think it’s the dementia-that he’s forgetting what he reads, but then I flash on a long-ago Christmas, Dad returning every few seconds to the little folded Japanese instructions as he built me a slot-car racetrack. I guess it’s one of those things I’m supposed to learn, maybe the only thing-
“How big is-” Franklin starts to ask.
“Big as your foot,” Dad says.
Steam escapes from the mouths of the Prior men.
Dad drives the first spike through the base of our fort and then the next one. It’s a simple base-sixteen posts, eight going in each direction, spiked crosswise to form a nice, solid foundation. The spikes echo like gunfire as Dad pounds them.
“Floor next,” Dad says, reading the plans. We lay out eight of the longer posts, the eight-footers. Dad shows the boys how to use spikes to make sure the floorboards are uniformly spaced.
We’ve been out about two hours and are about two-thirds done when I look up and see a newer four-by-four Ford pickup truck coming down our street slowly, as if looking for an address. The
truck parks in front of my house. A very unhappy Lt. Reese climbs out, wearing a heavy coat, a watchman’s cap and a scowl.
I set the framing hammer down. “You might have to finish without me,” I tell Dad.
“Well, look here,” Lt. Reese says as he walks up the sidewalk. “If it isn’t the guy who managed, in twenty-four hours, to fuck up a six-month investigation.”
“I’m sorry.”
He laughs bitterly. “Don’t apologize. I told you what would happen if you fucked up.” Then he looks past me. “Hey, I know that pile of shit. Is that Frontier Fort number two?”
“Yeah.”
“I built the same thing for my kids. Ten years ago. Wife didn’t want them falling out of a tree. They played in it for twenty minutes and haven’t been in it since. But the stupid thing will be there fifty years after my house falls down. Why are you making it in your front yard? Who builds a goddamn fort in his front yard?”
“That’s just where my dad started it.”
“And who builds a goddamn tree fort in November?”
“My dad…he’s kind of senile.”
Lt. Reese looks past me. “All that wood.” Shakes his head. “It’s easy to build, but it’s twice as expensive because of all those four-bys. Thing’s a waste of trees.”
Then the lieutenant calls past me. “Hey. Grandpa! You gotta use the twelve-inch spikes for the last row!”
I turn. Dad is, indeed, holding a six-inch spike.
Lt. Reese walks over and picks up the plans. “I know it says to use shorter spikes, but you need this one to go through the floorboards, too. See?” He grabs the drill, puts in the longer bit and deepens the hole, then takes a longer spike and sinks it while Dad swings the hammer and drives the spike through. It makes a sharp
report that echoes down the street. I flinch each time he hits it. Lt. Reese steps away. “See?” he says again.
Lt. Reese sits on the porch and watches us cut the doors. “I can wait,” he says.
And so, with the sun burning off the morning fog, supervised by the surly lieutenant from the regional drug task force-who occasionally calls out instructions (“Reverse the drill!”) my father, my sons and I successfully build Frontier Fort Number Two in my front yard.
We’re leveling the sidewalls when Lt. Reese says, “Hey. You got any coffee in there?”
I go inside to make it, but in the kitchen I see that Lisa has already made a pot. I get a cup for Dad, one for Lt. Reese and one for me. We sit on the front porch, holding the warm cups in our cold hands, watching the boys play in their finished fort. It’s bulky, but not at all roomy; like everything in life, Frontier Fort II is both bigger and smaller than I thought it would be. There are no secret rooms. No Murphy beds or home gyms. Not even a roof. It’s just some square walls sitting on a smaller square a few feet above the ground. Even the boys aren’t quite sure exactly how to “play” in it, or how to play anything without a controller in their hands. It strikes me that I am at least two years late in building my boys their treeless tree fort.
We sit on the cold porch, steam from our coffee in our faces, watching the boys jump from the walls.
“So did you get him?” I ask. “Dave?”
“Get him?” Lt. Reese laughs. “We could’ve arrested him any time we wanted. God, you really are stupid.” Then: a sigh. “Idiots turned themselves in, just like we were afraid they would. Lawyers called this morning. They all want deals. We’re fucked.” He sips at his coffee. In his disappointment, I remember what Randy told me and I think I finally understand: the last thing they wanted
was to arrest Dave and Monte, to shut down the operation. With their grant running out at the end of the year, and their emergency budget presentation coming up, what they really needed was some reason to keep the operation going so the task force could get two more years funding. They needed tape of me pretending to buy Monte’s business, so they could string the thing out for a while. But I panicked and blabbed and ruined the whole thing.
Lt. Reese finishes his coffee. “We should get going. There’s a lot of paperwork.”
I pull the watch from my pocket and hold it out to him. “And this. Is it-”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Just a watch. With a backlight. It was Randy’s idea…he figured you’d get suspicious if you didn’t think you were wired up. I wanted to put a fake body wire on you but Randy thought you’d piss your pants so he came up with this James Bond bullshit.” He takes the watch, puts it in his pocket. “I guess this is what happens when you’re pushed for time. You make mistakes.”
“What’s going to happen to those kids,” I say. “To Jamie?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about him,” Lt. Reese says cryptically. I think this confirms what I figured out last night. That if I was OH-2…there had to be a-1. “So Jamie was-”
He just smiles. “Don’t ask me that.”
“None of those guys seemed like criminal masterminds,” I say. “Even Dave wasn’t as bad as you made him out to be. I think he was just caught up in it, like I was, over our heads.”
“Caught up? Over your head?” This is apparently the wrong thing to say to Lt. Reese, who spins on me, his old shitty self. “You were dealing drugs, fuck-nuts! You know the definition of a fucking drug dealer,
My boys have looked up from the tree fort. I hold up my hand to quiet Lt. Reese.
He continues more quietly: “The only difference between you and Dave? Is that you
Lt. Reese hands me his coffee cup, sighs. “You know the worst part of what I do: nobody ever deserves it. Nobody ever thinks they’re wrong. You’re all a bunch of assholes walking around crying, ‘It ain’t fair…I didn’t mean it…I got a bad deal.’”
“Amen,” says Dad.
Lt. Reese and I both look over at Dad, who rocks back and forth, staring off into space.
Lt. Reese reaches over and pats my father on the back. Then he stands. “You ready?”
“Can I go in and tell my wife?”
Lt. Reese looks at his empty cup. Sighs. “Get your dad and me some more coffee first.”
I get them each a cup. “Five minutes,” Lt. Reese says.
I nod. I don’t see the boys in the fort, so I walk over. They’re sitting on the floor, cross-legged in opposite corners, like boxers between rounds. They’re playing their Gameboys. Fifteen minutes in their new eleven- hundred-dollar fort and they’re back to playing video games.
“I love you guys.”
They look up, confused. “Okay,” Teddy says. I step into the fort. It really is solidly built. I feel strangely…proud. I bend down and hug them. Even Teddy hugs me back, awkwardly, but I’ll take it. They don’t ask where I’m going.
