The Fort
By Jacob Malewitz
A Fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, literary noir
It started as a series of screams, a big man beating on small women. “Stop! Please Sto—“ And another hit, a slap, a scream, a whimper, “I am going to kill you one day,” were the last, rushed words, but Bill wasn’t sure who said it, quite odd to have screams mingled with threats, inaudible aggression and pain. He heard it, Bill Day, or B, and he felt in the resolve to stop the screaming … one day. How?
And he had heard it one too many nights. Beatings. Blood. ‘Screwing’ with a purpose. He asked himself on such days, what would he do, if he was big, strong, mean, and good with the switchblade his father had given him? Would he still run? Would he ever stop running? The switchblade played on his senses: the power of it made him smile, but it was dull … a useless blade. He heard the sounds of screwing downstairs; again, Steve had won. “To the victor,” B said, drawing the blade back in, touching the tip, a small speck of blood still on it when he had pretended to slit his wrists to get a few days off from school. They never found the blade; he made sure; and the blood was a joke; he wanted attention. “Go the spoils,” he said, closing his eyes while opening his mind to all the things he could do to end Steve, to make the pain stop.
He walked downstairs six hours later, waiting for his mother to take him to David’s house. He tripped on his books while going down the stairs, almost fell downward in a vicious spiral. He looked quite the part, with his thick glasses and the pen he always kept inside for poetry. He liked war poetry, he liked Churchill, he read history. “Quit living in the past,” mom would always say.
“Ready, mom?”
“As always.” She came out with only a bra on, pulling the shirt downward, slow enough so he could see the new bruise. He noticed her breasts, which were why men liked her, in some sense, why she drew them to her like a cat in heat. “As always,” she said, downing the rest of coffee setting on the wood dining room table.
“Are you trying to show the pain,” he said quietly, and then thought twice, pulled out his small notebook, and wrote down that exact mumble in letters few would ever be able to read … except B, war poet.
Summer arrived a few weeks ago. He was slow at school anyways. One day, he had punched his best friend David in the face over a soccer game; things seemed never quite the same between them, nor was school ever the adventure again; violence always changed things.
“Did he beat you up again, mom?” but he didn’t say that. Couldn’t say that! No, that would get a slap in the face and tears and smiles. He loves me, she would say, and I am just trying to save the (false) relationship. She hated being alone.
“I am leaving him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Aga—“ but he stopped. ‘Again’ wouldn’t work; never tell a smoker to stop smoking, a teacher you cheated, a cute girl you’ve got a crush. Avoid.
“Good, mom. I love you,” and he gave her a hug, feeling against her large breasts which made him quite uncomfortable, quite disturbed. B could see why all his friends were, whether they knew it or not, his friends. His mom was hot. Fact.
B was 14. He had a switchblade.
The drive over to David’s home in the brown rust-bucket van made B miserable; he really didn’t like David anymore, nor did he like his parents, who seemed easy to second and third guess you, and who didn’t like the fact B had beaten up on their son. Nevertheless, it ended up being safer than his home, for something dark lived there which stopped only to screw and drink.
“Hi, David,” he said a few minutes later, waving back at his mom who always made sure he did wave. It was a secret: the waving meant something else, a goodbye that would happen. He was a grown boy, and soon he would stop waving. For now, he waved.
“Hey there, B.” David had a bowl of cereal in his hand, talking through cheerios and 2 percent milk. “Soccer?”
“In the park,” B replied.
“In the park,” David agreed. “I hate my back yard.”
“Hate mine too; lots of weird animals.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, really, I hear rustling out there sometimes. Or a big one trying to kill a small one.”
“Come on in.” And when they were seated, and Pokemon was playing on the tube for David’s brother Johnny, whose eyes seemed to never waver from the TV, David brought up the mystery they would be following for the next weeks.
“It’s not animals,” said David, “it’s not a monster or anything.”
“What if it is a monster, David?”
“Shutup, Johnny … Anyways, it’s the gang, triad dragons, they like to roam around back yards, check the locks on any bikes, find useful stuff.”
“Triad dragons?”
“You know what a gang is?” David said, swallowing more cheerios.
“Ya.”
“Same thing, ‘cept these guys are—“
“Bad.” Johnny said.
“Shut your damn mouth.”
“David watch the lip,” it was his David’s father. Chris Peters, who was in the kitchen eating his breakfast while he read the paper; B didn’t even have to look; he knew.
“Let’s go to the park,” B let out. When David finished downing a second bowl of Cheerios, they began walking the four block trek to the park, which held basketball courts where both gang members and old guys who thought they were good played, occasionally allowing someone young to play; there was the woods in the far back, holding secrets David and B later found; there was a soccer field, a few slides, several swings. Safe.
David always walked oddly, dragging one foot behind him, breathing heavy like a smoker would, always moving his hands back and forth in stride with his walking; combined, you wouldn’t think him a star athlete; he was.
B knew how it usually went. They would kick the soccer ball back and forth, naming each kick with a cool name. “Rocket kick!” “Dragon kick!” They would yell until the names became “Rocket kick two!” and then they usually stopped, their imaginations tapped.
“My mom’s going to leave him, said so.”
David kept walking as they closed in.
“She ever fight back?”
“I hope to God she doesn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I would have to kill Steve.”
B walked more like a hood, learning that from the brother who ran away and went into the military. He always walked like it was an art form, knowing when to send signals out. “I really hate that fucker.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“Like fight back?” they were close in some ways, distant in others. But both knew what this alluded too. David had attacked him once: a fight born out of one popular kid befriending David and telling him to attack B after he scored in a soccer game; it happened and it changed them.
B looked back to the woods. “Ever go back there.”
“It’s weird back there. Think they’re actually some animals or something. ‘Sides, the tracks are ruled by the gang, and that’s close.”
“Screw it; let’s go.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Afraid, Dave?”
“Fuck you.” Once on the outskirts of the small place which would become the fort, B saw potential, but it wasn’t until halfway into the small place he found the reason they were there. The woods were on a slope, where ravines ran through the maze of trees and brush; upward was a street. They walked into it, looking for soft spots, places to explore in the shaded darkness. B stopped, looking ten feet ahead. A dog, its eyes closed, not breathing—a golden retriever which had passed on. “What the hell.” David looked down at the dog. “This is getting weird; we should go.”
“No.”
“B, what are you crazy? Something killed the dog.”
“Nothing killed the dog.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“There is no blood.”
“It doesn’t look old, B.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He walked to it, poked it with a stick, and proceeded to roll it over, showing a disgusting pack of bugs clinging to it; it didn’t smell; it died recently.
“We have to bury it.”
#
#
“You got to be kidding, what the hell did your mom give you? She still smoking that hash?”
He gripped his fist, feeling the pulse of a boy ready to fight, willing to battle. “Don’t say that.”
“Well she used to sell—“ but David stopped, because Davey could see in B a reason for a small mistake; a mistake he wouldn’t regret. “Forget it. I am outa’ here.”
David walked away, and B didn’t say a word. By the time the red-headed boy was a good football field away, he stopped, turned back, his head up, his feet covering the ground a little faster.
They dug the hole never touching the dirt. They put the golden retriever, who offered no struggle, in the hole waiting for it to come back: it just didn’t compute—death. There, for several minutes, they merely stood and gaped at what they had done. What if they thought we killed it? B thought. What if they think I murdered the dog, some kind of satanic cult or … His hand pulled to his forehead, the sweat forming, for it was warm. He pulled out the small notebook, considering a poem on death, a poem fit for a war poet. But nothing came from it; he saw no reason to write about the dog; he had not witnessed its death nor did he see it as a tragedy. It happened.
“What now?”
“We build a fort to keep them away.”
“Keep who away?” David said, pulling at his hair, tossing the stick they’d use to bury the dog. “Dude, are you getting weird on me?”
“Let’s make a fort,” he said again, this time to himself. “Build a fort,” he said, his eyes returning to his forehead where there was less sweat; his eyes squinted back up to the sun. He looked hoping to see something.
David waited a few hopeful seconds for B to make sense, to no avail. “I guess we can build a fort … to keep them away.”
Mothers watch/with hope/as boys slave away/over nothing/but peace.
He wrote the words down in haste.
They walked to the back of the park, David hesitating with every step, unsure of what they were doing; B just took it all in, playing with ideas of poems, pretending to write sometimes too, to keep other things away. “We build it on the slope, in the woods.”
David smiled, saying in a hushed voice, “If you build it, they will come.” He laughed and followed in B’s wake. He repeated the phrase a few times; once, B looked back to him, smiling, and this caught David off guard; his eyes squinted a bit.
“So how do we build a fort on a slope?”
“Less a fort, more a place hard to get too.”
“Sticks.”
“What?” David said.
“We use sticks.”
“Sticks: I got plenty of those in my backyard.”
“Keep them away.” B pulled it all in; a war poet making a fortress for war. Something in the back of his mind yelled for action.
David mumbled a few words, picked up a stick, looking at the door to the fortress, or what would be the entrance. B pulled out his switchblade, David feigning surprise, his eyes opening a bit more. B sharpened the edge of the stick, jammed it into the ground, and looked back to David.
“What are you gonna—“ he stopped, noticing the marks deeper into the wooded area. There were red circles spray painted across the ground in three places. “We gotta go, dude.”
“Why?”
“Triad dragons.”
“I don’t care about some stupid gang.”
“They claimed this! It’s theirs.”
“This is a park.”
“And the triad dragons meet under the bridge, that’s like twenty seconds from here.”
“I don’t care,” B said, his eyes showing interest. His breathing heavy for a moment; he then noticed the sounds of cars and people above, less than twenty yards away, where the road and sidewalk were. He smiled. “Want to go check it out?”
“Let’s just build the stupid fort.”
“Scared?”
“Shut up.”
The building of a fort on an incline turned out to be easy. No one would come from the sides, nor would they come from above the fort. You needed to come dead on at the gate, where all the wooded openings were. B and David put sharp sticks at all the entrances; the point was warning: if they could slow you, you might give up. David mentioned a few times how easy it would be to just walk in. Yet there was only one entrance, via hopping on a log setting in a small stream, just a skip away from where the dog breathed its last breath. You could come up the traditional routes, but it would be tough.
They stopped. Not because they were done … because they heard sounds coming from beneath the bridge; the sound of the triad dragons forming up. B made his intentions simple. “I’m going down there.”
“We have a stupid fort, but I’m not dying today.”
“Then leave,” and for a moment, in David’s eyes, B saw the scared boy he had knocked senseless, the kid who took a good right hook while trying to be popular. In many ways, B still hated David, even though he struck the blow.
He continued walking, not because he was curious or angered. It wasn’t that he wanted to get beat up; he just had to see them, because the poetry of war called for it. There would be battles, or so he thought.
In ten seconds, he was half way, David on his heels.
“You are crazy! What do you think they’re gonna’ do? They kill people.”
“They don’t kill people,” he responded, getting a view of the railroad tracks at the same time. They approached the gang, who were standing in a circle, smoke rising into the air. B could smell the cheap cigarettes, and other things, the kind of drugs his mother once smoked.
“Please!” David whispered. “Please, bro, I don’t want a friend to die today.”
“I thought you hated me, like the other kids.”
“No one hates you; even if they did, what’s the point in going down there?”
“I am not sure; I just have to.” A small trail cut downward toward the railroad tracks, through brush. “It’s our fort.”
“It’s just a stupid—“ and David stopped in his tracks, looking toward the three triad dragons walking their way. The look in his eyes was one of fear coupled with anger; combined, they made him take a few quick steps back.
“Go back to the fort,” said B, “just go now.”
David turned back, and in his rush to run back to the fortress he tripped on a rock. B heard him curse. David wiped the blood off his chin, sprinting away to the fort. For some reason, B thought that was the safest place to be, but not the place for him.
“Hiyo, Silver.” The triad dragons all had shaved heads, reminiscent of Neo-Nazis, or so was B’s first thought. There were a few Asians, a few blacks, a few whites, one so far away that he looked latino to B, or perhaps another white kid. “Kid, you think this is a fun place to hang out? Wait to you get a load of us.” He saw the blade out; another had a baseball bat; the rest appeared unarmed, or at least didn’t have weapons in their hands. They had no competition: B knew of no other gangs except on the west side of the city.
“Hi.”
“Uh, hi ain’t gonna cut it,” said one, who appeared to be the leader. His switchblade reminded B he had one too, but there was no way to beat them. That wasn’t the plan.
An Asian he remembered: this boy used to hang out with his brother, Peter, who had been, it was said by his mom and his unruly father, wild. The wildness of this triad dragon stood out. Something changed in his eyes; the switchblade pulled back; the triad dragon gave a good look to B. “You gotta be kiddin’! That you, little B?”
His brother had given him the name, saying that it was the first letter Bill could say, the first letter he could write down legibly. “Ya,” and he felt a series of emotions over him: missed his brother; missed the life he once had; missed having real friends before it all stopped. “Ya, I’m B.”
“Dude, you were this small,” he said, holding his hand to his waist, “The last time I saw you. This small!”
“I guess growing happens to all of us.”
“Right, you don’t remember me, do you?”
“No.”
“Mike Tran.”
“Mike Tran,” B said, repeating it to himself.
“What, you like the name?”
“I remember it. My brother sat next to you in middle school; you got into a fight with him.”
“Girls, my man, girls got in the way.” Mike stepped forward, his eyes locking with B’s. Perhaps he saw something there that no one else could, for he said a few words that made B look down. “I remember why he left: the boyfriend.”
“The boyfriend.”
“Steve was his name.”
“Steve is his name.”
“Right.” Mike nodded to his fellow triad dragons, walking back with B toward the dirt path away from the railroad tracks. “This isn’t a good place to be.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“See that, but it’s still not smart. These guys are cool, I’m with ‘em, get me, but not forever.”
“I get it.” He wiped a stand of hair from his eyes, looking right into Mike’s. “I need a favor.”
“Ask it.”
“I built a fort over on the slope.”
“A fort?”
“A fort. And I want to be able to go there.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” B responded, looking down. “I don’t know.”
B followed Mike’s eyes toward the switchblade in his pocket, too big really to be hidden forever, and he thought it was early on to show he was armed.
“You ever play golf, B?”
“Hate it.”
“Stay here.” Mike walked pack to the pack of gang members, taking a drag on a cigarette or something quite like a cigarette; then he grabbed a long metal rod, which, when B saw more of, turned out to be a golf club.
When Mike Tran was back, he handed the club over to B. “Don’t just swing, they say, swing hard. Now that switch’ is nice, sure, but you don’t want to kill the guy. You want to beat on ‘em; even we don’t kill; we just beat up; it’s a fine art.”
“My brother … did he try to kill him?”
“I’m not sure; if he did, he failed.” Mike pulled out a pack of cigarettes, a set of matches, and a piece of paper. “Now, this isn’t gonna’ go down. You don’t go out there and attack him. You call me, see, call me before you do a single thing. Then, we handle it. Only use the golf club if you have to … only.”
The paper went into B’s hands, the golf club he held tight, his eyes staying lowered to the ground. He nodded, mumbled a thank-you, and walked back to the fort. David, actually, was sitting in the most defensible spot, the place where no one could get; it was like a keep with solid trees covering all the angles, and the loads of stones easy to throw. A good defense/means offense/and offense/means attack. They didn’t speak.
#
The car was parked not too far away, a beacon in the darkness as nothing else seemed moving. Its lights were on; its passenger smoked a cigarette, the window letting in the cool air, which mingled with the smoke only to be pushed back by heavy breathing. It was as if B could feel Steve’s presence. The big, bulky 300 pounder could easily take on B anytime he wanted. For some reason he never touched him; maybe he saw something else in B’s eyes … a warning. The fort was the beginning, a small book written down, a few poems scribbled while hiding there. There was more to the poems, more to the fort, than B could ever quite understand. It seemed to be his last stand against the world. A pen in his hand, sitting in his room with the lights dimmed and the pages ready for action … no one could touch him. It wasn’t the last stand; it wouldn’t be; it couldn’t be.
He heard his mom on the phone downstairs, chatting with someone about how Steve was stalking her. Her emotions were high, her voices being sent up the stairs.
“I won’t call the police, okay, so just stop … No, I am not going to. I don’t need to tell you why.” There was a pause. B wasn’t sure whether it was grandma or Christine, whether someone was trying to talk sense in his mom. It didn’t matter.
He was upstairs, thinking of the fort, writing down verse, when it all began. He sat there, looking out the window toward chaos, his fingers tight on the golf club.
“He is crazy, all right! I admit it! Just leave me alone, I wish you all would just leave me alone—“and the phone slammed on the wooden dining room table, the sob of mom being broken. He tightened his fingers around the golf club, sat up, and did exactly what Mike had told him not to.
Going down the stairs was the hard part—sneaking past his mom’s eyes, not surprising her, and she was scared, and she would hear him, stop him. Walking out the door turned out to be easy. B ran toward the car, its front lights striking his eyes. Hitting the windshield with a seven iron golf club, specially made for pounding people, places, and things, was easy.
FIN
