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| Sissy and Garryd at Castle LeFini |
Castles!
Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat! Holding the
sticks the way Marc had showed her, Sissy played Marc's new drums, letting the
sticks bounce on the surface of the drums. She played with enthusiasm, rat-a-tat-tat,
rat-a-tat-tat. Marc came steaming
into the room with clouds of rage pouring from his ears. Blue clouds, Sissy noted. She knew she was in trouble for playing
without permission, and lifted the drum sticks like twin swords to defend herself
from the onslaught of his fury, but the voice she heard wasn’t Marc's and
wasn't screaming. It was Garryd,
and he was whispering.
As
she dragged herself up through foggy layers out of her dream, she realized that
Garryd was tapping on the aluminum frame of the screen on her bedroom window
and calling her name in a hushed hiss. "Sissy," he said, this time
louder.
"Shhhh,"
Sissy said, "What time is it?"
"It's
only 9:30. You went out like a
light."
"I
was tired. You slept all the way
home. I was writing my report for
The Frog Haven Friends who are okaying the funds for our camp experiences, the
way Mr. LeFevre set it up, remember? We have to tell what we learned. Justify the expenditure. Did you get yours done?"
"Don't
worry, I'll get it done soon," Garryd said, sounding a little
annoyed, "Listen, I have
important news. Remember how the
gangs were acting so weird during the last week of school, and disappearing
without telling us where they were going."
"Yeah
. . . ?" Sissy, said, drawing
it out so it sounded halfway between a question and a sarcastic remark. "It's not like they ever told us
where they were going."
"I
know, but you're missing the point.
You told me to find out, if I could, remember?"
So
much had happened at Morgan Mountain that Sissy could only barely remember the
whole business of the boys’ strange behavior just before they left for camp. And she was so sleepy she could hardly
keep her eyes open.
""Yeah,"
she said, finally dredging up the memory, "I told you if you could listen
in on them or follow them and find out anything, to let me know."
"So,
after we got home tonight, I was stashing my sleeping bag and backpack in the
garage and I heard voices. I
ducked into the pines between our houses, and who should come along but Marc
and Paul LeFevre. They were
carrying white frog buckets and talking about mortar.
"At
first, I thought they meant cannons, weapons, bombs, explosions, it was getting
kind of dark, and I thought they might not spot me, so I followed them. They went between Taylor’s and
Sampson’s and into the woods, jogged through the woods to the construction site
where houses are being built . . . “
“I
know the spot,” Sissy said, impatiently, waking up a little.
Garryd
continued without pause, “and they got some mortar out of some bags piled under
a big tarp—cement-like stuff you put between bricks."
Sissy
sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"This isn't making any sense," she complained. “Bombs and cannons and bricks? I don't get it."
"They
went down the path to Salamander Pond, up Crayfish creek, and through the horse
field. They stopped and got a
couple wild apples for Whitey."
"Sissy?"
Sissy's Mom called, "Is something wrong?"
"I
was just having a nightmare Mom, everything's fine. I’m thinking of otters playing." That was her mom’s suggestion for
dealing with her persistent nightmares, to picture otters playing. It usually worked.
"Go
back to sleep, sweetie, you had a long day."
"Okay,"
Sissy hollered back. "Talk
more quietly," She whispered to Garryd. She was grateful her Mom hadn't come into the room. She must be working on some project.
"Castles,
Sissy, they're building castles!" Garryd said.
Sissy
knelt and rose up so she could see Garryd better. "Castles?
Really? Where?"
"There's
a quarry behind the horse field, did you know that?"
"I
saw it on Pa's map, the one in their study, but we're not allowed to go to that
quarry, it's posted and Pa says the quarry is active, and the workers don't
want kids in there. And it’s
dangerous, with cliffs that can collapse and stuff. I've never been there."
"Past
the quarry, there are these things that look like silos without barns. Marc and Paul are making one into a
castle, and it looks really cool. I
heard them call it Castle LeFini, and on the way back, I figured that was
LeFevre and Mancini and funny. The
older McAllister boys have one, too, I heard them say and I think some others
do, too, Michael and Guy Lefevre and Bill and Kelvin and all the other kids
have their own castle together.
There are lots of those silo things, maybe we could have one, too. That would be awesome."
"We're
not allowed to go there," Sissy said, automatically.
"Come
on," Garryd said, his voice rising with impatience, then dropping to a
whisper again. "Come out the
window. Put your pillow under the
blankets like kids do in stories."
"It's
too hot for blankets," Sissy objected. She inched up the screen. It squeaked.
She panted onto it, hoping to make it go up more quietly. It seemed to work. Garryd helped her climb out and drop to
the bucket he’d upended to stand on.
She gently pulled the screen partway back down, being careful to avoid
the spot that would make it lock.
The pointy edge of the screen frame scraped her inner thighs and inner
arms.
Garryd
covered his mouth and pointed.
Sissy was wearing a pair of lacy underpants with little hearts and roses
and a blue flowered camisole that didn't match the panties. She rolled her eyes. She was not wearing a bra, and her stupid
breasts, and worse yet, her nipples, were visible under the thin fabric of the
camisole, but Garryd didn’t seem to think of her as a girl or, heaven forbid, a
sex object. He seemed only to see
her as a friend, more like a sister. That was a big relief to Sissy, who really hated the way her
body was betraying her. She’d
always thought of herself as more of a boy than a girl. How could she be a boy with those
stupid ugly, embarrassing things on her chest?
"Look,"
Sissy said disgustedly, “Mom was doing laundry and took all my camp clothes and
said she'd give them back to me clean in the morning—after I shower. The busceebies will probably eat me
alive."
“Probably,”
Garryd chortled. "Come on,
let's hurry." Sissy was barefooted, too, but that was nothing unusual,
except that after the Morgan Mountain foot fiasco, where she was required to
wear shoes, it felt both strange and wonderful to be barefooted again. They ran
along the row of pines between their houses, crossed to the ones between
Sampson's and Taylors, and headed down the path through the edge of the Bushwhack
to Salamander pond, up the bank of Crayfish Creek, through the horse field,
stopping to give Whitey an apple and give his soft muzzle a quick rub. Then they jogged to the edge of the
quarry. Garryd led the way down a truck
ramp, across the quarry, up the other side and down a dark narrow, overgrown
dirt road.
There they were, first the abandoned silo
things, dark cylinders rising among dark trees, empty and deserted, and a short
ways farther, the castles. They
found three castles, about as far apart as the houses on Van Vleck Drive, in
various stages of development.
None
of the castles were finished. In
fact, they were barely begun, but Sissy could see what the gangs had in
mind. It was impressive. The boys were building rectangular fortresses
around the fronts of the silo things, hauling rocks from the quarry, probably
at night, when the workers weren’t there, piling them up around the fortresses
and silos to make it look like a real castle and cementing them with stolen mortar. Sissy could see it all unfolding. They would be magnificent.
“WOW!”
Sissy said, exhaling a long breath, and then whistling. “WOW!” She repeated.
"We
need one," Garryd said.
"We need our own castle." Sissy could only agree.
*
Mary
Stebbins Taitt
