Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

Dad goes back to reading the plans.

Chuck goes on: “I think you should know…” He sighs. “I mean…I guess I’d want to know…if I was you…first of all, we didn’t…and it wasn’t something anyone…you know…what I mean is…” He screws up his face. “And whatever did …

you know…happen…it was my fault…Lisa, she didn’t…what I mean is…”

“It’s okay,” I finally say-putting myself out of my misery by holding my hands up. Christ, I’d rather he showed me pictures than leave all those unfinished sentences.

Then Chuck Stehne, Prince of Lumberland, nods, sighs again, and starts for his truck, although he still seems desperate to say… something. He pauses, then seems to think better of it, then gives a what-the-hell shrug, and finally says it: “I really do love her.”

There it is. My head falls to my chest.

“It wasn’t something…I mean, we weren’t…Anyway…” And then, when he has done all the damage one person could possibly do with nothing more than sighs, nods and stammering, unfinished thoughts, he starts for his truck again.

Then Chuck Stehne climbs into the cab of his flatbed truck, pulls the door shut, sits for a minute before starting it and-finally-pulls away. And I look up at our bedroom window, but all I get is a flat reflection of the gray sky.

“You gonna help or you just gonna stand there holding your dick?”

And so my father and I continue to build the base of Frontier Fort II. I get him some shoes and gloves. We saw some more posts, then lay two of them on the ground, four feet apart, and then we put two more on top of those, perpendicular to them, and two more on top of those.

I look up every few minutes, and once I catch Lisa in the window, staring down on us. I hold my hands up…in a double wave, or a sign of surrender. But she just backs away from the window. A few minutes later, the boys come out, in coats and hats and gloves. The door closes before I can catch Lisa’s eye.

“I thought you said this wood was a mistake,” Teddy says.

“Sometimes you just make the best of your mistakes,” I say, accidentally parenting.

“So…we can keep it?”

“Sure.”

“No way!” says Franklin, and he picks up one of the spikes and swings it like a sword.

The fort comes together pretty quickly. I’m surprised how often Dad refers to the plans as we work. At first I 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- pay attention to the goddamned instructions. Follow the rules, dipshit. I watch Dad drill 3/16-inch pilot holes, watch the way he eyes it and lines it up so the drill goes straight down through the base beams. He has Teddy hold a framing square on the base to make sure we’re at 90 degrees and then he has Franklin go get one of the six-inch spikes.

“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.