The Last Stand of Daronwy

by Clint Talbert

  “I’ll tell you what we should do. The only way to stop those dozers is to change the minds of the people that drive them. We have to show them what Twin Hills means to us. We have to show them what we believe, and how much we believe it. We have to put up our own ‘No Trespassing’ signs. We have to build a wall to protect our forest. They have to know that bulldozing Twin Hills is like bulldozing our homes. And when they see what we’re doing, then they will realize, and they will stop. That’s how we stop the bulldozers.”

  The heavy silence of their stares weighed on him. His knees shook, and he worried he’d fall off the Tree. His pleading eyes found Daniel’s.

  “What are you talking about?” said Loren.

  “Building a wall,” Daniel said. “He’s talking about building a wall across what’s left of Twin Hills, along this side of the pond.”

  Jeremy smiled. “And I’m talking about putting this sign on it.” He shook the sign in the air. “I’m talking about building something to show these people why they cannot destroy Twin Hills. If we can make them realize that they aren’t just cleaning out a dump, if we can show them that bulldozing this is like bulldozing our homes, then they’ll think twice. We have to build a wall to protect what is ours.”

  The boys began nodding to each other; cautious smiles crept through the crowd.

  Loren clapped his hands, whooping. “All right, Mr. J!”

  “Okay,” Jeremy said. “Let’s start getting materials out here tomorrow. Any spare wood you can find, if you can pull some of the dead trees from the burn piles, we’ll need to move them over here. Who can get us some spray paint?”

  “I can,” said Roland, “I work at Wal-Mart.”

  “I can get us hammers and nails and a bunch of rope,” said Marcus.

  “Bring everything you can find here, to this grove. We’ll start building on Friday after Thanksgiving.”

  On Friday morning, Jeremy and Daniel arranged a line of survey stakes from the street swamp to the twin hills, demonstrating where the wall should go.

  “What should we do next?”

  Jeremy motioned, walking toward the Trash Clearing. “Help me pick up that old washing machine. Let’s put it at this end.” They half-carried, half-dragged the rusted carcass to the line. When Sy and Loren showed up, Daniel and Jeremy were trying to hammer old panels of metal into the ground next to three washing machines, two dishwashers, and a refrigerator door.

  “We should stack those appliances. Give me a hand,” Loren said.

  They lifted one rusty hulk and set it atop the other. Marcus and Paul arrived with several sheets of plywood and three boxes of tenpenny nails.

  “We ought to nail that plywood to the front of everythin’ so that we have somethin’ to write on,” Marcus said.

  “We’ll need braces to get the plywood to stand up. Hammering stuff into this sand doesn’t work.” Jeremy demonstrated, pushing the panel he and Daniel had hammered in. It fell flat. “I have an idea. Be right back.” He ran home and returned with his dad’s crosscut saw.

  “Sy, Daniel, let me show you.” They picked long, fallen branches. Jeremy showed them how to cut the tops of the branches at an angle, to make a flat surface to nail the plywood to.

  Lee arrived dragging three warped, twelve-foot two-by-fours. “Hey y’all, I got a bunch of these, come help. They might work better than those branches.” Behind Lee’s house was an old burn pile where his dad burned trash. They pulled a dozen planks of lumber out of it. Some of the boys Jeremy didn’t know came with hammers and saws. Jeremy had them all making braces while he and Sy scavenged through the remnants of Helter Skelter, finding old tires and rusted oil drums. They pulled these to the pond, stacking them along the line of the wall.

  As the sun rose past noon, a motor thundered through Twin Hills.

  “What is that?” Daniel looked at Jeremy, who looked at Loren.

  “Hide! Everyone, take the tools, it might be the cops!”

  The motor came closer. The boys scooped up hammers, nails, and saws as they scrambled into the trees behind the wall. Jeremy ran to the Tree. He laid a hand against it. “Please don’t let them catch us… not yet. Not yet.” The gashes on his back burned with a frigid anger, making Jeremy catch his breath.

  The engine stopped. Loren’s laugh echoed over their hiding places. “Come out, y’all. It’s just Roland.”

  Jeremy smiled at the Tree and tried to shrug off the prickly tingling in his back.

  Roland sat on his three-wheeler. “Didn’t mean to scare y’all. Here you go, Mr. J.” He dropped a shopping bag full of spray paint into Jeremy’s hands. He patted the machine. “I figure we could use this to pull some of those logs out of the burn piles.”

  Jeremy turned. “Marcus, do you still have that rope?”

  They walked to the most concealed burn pile. It was still smoldering, and the air shimmered over the logs. Loren walked to it, squinting into the heat. He tied the rope to the first tree he could reach.

  “No, you can’t put it on that lower one. Ain’t gonna be able to pull that out, man. You gotta put it higher.”

  “I ain’t climbing up there, dude.”

  “I’ll go.” Sy climbed up onto the burn pile. Everyone watched as he moved up the outer edge, grabbing from root to root. He was three logs high when a branch snapped. He fell, but caught his hands on another root. His legs dangled in the hot air.

  “Be careful, Sy!”

  He got his feet back on a root and tied the rope around a medium sized log on top of the smoldering pile. He came down carefully and jumped to safety, coughing. His big brother slapped him on the back. “Good job, good job.”

  “All right, get out of the way, everyone.”

  Roland climbed on the three-wheeler. He drove slowly, letting the rope stretch taut. Jeremy swallowed, eyeing the three-wheeler, the rope, and the massive tree it was tied to. Roland gave it some gas. The engine whined. Roland gave it a little more gas. The log shifted and the three-wheeler jerked forward. Roland flinched. He tried a little more gas. The wheels started to spin and then he let off. Easing into it again, the log shifted farther, then a little more. The engine complained; the rope tightened. The end of the log turned toward them.

  Jeremy held his breath.

  The wheels started to spin on the chewed dirt, then caught; the machine lunged forward. The log tumbled down the pile, thunking against several others and knocking them free. Roland lurched on the seat but managed to squeeze the brakes. He stopped before the rope went taut and he went over the handlebars.

  Everyone cheered. Roland laughed, shaking his head. Loren clapped people’s shoulders hard enough to leave welts. “Oh yeah! Let’s get another one!”

  They rescued eight massive tree trunks from the burn piles. Using the three-wheeler and a ton of pushing, they dragged the logs to the wall. Loren directed them to put the smaller logs next to the larger ones. Once they had the large logs staked in, Loren called them.

  “All right, boys. We’re gonna lift this small one up and put it on top. The minute we get it up there, Lee, you take one of those two-bys and nail it to both trees, you got that? Make sure the end of your two-by is on the ground. That way it doesn’t roll off the other side.”

  The boys squatted around the blackened trunk.

  “On three.” Loren squatted. “One… two… ”

  Jeremy dug his hands into the dirt beneath the log.

  “Three!”

  They strained. They groaned. They gritted their teeth. The log rose about four inches.

  “I’m gonna drop it!” said Marcus.

  “Everyone drop, now!” The log thudded back into the sand. Loren wiped the sweat off his brow. “Crap.”

  After another try and more cursing, Loren proclaimed it was time for lunch. They would meet up in an hour. Jeremy went home and ate
a turkey sandwich, gazing into his backyard. As he stared at his dad’s old cache of steel pipes and cinderblocks laid against the back fence, an idea surfaced in his mind. He found Loren heading out with a boom box, talking in his driveway with Kelly and Mira. Jeremy called them. Together, they carried several of the old cinderblocks and pipes to the wall.

  Many of the boys had arrived. Jeremy used the blocks and pipes to make three levers to help lift the tree. “Make sure your pipe is really under the log, like this.” Jeremy worked a pipe beneath the log so that it rested on the cinderblock.

  Loren nodded. “Nice. Let’s get a couple of people on the pipes, and the rest of us will lift it up and push it into place. Good thinking, Mr. J.” He walked to the boom box. “I brought some music to help us out.” He pushed play on the tape deck and the fastest music Jeremy had ever heard resounded through Twin Hills.

  “What is that?”

  “Metallica, dude. Ride the Lightning.”

  “On three,” said Loren. Everyone took their positions. “One… two… three!”

  Straining, they lifted the tree almost a foot. Jeremy stood between Mira and Daniel, their hands flat against the log. “Push! Push it up!”

  With an aching lethargy, the massive trunk edged atop the larger log. It rolled into place.

  “Lee! Now!”

  Lee and Marcus swept along the log, hammering the two-by-fours into place to keep the wall upright.

  The two logs made the wall as tall as Jeremy. Loren raised his hands. “Rad! That’s what I’m talking about!” Loren high-fived everyone.

  Daniel beamed. He pointed at the cinderblocks. “Let’s move the blocks and do the next one.”

  As the sun set, the wall stood about five feet high in most places. It extended from the edge of Helter Skelter, running past the twin hills, along the pond, and ended near the Street Swamp.

  “This is incredible,” Daniel said, staring at it.

  “Yeah, it’s a good start. Tomorrow, we need to make it higher, nail on the plywood, and start spray painting.”

  “I want to get Roland’s three-wheeler and put more logs here and there.” Loren pointed at the places the wall crossed the existing trails. “That’s where they’ll drive up to it. So it needs to be stronger there.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Good idea.”

  Loren called to the knot of boys drifting toward the street. “Hey, y’all. I better see you out here tomorrow. If I don’t, I’m coming looking for you, got it?”

  Everyone was there the next morning. Loren proved to be worse at driving the three-wheeler than Roland. He broke several ropes, and threw himself over the handlebars twice before he pulled down his first log. But they managed to triple the logs where the wall crossed the trails. They hammered in plywood against the tree trunks. Jeremy and Daniel crafted long braces using two-by-fours and branches, and braced the wall with them, burying their ends in the sand of the Mini Desert.

  “Ow.” Mira shook her hands out. “I think I’m getting blisters.”

  “Here.” Jeremy picked up her hammer and nailed the plywood into place.

  “You don’t have any blisters?”

  Jeremy opened his hands to reveal the red welts across his palm. “Mine don’t hurt, though,” he lied.

  Loren flipped the Metallica tape over for the hundredth time. “I should have brought my Cyndi Lauper tape,” Mira said.

  Jeremy laughed. He nodded down the wall. “They’re spray painting down there. That won’t hurt your hands.” Jeremy finished nailing the last sections of plywood alone. Mira ran to him, bringing him a spray can.

  Jeremy stepped back, looked at the long, snaking line of the wall. It was taller than Loren now, seven or eight feet high. He wrote, “This is OUR woods. Keep Out!” He handed the can back to Mira, who wrote, “Bulldozers: go home!” Jeremy walked the length of it, watching the boys laughing as they wrote slogans along the wall. Some rode on each other’s shoulders, painting the higher parts.

  “Mr. J, get down here!”

  Jeremy, Daniel, and Mira walked to Kelly, Loren, and Paul. They stood near the center of the wall, next to the pond. Loren held the “No Trespassing” sign that Mira had pulled down. “Time to put the finishing touch on this thing. Grab a hammer and some nails.”

  Loren and Paul each took a foot, lifting Jeremy high. Mira climbed on her sister’s shoulders and held the sign in place while Jeremy nailed it. In the center of the wall, the “No Trespassing” sign stood out, its stark red letters spelling out their intention.

  “Looks good,” said Paul.

  “I think we’ve done it.” Loren stretched his arms. “Dude, I feel like I’ve been at practice for three days straight.”

  Jeremy stretched and crossed his arms. “Me too.”

  Daniel wiped sweat from his forehead. “I’m exhausted, but I think we’re done.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think I could pick up another hammer if I wanted to,” Paul said. “Daniel, I’m gonna head home.”

  “Hey, Kelly. Do you want to come play some Atari?” Loren asked.

  Kelly turned. “Mira! Grab Loren’s boom box when you come in. And get me before you go home ‘cause you know mom’s gonna have a conniption if we don’t come home together!”

  Mira rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay!”

  They walked away, leaving Mira, Daniel, and Jeremy.

  “What happens if they just bulldoze the wall too?” Mira asked

  “Then it’s a new beginning.” Daniel said, catching Jeremy’s eye.

  Jeremy glanced at the sign above them. “Then at least we went out with a fight. Help me pick up some of these tools.”

  They walked the length of the wall, picking up tools and the boom box. They brought it to Loren’s, where he and Kelly were yelling at each other over a game of Space Invaders. Daniel pedaled home to ask his mom if he could spend the night at Jeremy’s. Mira sat with Jeremy on his driveway, watching the shadows try to find a place to hide in the obliterated waste that was once Helter Skelter.

  “Hey.” She took Jeremy’s hand, weaving her fingers through his. “I’m really sorry about Josh hitting you.”

  “It’s okay. I forgot about it after my eye healed.”

  “I told him it was stupid. And I broke up with him.”

  “You did?” Jeremy looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. Her hands were blistered, her ponytail had come partially undone, dirt stained her forehead. Her eyes stared out in the distance, as if looking into the other side of the shadows. This was the Mira he knew.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.”

  “No, I should have done it sooner. What’s cool was when you convinced everyone to build the wall.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I didn’t know what to say at first. But when you came up the tree with the sign, it hit me. Thanks for pulling that sign down. How’d you do that? It was pretty high up.”

  “I stood on Kelly’s shoulders. Cheerleader-style, you know.”

  She pulled him closer. Electricity arced through his body. The soreness in his muscles vanished. When she spoke, her voice was soft. He had to lean close to hear. “Do you remember that night we went to find the Old Man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think that thing was?”

  “I don’t know.” Jeremy could almost hear those footsteps again, and his scars bit into his back with frozen teeth. He thought of the gorilla in the other world.

  “You saw it too, right? Standing by the pond, and it looked at us…” She shuddered, and pressed her shoulder against his.

  “Yeah.” He gazed into the shadows across the street.

  “I wanted to believe I had made it up. I was so mad at you. But it was really my fault we were out there.”

  “It’s okay.”

  The
y both stared into the darkness across the street. “What do you think will happen to it if they bulldoze all of Twin Hills? If it doesn’t have the woods to live in, where will that thing go?”

  He had never thought about that. “I guess it’ll move to a new woods, farther away from people.”

  “I hope so.” She squeezed his hand and brought his eyes back to hers. “I was… um… I don’t think I ever told you. But I was really glad you were there.”

  “Thanks, I was too… ”

  She cocked her head to the side, her eyes softened, and her lips came forward, as though she were going to say something, but didn’t. Jeremy’s insides quivered. He didn’t know how to do this, but it felt right. He pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and leaned across that tiny distance between them. His lips pressed against hers. Firm, yet soft; dry, yet moist. He balanced against her lips for an eternal second. He could feel her chest rise and fall, he could taste the salt of her sweat. His heart exploded into shimmering fireworks.

  He leaned away, just an inch.

  Mira’s eyes opened. She touched her lips with her free hand, then touched his. Her eyes shone with a brilliance he’d never seen.

  “I… I’ve never kissed a boy. You know, like my dad, but not like… like for real.”

  “Me either.”

  Her head cocked, then she laughed. “I hope not…”

  “I mean…” But then her contagious laughter caught him.

  “What’s so funny, you two?” Kelly crossed Jeremy’s yard. Jeremy’s face flushed beet-red and their hands separated like two beads of mercury.

  “Nothing,” said Mira, flashing a conspiring smile at Jeremy.

  “C’mon, Mira. Let’s go home.”

  Mira winked at him in the half shadow and followed her sister inside.

  Jeremy could still feel the soft pressure of her lips on his. His heart soared over the bulldozers, the pond, the wall, the Tree; up and up to dart among the stars and distant worlds.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The bulldozers were still asleep when Jeremy joined the others at the bus stop on Monday. They compared blisters on their hands and listened as Loren exaggerated his trials with the three-wheeler to Roland.