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have impressed us with the fact that you know more about many things than a six-year-old boy does,” I told him. “You’re a regular encyclopedia. So why don’t you quit picking on Ricky Ray?”
    “Holy cow!” Logan said, holding up his arms as if surrendering. “The kid asked a question.”
    “Which you could have answered in a polite and respectful manner,” I pointed out.
    Logan shrugged, but he looked more than a little humbled. I was hoping we could embarrass him all the way out of the building project. There had to be someplace other than Logan Parrish’s backyard to build a fort.
    Donita made a sharp left onto Watauga Avenue. “Turn here,” she said, leading us pastthe Elizabethton Savings & Loan and across the railroad tracks. We passed Trivette Coal Company, the name of which would make you think it was a large business of some importance, but really it wasn’t much more than a shack where Mr. Lindberg Trivette kept his office and a small supply of the coal that he sold by the truckload or the sack. Mr. Trivette was about ninety years old, and he spent most of his day sitting at his desk reading novels. I ran into him a lot at the library, when we were both checking out our weekly supply of books. “You read any of them Thomas Wolfe books I been telling you about?” he always asked, and I always had to shake my head no. I picked up Look Homeward, Angel once, but the first few paragraphs didn’t really draw me in.
    “Uncle Wendell, you there?” Donita called out. We were nearing Potter’s Used Auto Parts and Misc. Supplies, which looked to me to be a former gas station. It had that design to it, with a roof that came off the main building to shade a rectangle of concrete covered with oil spots, making it appear like a map of some far-offplanet. All that was missing were the gas pumps themselves, but you could see where they might once have been bolted to the concrete.
    “Hey, Uncle Wendell,” Donita called again. She turned around and said to the rest of us, “He’s getting on in years. I don’t think his hearing is all that good.”
    “Ain’t nothing wrong with my hearing,” a man said, walking out from what I guessed was the main office. He must have been Mr. Potter. “I’d wager good money I hear a sight better than you do, little gal. Now come give your old deaf uncle a hug.”
    Donita went over to the man, who was wearing a dapper hat from the 1950s, a brown cardigan sweater, and wing-tipped shoes, and squeezed on him. “How you doing, Uncle Wendell?”
    “My day just got a whole lot brighter, that’s for sure,” Mr. Potter said, patting Donita on the head. “You bring some friends with you?”
    “These are some people I live with, except for that tall one over there,” she said, pointingto Logan. “His name’s Logan Parrish, and he lives over on Snob Hill. I understand his daddy’s a judge.”
    Mr. Potter nodded. “I voted for him in the last election, as a matter of fact.”
    Logan half-smiled, half-smirked. You couldn’t tell if he was proud of his daddy or if he would have voted against him if he’d been of age.
    “That’s Maddie,” Donita continued her introductions, pointing at me. “And that curly-headed girl is Murphy, only that ain’t her real name, but don’t ask me why that is; and the little boy is Ricky Ray.”
    “Goodness, you got quite a crowd with you today,” Mr. Potter said. “Y’all just stopping by for a visit, or do you have some business with me?”
    “We’re going to build a fort at that one’s house,” Donita told him, pointing a finger again at Logan. “We’re going to need some supplies, maybe some tools too.”
    “I’ve got tools,” Logan said. “I’ve got my own toolbox. And we can use my dad’s stuff, too. He never does.”
    Mr. Potter nodded. “So you’ll be needing some lumber, some nails, that sort of thing.” He turned toward his office, motioning with his arm. “Well, follow me out to the back; we’ll see what I