On the Run

by Tristan Bancks

  In and down.

  The raft was lost to him, and his entire world was no breath, muffled roar of water, and blackness. Even with his eyes open he could see nothing and he had no idea which way was up and which way down. This was a relief from the fear and dread that waited for him above the surface. Nothing but darkness. Ben felt the weight of his backpack, and, for a moment, he wished to live down there in the netherworld, where nobody and nothing could get him. Except piranha. Ben had always been afraid of piranha. Even in swimming pools.

  Soon, fear for Olive and physical inertia pushed him up and out of the water. His face was filled with spray, and he wiped his eyes and searched in the dark roar of the falls and he wanted to call out but he did not. He waited and he paddled as the river shoved him downstream. He saw Olive’s head. She was trying to regain stability. Then he saw the raft. It was under her. She was on it. It had not tipped. It had held together. She was holding the bag of money and Bonzo. Ben kicked hard and he laid a hand on a rough branch on the edge of the raft and they drifted quickly down, saying nothing.

  The moon raised its head from behind the trees and for a moment he could see the soft glow of the river and banks ahead. To the left was the tall rock wall and, to the right, overhanging trees. Ben paddled for the trees where there was cover from moonlight—shadows, reeds, rocks, darkness. Darkness would be his friend now. His skin felt cold, but the paddling warmed his insides. He took a mouthful of water, mossy and gritty. He spat it out.

  They paddled quietly away from the demented roar of the falls and he listened, body tingling. He felt water in his ear. He tipped his head sideways and shook it out.

  He looked behind.

  Through the trees he could see a flashlight beam scanning the darkness back where they had set off. They paddled on, drifting close to the right-hand bank under the cloak of shadow, listening to the cries and calls of the police officers behind and up the hill.

  “Why did the police come?” Olive asked.

  Ben ignored her.

  There was a corner ahead, feeding around to the right beneath the overhanging trees. Where do rivers lead? he wondered. Do they lead to oceans? Into a lake? Why had he never learned this? How far would they go and which direction were they traveling?

  Sometimes his feet touched the bottom and he pushed off, away from the bank. He could float like this till first light if the river flowed on. It must have been after one o’clock. Five hours till light, Ben thought. His heart rate calmed, and the adrenaline started to evaporate. He pulled his body up onto the raft. The shouting was distant now, but Ben wondered if they were being followed. Surely two kids could not escape the police.

  Just then, there were two more shots. One-two. The sound bounced off the tall stone wall.

  “What was that?” Olive whispered, grabbing Ben’s arm.

  Two shots for who? They were too far away to have been for Ben and Olive. So who were they for? They floated back out into the moonlight. No cover from tree shadows.

  “Not sure,” Ben said. “Maybe it was car doors slamming.” He said it to soothe her, to soothe himself. He prayed for his parents. He prayed that what he had done—telling them about the police—had not led to the end of them.

  Ben lowered his head. He saw the reflection of the moon and stars in the water. He imagined that he could dive into that deep, dark sky and fall forever. He wished on the bright white moon, on the river, on the darkness, that everything would be okay, that Mum and Dad would be okay, that he and Olive would make it out of this.

  In Ben’s stories, the good guys always won. But Ben didn’t know who the good guys were in this story. Or when it would end.

  HOPE

  It was the sound of blades that woke him. The rotors.

  Chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk. That’s how they sounded.

  Ben tried to open his eyes but the early sun threw daggers and he closed them again. He felt the gentle bobbing beneath him and the sogginess in his shoes and clothes and he remembered. He sat up. His eyes opened, and he saw red. Blood red in the water. He pushed himself up off the raft and got to his feet. He was waist-deep. The sports bag was still on the raft, but he could not see Olive anywhere. He shivered and he called for her, but she did not respond and all he could hear was the chk-chk-chk-chk.

  “Olive!” he shouted.

  Still nothing.

  Ben still had his backpack on. He grabbed the heavy sports bag and waded through the red water, leaving the raft in the reeds on the river’s edge. He clambered up the steep bank and looked into the river from above, praying that he would not see Olive in there. He didn’t know how far they had traveled or how long he had been asleep.

  He shielded his eyes and searched the sky. No helicopter. Not yet. But that’s what it sounded like.

  “Olive!”

  No response. He scanned the surrounding bush. It was muddy here. And rough. Not the shady, ferny coolness of the river near the cabin. Harsher. No pines, just gums, eucalypts. Farther down, some giant trees with enormous roots on the riverbank.

  “Olive!”

  Chk-chk-chk-chk. That sound from the sky. From a low mountain range behind him.

  Ben shivered with the cold and began to run.

  “Olive, where are you?”

  A high-pitched noise came in reply. A bit like a voice, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Olive!” He ran and listened but it was hard to hear as the chk of the helicopter moved up behind him. He scrambled through the trees, over the hard, stony ground. “Olive!”

  Then her voice. “Ben!” He saw her slight figure in a small clearing up ahead, waving both arms. “They’re coming to save us.”

  No, Ben thought. Not save us.

  The clearing was carpeted in dead yellow grass. He ran to it as the helicopter came over the mountain range behind. He looked back and he could see it now, flickering in and out of the tree branches. The sound was so much louder. Olive was still waving to the sky.

  “We’re here!” she shouted. “Here we are!”

  “No!” Ben screamed, his voice drowned by the cutting sound of the rotors. He was close enough now that he could grab her and try to drag her into the trees, but she would kick and scream and make it impossible. He had to capture her imagination.

  “Wave your arms, Turkey Brain,” she said.

  “Let’s pretend we’re criminals on the run,” Ben said in a loud voice. “Let’s pretend … that we have to hide from them.”

  Chk-chk-chk.

  “Why?”

  “Come on!” Ben said. “Let’s hide. Let’s make it fun. Let’s see if they can find us.” He tried to conceal the desperation in his voice, to not sound aggressive in his pleading. She would smell it. “We’re bushrangers. Pirate-bushrangers. Captain Thunderbolt and his sister, Olive, captain of the ship. And they’re trying to steal our loot.”

  She was stuck then. He could see it in her eyes. It sounded fun, but why didn’t Ben want to be saved?

  The chopper seemed to swing right over them. It was high but so loud, and Ben knew that they had been seen, had been found. This meant a whole lot of things that he couldn’t think about at that moment.

  “All right,” she said, disappointed.

  Ben grabbed her hand, and they ran. “This way.” They ran for the thickest trees, the heaviest cover. Maybe we can get away, Ben thought. Maybe they could escape the police for a second time. He knew how crazy it was, how wrong. He knew that he should not be running from the police, that he should be waving his arms too. But if he was rescued he would have to tell the police what he knew. And if his parents were still alive he couldn’t give them up. He was running for them, what he thought they would want him to do.

  Chk-chk-chk-chk. The chopper was turning back toward them now. Ben ran for the trees with the enormous roots. There was no path. Low shrubs and bristly bushes scratched at his legs as he pulled Olive through. Dragged her.

  “Arrrr!” Olive said. “They’ll never catch us.”

  “Arrrrr!�
� Ben said halfheartedly, and Olive fell. “Whoops!” He pulled her up and continued to drag her.

  “Slow down!” she said.

  “We can’t. They’ll catch us and plunder our treasure.”

  Olive let out a well-practiced cackle, the cackle she used when she was playing pirates on the trampoline after school. But they were not at home anymore. Ben wondered if they would ever see their house again. He could see the thick brown trunk of the giant tree up ahead, the safety of its roots.

  The chopper paused and hovered to their right. Ben stopped at the base of the old tree and glanced up. He could see the white nose and dark blue tail with “Police” written diagonally in white. He had seen dozens of pictures of these choppers but never one in the flesh. He was running from the police. He felt as though his dream of becoming a detective had all but slipped away.

  The chopper was swallowed by the thick canopy of the tree. Ben and Olive nestled together, their backs against a fat, tall root. Hard green fruit lay around them in the dirt. Vines ran from the ground up to the branches, a tangled mess. The pair breathed hard, shoulders and heads heaving up and down, air filling and deserting them.

  Still that sound, the chopper hovering out of sight. So loud. The chk-chk-chk was more like a whoomp now.

  “Pretty fun, huh?” Ben said.

  “Are we really playing pirates?” Olive asked.

  Ben did not say anything. He was looking up through the branches, searching for their friend and enemy in the sky.

  “Then why did you say we were?” she asked.

  Ben shrugged. He didn’t know why he had said it. How could this be the right thing to do?

  Ben squeezed his bottom lip hard, and the shots from last night echoed in his head again. He was pretty sure the first one had been a warning shot. But what about the two shots as the cabin and the police and his parents had faded into the distance?

  Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp. It wouldn’t be long, Ben thought. The chopper would land. What would he say? Why did they run?

  Kids. They were kids. They were scared.

  What would the police tell him about his parents, about the shots? He was afraid of what might have happened to them. Maybe that was why he was running.

  “I’m hungry,” Olive said.

  Ben closed his eyes, took a slow breath.

  “Maybe they have food,” she said. “I don’t want to play pirate-bushrangers anymore. Let’s tell them we’re here. Let’s get rescued.”

  Ben thought about it. She was only seven but she was smart, and Ben often wondered if she knew more than him. Maybe we should get ourselves rescued, he thought. I mean, how will we survive out here alone? Could we make it back to the cabin? Where else would we go? He looked at the bag. The zip was slightly open. He could see the money, soggy now from the river, a green hundred-dollar bill on top of a pile. The grim-looking man with the mustache stared back at Ben from the bill. Next to him cannons, images of battle. Ben looked up at the chopper, hovering. We should turn ourselves in, he thought. We should. But then it moved. Chk-chk-chk again.

  Ben stood, and Olive too. She ran out from under the tree. Ben watched her go but the helicopter moved away quickly. Thirty seconds later, the sound was gone.

  And hope too.

  STUCK

  “What do we do now?”

  Ben shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Then why did you stop me waving to the police?”

  Ben shrugged again. But he knew why. To protect her from whatever happens to kids after their parents go to jail or die. Not die, he thought. The shots were not for them. His mind wavered.

  “What are we going to do?” she insisted.

  Ben walked out from beneath the tree, toward the river. He left the bag of saturated money lying on the ground in among the roots. Was that why he had stopped Olive? Was it to protect his parents, his sister, himself? Or was it to protect the money? Maybe. He hoped not. But maybe. It was a lot of money. The police would take it away.

  “Which way should we go?” Olive asked.

  Ben looked down into the red-stained river. The red was from a plant, he thought. Too much for it to be blood. But still it made him feel sick. He looked upstream, toward the not-knowing place, where he had been at the mercy of his parents. A place he and Olive could not go back to now. He looked downstream into the unknown shadows and shapes created by the trees on the bank. The river twisted into a gnarled tunnel. He turned and looked into the savage sprawl of wilderness behind him and on the other side of the river. A place to become lost.

  For the first time in Ben’s life, he could choose to do whatever he liked, go wherever he wanted—and he felt stuck.

  “I’m hungry,” Olive said.

  “What do you think we should eat?” Ben asked.

  “Do you have any chips?”

  Ben looked at her. “No. I don’t have any chips.”

  “Crackers?” she asked.

  Ben sat down at the river’s edge and hung his feet off the steep, muddy bank. He peeled his wet shoes and socks off. The river was only about twenty feet wide here with dense bush on the far side. Back near the cabin it had been wider. How far downstream had they floated in the night? He had stayed awake for a couple of hours and couldn’t remember when he had fallen asleep, but he did know that the river had been running quickly. He let his backpack slide off his shoulders.

  The day was starting to warm, and in the sunny patches steam rose from the moist, damp earth around him.

  “What have we got?” Ben asked.

  “Huh?”

  “In your pockets and stuff. What have you got that could help us?” Ben unzipped his backpack as he spoke. He placed his wet video camera on the flat sandstone rock next to him. His knife and soggy notebook and My Side of the Mountain. A random array of pens, pencils, felt-tip pens, and pencil shavings from the zipper part at the front.

  Olive laid Bonzo down, waterlogged and pathetic.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Ben asked.

  She stuck her bottom lip out, nodded.

  Ben produced a soggy mess covered in plastic wrap from the bottom of his bag. He placed it in the sunshine next to the other things. A long-forgotten sandwich. Not in the traditional sense. It was more like a handful of mushy porridge with bright blue and green spots.

  “What is that?” Olive asked.

  “Sandwich. It’s a bit old.”

  “I am not eating that. I would rather die.”

  He shoved it at her face.

  Olive squealed and ran.

  Moldy sandwiches were one of Ben’s favorite things in the world. He and Gus had a competition running to see who could find the bluest sandwich in the bottom of their bag. This one was a contender. Ben was annoyed that Gus was not there to see it, and part of him, down near his belly, sank. His old life felt as foreign as this place now.

  It was the only food they had, and he knew they might have to eat it if they didn’t find anything else soon. He pressed it flat and tried to make it square, so that it resembled a sandwich again. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad once it was sun-dried.

  “I’m hungry,” Olive said again.

  “Do you think telling me fifty million times is going to make food magically appear?”

  Olive looked hurt. Ben felt bad for snapping. He heard his mother’s voice in his mind: She’s only seven. Give her a break.

  “Well,” Ben said. “Maybe we should go look for food.” He turned to the trees behind him.

  Stay where you can hear the river, he thought. Don’t leave the river.

  “Do we have any food?” Olive asked. “What about in that bag?”

  Ben looked over at the bag of money lying beneath the tree. He laughed. They had so much money. Ben had once heard Mum telling Dad in an argument that “money doesn’t buy happiness.” He had thought this strange at the time. Of course money could buy happiness. But now he knew.

  “There’s no food in the bag,” Ben said.

  “Are there any shops?” Olive
asked.

  “No,” he said. “There aren’t any shops.”

  Ben felt the force of the wild all around them. In the cawing of crows high in a dead tree and the relentless chirping of insects and the silence of the big blue sky. He was not sure if the force was for or against them. But it was there.

  “Do you think Aborigines in the olden days ever ran out of food, like us?” Olive asked.

  Ben looked around. Yams. He had heard of people eating yams. Maybe he would find a yam.

  “Do you know what a yam looks like?” he asked her.

  “A man?”

  “A yam.”

  Olive did not respond.

  Sugar ants. He had seen a show once where a guy ate sugar ants right out of the palm of his hand. Ben looked at the ground next to him. There were ants but he didn’t know which was a sugar ant and which was just a mean, biting ant.

  “What about bush food? Do you know anything about that?” Ben asked.

  “Is my veggie patch bush food?”

  Ben looked at her.

  “I grew some really good radishes. Maybe we’ll find radishes!” she said.

  “Maybe.” Ben hated radishes. He opened the copy of My Side of the Mountain, gently peeling the wet, stuck-together pages apart, trying not to tear them. Sam Gribley had survived a year in the wilderness by himself.

  “He found heaps of food, didn’t he?” Ben said. “Berries, acorns, deer. Remember when he ate a deer and used deer fat for his lamp?”

  “That was disgusting. We can’t eat a deer!”

  He wondered if there were even any deer around here. Sam Gribley had been in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Ben wondered if any of the same things grew here. He was pretty sure there would be no raccoons, weasels, or falcons.

  “Nothing we ever learned at school can help us here,” he said.

  “An Aboriginal man came to my school and showed us how to throw a boomerang once.”

  “That’s helpful,” Ben said. “Do you have a boomerang?”