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story by Skrubly
words : pope,swimming,pond
doodle/color by mordecai
It was one of those lazy summer days everyone talks about when
they get older but never appriciate when they were young. On that day I
was not appriciating the scorching heat that seemed to stick to the walls
of the two-story victorian house I had lived in all my life. I had a nice
view of the backyard from my bedroom window, and the backyard ended where
the woods began. I was twelve years old.
Looking back on it now, being twelve was one of the worst ages Ive
ever been. It was if half the world expected be to be a teenage hooligan
and the other half expected me to still like playing with lincoln logs. I
expected neither of myself.
It was that year that everything seemed to fall in on itself, when
my friend Pope and I decided to try and build a fort in the back of the
woods. Everybody called him Pope because his head was shaped like that
funny hat the Pope wears. That and I think that Pope was his last name.
But it didnt really matter that much.
Wed picked a pretty good spot for the fort, too. It was more like
a treehouse than anything else. We found this great spread out tree that
had all sorts of different branches that were close to each other. Not like
an oak tree where youre lucky if you can even climb the thing. We nailed
cut up pieces of 2X4 to the trunk of it as steps, so we could climb up
further. They were pretty sturdy, too.
So it went like that for about a week, me sitting in the tree with
a hammer and Pope handing up the wood we had scavanged from around the
neighborhood. We almost ran out of nails, until one day when we were poking
around a construction site, we found an old box of carpernters nails that
had been partially buried under the dirt.
Once we got the treehouse built, things went pretty good. It was
sort of spread out over five branches. More like little platforms than
an actual treehouse. But it didnt matter, cause Pope and I would go there
every day after lunch and just sort of hang out. Sometimes wed bring books
and just read, and occasionally a cool breeze would come by and that would
make the day even better. Then we decided to dam up the creek that ran
by the treehouse.
We were thinking about how great it would be to go to the pool that
afternoon because it was so hot. Wed have to ride our bikes though, and
we were just too tired to bother. So we decided to try and dam up the
creek instead. Of course that would be a lot more work than riding our
bikes to the pool, but that didnt seem to matter at the time.
We started to gather rocks from around the creekbed, and we just
started trying to build a wall from one bank to the other. It was hard work,
but the shade from the trees at the side of the creek helped, and we waded
around the creek in the cool water.
After about two hours of stacking the rocks up, we finally managed
to get a wall about two feet high. The water started to back up behind it,
starting to form a little pool. After dunking our heads in the water, we
went home for dinner.
The next day we went back and stacked rocks until the wall was four
feet high, but it didnt seem to matter because the water leaked through
the cracks. So we started shoveling dirt with some scraps of wood from
the treehouse and piling it behind the damn. That seemed to do the trick,
and the water seemed to be just a trickle.
So for weeks afterwards we would go to the treehouse and swim in
the pond when we got too hot. It was sort of deep enough to swim in, but
most of the time we just sat there enjoying the patterns the light made
through the leaves on the trees and trying not to think about school.
Then Pope got the great idea one day to try and dive from the
treehouse. He did a cannonball and made the biggest splash Id ever seen,
and it almost started to crack the dam.
He tried another, this time a normal head-first dive, and when
I saw him start to do it a scream sort of froze in the back of my throat,
as if I thought I could stop time. Or history, for that matter.
Everything seemed to go in slow motion as he dived with his arms
outstretched from the platform of the treehouse, arcing over the bank of the
creek towards the pond. And then I saw a splash and Pope didnt come back
up afterwards. I screamed and half-fell, half-jumped out of the tree.
I groped in the murky water for his leg, the dirt stinging my eyes.
I found him a moment later, and he was wedged under a branch. I
untangled him and brought him to the bank of the creek, and he was not
breathing. I ran as fast as I could to home to get help. When the ambulence
got there he looked like he was dead.
My friend Pope never came back from the hospital, and all I remeber
was the a half-mumbled statement by my father that they couldnt revive him.
I never returned to the creek again.
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