The Cable Spool Fort
         by Bill Glover
         "Hey, Roy?" 
         "What?" 
         "You suck." Chad said. He wished Roy wouldn't fall for that gag every time, "get me a big rock, Roy." Roy stooped to pick up a big, white caliche rock that looked like a dirty lump of chalk and handed it to Chad. Chad took the rock with disgust as Roy returned to staring at his shoes. Chad was six, and at eight Roy should have been teasing or ordering Chad around or something. But since his fall the year before, Roy had been shuffling and doing what he was told. Chad strained and pounded the rock into the iron hole until he could smell the dust. It smelled like first grade. He wished he were there now, even if he did have to sit next to Roy. The rock was too big to fit into the iron hub of the big cable spool, so Chad leaned it against the tumbleweed and slid down off the splintery wood on his belly to admire his handiwork. 
         The fort was a lone, wooden cable spool like a tall barrel with thick disks on its ends, each the size of a dinner table. Several boards were missing, making a door to the small room inside. The tall tumbleweed flag marked it as Chad's to defend now. He looked around, trying not to seem nervous. 
         The sky met the flat ground in all directions on the other side of the chain link fence. Chad checked the other fort out of the corner of his eye. Two forts stood on the playground, and a hot, bare battlefield separated them. A massive, rusted A-frame swing marked the border though nobody was swinging in the hot sun. The larger of the two forts was a squat black bunker made of tires, two big tractor tires capped with one from a truck and two smaller ones from cars. The older boys lay around in shade and napped inside the walls. They were watching now from well defended spy holes, or maybe they were performing secret experiments and swearing bloody oaths. Chad wished he were old enough to be one of them. Maybe Tucker would let him in after he saw Chad wasn't chicken. 
         "You wanna play robots?" Roy asked. Chad felt his heart beat a little faster and his cheeks burned. He had invented the "robots" game to make fun of Roy, but Roy had never figured that out either. It was Roy's favorite game. 
         "No, go get some stickers." Roy shuffled off without argument, his baseball cap pulled low to cover his bald head and brain plug and his shoe laces untied. Roy had taught him to tie his shoes when Chad was five. He thought about gathering stickers himself. Roy was too slow, but he didn't dare step away from his fort. He took another careful look over his shoulder and bent to pluck a yucca spear as if that were what drew his interest. The long blade of the yucca had a sharp tip, but the only weapons allowed according to Humpty Dumpty Nursery rules of engagement were smelly thistles or cocklebur stems covered with spiked yellow stickers. The tiny barbs hurt, but nobody was allowed to beat you up if you just used stickers. The hot August sun was settling toward the time that Mrs. Rayburn would bring the milk tray out of the cinder block building where the toddlers and babies were kept. The older boys wouldn't wait much longer before attacking. 
         Meanwhile Roy stalked around the fence edge bending to pick cockleburs as he went. Every move Roy made since the accident was smooth and sudden and strange -- like a remote control boy. When he saw Roy in the hospital with a shaved head and the small silver plug at the back of his noggin like a bottle cap, Chad had called him, "Remote Control Boy." Momma had smacked Chad for saying it which hurt, and then she had cried, which was worse. Pop had given Chad the sideways glance that promised hard labor when they made it home. Chad just hung his head. He knew it was too late to explain that he was trying to get a smile out of Roy. 
         Pop said, "The doctors have put something very special in Roy's brain. It's something they made for soldiers and astronauts and it's going to help Roy walk and talk to us again." Pop put a hand on Roy's shoulder. "How are you feeling, Roy?" Pop spoke slowly and Chad knew that he must have been practicing this with Roy. They all stood around while the doctor made Roy shake and jerk and moan with a sick sound. But the thing in his head hadn't worked yet because of something having to do with the, "electric toads," which wouldn't, "sit up." Roy didn't really start talking for days and didn't walk until a long time after that. Now, this year, Roy was in the same grade as Chad, and it was embarrassing. 
         Roy stepped around the edge of the building and out of sight. Just then Tucker Williams came climbing out of the top of the black fort like a gold headed monster. Tucker was big, even for a third grader, and he was not quite right in a different way than Roy. Tucker was the oldest boy in the playground, and the one who decided the rules of the game. 
         "Time out!" Chad called, "We're not ready yet." 
         "No time outs!" Tucker shouted and continued to climb down the tires. Several more boys spewed out after him. 
         "Roy!" Chad called, but his voice would only whisper. He didn't want to be a crybaby, Tucker hated crybabies. The rules of the game were that Chad had to keep everyone away from his fort and away from his tumbleweed flag. From painful experience, he knew it wasn't going to be as easy as just pretending he was too slow or too weak to do anything. Tucker liked to hit and he liked to see blood. Going down too easy would only make him mad, so Chad reached behind him to grab the five stickers he had managed to collect before the start of the game and readied himself. 
         The boys came in quick from all sides, knocking Chad down, but he managed to roll to his feet and get one sticker off into a boy's arm before being knocked down again. 
         "Baby!" Tucker was standing over him with the huge tumbleweed held high in the sun. "Penis! You didn't fight!" 
         Chad tried to tell his arms to lift him and let him reach for the tumbleweed to prove he wasn't a baby to Tucker. But as much as he wanted to appease the scary, staring, angry boy, he couldn't move for fear of what was coming next. 
         "I'll make you fight." Tucker leaned in low and his breath was sour as it blew in Chad's face. "I'm gonna take the plug out." Then Tucker's face became serious. The awesomeness of what he intended pulling his eyes wider still. From his pocket he pulled a small screwdriver, perfect for prying plugs from boy's heads. 
         Now Chad's legs and arms and mouth worked, and he was up and running and screaming, "Roy, go inside! Roy!" He sprinted for the corner of the building around which Roy had disappeared. The door was on that side and Mrs. Rayburn. Just then a horrible pain stung Chad's cheek and neck and ear. The tumbleweed's yellow thorned branches scratched around him as it dug into his face. Tucker made a grab for him but missed it, and Chad heard his shirt rip a little. He ran like only a small boy can run, but he was losing and he wished hard that he could fly. 
         "Roy!" Chad rounded the corner grabbing the cinder block to help him turn faster just as Tucker came down again with the tumbleweed from behind, and the world slowed almost to a stop. 
         Roy stood with the bill of his cap down. His head rose and his eyes focused over Chad's shoulder. Roy held stickers in his hand like flowers, but he bent looking down and snatched something from the ground. His hand blurred and snapped out as he stood back up. Something whined as it spun past Chad's ear, and he heard a sharp, meaty thunk just behind him. 
         Roy stood expressionless as ever as Chad turned to look. Tucker towered there with a surprised expression and crossed eyes, the tumbleweed in one hand and the screwdriver held up high in the other ready to stab down into Chad's back. A sharp, flat, flint rock split Tucker's forehead and was buried deep and solid like a part of a Halloween costume complete with a drop of blood just starting down toward his nose. 
         Tucker dropped down like a jacket from a hook. He lay folded over his own lap in a way that made Chad think of broken things. 
         "You ok?" It was Roy, and when Chad looked up there was something like his brother there around the eyes. 
         "Yeah." Chad stepped back away from Tucker's open-eyed face. "He was gonna take off your head plug." 
         "I thought he might stab you." Roy said and craned his neck forward to look at Tucker's face as the other boys began to crowd around at a respectful distance. "Do you think he's dead?" 
         Just then Tucker blinked and began to sob. "Nah." Chad said, "We're gonna be in trouble." 
         "Yeah." Roy said. Then he shrugged. Suddenly his blank face seemed like the face of a Play Force Soldier or a GI Joe. 
         "Hey, Roy?" 
         "What?" 
         "You suck." Chad finished the formula, but this time, he didn't mind that Roy fell for it. It was all right.