THE S CLUB

“Think this place is secret enough?” questioned Madge. The wind ran through the tall brown grass. It sounded like flapping rice paper. It was a place where hardly anybody goes. A place where migrant worker might have passed out. It was a small group of cypresses that lined the far perimeter of the potato field.

I just want to get as far away from Farley as I can get,” said Chris snapping off a piece of Beef Jerky with his teeth.

“Who knows,” said Madge as her eyes enlarged like Moe’s. She twittered her fingers and sing sang,”nook, nook, nook”

Chris playfully grabbed Madge’s nose with his left hand and karate chopped it with his right.

“Ow, that smarts,” cried Madge as she quickly kicked Chris in the shin. Chris bounced away in pain. With her red and watering eyes, Madge turned toward me. ”Well, what do you think Edmund?

“I think Farley and Neil will find out eventually,” I said. “There is no way they really can’t find out about it.”

Chris got very defensive. “I have kept a secret from Neil before,” he said.

I had seen a great many forts come and go in the past. Each fort having the promise of being far more superior and far more selective than its predecessor, and yet each fort has the same history. Farley finds out about it and is not allowed to join in. She tells a parent because the fort is one someone else’s property and it has to be torn down.

In my experience, forts in the woods have always proven to be the best. Particularly tree houses. I love sitting in tree houses while eating sugar and butter sandwiches as the sun strikes through the green cupola of the forest.

Madge looked up at the cypresses with an engineer’s eye.” There ain’t enough tree to make a proper tree house.”

“And besides all Farley has to do is see us take nails and hammer and she knows there is a fort going up,” lamented Chris.

“Oh I got it,” said Madge. ”Let’s do it jungle style,” she said in the heat of a pitch. “And do grass huts.”

“Yeah,” said Chris, “we can surround the huts with booby traps, dig holes, whittle spears, place them in the holes and cover the whole thing up with tall grass.”

“Sounds boss,” said Madge, ”but we got to think of a name, a real good name like Fort Congo.”

“Perhaps Fort Bwana,” I suggested.

Madge’s eyes lit up, she snapped her fingers (which is something I still can’t do). “That’s perfect, Edmund!” she said suddenly liking me. “Dad is wrong, fuck marketing, you should go in the military and be in charge of naming their forts and stuff.”

Oh! certainly Fort Bwana was going to be the greatest fort ever.

The making of Fort Bwana was ingenious. On the east side of the potato field there was a roll of chicken wire. The three of us lifted the cumbersome and rusty mesh and moved it to the cluster of cypresses. There we unrolled it and broke it off in ten-foot sections simply by bending the wire back and forth until it separated. With each section, we arched it and secured it to the ground. We positioned these arches one after another to form a Quonset hut like structure. We, then, gathered the tall dead grass of the field and wove it through the chicken wire.

“I hate this part,” barked Madge, ”the weeds break too easy.”

“I wonder how the real niggers do it?” said Chris.

“Oh they have better plants to do it with,” surmised Madge. ”They have rubber plants, vines, wall plants, they really have everything for building really great huts in Africa.”

“Ugh, would I hate to live in Africa,” I said. I don’t know if it’s the animals, the incredible arid or humid weather or the bugs that would get to me the most if I lived in Africa. I imagine you would be swatting flies the same way people breathe everywhere else. Not only are there more flies in Africa but there are no screens to go over your windows of your typical tribal hut. With a situation like that, it is hard to see how the tribesman can take it.

The sun stretched high, wide and hot in the sky. Weaving the sides of the hut was tiresome while laying clumps of brown grass on the top was snap. Naturally, that was the chore Madge chose for herself. Chris hauled armfuls of weeds. Furiously he would shake off the roots and drag his harvest to the shelter. Sweat poured down the sides of his face and burned his eyes; his hair flopped like a wet mane.

When Chris worked the fields he sang to himself. He sang the Chipmunks song over and over again. It was insanely, inane, nasal and disconcerting. Every so often, Madge and I would look up at one another and wonder if Chris had really and truly lost all his marbles.

Chris was cute enough to be in commercials (which why we liked him). Like anybody who is good looking, Chris used this as much as he could. He could muster up a sorrowful or a dazed innocent expression and evoke sympathetic turn from the most hostile of Boom’s tirades. He would always be her little baby boy.

Madge pelted the last snatch of weeds on the structure. She stepped back and put her hands on her hips, grinning, ”Let’s get inside.” On our hands and knees we crawled into our rabbit hutch. Pine needles cracked beneath us. Dirt and sunlight flaked down from the roof. A zephyr carried an earth and sweat odor through the tunnel. The walls were beige and gauzy.

“Gee, we could even camp out here,” suggested Chris.

“Mom, would never let me,” realized Madge.

Two black shit-kicker boots stepped in and blocked the hut’s egress. “Hey squirts,” he said shaking the structure. Clumps of dirt drizzled and the walls angulated like a cave in.

“Neil,” shrieked Chris, “cut it out.”

The secrecy of the fort was already in jeopardy. The only consolation was that (at least) Farley didn’t know about it.

“So what do you want?” screamed Chris.

“Eh! nothing,” he said. ”I mean this here fort looks pretty nice, to be honest with you. I kinda like it.”

“So what,” said Madge, “you are not in it, so what difference does that make?”

“Oh yes, I am,” he said.

“Oh no, you are not,” declared Chris staring his brother right in the eye.

Neil rabbit-punched Chris.

A ghastly pain-choked wail pealed out of a keeled over Chris.

Neil then karate chopped him in the neck.

Neil then slipped into the first position.

“Anyone else wanna try me?” he said.

“Edmund,” said Madge looking over at me, “go beat up Neil.”

“No,” I said. Why didn’t I stay home and re-read Peyton Place? I wasn’t going to get a bloody nose over a ridiculous little hut of chicken wire and weeds. “No,” I said, “you beat him up.”

“Are you kidding?” said Madge. She shook her head. “I am just a little girl.”

Neil wiped his hands. That decided it. Fort Bwana was now Fort Neil.