The Tree Fort — Day 36

Genre: Drama

Plot:  It is 1942 in rural Long Island, NY. A mother and her 8 year old son and 1 year old daughter watch as the father heads off to join WWII. Early in the war, before US troops even see action in Europe or North Africa, the father becomes a commando and is sent on a raid in Europe behind enemy lines. When the word comes back that the father and his unit were killed in action behind enemy lines, the mother's and son's world falls apart.

The boy refuses to believe that his father is dead, and retreats to the family's backyard. The father had helped his son start to build a tree house in a majestic oak tree before he left for the war, and the boy now throws himself completely into the project. Working night and day for weeks, he turns the simple tree house into something else altogether: a nearly impenetrable fortress. The boy spends more and more time in his treetop fort. He begins covering the walls and ceiling with newspaper clippings about the war, plotting rescue plans and looking for clues as to his father's location, convinced that he must be alive and is being held as a prisoner by the Axis.

As the boy's world becomes ever more insular and imaginary, the mother is left to cope with the harsh reality of having no breadwinner, and two children to feed, including an infant. The local grocer is a lecherous and dark man, too old to be drafted. He is one of the only men left in the town, as most of the other men the mother's age are either married, or been sent off to war, or both. The grocer has had his eye on the woman for years, and now that her husband is dead, he begins making overtures to her, and bringing her family free food. The boy distrusts the man, and is angry at his mother for allowing the courtship. He believes his mother is "betraying" his father.

Time passes, and the war rages. It has now been two years since the father died. Though she does not love him, to ensure care for her children the mother has begun a serious relationship with the grocer. The boy and the man keep their distance from each other. But one day, the boy believes he catches the grocer trying to sexually abuse his young sister. He tries to tell his mother what he has seen, but she is furious with the boy. He has been living in an imaginary world for two years, she tells him, he must grow up. Later that day the grocer proposes to the mother and she accepts.

The grocer is now ascendant as the man and unchallengeable authority of the household, and confronts the boy, telling him that he is powerless to stop him from doing whatever he wants. He tells the boy to shut his mouth, or else he will hurt his mother. The final straw comes when the grocer announces that once they are married, the new family will move to his much larger home. The boy refuses, saying that he will not leave his tree fortress behind—that he must stay there and wait until his father returns. The conflict comes to a boil and the grocer takes a can of gasoline and a match to the tree, setting it ablaze... Just as the long lost soldier / father comes limping up the driveway, truly back from the dead. 

As the shock reunion and final accounting begins, it quickly becomes apparent that what has been lost by all can not be recovered. With the tree blazing in the background, the now hysterical boy escalating the situation and screaming for blood, and 4 distraught worlds colliding, the resolution heads towards a violent showdown.