At Yellow Lake

by Jane Mcloughlin

  One of the car doors opened. A clumsy shadow tumbled out. He held his breath. Would they see him? He wanted to get up and run, but staying here, clutching his holdall, ducking behind it, was safer – he could see them, but they couldn’t see him.

  The shadow scrambled to the middle of the road, stumbled toward him in the dark. As it got closer, he could hear its breath – frantic, terrified gasps. It tripped into the ditch and he saw that it was not an it, but a she – a girl, the same age as him, younger even, fourteen, at the oldest. She was flat on the ground, like him, clinging to the wet grass, covering her face, trying not to move.

  On the highway, men were climbing out of the car. One guy hopped back and forth, trying to put weight on an injured leg. Another one shouted, ‘Etta? Where are you?’

  Etta. That must be the girl.

  ‘Hey,’ Peter whispered. ‘Over here.’

  She turned her head slightly. ‘Oh, God,’ she whimpered. ‘Are you with them?’

  ‘No. I was just hitchhiking. They nearly—’

  ‘So that was you.’

  She didn’t say any more. She looked up at the men who were huddled around the car, standing in front of the steaming bonnet, looking back towards the woods, pointing.

  She didn’t budge. Neither did Peter. It seemed easier, somehow, staying still, waiting for sleep, or for morning, or for the men in the car to find them.

  ‘No, Peter.’ That voice in his head. ‘You’ve got to move.’

  He shook himself, grabbed his bag. ‘We can’t just stay here. They’ll come looking.’

  The girl lifted her face, slithered sideways, closer to him.

  ‘Where can we go?’ He could see her eyes, hollow and dazed, ringed in black make-up.

  ‘I know a place,’ he said. ‘A cabin at Yellow Lake.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Not far.’

  He moved up onto his hands and knees, hooked the holdall straps over his shoulders. The muddy soil squelched between his fingers. They’d have to stay low, crawl to the edge of the woods, before they could make a run for it. A few seconds later, the girl followed him. Peter stopped, waited until they were side by side.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘Once we get to the cabin, we’ll be safe.’

  They crawled towards the forest like clumsy animals. When they got to the top of the ditch, they edged past the first row of trees and shouldered through dense undergrowth. Peter could hear the girl – Etta – beside him. Her breath sounded like his – heaving with effort, but shallow with fear.

  They inched forwards until the brambles and tree roots became too dense to push aside. They couldn’t have gone very far. It felt like miles – Peter’s arms ached, his face and hands burned from the stings of tiny cuts – but it was probably just a few hundred metres. He turned to the girl. Her muddy, matted hair hung down across her face like clumps of seaweed. Her eyes were clearer, though, Peter thought – more determined, less terrified.

  ‘All right?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yeah. I’m OK.’

  ‘Would you like to rest here for a while or do you want to keep moving?’

  Behind them, a twig snapped. Without speaking, without even looking at each other, he and the girl scrambled onto their feet and took off into the forest, dodging trees, ducking under thick branches. Peter imagined the men behind them – hacking through the scrub with machetes, massive hunting rifles strapped to their backs, waiting for just the right moment when they could stop, take aim, pick them off – first the girl, then him.

  But he didn’t turn around. He kept going – tripping, falling, not seeing, not daring to stop, even for a second. He put his hand out for balance and he felt something touch it, hold it, squeeze it – the girl’s hand! He squeezed it back. It was strange how he felt stronger, braver, joined to her like this.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered, and they seemed to pick up speed – tramping through the undergrowth, jumping over the roots. His shoes were soaking wet, caked in dirt and slime. His legs ached. His heart was beating so fast he thought his chest would explode. But the girl tightened her grip on his hand, like a silent message – don’t stop, don’t stop – so they trudged on in silence, until the forest got so dense that the trees looked like charcoal smudges on a huge black canvas. . .

  Peter stopped. Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was that darkness before the dawn thing, but he couldn’t make any sense of where he was any more. Were they moving away from the road? Were they getting nearer to the cabin at all? The forest was a maze, and they’d reached the centre – he hoped – but would they ever get back out?

  The girl let go of his hand. ‘What’s the matter?’ she panted.

  ‘Nothing,’ Peter said, ‘it’s just. . .’

  He felt dizzy. He could hardly see.

  ‘Do you think we’ve lost them?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he said. He crouched down and tied his shoelaces as slowly as he could. He needed to steady himself. They were both out of breath. His lungs were burning. Something rustled in the undergrowth again. It was just a fox or a squirrel scuffling through the dried leaves – Peter knew that – but the girl let out a little cry and they were off again, stumbling straight into the darkness like a pair of startled deer. Soon his chest was straining and his legs felt as if they were about to seize up completely. He could hear Etta, just behind him – panting, tripping up, nearly falling.

  ‘You OK?’ he whispered. He turned back to Etta, saw a tiny shrug of her shoulders. He glimpsed the mucky curtain of hair that covered her face. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. It was odd, that – odd for a Yank, anyway. Most Americans he’d met liked talking, so what had made her so quiet?

  They were walking now – a slow, silent trudge. Breathing was easier – he took in deep gulps of the cool night air. His vision got sharper. He squinted through the trees for a glimpse of something he recognised – a glimmer of lake, lights from a cabin window, footsteps on a trodden-down path.

  It felt safer, too, as if the men in the car had got lost and given up. Or had never even tried to find them – that was a possibility, wasn’t it? Maybe when he and Etta had disappeared into the woods, the men had stood by the side of the road and waved them goodbye.

  ‘Wait,’ Etta said.

  He stopped. Listened. What was it? He couldn’t hear anything dodgy – just chirping crickets, flitting birds, whining insects.

  ‘I. . .’ The girl’s voice was a tiny croak. What the hell was the matter? ‘Um . . . I gotta go pee.’

  Oh, God.

  ‘S . . . sorry,’ he stammered, feeling heat rising up his neck, warming his cheeks. ‘I’ll wait here, OK? You go, you just. . .’

  It felt strange, talking to her, especially about something embarrassing like having to piss. His voice was odd in this place, too – posh, as though he should be wearing a dinner jacket or carrying a riding crop.

  ‘I’m gonna go behind a tree,’ the girl said.

  ‘Fine.’

  It was pitch dark, and he was standing ten feet in front of her, facing the opposite direction. Still, he closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. He heard rustling leaves, then the sound of her peeing – like a rushing stream, though he tried not to listen – then more rustling, then nothing.

  He waited a few minutes. What was taking so long? He knew girls took forever in the loo, but that was for make-up and stuff, for admiring themselves, wasn’t it?

  ‘Right then,’ he said, in a clipped voice that reminded him of his father’s. ‘Maybe we should get moving.’

  The girl didn’t answer.

  ‘Etta?’

  Slowly, the girl came out from behind the tree. As she got closer, and he could see her properly, he noticed how small she was, how young she looked, how fragile she seemed. The black make-up around her eyes had dripped down her pale face like two tiny coal rivers. She was shivering in thin, ripped jeans and a flimsy yellow vest top. She stopped a few feet away from him –
her arms wrapped around her body – as if she didn’t dare get too close.

  ‘Those men didn’t hurt you, did they?’ he asked, and straight away he regretted his words, straight away he willed her to say no, she was fine, she’d just got out of that car to stretch her legs, she’d never been in any kind of trouble, it was just the accident that had made her temporarily confused and now she should really be getting back to her nice, normal life.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she muttered, her eyes on the ground, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Then she started to tremble. Her head shook first, then her body. Soon she was shuddering all over, letting out a rumble of choking sobs and tears.

  Peter stood beside her, useless. What was he meant to do? Put his arms around her? Hold her? Maybe he should feed her some line about how things weren’t so bad, how everything would be all right – every cloud has a silver lining, bollocks like that.

  ‘Don’t worry, Etta,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you home soon.’

  The crying got louder.

  ‘Do you have a cell phone?’ That was good – something practical, at least. ‘Should we call your family?’

  The sobbing got worse, the shuddering and shaking got so violent that she collapsed onto the ground, and curled up into a little ball.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. Sorry? How weak was that?

  He sat down next to her, took the holdall off his back. What else could he do? Nothing. Just sit. Keep an eye on her, make sure that she wasn’t having a seizure or something. Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe he hadn’t upset her at all, maybe she was epileptic. He knew what to do if that was the case – put something in her mouth, a comb or a ruler, so she wouldn’t swallow her tongue. No, he remembered. That was just a story – complete rubbish, like if you crossed your eyes too many times they stayed that way.

  While he was thinking these things, he started smoothing her hair. He hadn’t meant to touch her, and when he realised what he was doing, he wanted to pull his hand back. It seemed to be having an effect, though. Her sobs had shrunk to gentle whimpering. Her breathing was more regular – deeper, calmer. He kept smoothing and petting, imagining that the back of her head was his neighbour’s cat, the fidgety one that didn’t like anybody stroking it except him. See? He wasn’t so bad. Cats liked him, and everyone knew how fussy they were.

  At last the girl was quiet and the crackling, hissing sounds of the summer night smothered his random thoughts. Peter let his hand rest on her head for a moment, then carefully took it away. He unzipped the holdall, reached into it, rummaged around for something she could wear. He pulled out a plaid shirt – heavy flannel, an old proper work shirt he’d bought at Oxfam – and put it around her shoulders like a blanket.

  The girl sat up, cross-legged like him. She leaned closer to him, trying to make out the features on his face.

  ‘It’s hard to see,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry.’ Another apology. As if the darkness, too, were his fault. ‘My name’s Peter. Peter Lawrence. I’m from England.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were from Welmer.’ The girl laughed. That was something.

  ‘The cabin. It’s my mum’s place. She’s a Yank. Was. An American, I mean. I was on my way there when you . . . when your . . . sorry . . . when that car stopped.’

  The girl was struggling to get her arms into the sleeves of his plaid shirt, so he held it up for her, the way his dad used to help Mum on with her coat.

  ‘Is it far?’ the girl asked. ‘This cabin?’

  ‘I don’t know, actually. I thought I was getting close when you. . .’ Why did he stumble on the words, why was it so difficult for him to say what had happened? Why was he sounding so mealy-mouthed, so English, so much like his dad?

  ‘When I escaped?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From those bastards?’

  ‘Yes.’ He knew he should say something else – tell a joke, maybe, or offer ‘validation’, as Mum called it, not that he knew what that meant.

  It was no use – all he had to offer her were some wonky directions and out-of-date travel information.

  ‘If we could find the road again, it might be a couple of miles. If we keep going through the woods, it might be closer, but we’re lost now, so. . .’

  ‘So we’re probably screwed.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said without thinking, ‘although the word I was thinking of was a lot worse than “screwed”.’

  At first there was silence – forest sounds, bugs and things – but then Etta laughed again, an easy sound, not forced, not something she was doing because she wanted to be polite or to cover up her embarrassment at his lame attempt at humour. She laughed because she got the joke. She laughed because what he’d said was actually funny.

  ‘Right then,’ he said, and his dad’s brisk, authoritative tone sounded right for a change. ‘Are you ready?’

  He got up and stood over her, stretching out his hand to help. As she took it, he gently pulled her up so that she was standing beside him.

  ‘Let’s keep going this way, and see if we run into something I recognise.’

  They moved forwards, deeper and deeper into the woods, stumbling occasionally, but what did that matter? The girl – Etta, he thought, her name is Etta – kept hold of his hand, and he felt that strength again. With every step they took, they were getting closer to the cabin. Peter was sure of it now – he could feel it, drawing them towards it like a magnet. He looked up at the sky. There, through the canopy of trees, bright stars studded the darkness like a trail of tiny lights.

  JONAH

  A strange noise woke him. He’d heard it before but wasn’t sure yet what it was. A fox? A heron? Maybe a distant cabin owner’s baby had woken up. In the middle of the night, sounds travelled a long way. No, it was a fox, most likely, barking out a high-pitched warning to her cubs.

  For the first time since he’d finished the wigwam, Jonah couldn’t sleep. The harsh shrieking that woke him went quiet after a while, but other things – restless, invasive thoughts – wouldn’t leave him alone.

  At first he thought it was just the hunger, the haunting memories of warm food – a restaurant where he’d eaten with his father once. It was a diner with steamed-up windows. The waitresses were all old, grey-haired ladies with white waitress uniforms and gnarly, blue-veined hands. He and his dad had driven miles and miles from Minneapolis – Jonah didn’t know why. But he remembered the food – the old waitress called it a hot beef sandwich. Perfect orbs of steaming mashed potatoes nestled between two huge triangles of roast beef on white bread, smothered – the whole plate – with hot, brown gravy.

  That was the last time he’d seen his dad, before he started high school, at the end of middle school when he was about twelve or thirteen. His dad had picked him up from school. He’d stood waiting outside the chain-link playground fence, alone. None of the other parents were waiting – that all finished at the end of grade school. You either walked home alone or you took a bus. His dad was smoking – that wasn’t good. He looked confused, out of place, as though he wasn’t sure if he was at the right school. Jonah saw Mrs Murphy, who was on after-school rota, pointing at him, whispering something to Mr Cornell, the assistant principal.

  Jonah hadn’t been expecting his dad, so he wasn’t sure what to do. He’d been taught, over and over, not to go with strangers, to report any suspicious-looking people. Did his dad fit that description? It had been a year at least since he’d last seen him. He looked raggedy, with torn jeans and a thin, dirty-looking corduroy jacket that couldn’t have kept him warm enough, not on a cold November afternoon.

  Mr Cornell started pressing numbers on his cell phone, all the while looking at Jonah’s dad, as though if he took his eye off him for a minute he’d abduct someone or pull out a gun.

  Jonah raced to his side. ‘It’s OK. That’s my dad.’

  The look Mr Cornell gave him was one of complete bewilderment. Who’s this kid, he seemed to be asking himself.

  ‘I’m Jonah Campbell. In t
he eighth grade. Mrs Benson’s class.’

  Mr Cornell’s face registered a little recognition.

  ‘That’s my dad. Don’t call the police.’

  Mr. Cornell’s face scrunched up. ‘He doesn’t look like your dad.’

  Jonah understood. Indian-looking kid, white dad. Of course it didn’t make sense to Mr Cornell.

  ‘Well, he is.’

  It didn’t make sense to Jonah, either. Not just the Indian/white thing. Not just the never-seeing-his-dad thing. It was his mother’s silence on the subject that he really couldn’t figure out.

  His mom was a big-mouth, always trumpeting on about something – how kids today didn’t know the meaning of work, how President Bush should have been hauled up in front the Court of Human Rights, whatever that was, how building a new sports stadium in downtown Minneapolis was wasting millions of dollars while people in the Cities were still living on the breadline. It was always something with his mother, but it was never about his dad.

  It had been a good dinner, though. So delicious that Jonah had had to fight to keep himself from licking the plate. When they were finished, his dad ordered two slices of lemon meringue pie. It arrived in an instant – a huge slab of neon yellow goo topped with a wobbly white crust that was dotted with droplets that looked like beads of sweat. Jonah could hardly bear to eat it, but his dad needed fattening up, so he kept eating, hoping his dad would too.

  Three years had gone by since that weird, silent lunch. Jonah turned over on his mat and inched his body away from the twig that was poking him from underneath the thin cloth. He shouldn’t have let himself start thinking about food again, about how he’d kill for just one bite of that gross, sweaty meringue.

  He pulled the sheet up to his chest. Thinking about his father, that was another thing. When he was younger he’d lie awake, like this, thinking of all the things he should have said on that last meeting. The usual things like, ‘I love you Dad’ or, ‘I miss you.’ Now Jonah knew those words didn’t mean a thing. How could you miss someone you never spent any time with? How could you love somebody you never really knew?