Hey, Diary!
You’ll never guess what we did today. Dad and me.
I was up early ’cause I wanted to find out how Jimmy was, but Mom said I had to wait until at least nine o’clock before I could call and ask, and while I was having breakfast I heard Dad down in the basement doing something with his power saw. I asked Mom what was going on, and she said she didn’t know, but that he’d been down there since about six-thirty. I finished my cereal and went to take a look.
When I got to the basement, I found Dad piling up a bunch of flat boards, all cut to the same length. Off to one side were some two-by-fours, and Dad was wearing his tool belt that has all the pockets in it for nails and stuff and a loop for his hammer.
“What are you building?” I asked him.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Want to help?”
“Okay,” I said, surprising myself. Before yester-day, I would have said no. Before yesterday I wouldn’t even have bothered to ask what he was doing.
“Help me carry all this stuff upstairs and out to the back yard,” he said.
“But what’s it for?”
“Just be patient.”
I looked at the clock when we walked through the kitchen with our arms full of wood, but it was only a little after eight so I couldn’t call to find out how Jimmy was yet. It took us two more trips to get everything out into the back yard, where we stacked it all under the maple tree. Then Dad got his ladder out of the garage and leaned it up against the tree. I looked up and saw where he had nailed some wide boards between the biggest branches. They were arranged in a kind of square pattern, like the beams in the ceiling in our basement.
“When did you do that?” I asked.
“Yesterday morning, while you were out flying with Jimmy.”
“What’s it for? Why won’t you tell me what we’re doing?” Instead of answering me, Dad took a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it and handed it to me. On it was a sketch of the tree with a kind of a platform in it and some measurements. And sitting on the platform was a drawing of a girl. Me. Okay, so it was only a stick figure, but Dad had drawn long hair on it like mine and a smile on my face.
“Is this for me?” I asked.
“I thought maybe you might be missing your elm tree,” Dad said.
I looked really closely at the drawing. “This is so cool!” When I looked up again Dad was smiling, but he looked kind of sad too, all at the same time. I couldn’t figure out how that could be.
“Up you go,” he said, pointing to the ladder. “Find a place to sit where you won’t fall off, and I’ll hand you some boards. Just lay them across the framework, and then we’ll nail them in place.”
I hate to admit it, being as how he’s my best friend and all, but I forgot about calling Jimmy. Dad and I spent all morning nailing boards to make a floor up in the tree, me sitting on a fat branch and him on the ladder. He showed me how to hammer in the nails nice and straight, and how to hold the hammer out near the end of the handle, “Not close up by the head, like a girl,” he said. He was teasing me.
I only bent a few nails.
Next he got his power saw out of the basement and cut up some two-by-fours into short pieces, and we nailed them to the trunk with huge spikes so I could climb up and down without a ladder like I did in the elm tree before it got sick and had to be cut down. It was past lunchtime when we finished.
We built the platform even higher up than the branches of the elm tree had been, and I could see not just over the fence, but even across the roof of Mr. Harding’s house and all the way across the dykes to Port Williams, and almost to Grand Pre in the opposite direction. I could see the tower residence at the university and even a little bit of the one-oh-one highway south of town.
“I wish Jimmy could see this,” I called down to Dad. And that reminded me. “Oh my gosh, I forgot to call and see how he is. Do you think he’s home from the hospital yet?” I climbed down as quick as I could and ran inside. Mom was standing at the sink.
“Are you ready for some lunch?” she asked.
“I have to find out about Jimmy first,” I told her.
“I called Mrs. Morris myself,” Mom said. “They’re bringing him home this afternoon. You can go over and see him later if you want.”
Dad came in and went down in the basement, and I sat down at the table. “Mom, there’s something really bad wrong with Jimmy, isn’t there?”
“He just had a dizzy spell, that’s all,” she said, only she looked away when she said it, the way she always does when she’s trying to hide something from me. I heard Dad on the basement stairs then, and he came up carrying a big thick rope and some pulleys.
“What’re those for?” I asked him.
“For Jimmy,” he said. “We’ll build him an elevator so he can go up in the tree with you.”
We had lunch and then worked on our project some more, only I couldn’t help as much because Dad had to cut some new boards and make a kind of framework for the pulleys and figure out how to mount them. I didn’t understand exactly what it was all about. He talked about “mechanical advantage” and about how the pulleys would make it easier to lift Jimmy up, even though he weighs more than I do. At least he used to, before he got sick and started to get skinny.
“He’ll be able to do it himself,” Dad promised. “He has really strong arms from making his wheelchair go.”
I thought back to when we got out of the van at Mr. teStroete’s barn, and I wasn’t so sure that was true any more.
I was getting really excited over being able to share my tree with Jimmy, and how his world was going to be as big as mine now. Only I was kind of bored, too, because there wasn’t anything I could do to help.
“Why don’t you go over to Jimmy’s house?” Dad said. “Call first to be sure he’s home.”
“Can I tell him about what we built?” I asked. “Will you have it finished by the time I get back?”
“Probably not. I still have to make a seat for him and rig up the ropes, and test it to be sure it’s safe and strong enough. But you can tell him. It will give him something to look forward to.”
I thought about that as I hurried inside the house. Jimmy has lots to look forward to, doesn’t he?
I called Jimmy’s house and Mrs. Morris said he was up and feeling pretty good. The doctors told him he’d have to stay inside for a couple of days, but that it was okay for me to visit, and so I did.
“I feel really bad about your plane,” I told him. We were sitting on the back deck, Jimmy in his wheelchair and me on the top of the picnic table.
“Them’s the breaks,” he said in a hillbilly accent. “Thanks for bringing all of my stuff home with you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I’d never seen Jimmy crash a plane before, although he said he did it lots of times when he was first learning how to fly. I thought he’d be really sad, but he didn’t act like it.
“Can you fix it?” I asked.
“Maybe. I’m not sure I’ll bother.”
“How come?”
“Might not be enough time,” he said.
“It’s only July,” I said. “Lots of summer still left.”
“Yeah,” he said, kind of sad, I thought. Then he shrugged and sort of shook himself a little. “How’re the kittens?” he asked.
I stayed at Jimmy’s house for almost an hour and we played some Scrabble, and then he wanted to show me his new marbles. They were dark blue and dark green and black, and so shiny I could see my face in them, and they reminded me of the blackbirds’ eyes, and that kind of scared me.
I could tell he was getting tired so I made an excuse about Mom wanting me home early and left. Dad wasn’t still working in the back yard. Mom said he had to go to the hardware store for something to finish building Jimmy’s elevator, and then I remembered that I hadn’t told Jimmy about the tree.
I wonder if Jimmy will ever go flying again?