"That sucks," Timmy spat. "What's the big deal?" Barry shrugged.
Timmy felt his summer slipping away, and it angered him.
"Where are we supposed to hang out instead?"
"The dump?" Doug suggested. "Or over in Bowman's Woods? I bet Mr. Bowman wouldn't care. Or Mr. Jones's pond?"
"No way." Timmy slid off his bike and flicked a bug off the front mag wheel. "Only thing we can do at the pond is fish. We can' t swim in it with all those snapping turtles and water snakes." He shuddered at the mere thought of snakes, then continued. "And too many other people go through Bowman 's Woodshunters, hikers, older kids. Besides, it 's too far to go every day. The Dugout is right here. We're just going to abandon it?"
"We could build a new one. A better fort." Doug segued into the introduction from The Six Million Dollar Man.
"We can rebuild it. We can make it better than it was before. Better. Stronger. Fas "
"Shut up," Barry said, rolling his eyes. "Retard." Doug pouted. "Then how about a tree house?"
Timmy scoffed. "A tree house? Get real, man. Those are for pussies. It' s too easy for other kids to raid. You guys want Ronny, Jason, and Steve stealing our stuff when we 're not around?"
Ronny Nace, Jason Glatfelter, and Steve Laughman, each a year older and a grade higher than the boys, were the town bulliesand their sworn enemies. They lived beyond the Jones farm, along Route 116, but often road their bikes up the hill and into Timmy, Doug, and Barry ' s territory. Presently, an uneasy truce existed between the two trios, but all of them knew that before the summer was over, because of slights real or imagined, a new war would break out. The last time, it had been because Ronny and Jason had thrown rocks at Doug and called him fat boy when he rode by their homes on his way to the Colonial Valley Flea Market.
The time before that, it had started because Barry shot Steve in the butt with his BB gun.
Although none of the boys would have admitted it out loud, they looked forward to the yearly wars. The familiarity was comforting.
Barry wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. "Look. If we're inside the Dugout, then my dad can't see us, anyway. He'll never even know that we' re over here. I don
't see the point in moving. And besides, when we sneak out at night, it ain't like nobody knows. We can play over here then."
All three of them were experts at sneaking out, crawling through their bedroom windows after their parents had gone to sleep and getting into midnight mischief; or at least Barry and Timmy were. Doug often used the front door rather than the window, since his mother never seemed to care if he was home or not. Agreeing that Barry was right, they turned toward more pressing matters. Timmy decided to keep quiet about the fact that his grandfather was aware of the Dugout 's existence. He wasn't sure how the guys would react.
"Is that the map?" Barry asked, pointing at the tube in Doug's hands. "You done with it?
Grinning proudly, Doug nodded.
"Let's see it."
Doug glanced around furtively, as if expecting Barry's father, or perhaps one of their archenemies, to be lurking behind a tombstone.
"Let's take it to the Dugout first. Safer there." With Barry perched atop Timmy' s handlebars, they rode over to the fort, and stowed their bikes in the tall weeds, obscuring them from view. They made sure no one was in sight, and then pulled up the trapdoor, quickly climbing down the ladder and disappearing into the hole. Once they were settled, Timmy pulled the trapdoor shut, plunging them into darkness. Barry clicked on the flashlight and shined the beam around until Timmy struck a match and lit the rusty kerosene lamp they ' d salvaged from the dump. The soft glow filled the underground space, flickering off the moldering centerfolds of naked women and posters torn from the pages of Fangoria and Heavy Metal hanging from the tancolored wood paneling, which had been rescued from the dump and pinned to the soil with twelvepenny nails, clothesline, and generous amounts of duct tape. (The most important thing that Timmy's father had ever taught him was that duct tape could be used for anythingfrom battlefield triage to plumbing to hanging pictures.) Doug moved a stack of comic books, Hustler, and Cracked magazines off the card table and pulled the cap off the plastic tube, while Timmy and Barry fished cans of Pepsi out of an old Styrofoam cooler. With something bordering on reverence, Doug took out the map, unrolled it, and spread it across the table.
"Wow," Timmy exclaimed after a moment's pause. Barry whistled in appreciation.
"You guys like it?"
"Totally." Barry's attention was glued to the map.
"You did good, man." Timmy clapped Doug on the back. "It's amazing." Spread out before them was a scale depiction of their world, their domain. Doug had captured everything in loving detaiclass="underline" their homes and the roads between them, the surrounding forests, the cemetery, the homes of their enemies, and the location of the Dugout. The area devoted to Bowman's Woods was filled with handdrawn trees, each one meticulously rendered. The graveyard had hundreds of tiny tombstones. Catcher's driveway had an illustration of a growling dog along with the words, Here There Be Monsters.
"How long did this take you?" Barry asked. "You must have worked on it, like, forever." Smiling, Doug shrugged. "It was easy. I did a lot at night, after my mom had gone to sleep or was watching TV. I stayed up late. It was fun. Used a whole box of colored pencils." Timmy's eyes shone. "This is so cool. We can mark off stuff as we discover it. And you even left room around the edges."
"Yeah. I figured when we explore those places, we can add it to the map." Timmy's index finger traced the roads. "Cool. You even added Ronny, Jason, and Steve's forts."
"The one's we know about, at least."
"We can use this to plan our strategy before we raid them. Make sure we have escape routes and stuff like that."
"That's what I figured," Doug agreed. "We can hang it up, and you can mark stuff on it, just like a real general would."
Timmy smiled. "General Graco. I like the sound of that."
"How come you get to be the general?" Barry flicked Timmy's ear with his thumb and index finger. "I didn't vote for you."
"You don't vote for generals," Doug said.
"Yeah, well, I outrank you, even if Timmy's the general."
"No way."
Timmy turned their attention back to the map. "Hey, we could even"
"Listen," Barry whispered, interrupting. "You guys hear that?"
"What?" Doug asked.
They tilted their heads upward, straining to listen.
"Timmmmmyyyyyyy!"
The voice was faint, but drawing closer. It was his mother.
"Timmy? Where are you?"
"Oh, man," Timmy moaned, "if she finds out about this place, she'll never let me play here again."
Barry rolled up the map. "Why not?"
"Because she'll freak out and worry that it will collapse on us or something."
"What do you think she wants?" Barry stuffed the map back in its protective tube.
"It ain't lunch time."
"Probably wants me to help my dad. Let's just stay down here till she's gone."
"Timmmmyyyy? Timmy, answer me!"
Barry slapped his forehead. "Oh shit. The bikes are up there, man. If she sees them, she'll know we're around here somewhere."
"So? We're underground. She can't find us."
"Yeah, but if she's looking in this spot, she might notice the stovepipe, and figure it out."
"Shit. You're right." Timmy thought of his grandfather. The stovepipe had given the fort's location away to him as well.
Quickly, they blew out the lantern and clambered up the ladder again, scrambling for the bikes. Timmy's mother stood about fifty yards away on the cemetery' s lower road. Her back was turned to them as they approached. She called out again, hands cupped around her mouth.