“Thunder-turtles!”

That’s the watchword, and it means feet hidden in foliage, flag hauled out of sight, napkins full of white chocolate-chip cookies stuffed up our shirts. We can’t still the shaking of every leaf in the tree, though. I bite my lip in a mix of hope and fear and in the back of my mind think I will slap Josie good, later, for climbing so high. It’s her fault we’re in danger of being spotted. She’s in plain sight at the top of the tree, shaking all of us because she’s stupid enough to edge out on those bendy limbs.

I see my mother’s pink skirt through the leaves. Then I realize we’re not on her wanted list. She isn’t even looking for us, she only came out to snip green onions from the herb garden. The door slams as she scurries back indoors, out of the heat.

“Rattle-pie!” I bark out. All safe now.

Our legs are free to dangle and create a small, welcome breeze as they swing. Mark lets the flag out again, somebody’s old red apron with a gruesomely realistic half-decayed head he drew with his sister’s art school pens. It’s much better than an average pirate flag because the bones aren’t bare yet. Just on their way, with the help of the maggots Mark’s drawn as garnish.

“Josie!” I growl, “If you got any sense in your head, come down. You almost got us seen.”

“You’re just a regular old pirate captain to be as mean as that,” comes her brittle, mousey voice from on high. Is she praising me or not?

“Josie, I’m about to eat your cookies,” Mark tells her as bait. He’s on my side. I pass him a cookie from the package stuffed down my shirtfront, so appearances are perfect five seconds later when she shinnies down and plops on the limb above us.

“Give me!” She tells him forcefully, and he does, but not before chomping a bite just where the chocolate chunks are thickest. He laughs, crumbs raining.

“You’re too old to steal from girls,” Josie reprimands. Her body matches her voice; small and thin.

Maybe it’s true. Mark’s nineteen, long auburn bangs and hairy legs. He should be in college, my mother thinks, but she’s a thinker, not someone to take action. If the stove had gone up in flames she’d stand in the kitchen ten minutes mulling over what she should try to rescue first.

“How come if I’m too old to steal from you, you take my stuff all the time, and always eat the middle part of my candy bars without asking first?” Mark inquires seriously.

I eat a cookie myself. They’re good, very greasy and more chocolate than cookie because Mark made them.

Josie bites her lip, apparently deep in the swamp of thought. “I’m young and innocent, that’s why. I’m entitled to my share plus yours. I’m entitled to whatever I can get.”

We laugh. She’s quoting some movie, has to be. She giggles too, and I give her the rest of her share of cookies.

 “Thunder-turtles!” This time Mark gives the alarm. We swoop a little higher in the tree, but forget the flag. We watch the ground in horror, waiting for some pirate-hating intruder to stare up, but it’s only Jim Feldman, Mark’s mutt dog. He wags his entire hind end and twitches up his gums to reveal a shiny dog-smile. Mark tosses him a cookie.

“Feldie!” he calls, low. “Go get Betty!” Feldman snorts a few crumbs from the grass like a vacuum cleaner–that dog has some lung power–and tears out of our yard to get Mark’s mom.

Mark’s family call themselves Progressive Calvinists. I once asked Mark what it meant and he said it only meant they did what they wanted to and rubbed other people the wrong way. I didn’t see how that could be correct, because Mark’s parents, Betty and Cliff, are sweethearts. Betty’s a very nervous woman, and doesn’t like Mark to go far from home. He loves her too much to disobey. Once he went across the border to Utah for one night and she called her second cousin, who runs a division of the New Mexico Ski Patrol, to come looking for him. They came all the way up to Utah, but by the time they had set out search parties he was back home again, and Betty fainted dead away with her face in the carrot peelings when she saw him. Cooking is her nervous habit, and she’d skinned so many carrots in the 24-hour period that her hands were stained orange for a week.

“Mark, that’s mean,” Josie says, “Betty will have a heart attack if she sees you in a tree.”

“Got to have some fun,” is his answer.

From our spot high in the oak, we can see Feldman tearing down the block. He’s a smart dog, and he’ll get Betty. But in front of Mark’s low brick house, he spots Mark’s chrome-shiny bike leaned against the family car. Feldman cannot resist shiny objects, and plants his tail down on the driveway and barks and barks and barks at the poor bike.

“Damn.” Mark whistles between his teeth, but even that fails to draw Feldman’s attention. “Well, I guess the damsel walking the plank is out.”

Over the many years we’ve done this pirate ship tree game, we’ve often imagined Betty, in her screaming and fainting fits, to be a fair captured princess in distress.

The breeze intensifies as the sun begins to sink.

Josie and I ask Mark if he ever plans to go away to college. He says he’d like to stay here on Marlon Road just as much. He doesn’t think much of travel after the Utah experience, and besides, it’s almost Halloween….Mark does our masks for us every year.

Kids on other blocks actually pay him to do theirs. He gives out the best candy too, but only me and Josie know that, because on Halloween he turns out their porch light and leaves an ash-tray filled with bubblegum on a chair beside a flashlight, so from the street kids think it’s a crummy offering and skip the house. The chocolates he saves go to me and Josie. That’s why we always get bigger hauls than any girls on the block.

It’s past twilight and down Marlon Road the mothers are summoning children home. I even hear Betty calling. Mark scrambles down three limbs and drops the last six feet–as he’s almost that tall, it’s easy. Josie drops a last cookie on his head.

The creak of the back door announces my mother. Mark grins up in the last light.

“Thunder-turtles!” he says in a hoarse whisper, and sprints the 100-yard dash for home.

We snatch the flag in and hide closer in the sheltering dark arms of the tree, giggling.

I never figured out why my mother so disliked having a couple of pirates for daughters.

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