On the Run (7 page)

“You'd taste disgusting.”

Ben pinched her arm.

“Ow. What about that?” Olive said.

She was pointing at a clump of tall, tough-looking grass. Ben climbed onto a rock and jumped to the next, then pulled on a couple of the long strands. They did not budge. He pulled again, and his finger slipped along the sharp edge and opened up, bleeding. He sucked on the finger, swallowing the blood. He bent down low where the stem was round and white and juicy. He snapped it off, then gathered fifteen stems, passing them to Olive.

They ran along the bank, in and out of shadows, back to the branches, where Ben began winding the reeds through them. Up and over, down and under, up and over.

“Can you tell me now?” Olive asked.

“What?”

“Why you got in
trouble
,” she said.

“Doesn't matter,” Ben said.

“Does to me.”

Ben thought about the money, about Dad's reaction. And his mother's lies. He knew the police had not come to their house over parking tickets. And he knew they had not sold the wreckers.

“Do you think Dad killed somebody and he was hiding the body up in the roof?”

“No!” Ben said. “Why would you say that?”

“Just joking,” Olive said, smiling and doing a spin like a ballerina. “You're too serious sometimes, Benjamin.”

“Don't call me Benjamin. And where do you hear stuff like that?” Ben asked. He tied another reed to the end of the first piece of grass and continued weaving it through the branches.

“At school,” she said. “We play dead dog where you have to shoot a dog with a barrenarrow—”

“Bow and arrow,” Ben corrected.

“Then you have to hide the dog somewhere in the playground and kids have to find it.”

“Real dogs?” Ben asked, smiling.

“No. Pretend dogs. I usually choose a poodle because they're not very heavy. I picked a Labrador once and nearly died from dragging it over to the bushes behind the swings.”

Ben wanted to ask how a pretend dog could be heavy and how the others find the dogs if they are invisible, but he could see the conversation going on for hours.

“So what was he hiding? Tell me or you're not coming to my birthday party.”

“I don't want to come to your birthday party,” Ben said. “And you're probably not having one.”

“Yes, you do … And yes, I am!”

“No, I don't and no, you're not.”

“Fine, I'm going on a cruise around the Caribbean, finishing up at Walt Disney World with a cake that has blue icing, but whatever.”

Cake. Food.
Hunger.
Ben could taste the icing.

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “It wasn't important. Just Dad getting angry like always.”

He continued weaving reeds through the branches at four different points along the raft. It was slow work, but the shush of river and call of birds made them forget about time. After an hour they stood back and looked at their creation. Ben had used nine branches. It was a bit rough and wonky.

“Not bad for a first raft,” Ben said.

They lifted the end of it and dragged it down over the slick rocks. The raft was heavy and awkward to carry, the center of it sagging. Ben worried that the grass ties might snap. He took three or four breaks before he was finally able to drop one end of the raft into the river. He sent a prayer up into the trees and sky that it would float.

There was a shrill whistle from up the hill.

“You two! Come!” Dad's voice echoed through the tall timbers.

“Olive? Ben?” Mum called. “Food!”

He wanted to pretend he didn't hear, but it must have been three o'clock and he was so hungry.

“C'mon,” he said.

“I want to see if it floats,” Olive whined.

“Later,” Ben said. “We need to eat.”

They dragged the raft up the rocks. Ben found some bushy branches and covered it.

“Ben!” Mum called again.

“Keep your pants on,” he muttered, and started to make his way up the hill, Olive scrambling behind him. He could feel the river flowing out of his body, and fear flowing in. Would Dad still be angry about what Ben had seen? He used to think that there were two of his dad, the nice one and the angry one. Lately the nice one hadn't been around much.

As he climbed the hill, Ben made a promise to himself that he would work out where the money had come from and why they were lying to him. He was sick of being treated like a child. He was going undercover. He would find the truth.

 

KNIFE

Ben and Olive came over the rise and into the sandy clearing in front of the cabin, crossing back into the real world.

“Detective,” Ben whispered, reminding himself.

“What?” Olive asked as they headed toward the cabin.

“Nothing. Don't tell them about the raft, okay?”

“Why not?”

“It's our secret.” He stopped outside the cabin. Olive grinned. He knew that this would make her feel big and special. He didn't know why he needed it to be a secret, but he did. She probably wouldn't keep the secret, but he could hope.

Detective.

He pushed open the door.

“Here they are!” Dad said. He sounded almost chirpy.

Mum and Dad were seated at the table on new camping chairs. There was other camping equipment around the cabin—ice chest, blow-up mattresses, gas cooker. Ben dared to look into the open roof area. Dad had already taken the bag.

“You've been gone for ages,” Mum said. “Thought you two were dead.”

“No. Still alive,” Ben said.

The table was filled with food. The sight and smell of it filled his mouth with saliva. Olive sat on a wooden crate. The only thing left for Ben to sit on was the small green metal trunk. He dragged it over and sat, grabbing at the food, filling his paper plate and stuffing crackers and cheese into his mouth.

“Slow down,” Mum said. But she soon forgot, and they ate like a pack of wolves, swallowing food in great chunks, desperate to fill the empty space. They didn't speak until the tide of hunger had gone out and the sugar had reached their brains.

“Ooohhhhhhhh,” Ben groaned.

“Good, is it?” Mum asked.

“So goooood,” he said in a funny, croaky voice, and they all laughed. Even Dad.

Late afternoon sun fell in through the window. The cabin felt brighter than it had that morning. Dad reached into his pocket and banged a small box down on the table in front of Ben.

Ben looked at it and then up at his father.

“Open it.”

Ben was suspicious. Dad wasn't known for buying presents. He left that to Mum. She even bought her own birthday presents. Ben picked up the box. It was small and plain and gray. Ben wondered if there was some kind of punishment or prank inside. He carefully opened a cardboard flap at one end and let the contents slide out onto his palm. A smile washed over his face. He clutched his fingers around it.

“Ray!” Mum said.

“What?” Dad asked, wiping mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth.

Mum clicked her tongue and shook her head.

It was a knife. Swiss Army. Red with a white cross. A serious one. Chunky, with metal sides that felt cold on his fingers. Ben flipped out a large blade, then another, smaller one.

“You think you can take care of it?” Dad asked.

Ben nodded. He flipped out a saw, a tiny pair of pliers, a corkscrew, scissors, a screwdriver, and some small, mysterious, pointy tools. He picked a tiny pair of tweezers and a toothpick out of the side of the knife.

“I want one!” Olive said, sticking her bottom lip out.

“Ah, for you…” Dad said, taking a large box out of one of the tall paper shopping bags sitting on the floor behind him. He gave it to Olive, and she did a dance, pretending to play electric guitar with the box. This was the first interaction between Dad and Olive in over a week.

Ben was mesmerized by his knife. When every arm had been folded out he sat and looked at his dazzling red, white, and silver spider. It was the best thing he had ever owned.

“What do you say to Dad?” Mum asked, closing up containers, clearing paper plates, throwing them into a plastic garbage bag.

“Thanks,” Ben said without looking up. He was already thinking about the raft and how he could cut and saw it with his knife and make it sturdier and take off downstream. He almost started talking about it but something stopped him. He needed to keep his secret world by the river for himself.

“Awesome!” Olive said. She was holding a skateboard with a blue plastic deck and red wheels. She had been asking for one since she was four. Ben wondered where she would ride it out here.

Dad reached into his pocket and placed another small box on the table. “My love,” he said. Ben looked up. He had only heard his father call Mum “my love” once or twice. It sounded creepy and uncomfortable.

Mum turned from where she was crouched packing food into the ice chest. She stood, eyes wide, looking like a little girl. Dad snapped open the top of the box, and Mum's eyes kindled. She took what was inside and slipped it onto her finger. It was a ring with a diamond in it.

Mum flung her arms around Dad, kissing him all over the face a thousand times. Ben didn't really like watching his parents kiss.

“Do you realize that this is the first real present you've bought me in fifteen years?” Mum said. “I paid for dinner the first time we went out. Do you remember? I should have known it was a bad omen.”

Dad pulled a face at her. “All right,” he said, turning to the big bags on the floor again.

“What else?” Mum asked, admiring her ring.

“Look on the front seat,” he said. She went outside, opened the car door, and gave a little shriek. Through the window Ben could see that she was holding two boxes.

Dad had bought other presents for Ben and Olive too. Clothes for each of them in various sizes, just to be sure. Shoes for Olive. For Ben, a robotic Lego kit and a
Mad
magazine. For Olive, a pirate outfit and a hot-pink remote control pickup truck that could drive across the sandy clearing out the front. She loved her skateboard best. She rode it round and round inside the cabin.

It felt more like Christmas than any Christmas Ben had ever known. For that moment, everybody was happy. The way things were meant to be, the way they were in movies. The way Ben always imagined other families being. Maybe better.

As dark closed in on the cabin, Dad decided to try lighting a fire outside, and they laughed at his pathetic camping skills. Only Mum managed to get a decent flame going.

*   *   *

Later, as Ben lay on his squeaky new air mattress in the darkness of the cabin, with a belly full of food and his parents outside laughing and talking, he wondered … if life was full of good things and presents and they were all happy, did it matter where the money had come from? Did it matter why his father had driven off from the police? Did it matter that his mum had lied to him? Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe they really did sell the wreckers. Maybe that old corrugated iron office building and the broken-down machinery and all those smashed-up cars were worth that much money. And that's how they got the presents. What if it could always be like this? A million dollars could buy a lot of happy.

 

DETECTIVE BEN SILVER

Ben's eyes half opened. He was cold and had no idea where he was. No roar of cars or semitrailers on the highway. No trains. No background hum of electrical tower.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness. He saw Olive lying on her air mattress next to his. Mum and Dad's voices trickled in from outside. Not laughing and chatting like they had been earlier. Arguing now. Ben had that knife-in-the-belly feeling that he got when they argued late at night. He lay in the dark, alert, listening. Olive sucked her thumb, making a quiet squeaking noise.

There were other sounds too, when Ben listened deeply. Crickets or insects. A frog somewhere. Scurrying in a tree and a screech from high above. Not silence but not sounds that he knew. The noise of trucks and cars and trains was comforting. Known, mechanical things. But here everything was unknown. The only familiar sound was the arguing.

“Why?” Mum asked.

“Because we have to sit tight. It won't be forever, but we can't just…” Dad lowered his voice. Ben could not hear the rest of what he said, but it was spoken with intensity and Mum responded fiercely.

“Please. Just. Listen to me,” he heard Mum say. “I never feel heard!”

Ben crawled across his air mattress, crept to the window, peered out.

A near-full moon shone through the pines, and the white-sand clearing gleamed like silver. Mum and Dad sat on their camp chairs next to a few smoldering coals. Dad poked the coals with a stick, sending orange splinters of light shooting into the air. They continued to argue in low voices, silhouettes lined with moon-glow.

Ben worried sometimes that his parents would not be together forever. But he also worried that they
would
be together forever. He lay down on his mattress with a grunt, pulling the dark blue sleeping bag up to his neck. Like the fire, happiness had flickered and died. He looked around at the roof beams, the shelf with the food, the dark cupboard. This was the creepiest place he had ever slept. He felt a sharp bite on his elbow and thought of all the spiders that must be in the cabin with him. And ghosts. If he were a ghost he would hang out in this cabin. It was perfect for ghosts, just not for humans.

Ben lay still, watching, feeling, listening. He couldn't count the number of nights in his life that he had gone to sleep with his parents fighting. Too many. Even after all these years, he still got that feeling in his belly, waiting for Dad to get into the car and drive off, wheels spinning on the road. Ben wasn't a churchgoer, but on those nights he prayed that his dad would be okay. He would lie awake until he heard the car shake and rattle back into the driveway after midnight.