Two Wolves (9 page)

Ben worked the small, jagged blade back and forth across the floorboard. He was starting to make a decent groove now. As he worked he listened for the sound of a distant engine but there was nothing.

‘Shine it over here,' he said.

Olive focused the torch beam on Ben's work. Rain hammered the old tin roof.

They had read
My Side of the Mountain
in two sittings, one before lunch and one after. They had taken it in turns to read aloud and had finished the book by torchlight as the sun abandoned them for the day. Ben had never loved reading. He liked movies or a teacher reading them a book but he did not like wading through millions of words alone. But this book played on the cinema screen in his mind, like when he imagined his films. No one was showing him pictures but he could still see them.

Olive had peed in a cereal bowl. She had made Ben turn his back and reminded him of the time that he made her drink apple juice. Well, he had told her it was apple juice but it was not. It was something else. Something that
looked
like apple juice. Ben laughed but he still felt bad. Why did he do those things to her? It was as though there was a bad-Ben inside him, forcing his hand.

My Side of the Mountain
had given them comfort and light and warmth but when it was done all they had was heavy rain, leaks spattering the floor around them and small, unseen animals making nests in the darkest corners.

After dinner Ben had said, ‘Let's get some sleep. Tomorrow, this day will feel like a dream. They'll be here when we wake up, you wait.'

‘Liar,' she had said, darting across the cabin to grab her saucepan and heading for the window.

‘Stop. We don't want to be out there at night. And we don't want to smash anything. Think what Dad will do.' Ben had already been thinking about a way out of the cabin that would not get them into too much trouble if Dad came back. And if they really had been abandoned, they needed to be able to come and go without smashing a window. ‘Why don't we cut a hole in the floor, something we can cover up. A trapdoor.'

‘I love trapdoors,' Olive had said.

‘I know that.'

She lowered the saucepan. ‘What do we cut it with?'

Ben had pulled his knife out of his pocket and shoved the rusty, green metal trunk across the floor. He had run his fingers over the pine floor, found a small knothole about thirty centimetres from the wall and started to cut away at the board.

‘That'll take ten years!' Olive had said. ‘Lemme smash the window.'

It did take a long time to get going and the blade stuck regularly in the wood but Ben was determined. Olive held the torch but her mind wandered regularly and so did the torch beam.

‘This is payback for those dirty dogs leaving us,' she said.

Ben moved the blade back and forth, back and forth.
Dirty-dogs. Dirty-dogs.
Those words sawed through him.
Dirty
on the forward motion of his saw.
Dogs
on the backward. The more he thought, the more he sawed, the more he became certain that he and Olive needed a way out, that maybe Mum and Dad were gone for good. But why would they do that? Why would they lock Ben and Olive in?

‘Do you think he's real?' Olive asked, sitting above Ben on the camp chair.

‘Who?' Ben asked.
Dirty-dogs. Dirty-dogs.
Sweat rained from his forehead making fat splats on the floor.

‘Santa.'

Ben stopped sawing. He looked around the dark room. ‘Who said anything about Santa?'

‘Just me.'

Ben started sawing again. ‘Yes. He's real.'

Olive was quiet.

‘Do you think kids in Africa are dying right now?'

‘Maybe,' Ben said. ‘I guess so.'

‘Are other kids in Africa getting born?'

‘Yeah. Of course.'

‘Why don't kids in Africa get Christmas presents?'

‘They do,' Ben said, wiping sweat off his face with his shoulder.

‘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 torch.

Ben looked up, blinding himself for a moment by looking into the torch 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 torch!' he said, blowing sawdust aside. He lay down and put his eye to the crack, trying to squeeze the torch as close to his eye as he could. Through a 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 pushed down on it 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 torch into the gap. Ben used the piece of floorboard to scrape away the twisted mass of spider webs 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 creek. Fresh blood spilt 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 board. The third board seemed to take forever and 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, soon enough, he pulled up the third board. The hole he had made was the length of a school ruler wide and long.

They were free to leave.

He looked up. Olive had her eyes closed, resting her head against the window. He rocked 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 middle of 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 torch into his eyes.

‘No, because I'm six 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. And I'm busting.'

He listened for rain. It had stopped now. Just the distant flow of creek.

‘Go on,' she said.

The promise of seeing the creek 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 as he shoved himself through. Ben wished that he had made the hole slightly wider. Or that he had kept up his exercises or not finished off that block of chocolate. The soles of his shoes touched corrugated iron and then earth. He smiled.

Ben grabbed the torch from Olive and forced the rest of his body down through the hole. He kneeled 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 creek, the call 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 torch 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. He would go down to the creek. 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 his torch, 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. Just the distant click and tick of rocks. But Ben stopped, and Olive stopped, and they listened.

Run
, said a voice somewhere deep within him.

The car screamed down the final steep section of dirt road, not stopping in front of the cabin but continuing 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 creek 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 torch.

‘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 a 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 front 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 torch 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, the nails making it difficult, then he grabbed the metal handle of the trunk and heaved it back into position.

Someone fiddled with a 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 torch 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 torch off me. Anything you want, pack it in the car. Make it light. No heavy stuff. It's got to go in your bag. We leave in a few hours.'

Ben stabbed the torch beam at Mum. She stood in the doorway, handbag hanging limply from her shoulder, exhausted, haggard, her cheeks smudged with eye make-up. 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.

‘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 creek, surrounded by
shhhhh
and other night sounds. Forests are supposed to be dark and unknown. Parents are not. He wondered if he would ever find his mother's
shhhhh
as comforting as he found the sound of that creek.

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 feeble torchlight at the table – cold Big Red tomato soup 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 eye off the window.

‘Would you guys mind if we don't go on any more holidays? 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 leave at 2 am,' Dad said. ‘Make sure this place is the same as we found it.'

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 bag, 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 ‘holiday', whatever his parents had done wrong, the lies, reading out 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.

Ben stared in disbelief.

He looked back to the cabin, expecting his father to tear across the clearing like a lunatic. But he didn't. The slamming door must have covered the sound of the shattering glass. He opened the door, stood and brushed glass jewels off his lap onto the silvery sand. A near-full moon had pushed its way through the clouds above. He dusted chunks off the window frame and the car seat and he sat back down, clicking the door closed.

He let the breath fall from him and licked his dry lips.

Did a broken window mean seven years' bad luck? Or was that only mirrors? Either way, Ben felt that his seven years had begun a few days earlier.

Something good will happen. Something good always happens
. Tears welled but his eyes swallowed them in gulps. Ben was scared. His parents were scared, so he was scared. Parents were supposed to know the answers. Or to at least pretend they knew.

He was sitting in the back, behind the driver's seat. In the moon-glow he could see the front passenger seat, the gearstick and half the dashboard. Just above the gearstick, in a groove that looked as though it could hold another stereo, Ben could see a phone. Dad's or Mum's new phone.

He looked out the window, back toward the cabin. No one was coming. Raised voices, furniture being moved on the timber floor, the dull
thunk
of footsteps. The brick in Ben's stomach grew heavy and sharp at the edges. It gave him physical pain and tears fell down his cheeks then. He wiped at them and told himself not to be a baby. He didn't need Dad to tell him that any more.

Ben didn't want to do what he was about to do. If Dad hadn't read his notebook, if they hadn't been locked in the cabin, he would never do something like this. But these things
had
happened. He leaned through to the front and took the phone from the cavity. He pressed a button and the screen came to life with a picture of his mum in the front seat, looking up into the camera – posing, big sunglasses, one raised brow. Ben glanced back at the cabin again. He swiped the screen, making his mother disappear.

Evidence.
Ben wondered if a real detective would do this. Or if it was unethical. He hit the message button. No messages. He hit the phone button. Three dialled numbers. One from 7.15 am today, which meant that they must have left before that time. One from 8.22 am and one at 3.48 pm.

Ben turned to the cabin again. They were moving around inside. No voices now. Ben had come to fear silence almost as much as he feared the arguments.

He pulled the notebook from his backpack, took the pen out and jotted the dialled phone numbers in tiny writing near the spine on one of the torn middle pages. Ben knew that it was dangerous to use the notebook again but he hoped that the numbers would not be seen if someone flicked through quickly.

Ben tapped a few other icons but found nothing interesting. There were a dozen photos of Mum, taken by her, and a couple of shots of Dad driving, silhouetted against the blurred background. That was it.

He clicked on a folder labelled ‘Web' and discovered two icons. He hit the first. Nothing. He clicked the second, an orange ‘M' logo, and there were seven open pages. He tapped one, then another, looking for anything even slightly suspicious.

He tapped a page for a news site search on ‘Ray Silver' and his eyes rested on a picture that made the brick in his belly twist and turn.

Two pictures, actually. And a headline.