On the Run (18 page)

The phone continued to ring. He wondered if the phone might be tapped, if he was putting Nan in danger. He remembered, from a movie, that you could tell if a phone was tapped: you'd hear a small beep or click a few seconds after the call began, when the recording started. But was that a really old movie? He couldn't remember.

Finally, after almost a minute, “Hello?”

“Nan. It's Ben.”

He did not hear a click or a beep, but he still didn't say much. He did not tell her everything. Just that they were alive, that they would see her soon.

And then the question that he was most afraid to ask: “Have you seen Mum and Dad?”

She paused for a long time before she answered.

*   *   *

At the bus station Ben bought two tickets for the 4:30 p.m. bus out of a machine. A lady with short gray hair regarded him suspiciously from behind the information counter. Ben lowered his head and tried to keep Olive out of sight, hidden by the machine. Ben wondered if the lady had recognized them, if their story had been on the news. How many people knew they were missing? And which was worse—the thought of everyone knowing, or no one?

*   *   *

The journey down the coast was slow. Olive fell asleep the moment they sat in their stained, threadbare seats, second row from the front. He watched her carefully, wondering if he had done the right thing by not taking her to the doctor.

“Going home,” he said quietly. She sucked her thumb, cuddled Bonzo.

Ben fought to stay awake, sipping a steaming cup of milky coffee he had bought from a machine outside the station. He missed the sound of the river, missed the feel of it, even though he was thankful to be somewhere warm and comfortable. He closed his eyes and tried to hear that
shhhhh
in the white-noise whir of tires on wet road.

“Click flutter, flutter click,” said a woman behind them, over and over again, her voice low and unnerving. Ben peered through the gap between the seats. She had white-blond hair, messy lipstick. She bit her nails loudly—
click tick tick
—repeating the words “click flutter, flutter click” again and again.

Across the aisle was a small, straight-backed woman wearing fluorescent yellow jeans and zebra-print boots. Her feet did not touch the floor of the bus. Behind her, leaning against the window, was a man with a skeletal face and wild green eyes that shone bright in the passing headlights. He turned to Ben and asked him something but Ben could not hear the words. Ben smiled, tried not to look scared, and turned away.

When the coffee had gone through him, he went to the bathroom at the back of the bus. He took Olive with him, guiding her unsteadily up the aisle.

There were about twenty passengers. Most of them looked broken in some way, Ben thought. They wore the scars of hard lives in their faces and in the way they sat. When Ben was little, he hadn't known that people could become broken. Toys and plates and windows, he knew, but not people. Now he knew they could. Not just hairline fractures but compound breaks, where the bone pushes through the skin. Like when Olive broke her arm when she was four. Ben wondered if he would become broken like that someday.

Hours later, when everyone else on the bus was asleep, Ben drifted into an unsettled nap. He woke regularly to check on Olive, expecting to be leaning against the roots of a fig tree or lying on a rock or flat against cabin floorboards.

Olive woke around midnight.

“Can I have some water?”

Ben gave her some. She lifted her head from his shoulder and drank slowly.

“I'm hungry.”

He had not heard her say that in a couple of days. He reached for his backpack, jammed with food. She nibbled a rice cracker for a few minutes, then asked, “Where's the bag? The bag of money?”

Ben's heart thumped.

 

HIDE-AND-SEEK

He bolted down the alley, battered backpack on his front, Olive on his back. Morning light. Litter everywhere. Fences to the right and a wide concrete drain to the left. He slowed, looked both ways, took a deep breath, and shoved through Nan's squealing back gate into the long grass of her yard. Golden barked angrily and ran at them.

“Let me down,” Olive said, and Golden whined in a happy way. Ben let Olive down gently. She knelt. Golden licked her face, then ran across the yard like a maniac, doing circuits around the clothesline, past the tumbledown chicken coop and the old white car wreck that Dad had brought home when he was seventeen.

“Shh! Shhhhhh!” Ben said to Golden, trying to calm her. He pushed the gate shut and walked up to the house. Light blue peeling paint. He climbed onto the timber back veranda, avoiding the rotten stairs. He knocked quietly and heard the familiar squeak of Nan getting up from her armchair. Then the shuffle of slippers on carpet before her silhouette appeared behind the sheer white curtain.

She slid the curtain aside and then opened the door and grabbed him and hugged him and cried.

“You two,” she said, sobbing. She was wearing one of her brightly colored caftans. Pink and purple. Ben reached down to help Olive onto the veranda, and she squeezed between Nan and Ben, making a sandwich.

“Come on,” Nan said. “Inside.” She looked to the houses on either side and over the back fence, then slid the door shut and drew the curtain.

It was bright and warm inside, like always. Nan didn't like it when people turned lights off in her house.

“Still no word from Mum and Dad?” Ben asked.

“They called after you did. They're coming to get you. Soon, probably. I had to tell them.”

Ben's stomach dropped. Nan squeezed them into her so tight that the three of them became one, like Ben and Olive could never go anywhere again.

“I knew you were alive,” she said.

Ben felt the river rush through him for a moment.

“What happened to you?” Nan asked. “You both look so skinny and horrible! What have you been eating? And your hair's too short, Ben. What have they done to you?”

“Ben lost the money!” Olive said, dropping the words into the room.

Ben shot her a glare. Nan stopped and looked at him through her watery hazel eyes.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Mum and Dad, they—?” Ben began.

“I know what they did,” she said.

Ben took a breath, ready to say what he had rehearsed, but he had been caught off guard by Olive.

“They kept some of the money in a bag,” he said. “When we were in the bus shelter and got on the bus, there were tons of people around and I must have left it. We realized on the bus in the night but we were already so far down the coast and someone would have taken it, I know, and Dad's going to be so angry. I don't want him to come back here. Can you stop him coming back?”

He buried his face in Nan's shoulder so she could not look at him, and she put an arm around him. He continued babbling about how he didn't mean it, that he was stupid, that he had looked after the money all those days, carrying it up the river and then, at the end, when there was no danger, he had left it. Saliva and snot dripped from his face onto Nan's shoulder, and he wiped it off and rubbed it on his jeans.

“Don't worry,” she said. She looked him in the eye. “Don't worry. Did you mean to leave it?”

Ben thought about the question, then shook his head.

“No, of course you didn't,” she said. “Well, don't worry. It'll be okay. We'll work something out. At least you're back. You're much more precious than a bag full of money.”

Ben wanted to believe that.

“Come,” Nan said. “Come and eat. You must be starving.”

They sat at the kitchen table, and she made them steaming-hot tea. Ben did not like tea but he drank it. Nan made him toast with Vegemite, and sugar toast for Olive. She cooked poached eggs with lots of salt and ketchup and she put the tall yellow cookie jar on the table in front of them along with glasses of milk. Olive did not eat much, and Ben felt sick after the eggs. He tried to keep eating to make Nan happy but the hole inside him was not as big as it used to be.

Ben told her everything about their ordeal. About the night the police came and the raft and the helicopter and the storm and the night he thought Olive might die and finding the cabin again and hitchhiking and the bus trip. Everything. Almost everything.

Nan listened and nodded and occasionally excused herself, going to the front window in the living room, peering through the curtains.

When Ben finished, Nan led Olive up the orange-carpeted hall to the bathroom. He heard the bath running and Nan and Olive chatting. He had always liked being at Nan's more than being at home. He took off his new shoes and peeled off the socks. They ripped at half-formed scabs on his feet.

“I'll make soup for lunch,” Nan said, coming back into the kitchen.

Ben watched her chopping onions, thinking how easy food seemed now. Food had been so hard out there. Everything had been hard. He wanted to always remember.

She wiped her eyes with her wrist and looked at Ben in a funny way, scraping onions off the board into a pot.

“What?” Ben asked.

She took another onion and peeled it.

“I want to tell you something,” she said.

Ben waited.

“They'll be here soon, but there's something you should know first.”

Ben could feel the food and tea wrestling each other in his belly.

“It's about your grandfather.”

Ben liked stories about Pop.

“He was a crook,” she said, wiping onion tears. “He was a criminal, a scammer.”

She chopped slowly now, looking to Ben for his reaction. “That's why he built that cabin. A place to hide out sometimes, till things cooled down.”

Ben started to say something but he stopped. He was shocked, but he also felt as though he had somehow known this all his life. He thought of the stuff they had found in the cabin—the gun, the traps with tough steel jaws, and the safe. He thought of the story about the wolves in Pop's old notebook. He thought of his uncle arranging the car and giving Dad the bag.

“Is Uncle Chris dodgy too?” Ben asked.

“I don't know what your uncle Christopher is up to. A long time ago I decided it was best not to know.”

“Do you think we have convict blood? Maybe we can't help it. The Silvers, I mean. Was Pop's dad a crook?”

“I don't know. Probably,” she said. “Your grandfather nearly got me killed a thousand times. I hated it. And now your useless father is doing the same thing. Promise me something, Ben…”

He knew what she was going to say. She scraped another onion into the pot and pointed the knife at him.

“Don't turn out like your grandfather. Or your father.”

Golden barked, and the gate in the back alley squealed open. Ben looked out the window, adrenaline churning through him.

“That's them,” Nan said. “Come. Into my room. Let me deal with him.”

She gave Ben a push in the back, ushering him down the darkened hall. She stopped at the bathroom. “C'mon, out you get,” she said to Olive. “Whoops-a-daisy.”

“I don't want to get out!” Olive protested. Ben heard Dad's footsteps on the back veranda. “Who is that? Is that Mummy?” Olive asked.

“Shhh,” Nan said, wrapping her in a towel and guiding her down the hall to Ben, who was standing in the bedroom doorway. “I'll check, love. One thing at a time. Just let Nan go and speak to Mum and Dad and then you'll be able to give Mum a big hug, okay?”

Olive dripped on the carpet and shivered.

“Nice and quiet, you two. We'll surprise them.” She winked at Olive.

“Is Ben going to get in big trouble for losing the money?” Olive asked.

“Shhh. That's a good girl. You get dressed.” Nan pulled the door closed just as Ben heard the back door slide open.

“Hello?” It was Mum's voice.

“Coming,” Nan said, slippers shuffling double time up the hall.

 

LAST STAND

The moment Ben heard his father's voice in the kitchen he heard another noise at the front of the house. A heavy knock on the front door.

Then footsteps. Fast. Down the hall. Bedroom door open. Mum. Short-cropped hair. Dark circles under her eyes.

Ben had planned to be strong, to not show any emotion. That was before he saw her face fall apart and the tears falling from her eyes. She looked as though she had been out in the wild too. She hugged them so tight Ben thought his ribs might break.

“I'm so sorry,” she whispered, and it seemed to Ben that her whole body bucked with the crying and the grief and the happiness. He had never loved and hated a hug so much in his life.

“Let's go!” Dad said from the doorway, panicked.

Mum looked at him, still hugging Olive and Ben. “No.”

The knock on the front door again.

“Don't say that. Come. Now.” He grabbed her by the arm.

“Don't touch me!” she whispered, shaking her arm out of his grip. They stood, looking at one another for a few seconds.

Dad waved a hand toward the door. Mum walked into the hallway, one arm around Ben, one around Olive.

“Don't speak,” Dad said as they walked up the hall.

“Where have you been?” Olive asked, ignoring him. “Where are we going?” and “Why are we going so fast?” and “Are you and Daddy in big trouble?”

They hurried through the living room. Nan stood at the front door, waiting to open it. Ben had a pretty good idea who might be on the other side. Nan waved them on, telling them to move it.

They went through the kitchen and out the back door.

“Where's the money?” Dad asked.

“Where are we going?” Ben said.

“Where is it?” Dad insisted.

Mum jumped off the veranda, holding Olive's hand. Ben followed them, then Dad, who slipped a piece of old rope through Golden's lead and tied her to a veranda post. He ran through the yard behind Ben. “Tell me where the money is,” Dad said.