The Bones in the Cliff by James Stevenson

Author:James Stevenson [Stevenson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-202986-7
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1995-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

* * *

Mrs. Bowditch

It was a few days later that Rootie and I started building the tree house.

We picked a tree with a lot of branches—Rootie said it was a beech tree—that stood in the woods about twenty yards behind the house. There was a place on the trunk, maybe twelve feet above the ground, where three or four branches grew outward, kind of flat. That looked like a perfect spot for a tree house. Rootie and I climbed up and stood on the gray branches. The leaves were thick, which was good; it meant people wouldn’t see the tree house unless they were almost right under it. But we could see out in different directions. We could see the road and the house and even some ocean across the field.

“Right here,” said Rootie. “This is the place to build it. What do you think?”

“This is it,” I said. We climbed down, and that afternoon the work began.

Rootie and I rode our bikes to the island dump after it closed for the day. Nobody was around, just a bunch of seagulls squawking. We put our bikes near big bins of broken bottles—brown, white, green. The glass sparkled like jewels in giant pirate trunks. It was a scorcher of a day, and the heat cooked the garbage, sending up a stench so strong you could hardly breathe. But after a while you just got used to it.

We walked past big trailers with piles of old cinder blocks, sinks, toilets, bricks, scraps of lumber. On the bluff above the ocean, a dozen sad-looking rusty trucks—pickups, vans, flatbeds, a bakery truck, delivery trucks, a faded old fire engine—were sunk in the tall grass, their hoods open as if they’d died gasping for air. Curly vines crawled through the busted windshields. Beyond the trucks, the ocean waves came roaring in, throwing gray foam like spit on the old dead trucks.

In an hour Rootie and I collected sheets of plywood, two-by-fours, pieces of heavy rope. By the time we’d carried everything we needed back to the beech tree, Rootie and I were in a sweat.

“Let’s go to White Shark Beach and grab a swim,” said Rootie.

“White Shark Beach?” I said.

“White Shark Beach,” said Rootie.

“Why don’t we just cool off right here?” I said. “I’m pretty tired.” I started to sit down.

“You are?” said Rootie. “I’m not.”

“Where is this White Shark Beach anyway?” I said.

“Just past my house,” she said. “Want to see it?”

“Someday,” I said.

“It usually has pretty good waves.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t mind white sharks, do you?” said Rootie. “They don’t come in very often.”

“I guess I don’t mind them any more than you do,” I said.

In a minute we were on our bikes, heading for the beach. Rootie began humming the music from Jaws—the dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum theme.

“Knock it off,” I said.

Ten minutes later we were on a low bluff, looking at a small, perfect beach. Rootie ran down and across the beach and made a crazy dive into the waves.

“Come on!” she yelled when she came up in the water.

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