The sounds from the hammer shook the boy awake. They came in bursts of four rhythmic strikes. A brief silence would linger after the last strike. Then a new sequence would begin.  

The boy stared at the ceiling. He wanted to sleep longer, but the beating of his dad’s hammer and the humid air made it impossible. Instead, he sat up and crawled to the bottom of his bed. He stared out the window.  

His father was crouched on the roof of the shed he was building in their front yard, laying shingles. Yesterday his dad had said that once the roof was done, all the shed needed was windows and paint.  

Pretty soon, the boy knew he would hear his father’s voice from outside telling him to help. To bring extra shingles from underneath the deck or grab a tape measurer from the basement. Ever since he’d been laid off a few months earlier, his father had thrown himself into any task he could find around the house. As a result, the boy had spent most of his summer helping his father. Together they dug post holes for a new fence, replaced the lattice work on the deck, and now the shed.  

The boy looked through the trees behind the shed where he could see Tyler’s house. Tyler was a year older than him. They had met the summer before, in the trees between their houses. The boy’s older sister had taken him into the trees to see a fort that Tyler had built with his own sister. The fort was made of fallen branches. Tyler had set the branches upright in a circle to make a teepee. The section facing Tyler’s house had an opening, so they could all go inside of it. 

The boy had been ready to argue if Tyler said he couldn’t go into the fort. But Tyler said they could play in there whenever they wanted. He called the area between their houses “no man’s land.”  

Tyler went to a private Catholic school. So, he didn’t wait for the bus with the other kids from down the street. But the boy would see Tyler on weekends.  

One day, the boy and Tyler were in the fort together. Tyler had to leave because he had to go with his mother to her doctor’s appointment. Later, the boy’s mom told him that Tyler’s mom had cancer. The boy and Tyler still played on weekends, but Tyler never said anything about his mom.  

The boy thought little about Tyler’s mom until last week. He had been sitting on the computer in his parents’ room, playing a video game. His mom came in and asked him to stop playing for a minute. She sat on the bed across from him. She said that Tyler’s mom would likely pass away soon.  

The boy couldn’t understand what his mom meant. No one ever said that Tyler’s mom was dying, only that she was sick. What did that even mean? He knew she had recently returned home after spending months in the hospital. But the boy thought that was because she was feeling better. He thought it meant that the cancer was going away. His mom hugged him when he started to cry.  

The last time the boy had seen Tyler was a week ago. One of their neighbors had set up a rotation where families in the neighborhood would bring meals to Tyler’s family. The boy had gone over with his Cub Scout den to drop off a baked chicken dinner his mom had made. It was the first time he had seen Tyler in a few weeks. The boy told Tyler that he had just gotten a rare Pokémon card. After the boy got home, his mom told him that he shouldn’t have told Tyler about the card.