The Time Keepers

Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30 Long Island, 1979

B UDDY, AN ONLY CHILD, HAD SPENT COUNTLESS HOURS WONDERING what it would be like to have a band of brothers to bond with. He glorified the masculine energy he searched for in his Soldiers of Fortune magazines, the war movies he absorbed on the television.

So, four days after school had ended, while most of the families in Bellegrove were spending their summer days ferrying their children into their spacious American cars to the beaches or pool clubs, toting picnic baskets packed with tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches and thermoses of sweetened iced tea, Buddy began seeking other ways to pass time. He found himself up to no good, stealing pen knives and packages of gum, even the odd cigarette pack from the five-and-dime store next to Kepler’s Market. His partner in crime was Clayton Mavis, Bellegrove’s new kid, who had arrived mid–school year from East Texas after his father was transferred for his job in the oil business and found East Coast suburban life just as stifling as Buddy did. Although Clayton had regaled him with stories of shooting beer cans and squirrels with a hunting rifle, Buddy had piqued his new friend’s interest by suggesting they build a fortress-style bunker in the old woods near the reservoir, an idea that he had been contemplating for some time.

Just the thought of it enthralled Buddy. A place to call his own, one constructed with his two bare hands. A refuge far away from his overbearing mother. He first imagined it one afternoon as he lay in his bedroom. The sound of his mother vacuuming downstairs, the motor churning as she thrust all her energy into long angry strokes against the carpet. Adele had caught him eating potato chips in the living room and had unleashed a torrent of fury on him. “We eat in the kitchen in this house, young man! WE EAT IN THE KITCHEN!” Appearances were everything to his mother. She had lost her brother in the war, but she would now make her parents proud by being the pinnacle of perfection. Adele maintained the polished appearance of every room in the house with enviable vigor. From the moment his mother woke up each day, she had a rigid order she adhered to: she put on her makeup, zipped herself into a freshly washed dress (she loathed those women who spent the morning in their bathrobes), made breakfast for her husband and son, and then set out to make sure her home on Byron Lane gleamed from the inside out. Even the flowerpots by the front door were bursting with a rotation of flowers during the different seasons, and the porch swing was painted a sunny yellow.

Buddy often wondered what her friends at her church meetings would think about his mother if they saw how she transformed from her paper doll perfection into a tomato red–faced harpy who screamed at him behind closed doors. The sound of Adele’s shrill voice radiated in his ears, and Buddy often felt a rage boil inside of him that he had to struggle to control. When he was little, she was always quick to defend him in public, but once she returned home, her maternal affection vanished. She never hit him. But she often said things that he knew would shock her close-knit circle of friends. His father, who traveled most of the week and was rarely at home, seemed to enjoy the tight ship his mother maintained.

That afternoon, when the idea of the fort first came to him, she had berated him over and over again, her eyes bulging from her head, her hand shaking the vacuum hose in his direction as if it were a dangerous weapon. Buddy escaped her ire by storming up the stairs to his bedroom. He slammed the door shut and flung himself on his bed.

Even his room didn’t feel like his own. Adele had entered it while he had been out with Clayton and “sanitized” it, as she liked to say whenever she routinely invaded his space. She went through his desk drawers, collected all the stray pencils, and lined them up in neat little rows. She had taken his past issues of Soldier of Fortune magazine and stacked them in tall piles all in chronological order. She had even made his bed when he purposefully had left it unmade.

It even smelled differently. The scent of lemony disinfectant floated through the air, an aroma that he despised. He didn’t understand why she hated the smell of gym socks so much; to him it was a comforting odor, like his favorite bologna-and-American-cheese sandwiches.

Buddy flipped off his shoes and let each one fall to the ground with a thud. He reached over, turned the radio on the loudest volume, and stared at the ceiling.

The idea of the fort came to him instinctively. He hated being alone in the house with his mother. Within seconds he had devised a plan. He would tell his mother he was at Clayton’s so he could spend a few hours each day constructing the fort. He was sure his new friend would relish the opportunity. Still new to the town, Clayton was disappointed none of the kids owned a gun in Bellegrove and bemoaned how his recreational activities had become severely diminished.

Buddy was drawn to the outlaw-like quality of his new pal, and now he at least had someone to hang out with after school. The fortress would be a project they could labor over together and work up a real man’s sweat for. He imagined it might have been something his uncle had even done in Vietnam, constructing a camouflaged hideout from which to scope out the enemy.

The woods behind the reservoir were thick with tall pine and balsam trees, pin oaks and juniper bushes. He and Clayton would harvest fallen sticks and branches and create a foundation they would build upward, layer by layer. They would use whatever they could find. They would use ingenuity and strength, just like his Soldiers of Fortune magazines touted on their covers. He felt the idea was a way of channeling his uncle, a man who he had never met, but to whom every pewter framed portrait in his home was buffed and polished lovingly by his mother. Dressed in his uniform, his face staring nobly from behind the glass.