He gave Dewy and me our own offerings—boyish trinkets like baseball cards and Pogs—but it wasn’t enough to negate the fact that at night we could hear him groaning away like a lawnmower in our mother’s bedroom.

One night, Dewy and I were in the kitchen microwaving a troll doll when we heard our mother cry out, “Just do it already, cowboy king!” And then, a wave of laughter.

“I’ll kill him,” Dewy said, clenching his fists. “I’ll sneak in there while he’s sleeping and I’ll cut off his hands.”

“His feet, too,” I said, although my heart wasn’t in it. I had, at some point, grown fond of the Weenie. I didn’t understand it, since I too cringed each time he put an eye on our mother, but there was something comforting about his salmon-colored shirts, the smell of his Polo aftershave. Even the sight of his leather shoes in the hallway produced an aura of safety. I knew it would have to remain my secret—my own little bundle of pleasures. Dewy could never know that I borrowed the Weenie’s Old Spice deodorant, or that I liked to watch him tie his tie in the mornings, his thick fingers working the silky material. Or that I found a peculiar gratification in the sounds coming from our mother’s bedroom. That on some nights I would lie motionless in bed, listening for them. Summoning them.

One afternoon, after our mother had already fallen in love, the Weenie decided that Dewy and I needed a tree fort. “Every boy should have a tree fort,” he said, and rushed off to the hardware store to gather the necessities.

Dewy saw the fort as a mixed blessing. The Weenie was giving us something we could use—a place to call our own—but this privacy would come at a cost. For as long as the weather was good, we would be expected to occupy our station outside, away from our mother. Away from the Weenie. We could hear it already. Walter builds you a great big fort and all you want to do is sit inside and watch TV? It was a minor victory, but Dewy was going to let him have it.

In terms of actually building the fort, Dewy and I assumed the Weenie would do the hands-on work while we participated in some peripheral way, perhaps by bringing him water or offering verbal encouragements. But the Weenie soon had us sawing wood and hammering nails. I caught on relatively quickly, but Dewy immediately spilled a case of nails and managed a splinter the size of a toothpick. A rash on his forearms suggested an allergy to wood.

“What kind of boy’s allergic to wood?” the Weenie asked, winking at me.

Suddenly, Dewy was screaming. When we looked over, he was clutching his hand to his chest. Dark blood pooled on his shirt.

“Goddamn it,” the Weenie said, rushing over. “What’d you do now?”

“The saw slipped. Maybe if you’d taught me how to use it right.”