“Can you believe this, Benji?”

What a silly question. No one would believe this.

The second I saw it, two feelings started tussling inside me: pride and envy. And those are two feelings that never sit comfortably in the same spot at the same time.

Spencer said, “From down here it looks better put together than my own home. Look at the way those joints are perfectly tight, and how those windows fit. And the shingles! They’re so spot-on, it looks as though they were painted on instead of being real pieces of cedar. This is amazing!”

Me and Spencer were standing at the base of a sixty-five-foot tall maple, our heads thrown back and our mouths open, showing that same stupid look of amazement everyone gets when they see something Stubby and Patience have made from wood.

“Boy!” Spence said. “Let’s go up.”

Spencer couldn’t stop pointing out how perfect everything had been put together.

“Even the boards for the ladder have been shellacked and routed! Why would they go through all of that trouble?”

“They’re showing off,” I said. “They don’t have a bit of humbleness between them; they’re grandstanding.”

Spencer said, “I don’t think so. If they were trying to show off, seems to me like they would’ve built this right on the road so folks could easily see it, not hidden so deep in the woods.”

“Are we going to talk about this or go up?”

We climbed the ten boards to the tree house. When we got to the trapdoor at the top and climbed through, instead of leading into the house, it opened onto a porch with a railing and two rocking chairs!

“A porch?” Spencer said. “They put a porch on a tree house? And look how solid it is.”

He jumped hard and nothing moved, nothing. The tree house was braced so strong that it might as well have been sitting right on Buxton’s soil instead of being put in the boughs of a maple, twenty-five feet off the ground.

Spence laughed and said, “A screen door too? Did you have any idea your brother and sister were this skilled?”

Who didn’t know? Mr. Craig, the master carpenter, had told Mother and Father they felt and understood wood like no one he’d ever known.

I said, “I get the point; they’re very good.”

I hoped that didn’t sound like a compliment. It wasn’t meant to.

“I can’t wait to see what’s inside.”

Spence opened the screen door. I followed him in.

It was dark and cool inside. The only light that found its way into the tree house sneaked in through the four windows, one on each wall. It took a while for our eyes to get used to the dark.

The giant maple went right down the middle of the house, coming out of the floor and leaving through the ceiling. In one corner sat their wooden toolboxes, Patience’s with two horses carved on the top, and Stubby’s with a train.

“Those two have got a lot of nerve coming into our woods and building this without asking,” I told Spence. “A lot of nerve.”

“I can’t believe how beautiful this is; they must have started during the first thaw. They’ve been working really hard on this for a very long time.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I snapped. “If we let them get away with this, who knows what’s next? Why, they might even try to put a … a … sawmill in, and then what happens? There’d be people from all over Elgin County invading our woods to get lumber cut.”

Spencer didn’t understand how serious this was. He laughed and said, “Maybe they’ll let us use it some of the time.”

“Let us use it? Let us use something in my own woods? No, Spencer Alexander! This thing has got to go.”

“Benji, haven’t you noticed? This tree house isn’t going anywhere for a good long time. It’s built like a brick crap house; I think it could last for a hundred years.”

He still didn’t understand. And I didn’t have a hundred years to wait.

“Then we’ll tear it down.”

“What?”

“You heard me. We’ll tear it down.”

He saw I was serious and said, “Aww, Benji, let’s just –”

I said, “We’re friends for life. You have to help me.”

“I don’t know, Benji. If we tore the tree house down, it would be like we stole it from them.”

I hate moments like this! Times when you’re arguing with a forensics champion who lives and breathes public speaking, and all of the good points seem to be on his side. It’s like every argument you come up with gets sunk as soon as you launch it.

“Wait!” I said. “Instead of getting axes and tearing the tree house down, we could bring it down in sections very gently, then we could put it right back up!”

Spencer looked at me for a very long time, then shook his head.

“Benji Alston, that is the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve got a better idea. Instead of tearing it down and putting it back up, why don’t we pretend we took it down, go swimming, then come back and pretend we put it up again? You’re sounding very addled, you know.”

“You didn’t give me a chance to finish,” I told Spencer. “We’ll take it down, then put it back up, but …”

I paused, a trick I’d learned from Mr. Swan, who’s the best storyteller in Buxton. You find yourself paying even more attention and getting even more excited when he pauses in unexpected places in his stories. I was giving Spencer the same chance.

He looked at me and if there was one trace of excitement anywhere inside him, he was really good at hiding it.

I finished, “But! When we put the tree house back up, we’ll put it back upside down! Can’t you see what a hoot that would be? They’d cry like babies! We could hide in the woods and watch; it would be great fun!”

“Benji, can’t you see how long that would take? This is a fortress.”

“We’ll have four days. Patience and Stubby are supposed to go to Toronto to visit Uncle June with Father. We’ll have plenty of time.”

“Four days?”

“Four.”

Spence scratched his chin and smiled. “I’m only doing this because we’re best friends. But you’ll be greatly in my debt, Benji Alston, greatly.”

Spence laughed and offered his hand.

As soon as we shook hands, I was a bit disappointed that since Spencer is supposed to be so good with words, he hadn’t done a better job of talking me out of this. It did seem like a lot of work for nothing.

If I wrote this as an article for my paper, I’m afraid the headline would have to read:

PAIR OF IDIOTS SPOTTED SHAKING HANDS UNDER TREE HOUSE.

Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

*  *  *

We took the shingles off first and then, using the mule and a block and tackle, brought each half of the roof down separately.

Taking the tree house down was a cinch; we had it resting on the ground with less than a day’s work. Putting the whole thing back upside down was a house of a different colour.