Prisoner of Warren

by Andreas Oertel

  I sighed, frustrated by his wishy-washy advice. I was hoping he’d say something like, barricade the windows, load the rifles, move to Timbuktu. Something practical.

  Chapter 17

  “How’s he doing?” Gwyneth whispered.

  “Not much better,” I said. “But better.”

  That night, after supper, Tom and Gwyneth had come by for a visit, and the three of us were now sitting around Martin’s bed. They’d heard on the radio about my win at the Summer Games. The conversation bounced around the topics of Rake’s escape, my record-setting run, and Martin’s health.

  “Is your Dad worried?” Tom asked. “About Rake’s escape?”

  I shrugged. “Not really. He seems to think that if Rake was smart, he’d head straight for the USA.”

  Gwyneth frowned and glanced out the window. “But he’s not smart at all,” she said. “We know that. And he blames you for everything.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Tom decided that this would be a good time to further remind me of the dangerous situation I was in. “And don’t forget,” he said, “Rake swore he was going to kill you when we left him locked up at the Semenko farm.”

  Just then, Martin opened his eyes. He looked back and forth between me and Tom. Finally he said, “Are you two plotting again on how best to kill me?”

  Tom turned red. “Ahhh….”

  I laughed. I’d already admitted to Martin that I’d wanted to whack him, but then I saw the look of horror on Gwyneth’s face, and I’m sure I turned even redder than Tom.

  Gwyneth punched my arm. “You tried to kill Martin!? Why?”

  The phone rang out in the hallway again and we waited for someone to answer it.

  Martin laughed softly and reached for his cup of water. I think he was feeling better. “I caught the boys planning and practicing to suffocate me with a pillow,” he explained.

  I guess he had heard us.

  “You’re such…such jerks,” Gwyneth said. She reached over and punched Tom. Now we were both rubbing our shoulders.

  Martin was obviously enjoying our discomfort, so he kept going. “I am sure they considered many ways to…what did you call it—whack me? But I found their plan to smother me with a pillow the most amusing.”

  She gasped. “You didn’t.”

  Martin chuckled. “I was secretly hoping they would try again,” he said to Gwyneth. “I believe I would have laughed myself silly under that pillow. Perhaps even peed my pants.”

  I heard Dad’s feet pound down the hallway. He burst into the room. “Get in the truck, kids! There’s a fire at the LeBlanc farm! Their barn’s ablaze!”

  We jumped up and headed for the door. A fire was the worst thing that could happen on a farm. And a barn fire could ruin a family’s whole livelihood. Animals, feed, equipment—everything could be lost.

  Dad shouted over his shoulder, “You three run and fetch the pails and buckets, and I’ll swing the truck around.”

  A minute later we jumped in the back of the truck and Dad headed out of the yard. I turned back and saw Mom on the porch…looking worried.

  The LeBlanc farm was a half mile east and a mile south. We saw the smoke as we approached, so we knew it wasn’t a false alarm or a prank.

  “Looks like the chicken coop!” Tom yelled.

  Dad raced down the LeBlancs’ drive and came to a stop in a cloud of dust. We jumped out and joined the chain of neighbours already passing buckets and throwing water on the flames.

  “Forget the coop! It’s gone!” yelled Mr. Peacock, a close friend of the LeBlancs’. “Try and save the barn.” He was a foreman at a logging camp and used to giving orders. Everyone obeyed and the bucket line from the pump to the fire shifted. We began dumping water on the main barn.

  “Keep it soaked,” someone yelled, “or we’ll lose that too!”

  The giant barn was twenty feet from the chicken coop, but if the flames from the coop caught a gust of wind, the barn would catch. Some of the men found ladders and tried to keep the wall soaked by splashing it with pails of water.

  Tom passed me another bucket and shouted, “It’s not wired!”

  I swung the water over to Gwyneth and waited for the next pail. “Huh?”

  “The chicken coop,” Tom yelled. “It’s not wired with electricity. So what started the fire?”

  I had a sudden chill, even though I was hot and drenched in sweat.

  “And it’s still light outside,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Tom said. “So too early for lanterns too.”

  “Oh my God!” Gwyneth shouted. “This fire…this fire is a distraction. Rake did this to get you away from Martin.”

  Tom pushed me out of the line and passed a bucket to Gwyneth. “You gotta tell your dad. You have to get home.”

  I ran from the bucket line and began searching for Dad. But where was he? We needed to get back now. I criss-crossed through the smoke and flames and buzz of activity, and finally saw him. He was up on the roof of the barn, splashing water on the wooden shakes. I yelled and waved my arms to get his attention. But at the same time, someone started up a gasoline engine. I looked behind me. Another neighbour had brought a pump and was trying to suck water from a dugout.

  Crap! I’d never get Dad’s attention now—not with all the noise. And even if I could, it would take us an hour to leave the LeBlanc farm. More and more cars were arriving every second, jamming the yard and sealing in our truck.

  But I had to leave, so I did the only thing I could.

  I ran from the farm and into the fields, heading across country, straight for home. Using the roads, I reasoned, would have been an easier run. But going as the crow flies, as they say, would be faster and more direct. If Rake did start the fire to lure me away from Martin…well, then I had to run the race of my life.

  I ran through the pasture.

  I full-on sprinted across the barley fields.

  I skidded down the gully, and scrambled up the other side.

  I think I made it to our farm in under ten minutes, but I can’t be sure. I was so focused on getting home, it felt like I was running in a tunnel. I slowed down a fraction to catch my breath.

  Did Rake really start that fire? Or was I again imagining things?

  The fire could have been an accident. Lightning? No. Careless brush fire? No. Lanterns, electricity, gasoline engines? No, no, no. It had to be Rake Chambers.

  He likely imagined I would stay behind with Martin, figuring that Mom and Dad would leave to help put out the fire. But Mom had stayed behind and now she was in danger.

  How the heck could I beat Rake in a man-to-man, one-on-one showdown? I thought about what Martin had told me. Was that good advice, or was that the rambling of an exhausted brain? I shook away the doubt. I’d trusted him to help me win the race, now I would trust him to help me defeat Rake.

  I felt a new energy in my legs and sprinted around our barn, heading for the back door of the house.

  But I was too late.

  Mom was standing in front of the door, blocking it, and Rake was yelling at her to get out of the way.

  “Leave her alone!” I screamed.

  Rake spun around. He looked startled for a second, but recovered quickly. “Perfect timing, Webb. You can wait here while I kill your Nazi. Then, you can watch your farm burn to the ground.” He laughed and added, “As you noticed at the LeBlancs’, I’ve turned into a real fire bug.”

  I took a few steps closer and studied him. He looked dishevelled, frazzled, and desperate—a guy with nothing to lose. I was ten feet from him.

  He turned his back to me, grabbed my mom’s wrist, and yanked her off the steps. Mom was caught off balance and tumbled to the ground. Rake took another step toward the doorway.

  I didn’t want him in the house, so I yelled, “You’re pretty tough, picking on little girls a
nd old ladies.” I’m not sure why I called my mom old, but I could apologize to her later. If I was still alive, that is.

  “Okay,” Rake said, jumping off the steps. “I’ll deal with you now.”

  He pointed at me and I noticed for the first time a pair of handcuffs dangling from his right hand. One wrist was clamped with the cuffs, but the other cuff was loose—dangling like a foot-long metal bracelet. I guess he’d escaped from the police station before they could attach his left wrist.

  “After I beat the snot out of you,” he hissed, “I’ll drag you into the house so you can burn with your chum.”

  I recalled Martin’s advice and took a step back, pretending to be more frightened than I really was. “W-why don’t you just…just leave?” I stammered on purpose, and I knew darn well he’d never leave.

  Rake took a few steps toward me. Now he was only three feet away. “I’ll leave when I want,” he said. “And that’s not going to happen until you’ve lost everything you own.”

  It was time to fight.

  I had to strike before he tore my head off. But how? He was so much bigger than me.

  Dear Warren, Remember—

  Dear Pete, NOT NOW! I’m kind of busy here.

  Dear Warren, Remember what Martin said.

  What did Martin say? I tried to think. Do the unexpected.

  I began pleading and whimpering and babbling for mercy—because that’s what he’d expect me to do. “Look, Rake,” I whined, “I’m real sorry about all this­­­—”

  And that was when I kicked him between the legs—in mid-sentence. No one ever strikes a person while talking to them at the same time—that’s just not normal or expected—but that’s what I did. And it worked.

  Rake collapsed to the ground in a heap. I pounced on him, yanked both his arms back, and connected the free handcuff to his other wrist.

  “Mom!” I yelled. “Call the police!”

  I watched her slowly get up and limp into the house. I think she may have strained her ankle when she fell.

  Meanwhile, I stayed where I was (on the gravel and on Rake’s back) and waited for the police to arrive. Rake cursed and swore the whole time, but I didn’t care. No way was I going to let him escape again. Not on my watch.

  “I can’t figure you out,” Gwyneth said to me. “First you try again and again to kill Martin, and then you save his life over and over.”

  I shrugged. It didn’t make much sense to me either.

  Three hours had passed and I was sitting with my friends around Martin’s bed again, waiting for him to wake up. He’d been sleeping since we’d left to deal with the LeBlancs’ fire, so he had no idea Rake was in custody again.

  Tom wiped his forehead with his wrist and examined the soot. “I’m just happy,” he said, “that that nut is locked up again—for good.”

  “Thank God you made it home when you did,” Gwyneth said, “otherwise we’d have another fire to put out.”

  No one needed to say it, but we all knew that Martin (and probably Mom) would be dead if that had happened.

  Just then, Martin opened his eyes. He squinted at our filthy faces and smiled. “So,” he said softly, “the fire is out?”

  “Not only that,” Gwyneth said, “but Rake’s in jail again.”

  “All thanks to Warren,” Tom added.

  I could hear Mom and Dad on the phone in the kitchen, telling everyone they knew about how amazing I was—one-hundred-metre record holder, villain catcher, smart and handsome, and so forth. Well, I doubt they said those last two things. But since they were tied up with phone calls, it was up to me to re-tell the story of my sprint home and my showdown with Rake.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I was either too excited, or too happy to be tired. But I didn’t care at all. I closed my eyes, pulled up the sheets, and enjoyed listening to the snores and rumbles of Martin.

  Dear Pete, Thanks for being there for me. I would have really messed things up if it wasn’t for you.

  (signed) Warren.

  P. S. I miss you.

  Dear Warren, You did it all yourself.

  (signed) Pete.

  P. S. And just so you know, I was never actually going to give you a rabbit punch. I only said that.

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks to everyone at Nimbus for believing in Warren’s story as much as I do. And thank you Kate Kennedy, for the terrific editing job.

  About the Author

  Andreas Oertel has travelled all over the world and had a hundred different jobs—everything from rickshaw driver to health inspector—but his favourite occupation is writing. His middle grade fiction is critically acclaimed and has been nominated for several awards, including the Silver Birch Award, Manitoba Young Reader’s Choice Award, and Charlotte Award. Andreas lives with his wife, Diane, next to the Lee River in Manitoba.