The Dog Runner

by Bren MacDibble

  ‘Poor Wolfy,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe he’ll want to come in later,’ Emery says and rubs his head. ‘At least he’s alive and not lost anymore.’

  Emery goes back to sleep and I lie awake in the dark listening to Wolf scuffling outside the tent, probably making himself a little scratched-out hole to sleep in, like wild dogs do.

  I get up as soon as the sky gets a little light coz I haven’t been sleeping. I been trying to figure out what’s wrong with Wolfy. I open the tent quietly, telling the dogs to sit, but that’s not gonna work, they all want to be out. So I stick my head out and look around, make sure there’s no sign of anyone, and then open the tent fully, and let the dogs out.

  Wolf leaps up from beside a tree to say hi to them all, and the first thing I see is that his ear’s been shot right off. Just a ragged bloody stub of ear is left. Then something round and white flashes against Wolf ’s brown fur. It’s clipped to his harness. I throw myself into the dogs and grab his harness, twist and pull the tag off, then let him go before he drags me over.

  It’s got a wireless symbol on it. A tracker!

  ‘Wake up! We have to get moving!’ I yell at Emery.

  Emery’s up on his knees, arm held to his chest, looking around to see what the problem is.

  I hold up the tracker. ‘They caught Wolf and put a tracker on him. I’m gonna run it somewhere far away to give us some time. Keep the dogs here till I get back.’

  ‘Ella! No! They’ll track you!’ Emery says.

  ‘I got to, or they’ll wake up and start tracking it to right here!’ I run. Emery’s behind me, calling the dogs back. I scramble across the creek and into the bush. Sticks and bracken scratch at my arms as I scramble up the other side of the little gorge. I scramble right into a pile of blackberry canes and stop and pick myself back out carefully, unsnagging my T-shirt. Then I run along the top of the gorge. I figure if they have to cross the gorge to get to the tracker, it might slow them down. A farmhouse is up here, and I head towards it. There’s no sound coming from it, no lights are on. I think it’s empty. If I throw the tracker right underneath it, maybe they’ll think Wolf has gone into hiding. They won’t be able to get under there to check for sure.

  I stay low and run flat out for the house. There’s still not enough light that anyone up on the road behind the house or anyone looking across the land can see very well, so I think I’m fine.

  I push through the wires of the fence around the house and reach between the boards at the bottom of the house and fling the tracker, hard as I can, into the centre.

  As I head back to the fence, I check out a shed. Its door’s propped open, and there’s tools and duct tape and stuff hanging on the wall. The roll of silver duct tape is huge, just the kind of thing that would help Emery’s arm, stop it moving. I climb up on an old esky and pull it down off a nail. There’s a styrofoam box sitting next to it. I grab that too.

  I’m just squeezing back out through the fence, when a door at the house opens and a man shouts, ‘Hey!’

  I sprint for the line of trees in the gorge. I don’t look back until I get there and get under cover.

  No one’s following. Just someone trying to scare me off.

  I run a bit, hide, check around me, run again.

  By the time I get back to Emery he’s got the dogs sitting next to their harnesses, and Wolf, who’s still wearing his, already clipped into the gang line. He’s got the tent down and lying in a messy heap with the sleeping bags on top.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he says, face screwed up, holding his arm against his chest like he’s been banging it and it’s killing him.

  ‘I bought us some time,’ I say, and I hold up the tape and the box. ‘And I got this stuff so we can make a cast for your arm.’

  First, I pull the meat out of the tree and cut two of the hunks in half again. I give the biggest uncut hunk to Wolf for a change, since he’s behind on snacks, and while they’re busy chewing on that stinky old possum, I wipe the knife on my pants and go to work measuring the styrofoam box against Emery’s good arm, and cutting out one half of it so it makes a cradle for his other arm, from his elbow right down to his fingers.

  ‘So you sit your arm in here, and coz it’s a corner, it’s strong and straight, and I’ll cut another bit for the top, and if we tape it all together, you’ll be able to move around, without jolting your arm.’

  I undo the bungee cord and try to hold his arm straight while I drop the bark and wrap the T-shirt around his arm to keep it soft and snug inside the styrofoam.

  Emery gasps and tears fill his eyes and he’s grabbing at the weight of his hand with his other hand, like it’s a floppy thing, as I slide his arm gently into the styrofoam, and get him to hold that instead. Me, fighting the need to hurry, to get moving, in case those guys know where Wolf spent the night and check that out before the house, but trying so hard to be careful with Emery’s broken arm. A couple of strips of styrofoam on top, either side of the lump, and then I get the tape and wind it around the whole lot, nice and tight, hand, arm, T-shirt, styrofoam, right up past his elbow even, wrapping it around his upper arm, to keep it all firm, and then I wind it back down to his hand. I don’t think there’s any way any part of that broken bone can move now.

  Emery lifts his arm carefully, takes a deep breath and nods, then squints and grabs at his head like nodding hurts.

  I hurry and roll up the sleeping bags and tent and stuff that back into its bag, stow it in the cart, and go to work on getting the other dogs into their harnesses, lifting feet and doing up clips and hooking them into the gang rope. I fill the water bottles while Emery shushes the dogs who are keen to get moving, even Wolf, who seems happier about being back with his friends. I get close enough to check his ear, and it seems to be just missing. The edge of the ear is red and bloody like something just tore it off, right across the top of the triangle. His other ear is dark fur outside, pale fur inside with a darker edge making the triangle stand out. But this damaged ear is just the bottom part of the ear and a pile of bloodied pale fur, tufting out around his pink inner ear lumps. There’s nothing I can do to repair that, and I don’t know if covering it will help. Poor Wolf.

  I have to take the handlebars because Emery can’t, so he sits on the foot stand with his feet in the basket, and his arm held out by his other arm to stop the bumps from jolting his arm as much as they’re jolting his body.

  He’s got the map by his feet in the basket and as the sun comes up he’s squinting around, trying to figure out just where we are.

  He groans and shoves the map at me like it’s all too hard. I guess I’ll have to figure it out by myself for a while longer.

  I’m not much good at steering around prickles and weeds, so Emery’s sometimes yelping and spitting out prickle fluff but he doesn’t try to tell me what to do for a change and that’s good, but I think it’s mostly coz he’s really hurting. Between his arm and his head, he don’t seem to know which one to hold with his good hand.

  There’s a crack of a gun somewhere way back behind us, and I look down at Emery and he looks up at me, and there’s a big frown on his face as he peers back around me at the land behind us.

  I’m thinking maybe that guy in the house objects to people on motorbikes wanting to check under his house for a dog that isn’t there. And maybe soon they’ll figure out there’s no dog, and no gun-stealing kids hiding inside.

  ‘What if we threw the guns out?’ I ask. ‘Will they stop chasing us if they get the guns back?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Emery groans, and then he says, ‘But what if they don’t and then we don’t have guns to scare them off? And what if they don’t find them?’

  I’m looking over my shoulder all the time. No lights, nothing moving back there. The branch is still dragging and kicking up dust, but it spreads and settles again quick enough, and it’s not very light yet, so it’s not as bad as it was up on that hillside in the last of the light when those bikes saw us. The trail we’re making looks weird, bu
t the ground here is harder and it’s not three wheels and a pile of paws no more.

  There’s a house at the end of a long dirt road ahead, so I point it out to Emery.

  ‘Any lights or anything moving there?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  He shrugs. ‘We got a long way to go. We can’t wait to sneak past every house in the dark.’

  I keep the dogs going and we pass that house, only one street block away, nothing between us, close enough for me to see all the windows are covered by boards. Then we wind away between two hills down and over a creek and up the other side, and still no movement from that house.

  I take a deep breath and give up watching it.

  Another wide, dead dirt plain, and a couple of houses a long way off, a few farm sheds. It’s just so dry out here, maybe people have moved to places better for growing vegetables.

  The dry plains go on and on, only a few old fence posts left to divide them up.

  ‘We should be thinking about finding a place to hide for the day,’ Emery groans when the sun heats up.

  I’ve seen him trying different ways to keep his arm up so it don’t bounce along with his body, and after two hours of that, he’s just given up and he’s holding it to his chest, his face all screwed up. He don’t say a thing. He’s being tough coz both of us know we gotta get away from where we were.

  I find us an old empty tin barn to hide out in. Probably an old hay shed from back when grass grew here. Now just a tall shed open on two sides. Nothing left of the hay, every scrap eaten by starving roos probably.

  The dogs flop, panting, into the shady dust the moment I unclip them from the gang rope. I get them water, the last of the cold boiled potatoes and a bruised apple each. It’s not good dog food, but they need to eat to run and this will fill their stomachs.

  Dad always said there’s nothing sadder than a starving dog. He said dogs have been living with humans for sixteen thousand years. That’s a whole lot of time to be relying on each other, and it’s sad when a human lets a dog down.

  Wolfy comes snockering around my ankles with his head down, wanting his share but still afraid. I get down and rub under his chin softly.

  ‘Silly, Wolfy. Me and Emery would never hurt you, pup.’

  Emery and I eat the plums. It’s not safe to light a fire here to boil more potatoes, but there’s a sheet of tin lying in the hot sun, and it burns my fingers when I touch it. I’ve never heard of sun-dried potato chips, but I slice up some raw potatoes and lay them out on the tin anyway, to give it a try. I warn the dogs away when they come to sniff, and they’re too tired to argue, eyes looking from me to the potato slices like I might tell them to eat them any second.

  ‘That’ll never work,’ Emery says.

  ‘Gotta be better than raw,’ I say.

  Emery lies on the sleeping bag trying to sleep for a while, wiggling like he can’t get comfortable, then he sits up and spreads out the map. Squinting at it hard like his eyes hurt.

  ‘I thought it would take us four or five days,’ he says. ‘But we’ve already been travelling a week and only covered what I thought we’d cover in three days.’

  I shrug. ‘It’s harder than it looks on the map.’

  ‘If we can do three hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, that’s five hours a day at... about fifteen kilometres an hour... so that’s seventy-five kilometres a day, and we’ve got about two hundred kilometres left to go. So after this evening, we still have three days!’ Emery groans and sinks onto the sleeping bag like the maths killed him.

  I lie down beside him. ‘It’s okay, if it takes us even another week, as long as we get there,’ I say.

  ‘But two hundred kilometres! We’ve only got raw potatoes left and no meat for the dogs. Wolf got hurt, my arm is killing me, my head is killing me, I can’t think straight, and we might be being followed,’ he says, and a tear trickles from his eye and rolls over the side of his face and drips off his ear. ‘I thought I could do it, Els. It was a stupid idea. I should’ve waited for Dad.’

  My heart breaks for him, my big brother trying so hard to save us all, and feeling like he can’t go on, but I poke him in the side for us to be normal, and I say, ‘Well then, let’s give up and go home.’

  Emery frowns at me like I’m stupid, then he snorts. ‘That’s even further away than Ma’s!’

  ‘Then we’ll live in this hay barn.’ I wave my hand at the corner. ‘The bedroom can be there. And the lounge next to it, and over here can be the kitchen.’

  ‘You idiot,’ he says.

  I smile. ‘We gotta go on. You got us the dog cart, you got us out of the city. We’ll make it, Emery. We will.’

  ‘I thought we’d be further by now. This land, it doesn’t feel right. I don’t belong here.’

  ‘No one belongs here. It’s bare.’

  ‘Nah, not that kind of belong. There’s a feeling you get when you’re close to home, you know?’

  Coming home from school a long time ago, on the back of Dad’s electric bike, me with my legs dangling, him wobbling side to side as he pedaled to help the motor up the last little bit before we turn into our street, then both of us with hands in the air coasting the whole of our street. Dad would laugh, and it was like the air had changed, got lighter somehow, as if we were leaving the busy city behind, even though we were still deep inside it. The only home I’d ever known, full of people, and cooking, and inventions and our three big doggos, always excited to see us.

  But Emery, he had two homes.

  ‘It’s like you’re right where you’re supposed to be,’ he says.

  ‘And that’s your grandparents’ place?’

  Emery nods.

  ‘Why did they send you back to the city? Back to Dad?’ I ask.

  ‘Ma said small town minds would put me in a tiny box and I’d never break out. I told her I’d only want to come back and help her run the mushroom farm, anyway, but she said they didn’t need me yet. Her and Grandma could run it and look after Ba just fine until I finished school.’

  ‘I was happy when you moved in,’ I say, even though I can’t remember life before Emery came to live. I think I was six. Emery was ten, and I loved him right away. He’d visited in his school holidays before that, and Dad had even taken me to see him at his grandparents’ place, but I don’t remember much. I just remember how happy I was to have a brother moving in for good, and then how upset I was that half of all the school holidays he’d go off to visit his mum and grandparents and I’d be alone again.

  Emery manages a smile. ‘I’m glad I got to be your big brother, but I was just always waiting to go home, you know? So maybe me wanting to bring you out here, maybe that was part of it? Me trying to stick the best bits of two worlds together. When Ma said I had to go stay with Dad, I thought, why should I leave? It was them guys in town doing the trouble-making, not me. And Ba was teaching me stuff about the land and our people. So I asked him to tell Ma and Grandma to let me stay, but he told me to go and live with my dad until I finished high school. He said that there were lots of parts to me, and if I ignored some of them, I’d never know who I truly was. He said I had to know all my people, coz he never did. He said I already knew my Grandma’s ways, her Afghani food and customs at least, and I already knew some of what he had to teach me, but I needed to know my father’s ways too. Ba said he would be there when I came home. It’s not easy to be someone with lots of different parts, Bell,’ Emery says. ‘I wanted to just be one. I wanted to be like Ba.’

  I pick up Emery’s good hand, turn it over in mine, the dirt’s lined into the creases in his fingers, and under his nails, like it’s lined into mine. We got the same kind of hands, us two. We both got long fingers and the same curve to our nails.

  ‘I’m glad Ba sent you to us,’ I say. ‘I’m glad you wanted to take me to your home.’

  We doze through the heat of the day. I give the dogs and Emery the rest of the water so they don’t overheat, and just take a sip myself.


  Then when the sun starts to go down, I test the sun-dried potato chips and they taste like horrible brown potato slices that got left out in the sun all day and dried out. But the dogs don’t seem to mind them when I offer them.

  I pretend they’re really yummy. ‘Mmm, so crunchy, they just need a bit of salt,’ I say to Emery as I chew.

  He tries one and almost spits it out. It hovers on the end of his tongue before he decides to swallow it. ‘Tastes like cardboard!’ he moans.

  I’m grinning as I give the rest to the dogs and clip them back into the gang rope. They start up their bouncing and whining, even while I’m rolling the sleeping bags back up and shoving them into the net.

  We head out across the plain once more. A line of small hills to one side and bare empty flats to the other, ahead and behind. With no water in any of us, I’m panicking as each bit of landscape opens up ahead with no wandering line of trees showing us a creek. Soon it will be dark, and I don’t know if we should stop without finding water first. They need so much, these big dogs. They’re really gonna get sick without water.

  We’ve been going maybe an hour, maybe two, when Rooch starts checking over her shoulder. I turn my head to line my ears up, stare hard into the lowering light behind us, but I don’t know what she’s worrying about.

  Then something flashes.

  ‘Someone’s back there!’ I say to Emery.

  He leans out, checking round my legs.

  ‘We’re being followed!’ he says, and he scrambles up, getting his feet on the platform, pulling himself up with one hand, checking around the landscape. ‘Haw! Roochy! Haw a bit!’ he yells.