The Fort

by Aric Davis

  “No way in hell,” said Luke. “That Van Endel guy might be smart, but he wouldn’t believe a word out of our mouths, at least not until they figure out the body they found behind the drive-in isn’t really Molly’s. After that, he might even call us back in, but I don’t think waiting is exactly in Molly’s best interest.”

  “All right,” said Tim. “I’ll make Bacon an offer she can’t refuse.”

  “Perfect,” said Luke. “I’m going to stay in the fort until Saturday, minimum, so I can watch that trail that we saw them walk down. I don’t think they’ll come back, but you never know. Plus, if I’m here all the time and one of you guys needs to run away—like if you get busted for sneaking out—we’ll have an easy meeting place to start from.”

  “Wait,” said Scott. “Are you not in trouble? Because Tim and I are in, like, all the trouble, and you get to stay out of the house for a few days?”

  “It’s not quite like that,” said Luke darkly. “I’m kind of already running away. My mom came home super drunk last night, and I decided the punishment she would give me when she was hungover from that wasn’t worth sticking around for.”

  “Aren’t you worried she’ll come looking for you?”

  “Guys, I know this sounds weird, and probably even a bit dramatic, but except for the stuff I do around the house to help out, my mom would rather not have me there at all. I know that you both come from normal families and that might sound crazy, but it’s true. This way will be easier, and hopefully there will be nothing for me to even be in trouble over by the time we’re done.”

  “Anything else?” Tim asked.

  “Nope. You both have normal days, and we’ll meet back here at the same time tomorrow night.”

  32

  The night felt like it had been a dream, when Tim woke, exhausted, to his mother pounding on his bedroom door. He called, “I’m up, Mom,” before even looking at the clock. When he did, he saw it was seven in the morning.

  He slid out of bed, and the sight of himself in his mirror stopped him. It hadn’t been a dream. He really had snuck out, made a plan with his friends, and, just as stealthily, snuck back into the house unnoticed. He threw on new clothes and walked to the kitchen, making sure not to smile as he entered.

  His mom was frying bacon and cracking eggs for scrambling, while his dad was reading at the table. Becca was nowhere to be found, so Tim assumed she was sulking in her room.

  Tim walked to the table and sat down. “Ready to get to work, Dad?”

  His dad eyed him over the book. “I’m ready to watch you work. I’m taking a day off. You might want to get yourself some breakfast. It’s a long time until lunch.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Your mother is making a hot breakfast for herself and for me. You may have cereal, and there are some bananas that aren’t quite bad yet.”

  Tim stood and walked back to get his cereal. They were really taking this seriously! He smiled but kept it on the inside. There was no reason for them to see it, or to risk their thinking he might be up to something. He was winning, no matter how hard they thought they were punishing him. He had snuck out and back in successfully, and seen the two people they had barred him from ever seeing again. They’re going to feel terrible when they find out I didn’t lie, and I’m never going to accept an apology for it. That thought did make Tim smile, and he banished the dangerous expression from his face as he began to pour milk over the cereal.

  Work, as Tim knew it would be, was hard. He spent the morning suffering with loads of heavy rock, while his father sat in a chair, drinking a glass of ice water. The worst part was the no talking. His father was a super-good friend, and as bad as it was being banished from his other friends, it was almost worse having this one be so unfriendly.

  As morning faded slowly to afternoon and the pile of rock got smaller, Tim thought of Becca, and how in the world he was going to get his sister to listen to him long enough to even start a conversation. And that was the easy part! Staring at the blade of the transfer shovel, Tim knew that if he was going to escape this project, he was going to need to get his sister to hate him a lot less than normal.

  Good luck with that.

  Scott was folding laundry. His mom had said that he needed to keep himself busy all day, or she was going to come up with something far worse than anything he could possibly conceive of to do.

  The mood in the house had gone from wonderful, with the news of Carl’s new position and raise at work, to morose sadness. Scott’s mom was upset all the time, and even Carl looked down, as if he had finally started to come around on the idea of raising another man’s son but was now starting to reevaluate things. Scott felt bad for reasons he didn’t understand. Sure, he had stolen the gun and would have lied to the police, but all the stuff he was actually in trouble for lying about was true. His mom called down to him, interrupting the folding.

  “Carl just called. When he gets home from work, you two are going to work on the Olds.”

  Scott smacked the palm of his hand into his forehead. “All right.” He paused, trying to think of a way to get out of being alone with Carl. “Doesn’t Hooper usually help Carl out with that stuff? It’s not like I know anything. I’ll probably just piss him off even more than he already is.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine. As for Hooper, Carl says he’s under the weather. Probably just being lazy, if you ask me. But none of that matters. You need to be done with whatever task you’re on when Carl gets home, got it?”

  Scott sighed loudly, but not loudly enough for her to hear upstairs. “Yes, Mom. I got it.” It was only 2:10. Today is going to last forever.

  When Carl came home, Scott went out to meet him. “It’s going to be a minute,” said Carl. “I need to get out of these clothes. I’m not going to ruin work shit working on that goddamn wrecker.”

  Scott nodded, watching as Carl walked inside. He began to pull plastic toolboxes from carefully organized shelves, the kind that were carefully placed and could be placed back just as carefully. Scott laid the wrench boxes on the floor of the garage and had one left in his hand when the door from the house slammed shut. It was very loud, and very convincing that things were not going to go well. But Carl’s smile changed things.

  “Hey, liar,” said Carl. “How’s it feel to be a piece of crap?”

  “Not good,” said Scott, grimacing. “Not good at all.”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d be pretty down. That’s why I bought you some free time outside. You can watch and help a little bit if you want, but I can do most of the heavy lifting. You got my wrenches?”

  “Sure, right here,” said Scott, handing the heavy toolbox to Carl. “Why are you being nice to me?”

  Scott regretted the words the instant they came out of his mouth, and his face flushed. Surprisingly, though, Carl didn’t look mad. In fact, he looked like he was remembering an old joke with some fondness. “Before I say anything,” he said, “I want you to know that I’ll deny telling you any of this. Got it?” Scott nodded. “OK. First off, I believe that you and your buddies were telling the truth.”

  “You do?” Scott asked, incredulous. “If you believe us, then why did you punish me?”

  Carl shrugged. “Your mom knew what she wanted to happen, and I didn’t see any way of convincing her otherwise without getting my tail stuck in a crack next to yours. There are a lot of delicate things to consider here, but one of them is that as much as she wanted a man influencing your life, she also still wants to be the one making the majority of the decisions regarding you. She told me what she wanted to happen after talking to Tim’s mom, and I went along for the ride, not that I had much of a choice. I believe your little story, or at least most of it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Who knows if you actually saw Molly in the woods? The cops seem pretty convinced that they found her body by the drive-in, and they’re usually right about that sort of thing.”

  “But if we saw someone else—”

 
; “Then maybe someone else was taken. Guys who do this kind of thing usually like the same sort of things every time, so if he took Molly, then he might have taken another girl who looked like Molly. Or you could have really seen her. It’s pretty tough to say until they run her fingerprints or do a dental impression.”

  “What will happen then?”

  “Well, if it turns out not to be her, I imagine you’ll end up with a reduced sentence. Not to mention, the police will look pretty stupid for not acting on a live lead. Of course, the real shame would be for Molly. If you guys did see her, and at least a glimpse of the guy who took her, she might have had a chance of being rescued, and now that chance is gone.” Carl opened the hood of the Oldsmobile and sighed. “Where do we even start?”

  While Tim slaved away and Scott did the same, only more willingly, Luke sat alone with his thoughts in the fort. It wasn’t the most entertaining thing, just staring into the woods, but it was sort of relaxing, and it beat the hell out of being home with his hungover mom and terrible sisters.

  He had seen two people in the woods that afternoon, two boys a couple of years older than he, smoking cigarettes and laughing, passing a few hundred feet from the fort without noticing it. Luke had enjoyed watching them as a hunter, even though they were not prey. There was something to be said for going unnoticed. It was a thrill, even though he was doing nothing more than sitting in a wooden box.

  Luke leaned back against one of the walls. A quick nap wouldn’t hurt anything. He let impossible thoughts take him to slumber. A clean trailer, a sober mother, the heartfelt apology from Van Endel. It was going to be good.

  He slept for a couple of hours, as the calculator watch told him when he finally came to around six o’clock. Had Luke been awake, he might have seen that there was another person in the woods that day, a man carrying binoculars and walking with a limp. Unlike Luke, that man was hunting and was quite sure that he had found out exactly where his quarry had been roosting.

  33

  Hooper woke on the couch. Looking back and forth between the clock on the wall and the light coming through the blinds, he finally worked out that he had slept in until nearly three in the afternoon.

  He stood slowly, testing his weak leg, and was shocked to see that it was feeling a little better than the day before. He hobbled his way to the bathroom, then sat on the toilet like an invalid to urinate. When he was done he turned on the shower and stripped off his underwear. The water felt nice but didn’t bring the clarity he was used to. His leg was far too distracting, the water on it felt like someone running broken glass across his skin. Giving up after just a few short and decidedly unsatisfying minutes, Hooper dried off and opened the medicine cabinet. He poured three aspirin into his mouth from the bottle and chewed them into a bitter powder, then swallowed. It was time to check on Amy.

  He made toast and carried it with him to the steps, then made his way down them, careful not to spill the bread. She was awake, he saw when he reached the bottom, with her back to the pole. He felt cruel setting the plate next to her. She was gagged and bound, after all, and had to be starving, but there was one more thing to be done before she could eat. He tried to avoid her eyes as he said, “I’ll be right back,” before slowly making his way back up the stairs. Once at the top, he went to the garage to get the chain and locks from his car, and then headed back downstairs.

  When he was finally in the basement again, he undid one of Amy’s arms and then the other, then refastened them in front of her. He half expected her to fight, and took her passivity as a good sign. Everyone has a breaking point, and hopefully she was getting closer to hers, perhaps was even there already. He wound the chain around the pole five times, then locked two links together, so that it made a very solid five-foot-long leash. Amy would be able to stand, but barely. He took the other end of the chain, looped the lock through it, and attached it to the metal ring on the collar around her neck.

  “I’m going to take your gag off now,” said Hooper. “And if you scream, no one is going to hear you, but you will be punished. I already owe you a lashing for yesterday, so think it through.” He gently loosened the straps on the back of the gag, and she fell upon the water he’d cruelly left her the night before. In his injured state, he hadn’t realized the glass would just provide torment, as she would have been unable to drink it. She drank greedily at first, and then seemed to consider the idea that she should make it last. She set the cup down half empty, then began to eat the dry toast.

  “This will be our arrangement for a few days,” said Hooper. “If you keep up the good behavior, I’ll bring you more to eat than just bread and water.” He looked at the slowly drying spot on the floor where she had pissed, and grabbed an empty five-gallon bucket from under the steps. “You can use this as a toilet—again, at least until I know I can trust you.”

  “Does your leg hurt?” Amy asked him in a timid, kind-sounding voice.

  “It does,” he said. “I was hurt in the war, by shrapnel, and this feels a little bit like that,” he said, then chuckled. “Maybe a little worse. I was a much younger man then, and they had me on painkillers almost immediately. Walking is easier than I expected it to be, so that’s a blessing.”

  “What are you going to do with me? If you let me go, I won’t tell anyone what’s happened, and I don’t even know where I am, not really.” She was smiling at Hooper, but unlike when she kindly asked after his injury, this was not a smile to be nice. She was trying to manipulate him. He walked behind her. She didn’t turn to follow him, though he was sure she must have wanted to. Hooper grabbed the chain with both hands and yanked, jerking her back into the pole and making Amy grunt with pain. He dropped the chain and walked to where she could see him again. She was crying, looking at the floor while sobs wracked her body. It’s not my fault that I need to discipline her. She tried to run away, that’s how this whole mess started, and if I’m not stern enough, problems like that will persist.

  Hooper knelt in front of her, then tenderly lifted her head by the chin. “You need to understand some things, Amy. You belong to me now. There is no going back to what you had before. This is your life now. The sooner you accept that, the better for both of us.” He smiled, and she smiled back, but he knew it was forced. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face bruised slightly from the fall down the steps, he assumed. “Do what you’re told, and things will get better, do you understand?”

  She nodded and said quietly, “Yes.”

  “Good. Now I’m going to go back upstairs, so give me your hands and then sit against the pole.” She did as instructed, and as a reward, he cuffed them behind her, but not around the pole. She was plenty well secured to it without that, anyway. Next, he replaced the ball gag in her mouth and then tightened the straps. When she looked at him now, all defiance, all hope even, was gone from her face. Hooper smiled at her and then shuffled up the steps, returning her to darkness and locking the door behind him.

  The business with Amy taken care of, Hooper walked to his room. He’d decided that there was something else that needed doing, regardless of his injured state. He went to his closet and pulled out a set of olive drab fatigues, pants, and a long-sleeved shirt. He put the pants on slowly, then pulled on and buttoned the shirt, before taking a matching flat-brimmed hat down from the top of the closet and mashing it onto his head. If someone saw him, he might think Hooper was being a little nutty, but if pressed on the matter, Hooper planned to ask if that guy could still fit into his clothes from twenty years ago. His neighbors were good folks; they’d just think he was screwing around. He tucked the small revolver into a pocket and headed for the sliding door.

  It was odd being in the backyard again. The last time, leading Amy with the gun, still seemed surreal. He walked to the gate, opened it, and walked into the woods. Someone had been hunting him yesterday, and he wanted to know who. There was a bullet in his calf, and Hooper deserved to know who had put it there. He backtracked his steps as well as he could remember, following the b
roken path of popples back to where he’d been shot. There was no blood to show him where it had happened, the rain would have seen to that, but somehow Hooper just knew when he was in the spot.

  The moment had been frozen into his memory, and he could picture the day before with astonishing clarity. This was where he’d forced Amy into the thick trees, his calf burning with pain. Turning slowly, he oriented himself both to where he had been and to where his back would have been facing. Hooper almost jumped when he saw the fort through the trees. How did I not see it before? The stress of the day must have dulled his normally excellent situational awareness.

  The fort was made of weathered lumber and was attached to three trees, one much larger than the others. On the side closest to him, Hooper could see a window cut into a plywood wall. It made him nervous. That was undoubtedly where the shot had come from.

  He advanced on the fort as though approaching an enemy emplacement, for that was just what it was. Carl had mentioned something about helping his son with a fort back in the woods, Hooper recalled as he crept up on it. This was probably the same one. And I bet Carl’s fucking kid was one of the ones who shot me. The thought set off a burst of black rage in his head, tempered only slightly by relief that the boy clearly hadn’t recognized him.

  When he reached the fort, Hooper peered up at its floor and listened. Hearing nothing, he put the foot of his good leg on the bottom rung of one of the ladders leading up to the fort and began to climb. When he put weight onto his injured leg, though, his body shut down, his calf betraying him, and Hooper fell a few feet to the forest floor, landing on his ass.

  He was OK, but his dignity had taken a beating. It was for the best, he decided as he brushed himself off, feeling ridiculous in the old, musty-smelling clothes. He couldn’t hear the kids up there, but for all he knew, they could be there, armed and waiting on him. Though if they were holed up there as silently as this and were still armed with what he assumed was something stolen from Carl’s ridiculous gun collection—a .22, judging from the hole in his calf—they would have heard his tumble from the ladder and already taken a shot at him. Still, as he walked away from the fort the same way he’d come, he was cautious, even more nervous with his back facing the maw of the window. He might not see to them today, but he would teach those kids respect, and soon.