Pastiche: Jewett

The Tree Fort

         The air was crisp and damp one October afternoon, but the failing light and chill didn’t discourage the boy tucked comfortably in his tree fort with the bright, glossy pages of a comic book in his hands.  The fort was well equipped with a flashlight and lantern on the rough handmade shelves, along with three tins full of cookies, chips, and fruit rollups.  A canteen hung by its faded leather strap from a single nail in the plywood wall.

         There was rarely a day when the fort sat unoccupied; the boy enduring even foul weather to dream there among the tall birch and oak overlooking the lounging river only a few yards away.  So it was not unusual for his mother to be heard all over Back River hollering for her son when his supper had grown cold.

         To him, it was the “su-seer!” of barn swallows darting along the water and thin woodland.  It took several calls for the sound to register beyond the cloak of the comic world or an imaginary battle with a squirrely warlord.  This afternoon was no different.

         “An-drew!  An-drew!”  Ms. Holly shrieked again, then shook her head and turned back to the little rancher where her son’s plate waited on the woodstove.  She’d never heard of a child so content with the outdoors that he’d forgo a meal and the company of friends.  Most of her girlfriends at church groaned over the hours their boys spent in front of the computer or television.  Perhaps it was only that the boy missed his father.

         “It’s been two years,” she told the pastor’s wife the other day.  “But Andrew still goes to that treehouse every day.  He’s never home.”

         “Maybe he’d like to go turkey hunnen with my boys this year.  John is taking them to the eastern shore for a few days.  Maybe it’d be good for him.”

         Andrew, who had been coaxing a toad into his palm as the women talked on the church steps nearby, ignored the offer.        

          He was dreaming now about scaling the trunks of trees with his superhuman powers when he heard his mother’s voice.  He noticed then that he could barely make out the pictures on the pages in front of him through the shadow that had descended on the fort.  He carefully slipped the comic back into its plastic cover and put it in his backpack. From the hook, he grabbed his canteen and put his arm and neck through the strap, just like his father had taught him.  Then he clambered over the rope ladder to the leaf strewn floor, skipping the last three steps with a pleasant thud. 

         “Hello there son.”

         Andrew turned to find a tall man in pleated slacks and a brown leather jacket staring down at him with a grin.  His heart began racing home to his mother, leaving him feeling uncomfortably alone and backed against his tree. 

         “My name is Carl Kane.  Just bought the property here.  Do you live next door?”

         Andrew didn’t dare speak.  He knew the man was a liar; the property belonged to his parents.  It always had.  But how would he escape this stranger?  What would his mother think if he didn’t come home?

         Just then a woodpecker began drilling on a nearby tree, and the man looked up, an annoyed wrinkle on his face.  Andrew took the chance to dart off through the woods toward the porch light in the distance.  He knocked over the last of his mother’s mums as he swung open the back door and locked it behind him.

         For the next ten minutes, he huddled against his plate listening to his mother scold him for being late again. 

         “I’m sick and tired of calling you six or seven times every day.”  A knock at the door interrupted her and Andrew’s eyes grew wide as he saw a familiar grin on the other side. 

         “Ms. Holly?  Carl Kane.  We met at settlement the other day,” the man from the woods said as he stood in the doorway.

         “Oh, yes.  How are you doing?  Everything all right?” Andrew’s mother said.

         “Well, I think I scared your boy, there,” the man said, nodding to Andrew, who had dropped his fork and looked ready to run again.  “But I’ve got a proposition for him—it’s about his tree house.  Mind if I come in?”

         Ms. Holly was hesitant at first, but nodded and left the door open.  She walked back to the kitchen, talking over her shoulder.  “Can I get you anything to drink?”

         “Thank you, but I’ll only be a moment.”  Carl Kane loomed over the table where Andrew sat and pulled his wallet from his jacket.  “Son, here’s the thing.  I work for a developer who wants to build a few houses back there on the water.  That tree house of yours is in the way.  Now, I know it is an inconvenience for you, so I’m prepared to give you this gift card to the lumber yard.  What do you think about that?”

         Andrew, not exactly clear what the stranger meant, stared at him awhile without blinking.

         “Hon, the man is asking you a question,” Ms. Holly said.  She pushed away from the kitchen counter and, softening, she began running her fingers through her son’s hair.  “I had to sell the adjoining property since your father hasn’t been sendining us any money.  That tree fort belongs to Mr. Kane now, but he’s giving you money to build a new one.”

         “You could make it bigger and better than before,” Mr. Kane said, turning the gift card in his hand like a delicate thing.

         Andrew thought of the firefighter pole he wanted to install and the crow’s nest he’d been dreaming of for as long as he could remember.  It would be the king of tree forts if he could see all of Back River from the top.  He took the gift card quickly and thanked the stranger without looking up. 

         After Mr. Kane left, Andrew began making a list of items he could buy for the new fort, while his mother sat on the couch beside him watching one of her shows.  He thought about fantastic rope bridges, a tire swing, and even a flag mast.  It would span more than one tree and have two or three levels.  It would be the envy of every kid in town.  The excitement welled up in Andrew’s chest as he presented his list to his mother and she cooed over his wild imagination.

         But that night Andrew dreamed of his father lifting two-by-fours and hammering nails into the old tree fort; he was smiling and chatting about bugs and deer prints in the mud.  He handed Andrew the hammer and taught him how to swing without hitting his thumb and forefinger.  Then something changed.  His father knew about the new tree house and he looked hurt.  He dropped the bag of nails and walked away without a word.  Andrew couldn’t bare it. 

         He woke covered in sweat, heart beating fast.  Careful not to make any noise, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a fleece hoodie, and carried his backpack out the door.  When he reached the wood line, he turned on his flashlight and hurried down the worn path to the fort. 

         A cloud broke over the canopy, letting in the moonlight, and there the fort slept, like a low slung crown on a twin oak tree.  The unsettled screech of a barn owl from the roof of the fort startled Andrew, but his feet did not falter.  Not even the flat, ghostly face of the owl tilting down on him before it took flight could keep him from reaching his goal.  He climbed the itchy rope to the gaping doorway and felt along the plywood siding.  His fingers found it before the flashlight did—the roughly carved letters of his initials.  It was his.  It had always been his, because his father had helped him etch his initials in it with a pocket knife after they had spent days putting the bones of it together.  No settlement between his mother and Mr. Kane could change that.    

         For a time, Andrew leaned against the walls of his fort and stared at the moon through the open window.  He hated himself for taking the gift card, but he didn’t know how to fix it now.  He wondered what a superhero would do in a case like this.  Perhaps fly to the unsuspecting evil-doer’s house and demand with all his super mind-bending power that he give the property back.  But was Mr. Kane evil?  Andrew wasn’t certain.  He didn’t have a good feeling in his stomach when he was around—that was probably his super sixth-sense telling him Mr. Kane couldn’t be trusted.  But his mother didn’t seem to mind the man.  She’d gone on for an hour after the stranger had left, raving about how nice it was of him to give Andrew the money. 

         The next day, Andrew and his mother loaded her SUV with building materials from the lumber yard and headed home.  He couldn’t tell her that the wood wasn’t to build a new fort, but a sturdy fence around his tree.  He’d even managed to sneak in a “No Trespassing” sign while her back was turned. 

         Andrew arrived home with a smile on his face.  He wouldn’t give up—no superhero would.  He would build his fence and stand his ground.  Whatever battles lay ahead, whatever dreams were won or lost, Andrew didn’t care.  He filled his canteen and set out into the woods with his supplies, thinking of how proud his father would be the next time he called.      

         The afternoon wore on and the sun began to set a brilliant red, sparking off the low ripples of the river.  Through the tall shadows of the trees the neighbors of Back River could hear the echo of a hammer as an uneven fence slowly began to form around an old tree fort in the heart of a twin oak.

 

This pastiche was written for a class exercise and was done in the style of Sarah O. Jewett’s White Heron.  The dialect is not meant to offend–I needed something to play on Jewett’s use of dialect and decided on the Baltimore Hon.  Mike, born and raised in good ol’ Essex, has pointed out to me that people who own waterfront on Back River probably don’t talk Hon because they have money. But I don’t think having a dialect automatically makes you poor, nor does speaking proper English make you wealthy.  Either way, he brings up a good point–if I want to use this in the future, I should remove the dialect to strengthen the piece.