On the Run (11 page)

“No, they don't.”

“How do you know?” Ben wanted to work in silence, but at least the chatter stopped him from thinking about Mum and Dad and what they had done.

“Movies,” Olive said. “In Christmas movies Santa never goes to Africa.”

“Really?” he asked, surprised. He tried to think of one where they did.

“Mm-hm,” Olive said, sucking her thumb now while holding the flashlight.

Ben blinded himself for a moment by looking into the flashlight beam.

“Stop sucking your thumb.”

“You're not my dad.”

No. And you wouldn't listen to me if I was
.

Ben felt the saw go all the way through the timber for the first time.

“Give me the flashlight!” he said, blowing sawdust aside. He lay down and put his eye to the crack, trying to squeeze the flashlight as close to his eye as he could. Through the tiny slit, Ben could see corrugated iron on the ground and lots of old bottles. This pinprick of hope pushed him up off the floor, and he worked double time, hacking away like his life depended on it. And maybe it did. He would have to cut through three floorboards to make a hatch wide enough to escape. His hand ached like when he was forced to write for a long time at school, but it was easier now that he could push and pull all the way through the board. After almost an hour he had cut across an entire floorboard. He pried it up, and the rusty nails near the wall bent and twisted and the board came away.

“Ya-a-a-a-a-a-y!” Olive said, shining the flashlight into the gap. Ben used the piece of floorboard to scrape away the twisted mass of spiderwebs beneath and reached his arm down into the outside world, laughing for the first time that day. Breeze. He could almost touch bare earth.

“Let me, let me!” Olive said. She lay down and spat into the hole. “Coooooooeeeee!” Her voice skittered into the night.

Ben shoved her aside and began cutting the second board.

“We're like burglars,” Olive said, climbing back into her camping chair. “Except we're trying to get out, not in.”

Ben smiled at her weirdness. The feeling in the cabin had changed now. Hope had blown in. The rain had settled into a steady sprinkle.

“That's cool,” Olive said. “I'm a burglar!”

“Now you just have to become a judge and your life will be complete.”

“I'd need a wig for that.”

Ben heard a noise and stopped sawing. A bird or animal scratching the tin roof.

“This is a secret, okay?” he said. “A proper secret. Like, if they come back, we cannot say
anything
about it … or you're dead.”

Olive nodded and yawned. It was around nine o'clock, Ben reckoned. She went to bed at eight at home. He wondered what they would do once they had made it through the three boards. Would they really go out into the night by themselves, the only humans in all that inky forest-ness? And what then—tomorrow and the day after?

*   *   *

They're not coming back.
The annoyingly honest and fearful part of Ben's mind whispered these words. He hated them now, and hated himself for making them go. Why did he think he could play detective? He slipped with the saw and cut the top of his finger. The pointer, right where he had sliced it on the sharp reed down by the river. Fresh blood spilled from the slit onto the floorboards. He put the finger to his lips and sucked for a few seconds, then pressed down hard on the cut with his thumb, trying to stop the flow. It stung but he knew that he had to keep working. Two boards to get through.

They're not coming back.
These words helped him to saw faster and harder. Droplets of blood spat onto the floor. Twin angels of fear and anger drove him on. It was easier now with one floorboard gone. Three-quarters of an hour later he was through another and he started on the third and final board. He wondered if the saw on his knife was getting blunt. He sawed until he forgot about his parents, forgot why he was sawing, and eventually he pulled up the third board.

They were free to leave.

He looked up. Olive had her eyes closed, resting her head against the window frame. He poked her. “Hey, we're through.”

“I'm going first,” she mumbled, taking her thumb out, sitting up.

Ben was relieved. But he knew he could not let his seven-year-old sister go down through a trapdoor in the night before him. Even a little sister who acted, and maybe was, slightly braver than him.

“I have to,” he said.

“Why? Because you're a boy?” she asked, disgusted, shining the flashlight into his eyes.

“No, because I'm five years older than you.” Ben was trying to sound convincing, as if he really wanted to go first.

Olive didn't say anything more.
Nuts,
he thought.
She could have at least put up a fight.

He sat and let his legs dangle into the outside world.

“Maybe we should wait till morning,” he said. “There's no point going out now. What are we going to do?”

“We're going out,” she croaked. “We've been locked in here forever.”

He listened for rain. It had stopped. Just the rushing sound of the river.

“Go on,” she said.

The promise of seeing the river by night was enough to move him. He rested his palms on the floor either side of the hole and lowered his legs through the rough-sawn, splintery square. He scratched his hips and bottom through his shorts as he shoved himself downward. Ben wished that he had made the hole slightly wider. Or that he had kept up his exercises at home or not eaten that entire block of chocolate. The soles of his shoes touched corrugated iron and then earth. He smiled.

Ben grabbed the flashlight from Olive and forced the rest of his body down through the hole. He knelt and shuffled the corrugated iron and some bottles aside. He looked out into the forest of pines as Olive's legs appeared through the hole. He heard the gentle rush of the river, the calls of dozens of birds, insects, and frogs. Olive landed heavily and scrambled out from under the cabin.

“What are you waiting for, Fatso?” she said.

“Can you not call me names?” he said. “If I hadn't sawed the hole—”

“Can't you take it?” she said.

Ben wondered where Olive had learned to be such a punk. It wasn't at school. She had always been like this, even before she could speak. Ben trained his flashlight on her. “What if they come back?”

“Don't care. I'm going. Why else did we make the hole?”

Ben crawled out from under the cabin. They would go down to the river. He could think more clearly down there. He would make a decision: stay here and wait for his parents for who knows how long, or, in the morning, take off with Olive up to the main road.

By the time he stood, Olive was already heading downhill.

“Wait!” he whispered.

“Why are you whispering?”

Ben wasn't sure. He just felt that he should whisper in a forest late at night. Olive walked boldly into the dark while Ben scanned the ground with the flashlight, thinking every stick was a snake, every shadow a werewolf or zombie.

He ran to catch up with Olive and grabbed her hand, partly for her sake, partly for his. They were halfway down the hill, almost to the fallen tree that he and Dad had hidden behind, when he heard it. At first it didn't sound like a car. But Ben stopped, and Olive stopped, and they listened.

Run,
said a voice somewhere deep within him.

 

THE PLAN

The car screamed down the final steep section of dirt road, not stopping in front of the cabin but continuing out across the clearing.
Why would they park away from the cabin?
Maybe it wasn't his parents' car. But if it wasn't, who could it be? Low rumble. Brakes. Engine cut.

“Hurry!” Olive pushed Ben up through the hole, scratching his sides and hands. Fresh air and river and freedom disappeared.

Car doors opened.

He took Olive's hands, pulling her up into the cabin in a single movement.

“Ow!” she said.

“Shhh!” Ben hissed, switching off the flashlight.

“That hurt,” Olive said, sitting on the rim of the hole in the floor.

The sound of low voices moved quickly across the clearing toward the cabin.

“C'mon!” Ben whispered.

She stood up. “I hate them! I wish they'd never come back.”

“What if it's not them?” Ben snuck across to the cupboard at the back and looked for the gun, but all he could make out was the shovel. He grabbed the splintery timber handle with two hands. He stood there in the darkness, trembling, Olive clinging to his arm.

“Should we say something?” she whispered.

The chain jangled at the door.

Ben raised the shovel and tiptoed ever so slowly toward the door.

“Should we say something?” Olive asked again.

Ben said nothing.

“Mum?” Olive called.

More jangling.

“Yes,” Mum said quietly.

Ben's shoulders dropped. He released a staggered breath. Then he snapped the flashlight back on, lowered the shovel, and moved quickly to the hole, brushing sawdust down into the night. He jammed the three floorboards into place as best he could with the nails getting in the way, then he grabbed the metal handle of the trunk and shoved it back into position.

Someone fiddled with the padlock.

Ben looked to the floor to see if everything was clear. The knife lay there, covered in sawdust. He grabbed it, snapped it shut, and pocketed it just as the door opened.

“Pack the car,” Dad said, charging into the cabin. Ben trained the flashlight on him as he went to the table and began shoving things into a bag.

“What?” Ben asked.

“Don't say ‘What.' And get that flashlight off me. Anything you want, pack it in the car. Make it light. No heavy stuff. It's got to go in your backpack. We leave in a few hours.”

Ben stabbed the flashlight beam at Mum. She stood in the doorway, handbag hanging limply from her shoulder, exhausted, haggard, her cheeks smudged with eye makeup. Ordinarily Ben would have hugged her, seen if she was okay. But not now. Olive stood, arms crossed, back turned in protest.

Dad headed out the door with a bag and a cardboard box.

“Where were you?” Ben asked.

“We've got to go,” Mum said.

That was all.

Ben wanted to shout at her but was too shell-shocked to speak. He wished that he and Olive had not turned back. He wished he was still tramping through the darkness to the river, surrounded by
shhhhh
and other night sounds. Forests are supposed to be dark and unknown. Parents are not. He wondered if he would ever again find his mother's
shhhhh
as comforting as he found the sound of that river.

Mum went to Olive, bent down, tried to hug her, but Olive shrugged her off and moved away, arms still folded, back still turned. Ben wished that Mum was as strong as Olive. He went to the door. The car was parked across the clearing under a low tree. Hidden. They had come down the road so quickly and then hidden the car and said that they were leaving. Was someone chasing them? Did they have the passports?

“Why didn't you leave a note?” Ben asked. “You always leave a note. Tell us what's going on.”

Mum stared at him. Ben could feel the pressure of all the unspoken truths thickening the air between them. “We just—” she began, and Ben waited, hungry, needing to hear something, anything, but she changed her mind. “Just get your things.”

*   *   *

After twenty minutes of packing the car, Mum and Dad ate dinner by flashlight at the table—cold tomato soup from a can and bread. Mum mainly looked at hers and stirred it. Dad watched the window, looking up the hill. Ben sat with them, a brick in his gut: a solid block of unanswered questions, unknown parts of the story. Olive slept, thumb-sucking, her breathing jerky and fitful.

“Where did you go today?” Ben asked.

Dad licked butter off his knife and swallowed bread in lumps.

“We had to arrange some things,” Mum said.

“What? Where are we going? Can we go home?”

“No, Ben,” Mum said. “Not home.”

“We're sorting out a plan,” Dad said, not taking his eyes off the window.

“Would you guys mind if we don't go on any more vacations? They kind of suck,” Ben said.

Dad eyed him.

“I just want to go home. I miss making my movie. I—”

“Don't use your whiny voice,” Mum warned.

Yeah,
Ben thought.
Me using my whiny voice is the big problem here. If I just used a normal speaking voice everything would be fine.

“We'll catch some sleep and leave around two,” Dad said.

Ben tried to sit there and be okay with the not-knowing. After all, he was just a kid and they were adults and this was best for him. They knew. They would take care of him. They were his parents. He tried not to say anything, but the words exploded.

“Why do you listen to him?” he asked Mum. “Why don't you stand up for yourself? You would never have left us like that. Why did you?”

Her chin wobbled, she lowered her head.

“That's enough!” Dad said.

Ben had to get out of there, not be near them, or he would tell them how irresponsible they were, tell them that if they ever locked him and Olive up again …

He stood, grabbed his backpack, threw his things in, walked out of the cabin.

“Oi!” Dad said, but Ben kept moving. “Back here. Now!”

Ben slowed just outside the cabin door. He had always listened when his father had spoken. Until yesterday he had never even questioned his father to his face, but whatever bond they had was broken now. This “vacation,” whatever his parents had done wrong, the lies, reading his notebook. Everything was in pieces. Ben continued across the clearing.

He would sit in the car until they left. He would not go back inside that cabin, ever. He ripped the car door open, jumped in, and slammed it as hard as he could. He slammed it so hard that the glass in the window shattered and fell like a thousand tiny raindrops. They landed in the car, on Ben's lap, on the window frame, on the ground.