On the Run (3 page)

“Why did you do that?” Ben asked.

“Go to sleep. We leave early.”

He watched her. She laid Olive down on a blanket on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him for a long while.

“How early do we leave?” Ben whispered into the darkness.

“Four.”

“Why?”

“Because your father says so … Go to sleep.”

Ben lay there, eyes open, listening to rain beating the roof. The couch cushions smelled moldy and felt itchy. He wondered if there were bedbugs. He imagined his body swarming with mini beasts, hundreds of thousands of them eating him alive. He closed his eyes and saw it like a stop-motion movie with tiny bedbugs made of clay.

Dad's snoring filled the room.

Ben tried not to think about the bites. He thought about Nan, his dad's mum. She lived around the corner from them, right on the highway. She always had time for him and was interested in what he had to say. Nan was rake-thin, a tough old bird, one of those old people who sat on the front steps watching the world go by. Ben wondered if she had picked up Golden. Even though it was past midnight, he knew that Nan would be lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to talk radio and world news. She only slept for a couple of hours just before dawn.

Ben's eyes closed. He thought about the four police officers. He had asked Mum about them again, and she muttered something unconvincing about old parking tickets.

Ben touched his spiky hair and scratched his skin. He felt hungry. He silently prayed for the vacation to be over soon.

 

CHASE

Adrenaline streaked through him. He craned his neck to look out the back window.

Mum looked too.

“Don't!” Dad snapped.

“What does he want?” Ben asked. “Is he after us? Were we speeding?”

Dad drove on. He hadn't taken a break in five hours.

Olive knelt and stared out the back window, sucking her thumb.

“Sit,” Ben whispered, but she didn't listen. This was not a surprise.

“Are you going to pull over?” Mum asked.

They rode on in silence. Ben wondered if Dad had heard her.

There were two short, sharp blasts on the siren.

Ben had never wanted anything more than to look out the back window. Adults were strange. If kids ran the world everybody would be allowed to look when the police were following them. Not just annoying little sisters.

“What are you doing?” Mum asked. “Shouldn't you pull over?”

Dad shrugged. “We haven't done anything.”

“Ray, it's the
police
.”

Dad wiped his nose on the back of his hand and kept driving. “I haven't done anything.”

They drove on.

“If we haven't done anything, won't they let us go?” Ben said helpfully. Surely that made sense to his father. When Ben became a police officer, if he pulled someone over and they hadn't done anything, he would let them go, for sure.

An engine roared and a car moved up quickly beside them. The vehicle was royal blue with a white-and-blue checker print, dark-tinted windows, and four antennas. Ben knew what all of the antennas were for. He had sat in a police car at the Royal Easter Show a few years ago and committed every detail to memory. One was an 800 MHz enhancer. Another was a VHF low band antenna. Another for 468 MHz and then the standard radio antenna above the back window.

The lights and siren weren't on but the police officer—black wraparound sunglasses, short spiky hair, square head—pointed directly at Dad, then to the side of the road.

Olive started to giggle. “He looks
an
gry,” she said. Olive wanted to be a robber when she grew up. And a judge.

Dad swore under his breath but Ben heard it.

Mum chewed what was left of her nails.

Ben watched the cop.

Dad kept driving.

Tension spilled from the gaps around the windows and dripped down the sides of the car. With a low growl, Dad pulled onto the crunchy gravel shoulder of the road. He kept the engine running. They waited.

Ben caught a glimpse of movement in the side mirror as the officer stepped out of his car, put on his police cap, shut his door, and walked along the edge of the road toward them. He had a wide, steady walk, his legs far apart, his body like a gum tree trunk. He wore a light blue shirt, dark blue pants, dusty black boots. His pistol was slung low, strapped to his thigh with a harness.

He stopped beside the car. His left arm was heavily tattooed, like Dad's. Ben was surprised that police were allowed to have tattoos.

Dad rolled down the window. Mum smiled at the policeman.

“Can you please turn your engine off?”

Dad twisted the key and the car became still and quiet. Just the
click
and
tick
of the hot motor. And the
tock-tock-tock-tock
of the blinker.

“Why didn't you slow down?” the officer asked.

“I didn't see you at first.”

“Did you hear my siren?”

Dad sat for a few seconds, then nodded.

“Well, why didn't you pull over?”

Dad waited. “I'm not sure.”

“Make sure you pull over more quickly in the future.”

Dad nodded.

Ben was listening so intently he forgot to breathe. He stared out the window at the officer, whose thick reddish neck seemed to burst from his collar into a roll of fat that ended at his tight-fitting police cap. He looked about ten years younger than Dad. Early thirties. His name badge read “Dan Toohey.” A good name for a police officer. Not as good as Ben Silver, but good.

“Is this your car?” the officer asked.

“Yes,” Dad said.

Ben bit his tongue.

“Do you know why I'm pulling you over?”

Dad sat there. Mum chewed on her finger. Ben still could not get used to her short, weed-whacker haircut.

Dad shook his head. “No.”

“You have no idea?”

Dad shook his head again.

Dan Toohey looked in at Olive and Ben sitting there in their school uniforms. A semitrailer thundered by, ruffling the officer's shirt. Ben leaned forward in his seat, his right ear twisted toward the action so he would not miss anything.

“Your blinker,” the officer said. “You've had your blinker on for about five miles, you dodo.” He smiled for the first time, then he laughed, a big policeman's belly laugh.

Dad looked down and turned off his blinker. He laughed too. It was a bit forced. Then Mum laughed and Ben tried to laugh, even though he didn't think it was that funny.

“That was all. But since you didn't want to pull over, I'll have to run your license, all right?” The laughter petered out. “It'll only take two seconds.”

Dad took his time finding his wallet. Ben could see it on the dashboard but he didn't say anything.

“It's on the dash,” Dan Toohey said.

“Oh.” Dad passed his license through the window.

“Ray Silver … Back in a minute.”

“Excuse me,” Ben said to the officer from the backseat.

Mum shot him a glare.

“Do you have any police things you give to kids?” Ben felt like an idiot so he added, “For my sister.”

“Is not, Poo Face!” Olive said. “It's for him!”

“No, yeah, no worries. Let me think. I'll have a look in the car for you.”

“It's okay,” Dad said. “Don't worry about it. He's just—”

“No trouble at all. It's good to encourage the young ones. Otherwise the fire department gets all the new recruits. You a budding officer?” He smiled at Ben, who felt embarrassed and didn't say anything. “Actually, you know what I've got? They've just started giving us these business cards and I dunno what to do with them.” Dan Toohey took a velcro wallet from his back pocket and passed a card through to Ben.

It bore the name Dan Toohey and his rank, constable, with the New South Wales police logo—a circle of green leaves with a red crown on top and a wedge-tailed eagle in the center. At the bottom were the words
“Culpam Poena Premit Comes.”

“Maybe you can use it like a policeman's badge or something,” Dan Toohey said.

Ben looked up and said quietly, “Thanks.”

“I'll just run this license. Back in a minute.”

Dan Toohey headed to his car.

“What'd you ask that for?” Dad said.

“I—”

“He's just excited,” Mum cut in.

“Baby,” Dad said under his breath, shaking his head.

They sat in silence, the car filling with tension once more now that Dan Toohey and his belly laugh were gone. Trucks roared by, rocking the car with wind-rush.

Ben studied the business card, mouthing the words “
Culpam Poena Premit Comes
” over and over again. He flicked open his notebook, slipped the card in, and wrote the words on the inside cover, pressing hard to etch into the leather.

Culpam Poena Premit Comes

“Hey, Mum, what does ‘
Culpam Poena Premit Comes
' mean?” He stumbled over the words.

“I don't know. I don't speak Chinese,” she said.

Mum seemed to call any language she didn't understand “Chinese.”

“Dad?”

He was looking in the side mirror on his door. “Neither do I.”

“You guys are old. Didn't you do Latin at school?”

Ben was thrust back into his seat as Dad floored the accelerator, spinning the wheels, spitting gravel.

They drove away. Fast.

Ben looked at the reflection of Dad's eyes in the rearview mirror. Mum looked back at the police car sitting beside the road. Olive opened her mouth and stared at Dad, thumb frozen in midair a few inches from her face.

“Wasn't he coming back?” Ben asked. “You left your license.”

Dad drove on, sitting up, arms straight, holding the wheel firmly with two hands now. He took the next exit up the road. Ben heard the siren as they turned right at the bottom of the exit ramp. They sped underneath an overpass and along a winding, narrow road past fields of sugar cane. The siren sound was moving closer when Dad took a sharp left down a dirt track. It was a trail between two fields of tall green cane. Ben sat up and looked back as their car fishtailed.

Dad turned right down another dirt track and slammed on the brakes, switching the engine off.

Sheets of dust blew in through the open windows. Ben heard the police car dart by on the road. His heart pummeled his chest.

Olive laughed. “That was fun.”

They sat, engine off, sound of a crow
caw
ing in the sugar cane nearby, siren in the distance, dirt settling all around them. For the first time ever, Ben did not ask a question. Mum sniffed and covered her mouth and nose with one hand.

They sat.

“Must've been after someone else,” Dad said.

The siren faded.

“You got any of that drink left?” Dad asked.

Ben picked up the soft drink bottle from the seat next to him and handed it to Dad, who guzzled it all and wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What do we do now, Ray?” Mum asked.

“Stay here for a bit,” Dad said. “Then keep going up to the cabin.”

 

WITHIN THE WOODS

Ben awoke to darkness all around as the car climbed a steep hill into rain-foresty woods. Trees flicked quickly by. Tiny red eyes watched them from the blackness. Mum and Olive were asleep, Dad lit by dashboard glow.

Ben stretched and groaned. “Where are we?”

No answer.

The car raced ever upward.

Ben's back and muscles ached. His neck hurt. They had been driving all day, and he had fallen asleep after a drive-thru dinner of burger and fries.

“Dad?” he asked again.

“Nearly there.”

“The cabin?”

Silence.

Ben sat, quiet and wide awake. The headlights sliced through the night, opening it up for a moment, then snapping it shut as they passed. He nervously touched each one of his fingertips to his thumbs over and over again. He had seven million questions surging through him but he did not know how to ask Dad without riling him.

I'm me,
he thought.
Not this again,
said another voice inside him.
But if I'm me, then who is everybody else?
Ben often had these “I'm me” sessions. It was usually when he was walking home from school or before he went to sleep.
What does that mean
—
“me”?
he wondered. He sometimes drove himself crazy with these thoughts. He tried to concentrate on the road, the headlight beams, the flattened animal carcasses. Cane toads sitting up, tall and proud, then
bam.
Tires. Pancake.

Thoughts drifted out of the darkness.
I am me. But if I'm me, then who are Mum and Dad? Who are James and Gus? Are they “me” too? They think they're “me.” They call themselves “I” just like I do. So how am I different? I'm in a different body but are we the same thing somehow?

Ben's “I'm me” sessions always brought up more questions than answers. Each time he tried to capture “me,” it would disappear into the dark corners of his mind, like a dream he was desperately trying to remember. Where did his thoughts and ideas come from? Even the thought “I'm me”—what was that? It felt like there was someone back there saying things that Ben couldn't control. His mind flicked between sharp corners, darting animals, dashboard glow, and “me” until Dad suddenly slowed on a corner and took a left onto a dirt road.

“Is this it?” Ben asked.

Dad skidded to a stop. He nudged Mum.

“I think this is it.”

Mum stirred and sat up in her seat. Her jaw clicked when she yawned—a childhood collision with a wire fence. “What?”

“I'm not sure but I think this is it.”

Mum looked around. Trees. Dirt road. Dark. “Okay.”