The Last Stand of Daronwy (28 page)

Many of the boys had arrived. Jeremy used the blocks and pipes to make three levers to help lift the tree. “Make sure your pipe is really under the log, like this.” Jeremy worked a pipe beneath the log so that it rested on the cinderblock.

Loren nodded. “Nice. Let's get a couple of people on the pipes, and the rest of us will lift it up and push it into place. Good thinking, Mr. J.” He walked to the boom box. “I brought some music to help us out.” He pushed play on the tape deck and the fastest music Jeremy had ever heard resounded through Twin Hills.

“What is that?”

“Metallica, dude.
Ride the Lightning
.”

“On three,” said Loren. Everyone took their positions. “One… two… three!”

Straining, they lifted the tree almost a foot. Jeremy stood between Mira and Daniel, their hands flat against the log. “Push! Push it up!”

With an aching lethargy, the massive trunk edged atop the larger log. It rolled into place.

“Lee! Now!”

Lee and Marcus swept along the log, hammering the two-by-fours into place to keep the wall upright.

The two logs made the wall as tall as Jeremy. Loren raised his hands. “Rad! That's what I'm talking about!” Loren high-fived everyone.

Daniel beamed. He pointed at the cinderblocks. “Let's move the blocks and do the next one.”

As the sun set, the wall stood about five feet high in most places. It extended from the edge of Helter Skelter, running past the twin hills, along the pond, and ended near the Street Swamp.

“This is incredible,” Daniel said, staring at it.

“Yeah, it's a good start. Tomorrow, we need to make it higher, nail on the plywood, and start spray painting.”

“I want to get Roland's three-wheeler and put more logs here and there.” Loren pointed at the places the wall crossed the existing trails. “That's where they'll drive up to it. So it needs to be stronger there.”

Jeremy nodded. “Good idea.”

Loren called to the knot of boys drifting toward the street. “Hey, y'all. I better see you out here tomorrow. If I don't, I'm coming looking for you, got it?”

Everyone was there the next morning. Loren proved to be worse at driving the three-wheeler than Roland. He broke several ropes, and threw himself over the handlebars twice before he pulled down his first log. But they managed to triple the logs where the wall crossed the trails. They hammered in plywood against the tree trunks. Jeremy and Daniel crafted long braces using two-by-fours and branches, and braced the wall with them, burying their ends in the sand of the Mini Desert.

“Ow.” Mira shook her hands out. “I think I'm getting blisters.”

“Here.” Jeremy picked up her hammer and nailed the plywood into place.

“You don't have any blisters?”

Jeremy opened his hands to reveal the red welts across his palm. “Mine don't hurt, though,” he lied.

Loren flipped the Metallica tape over for the hundredth time. “I should have brought my Cyndi Lauper tape,” Mira said.

Jeremy laughed. He nodded down the wall. “They're spray painting down there. That won't hurt your hands.” Jeremy finished nailing the last sections of plywood alone. Mira ran to him, bringing him a spray can.

Jeremy stepped back, looked at the long, snaking line of the wall. It was taller than Loren now, seven or eight feet high. He wrote, “This is OUR woods. Keep Out!” He handed the can back to Mira, who wrote, “Bulldozers: go home!” Jeremy walked the length of it, watching the boys laughing as they wrote slogans along the wall. Some rode on each other's shoulders, painting the higher parts.

“Mr. J, get down here!”

Jeremy, Daniel, and Mira walked to Kelly, Loren, and Paul. They stood near the center of the wall, next to the pond. Loren held the “No Trespassing” sign that Mira had pulled down. “Time to put the finishing touch on this thing. Grab a hammer and some nails.”

Loren and Paul each took a foot, lifting Jeremy high. Mira climbed on her sister's shoulders and held the sign in place while Jeremy nailed it. In the center of the wall, the “No Trespassing” sign stood out, its stark red letters spelling out their intention.

“Looks good,” said Paul.

“I think we've done it.” Loren stretched his arms. “Dude, I feel like I've been at practice for three days straight.”

Jeremy stretched and crossed his arms. “Me too.”

Daniel wiped sweat from his forehead. “I'm exhausted, but I think we're done.”

“Yeah. I don't think I could pick up another hammer if I wanted to,” Paul said. “Daniel, I'm gonna head home.”

“Hey, Kelly. Do you want to come play some Atari?” Loren asked.

Kelly turned. “Mira! Grab Loren's boom box when you come in. And get me before you go home ‘cause you know mom's gonna have a conniption if we don't come home together!”

Mira rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay!”

They walked away, leaving Mira, Daniel, and Jeremy.

“What happens if they just bulldoze the wall too?” Mira asked

“Then it's a new beginning.” Daniel said, catching Jeremy's eye.

Jeremy glanced at the sign above them. “Then at least we went out with a fight. Help me pick up some of these tools.”

They walked the length of the wall, picking up tools and the boom box. They brought it to Loren's, where he and Kelly were yelling at each other over a game of
Space Invaders
. Daniel pedaled home to ask his mom if he could spend the night at Jeremy's. Mira sat with Jeremy on his driveway, watching the shadows try to find a place to hide in the obliterated waste that was once Helter Skelter.

“Hey.” She took Jeremy's hand, weaving her fingers through his. “I'm really sorry about Josh hitting you.”

“It's okay. I forgot about it after my eye healed.”

“I told him it was stupid. And I broke up with him.”

“You did?” Jeremy looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. Her hands were blistered, her ponytail had come partially undone, dirt stained her forehead. Her eyes stared out in the distance, as if looking into the other side of the shadows. This was the Mira he knew.

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“No, I should have done it sooner. What's cool was when you convinced everyone to build the wall.”

Jeremy shook his head. “I didn't know what to say at first. But when you came up the tree with the sign, it hit me. Thanks for pulling that sign down. How'd you do that? It was pretty high up.”

“I stood on Kelly's shoulders. Cheerleader-style, you know.”

She pulled him closer. Electricity arced through his body. The soreness in his muscles vanished. When she spoke, her voice was soft. He had to lean close to hear. “Do you remember that night we went to find the Old Man?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think that thing was?”

“I don't know.” Jeremy could almost hear those footsteps again, and his scars bit into his back with frozen teeth. He thought of the gorilla in the other world.

“You saw it too, right? Standing by the pond, and it looked at us…” She shuddered, and pressed her shoulder against his.

“Yeah.” He gazed into the shadows across the street.

“I wanted to believe I had made it up. I was so mad at you. But it was really my fault we were out there.”

“It's okay.”

They both stared into the darkness across the street. “What do you think will happen to it if they bulldoze all of Twin Hills? If it doesn't have the woods to live in, where will that thing go?”

He had never thought about that. “I guess it'll move to a new woods, farther away from people.”

“I hope so.” She squeezed his hand and brought his eyes back to hers. “I was… um… I don't think I ever told you. But I was really glad you were there.”

“Thanks, I was too… ”

She cocked her head to the side, her eyes softened, and her lips came forward, as though she were going to say something, but didn't. Jeremy's insides quivered. He didn't know how to do this, but it felt right. He pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and leaned across that tiny distance between them. His lips pressed against hers. Firm, yet soft; dry, yet moist. He balanced against her lips for an eternal second. He could feel her chest rise and fall, he could taste the salt of her sweat. His heart exploded into shimmering fireworks.

He leaned away, just an inch.

Mira's eyes opened. She touched her lips with her free hand, then touched his. Her eyes shone with a brilliance he'd never seen.

“I… I've never kissed a boy. You know, like my dad, but not like… like for real.”

“Me either.”

Her head cocked, then she laughed. “I hope not…”

“I mean…” But then her contagious laughter caught him.

“What's so funny, you two?” Kelly crossed Jeremy's yard. Jeremy's face flushed beet-red and their hands separated like two beads of mercury.

“Nothing,” said Mira, flashing a conspiring smile at Jeremy.

“C'mon, Mira. Let's go home.”

Mira winked at him in the half shadow and followed her sister inside.

Jeremy could still feel the soft pressure of her lips on his. His heart soared over the bulldozers, the pond, the wall, the Tree; up and up to dart among the stars and distant worlds.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The bulldozers were still asleep when Jeremy joined the others at the bus stop on Monday. They compared blisters on their hands and listened as Loren exaggerated his trials with the three-wheeler to Roland.

School ticked by, each minute more infinite than the last. Jeremy kept taking surreptitious glances out the windows, wondering if the wall still stood. For recess, they stayed in the gym. At lunch, the light never went to green. When the final bell rang, he was the first person on the bus. Daniel and Mira crammed into the seat, asking the same question: was the wall still there? The ancient diesel engine rumbled to life, and the bus trundled away from the school. As it drove down the street, the smell of smoke still hung in the air, but not as much as last week.

The minute Mira's feet hit the ground, she sprinted for the wall. Jeremy struggled to keep up with her. They rounded the remaining clump of trees in the bike trails and saw their wall, still standing along the edge of the pond. Daniel was there with Paul and Marcus on the other side of the pond, waving.

Mira caught Jeremy's hands, dancing in a circle. “I told you it would still be here. I told you!” They walked behind the wall and looked at the supports. The joists stood, the entire structure looked as intact as it had on Saturday. They wandered back home. For the rest of the week, the wall stood. People stopped checking on it. Loren started saying that they had won against the bulldozers. Jeremy went out daily, hunting farther and farther afield to find more branches and trash to use for braces. He wandered through what remained of Helter Skelter, looking for the giant hill of trash, hoping to dismantle it and pile it against the wall. He walked back and forth through the dark thicket that remained, but could not find it. He stepped out of Helter Skelter and realized he could see the wall from there. They had taken down more trees. They had probably flattened the hill too. They weren't stopping. But they were staying away from the wall. Jeremy walked toward the bulldozer.

The dingy yellow bulldozer loomed over him; its tread came up to his chest. Jeremy's eyes followed the hoses that connected the exposed engine to the hydraulics that worked the blade. It wouldn't take long to cut the hoses. He fingered the Swiss army knife in his pocket. No one was out. He could cut them. But would it be right?

It wasn't right that they were destroying all of Twin Hills. But the wall had held so far. He shoved his hands into his pockets and crossed the wasteland to the Tree. He climbed up the trunk and looked down at the trampled clearing. Hammers and nails and crowbars were still stashed here, along with some of the wood they hadn't used yet. He sighed, closing his eyes.

A warmth enveloped him, spiraling up from the Tree. He relaxed, letting his mind wander, watching the black slate behind his eyes. His thoughts calmed into a tranquil pool at his center and his breath deepened. The presence was there. He could feel it all around him now, as though he stood in the midst of a crowd.

Hello.
He wrote the word across the black chalkboard in his mind.

Welcome, Zhak-im-eya
.

Huh? I'm Jeremy.

You are the one who hears
.

Are you angels?

We all are angels trapped in these corporeal forms. What you call an angel is simply one freed from the thick bonds of the self
.

Are you God?

No
.

Well then tell God—no, ask God—to protect this wood.

We have
.

Well, ask more. God, please protect this wood, protect this tree, protect all these trees. Help our wall to stand. Help it spark some idea in these people and make them stop destroying Twin Hills.

Warmth exuded from the tree. It wrapped him in a circling wind and brushed away his worries. He heard music: a soft tinkling music like the whispers of bells and the afterthought of birdsong. It sang of towering redwoods on craggy coasts, of tangled cypresses in dank swamps, and all things between.

The scars on his back went cold.

He tried to hold on to the music, the voice, the song, but it slipped through his fingers like sand.

This is the music of the wind. Remember it, always
.

Jeremy shivered, opening his eyes. He tried to rub the tingling pain out of the scars on his back, but couldn't reach them.

The week before Christmas break, Mira and Jeremy were talking on the bus as it rumbled home from school. The moment they turned on the street, Jeremy stopped talking and sat forward. The soot fell so thick that the bus driver had to turn on the windshield wipers. Choking smoke wormed its way in through the windows. It covered the street and the driver slowed, unable to see more than a few feet. Jeremy squeezed the back of the seat in front of him until his knuckles went white. His throat burned. The minute the bus stopped, he leapt out and sprinted through the smoke across Twin Hills, tripping in the massive ruts left by the bulldozers. A mound of dirt sat on the edge of the pond, obscuring the tar pit. The trees along the backside of the pond were gone.

Most of the wall still stood, a shadow in the murk. But the eastern edge, the part nearest the twin hills, was flattened. The twin hills themselves were gone, leaving only bulldozer tracks. Fifty yards behind where they should have been was another burn pile. This was where most of the smoke came from. Jeremy ran to it, as though he could somehow save them, but the ferocity of the heat turned him back. He doubled over, coughing.

He returned to the wall. The logs they had staked into place had disappeared. Most of the plywood had been broken into chips small enough to put in a hamster cage. Part of the thicket that housed the Tree was gone, but the Tree itself was intact. His eyes stung, watering. He wiped them on the back of his jacket sleeve.

“Jeremy?”

“Over here!”

Mira and Daniel emerged out of the smoke. “Did they take down the wall?”

He glanced at Mira. “No. Not all of it.”

“Are you okay?”

Jeremy shook his head.

Daniel squinted into the smoke. “The twin hills are gone?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we going to do?”

Jeremy picked up a piece of plywood out of the chewed dirt. “I don't know.” He set it against the remaining wall. “I don't know. I have to get out of here.” He coughed again.

Mira and Jeremy walked back to their houses. She tried to hold his hand. He didn't want to hold hands. He wanted to hit something.

“It's going to be all right. You did everything you could.”

Jeremy glanced from her to the bulldozers. “No, I haven't. Not yet.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

She looked at the yellow beasts. “Jeremy, please don't.”

“Why not?” They kept walking.

“I… I…” Mira sighed, looking at him again. “I just…” Her eyes held the same fear he'd seen in her garage after hunting the Old Man.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Don't worry. I'll see you tomorrow.”

She nodded, half frowning. “Jeremy!”

He turned. “Yeah?”

“Be careful.”