chin was trembling, and his eyes were fluttering like they were going to start rolling back out of sight again.

  Uh-oh.

  It was just what I’d been afraid of. Gerard was freaking out.

  17

  “Gerard!” I hollered, not trying to scare him but hoping to snap him out of it before he had one of his little fit
s, or whatever they were. “What’s wrong? Tell us!”

  “G-Gerard d-does not like fires,” he said.

  I looked at Augie, like, What the heck? This is the kid everybody says is a firebug?

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. I had to ask. “But, well, you know what? Some people say you do like fires. They think you burned down some old shed at Al’s place. Is that true?”

  Gerard started crying. Oh, no. The situation was getting worse. I felt bad about making him cry, but geez. I looked to Augie for help.

  “Um,” he said to Gerard, “so you don’t like fires?”

  “No!” Gerard bellowed between sobs. “Gerard does not burn fires! Gerard does not like fires!”

  It hit me that he wasn’t crying like he was sad, though. More like he was angry. Or frustrated.

  Like you might cry, I thought, if you got blamed for something you didn’t do.

  I turned to Augie, bewildered. “Why does everybody think he did it, then?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Al said there was no proof who did it. Gram never believed it was Gerard. I guess I don’t, either.”

  Looking at Gerard now, neither did I.

  “Gerard,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Remember you told us you didn’t light the matches here at the fort?”

  Gerard snuffled and nodded.

  “And we believed you, right?”

  He nodded again.

  “It was J.R. and Morrie who lit the matches here, right?” Augie asked.

  Gerard nodded again.

  My heart was beating really hard as I asked, “Did they burn down the shed, too?”

  “Yes!” said Gerard. “But they said it was Gerard. They said they saw Gerard do it. But Gerard saw them. Gerard saw them!”

  “How come you never told anybody?” Augie asked.

  Gerard looked scared. “They said they would do something bad to Gerard. They said they would hurt Gerard.”

  Augie shook his head. “Those jerks,” he said softly.

  “Stronzos,” I said.

  Augie and I were quiet for a while, thinking. Gerard snuffled a little, then stopped crying.

  “Listen, Gerard,” I said, “we believe you. But now we have to pull off Operation Doom more than ever. You’ve got to show them you’re not afraid of them.”