Chapter 4: Fort Pear

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     "I'm going over to the pear trees to build a fort with Keety," explains Beat, scarfing a hammer and saw from the aluminum tool shed as Beulah and Wiley watch, called over by the screetch of the sliding door. "You little kids stay here."

"We can help," Beulah offers while grabbing a handful of rusty nails from a hardware box in the corner. "We'll bring some wood from under the house and go get whatever you need."

"It's too dangerous," Beat persists despite four pleading eyes, "but you can feed the snappers while I'm gone."

"What do they eat?" queries Beulah, excited by the idea of taking care of the two humongous turtles in their blue plastic kiddie pool.

"Try anything - grass, lilacs, bees, worms, lettuce from the garden, bologna from the fridge, an apple," Beat instructs as she's heading across the yard. "Just don't let mom see you taking things."

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     The snapping turtles had arrived the previous day by bicycle messenger. Thirteen-year-old Blaine and a friend had caught them in the swimming hole below the spillway at Willows Pond in the neighboring town of Middlesex. The two boys were quite the sight riding the two miles home up Route 28 with Blaine on the seat holding out a squirming snapper by the tail in each hand as his friend steered while standing on the pedals.

     Arriving with tails intact and arms trembling from the weight, Blaine deposited them into the first available container, a new PVC kiddie pool Mr. Reed had just brought home for the little kids. Adding a few rocks and some water from the hose, Blaine built a turtle shelter that he promptly forgot, taking off on his bike again the next morning.

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     "Those Needers won't be able to get us up here," Beat calls down from a crook up among the white and pink flowers in the tallest of the old pear trees.

"Nope, and we'll pelt them with pears in the fall," Keety answers from below as the April wind showers his armload of scrap planks with fetid pear petals.

"Look out!" Beat yells as a sudden gust sways the branch where the hammer is hanging.

Keety drops to the ground screaming, blood dripping from a hand over his mouth.  

A neighbor woman runs over and jams a washcloth into the empty sockets of his two front teeth as Beats scurries down.

     "What happened?" the woman asks when the flow and his whimpering ebb.

"An accident," he begins and then glimpses Beat slinking away between the houses. "I fell."

"Well thank Jesus and Mother Mary you didn't break your neck," she exclaims, making the sign of the cross before helping him up.