On the Run Read online

  “I hope you do as bad a job on yours as you’re doing on mine,” Ben said. “And why aren’t you cutting Olive’s?”

  “Her hair’s too beautiful. She can wear pigtails or a bun. Look down,” Mum said, her tongue poking out as she concentrated on clipping around Ben’s ear.

  “Why don’t we just wait till morning and go to a hairdresser?” Ben asked.

  They had been driving for about five hours when the rain became too heavy to see the road. The wipers on the car Uncle Chris had given them did not work well. Ben couldn’t work out why they had bothered swapping—the car was even older than the Green Machine. They had pulled off the highway into Rest Haven, a deadbeat motel with a flickering fluorescent sign out front.

  “Don’t use your whiny voice,” Mum said.

  She often accused him of whining, so Ben said in his deepest, most manly voice, “Why don’t we just go to a hairdresser?”

  “It’s more fun this way,” she said.

  “What’s fun about having your hair hacked off by a maniac with a pair of nail scissors?”

  “Mind your tongue,” she said. “Head down.”

  Ben watched another handful of thick brown hair drop to the tiles. There was more hair on the floor than Ben remembered having on his head. Another large clump fell. He looked up into the mirror again, and a tiny scream leaped from his mouth. His hair was an inch long.

  “I think it looks good,” Mum said. “More like a boy.”

  “Good? I look like a toilet brush!”

  “Oh, stop complaining, you big boob,” she said.

  “Boob?” he said, raising his voice and standing up. “I’m not a ‘boob.’ People are going to be cleaning toilets with my head.”

  “Sit!” Mum said, like she was speaking to Golden.

  “No,” Ben said.

  “Oi!” he heard from the next room.

  He looked at Mum, thinking for a second. There was no point getting Dad upset. He turned and studied his reflection in the mirror. “This room is where hair comes to die.”

  “It’s a new look.”

  “Vacation haircuts,” he grunted as he flopped back into the chair.

  A grin spread over Mum’s lips as she tidied up the sides.

  “I’m hungry,” Ben said.

  “Well, we don’t have anything. It won’t hurt you to skip a few meals.”

  Ben looked at her in the mirror. She knew he was paranoid about his weight because he’d told her the things kids said at school. She gave him an apologetic look and kept cutting.

  “Ow!” he said, grabbing his ear. He looked at his hand. Blood.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Let me look at it.”

  Ben stormed out of the bathroom, squeezing his ear to stop the blood flow. The room was dimly lit with brick walls, a double bed, and a tired-looking couch. Dad was looking out the window through a gap in the faded pink curtains, speaking to someone on the motel phone. Olive was asleep on the bed with Bonzo, lit by the glow of a greyhound race on TV.

  “Ben!” Mum called.

  He headed for the front door and yanked it open but the security chain stopped it.

  “Hey!” Dad said, putting the phone down.

  “What?”

  “Has your mother finished with you?”

  Ben reached for his ear. He dabbed at it and showed Dad the blood seeping into the shallow channels of his fingerprints. If he was honest there wasn’t actually much blood. He would have liked there to be a bit more, but it was still blood. Mum came out of the bathroom.

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s finished.”

  Dad looked at Mum. Mum looked at Ben. Ben looked at Dad. And that is how his hair stayed. Short and spiky with sticky-uppy bits.

  Dad was in the butcher’s chair next. He swore a lot and Mum threatened to cut his ear off too if he didn’t stop complaining. He stopped.

  Ben sat on a green vinyl chair that had a dodgy leg, opened the curtains a little wider, and stared into the parking lot through the rain-drizzled window. He grabbed his brown leather notebook from his bag. Ben had found the notebook in the cramped office at the back of Nan’s house where she kept candy bars in the middle drawer of a rolltop desk. The notebook had been his grandfather’s. When Pop was alive he had jotted some numbers on the front pages. Sums written in smudgy blue ink. Ben could barely read the writing but he kept those pages in the book.

  At the back of the notebook, on the last page, there was another bit of Pop’s scrawly writing. These words: “An old man tells his grandson one evening that there is a battle raging inside him, inside all of us. A terrible battle between two wolves. One wolf is bad—pride, envy, jealousy, greed. The other wolf is good—kindness, hope, love, truth. The child asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The grandfather answers simply, ‘The one you feed.’”

  Ben liked the words. He liked that they were from Pop, who had died when Ben was two. Nan said that, up until then, the two of them had been inseparable. Pop had taken him everywhere, always repeating a rhyme that Ben had loved: “Ben Silver is no good. Chop him up for firewood. If he is no good for that, feed him to the old tomcat.”

  Ben chewed on the rubber end of his pencil for a moment before writing this list:

  Police

  Vacation

  Uncle Chris. Gray nylon bag. Black handles.

  The new old car

  Haircuts

  Vacations were rubbish, Ben decided. And the cabin would be even worse. Nature. Ben wondered how long it would be till they could go home and he could finish making his movie. He was going to miss ordering his lunch at school tomorrow. And soccer at lunchtime. Why couldn’t James or Gus have come on vacation with them?

  Cars pulled in and out of the parking lot, headlights shining on hundreds of little raindrop jewels racing down the window. Out front, the sign for Rest Haven flickered to an uneven beat. The cranky lady from reception crossed the parking lot holding a red umbrella, a small carton of milk, and some towels. She looked at Ben, quickly looked away, but then glanced back. He wondered if she thought his hair was odd. Or just his family.

  When they checked in, Dad had refused to show her his driver’s license, saying that he’d lost his wallet. Ben had seen him with his wallet at a gas station on the highway half an hour earlier, so he went out to the car, brought Dad’s wallet to him, and said, “Here it is!” But, rather than being thankful, Dad was angry.

  “Don’t stick your big bib in!” he shouted as they drove across to the parking space in front of their room.

  Ben didn’t even wear a bib. What did “stick your big bib in” mean?

  Soon Dad emerged from the bathroom with close-cropped hair—another unhappy customer. Ben tried not to laugh.

  “Go to sleep,” Dad grunted, switching off the TV and lamp and flopping onto the big bed.

  Ben lay down on the couch in a rectangle of light from the bathroom. When Mum appeared half an hour later she was hardly recognizable. Her hair, usually halfway down her back, was now boyish and weird-looking.

  “Why did you do that?” Ben asked.

  “Go to sleep. We leave early.”

  He watched her. She laid Olive down on a blanket on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him for a long while.

  “How early do we leave?” Ben whispered into the darkness.

  “Four.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your father says so … Go to sleep.”

  Ben lay there, eyes open, listening to rain beating the roof. The couch cushions smelled moldy and felt itchy. He wondered if there were bedbugs. He imagined his body swarming with mini beasts, hundreds of thousands of them eating him alive. He closed his eyes and saw it like a stop-motion movie with tiny bedbugs made of clay.

  Dad’s snoring filled the room.

  Ben tried not to think about the bites. He thought about Nan, his dad’s mum. She lived around the corner from them, right on the highway. She always had time for him and was interested in what he had to say
. Nan was rake-thin, a tough old bird, one of those old people who sat on the front steps watching the world go by. Ben wondered if she had picked up Golden. Even though it was past midnight, he knew that Nan would be lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to talk radio and world news. She only slept for a couple of hours just before dawn.

  Ben’s eyes closed. He thought about the four police officers. He had asked Mum about them again, and she muttered something unconvincing about old parking tickets.

  Ben touched his spiky hair and scratched his skin. He felt hungry. He silently prayed for the vacation to be over soon.

  CHASE

  Adrenaline streaked through him. He craned his neck to look out the back window.

  Mum looked too.

  “Don’t!” Dad snapped.

  “What does he want?” Ben asked. “Is he after us? Were we speeding?”

  Dad drove on. He hadn’t taken a break in five hours.

  Olive knelt and stared out the back window, sucking her thumb.

  “Sit,” Ben whispered, but she didn’t listen. This was not a surprise.

  “Are you going to pull over?” Mum asked.

  They rode on in silence. Ben wondered if Dad had heard her.

  There were two short, sharp blasts on the siren.

  Ben had never wanted anything more than to look out the back window. Adults were strange. If kids ran the world everybody would be allowed to look when the police were following them. Not just annoying little sisters.

  “What are you doing?” Mum asked. “Shouldn’t you pull over?”

  Dad shrugged. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “Ray, it’s the police.”

  Dad wiped his nose on the back of his hand and kept driving. “I haven’t done anything.”

  They drove on.

  “If we haven’t done anything, won’t they let us go?” Ben said helpfully. Surely that made sense to his father. When Ben became a police officer, if he pulled someone over and they hadn’t done anything, he would let them go, for sure.

  An engine roared and a car moved up quickly beside them. The vehicle was royal blue with a white-and-blue checker print, dark-tinted windows, and four antennas. Ben knew what all of the antennas were for. He had sat in a police car at the Royal Easter Show a few years ago and committed every detail to memory. One was an 800 MHz enhancer. Another was a VHF low band antenna. Another for 468 MHz and then the standard radio antenna above the back window.

  The lights and siren weren’t on but the police officer—black wraparound sunglasses, short spiky hair, square head—pointed directly at Dad, then to the side of the road.

  Olive started to giggle. “He looks angry,” she said. Olive wanted to be a robber when she grew up. And a judge.

  Dad swore under his breath but Ben heard it.

  Mum chewed what was left of her nails.

  Ben watched the cop.

  Dad kept driving.

  Tension spilled from the gaps around the windows and dripped down the sides of the car. With a low growl, Dad pulled onto the crunchy gravel shoulder of the road. He kept the engine running. They waited.

  Ben caught a glimpse of movement in the side mirror as the officer stepped out of his car, put on his police cap, shut his door, and walked along the edge of the road toward them. He had a wide, steady walk, his legs far apart, his body like a gum tree trunk. He wore a light blue shirt, dark blue pants, dusty black boots. His pistol was slung low, strapped to his thigh with a harness.

  He stopped beside the car. His left arm was heavily tattooed, like Dad’s. Ben was surprised that police were allowed to have tattoos.

  Dad rolled down the window. Mum smiled at the policeman.

  “Can you please turn your engine off?”

  Dad twisted the key and the car became still and quiet. Just the click and tick of the hot motor. And the tock-tock-tock-tock of the blinker.

  “Why didn’t you slow down?” the officer asked.

  “I didn’t see you at first.”

  “Did you hear my siren?”

  Dad sat for a few seconds, then nodded.

  “Well, why didn’t you pull over?”

  Dad waited. “I’m not sure.”

  “Make sure you pull over more quickly in the future.”

  Dad nodded.

  Ben was listening so intently he forgot to breathe. He stared out the window at the officer, whose thick reddish neck seemed to burst from his collar into a roll of fat that ended at his tight-fitting police cap. He looked about ten years younger than Dad. Early thirties. His name badge read “Dan Toohey.” A good name for a police officer. Not as good as Ben Silver, but good.

  “Is this your car?” the officer asked.

  “Yes,” Dad said.

  Ben bit his tongue.

  “Do you know why I’m pulling you over?”

  Dad sat there. Mum chewed on her finger. Ben still could not get used to her short, weed-whacker haircut.

  Dad shook his head. “No.”

  “You have no idea?”

  Dad shook his head again.

  Dan Toohey looked in at Olive and Ben sitting there in their school uniforms. A semitrailer thundered by, ruffling the officer’s shirt. Ben leaned forward in his seat, his right ear twisted toward the action so he would not miss anything.

  “Your blinker,” the officer said. “You’ve had your blinker on for about five miles, you dodo.” He smiled for the first time, then he laughed, a big policeman’s belly laugh.

  Dad looked down and turned off his blinker. He laughed too. It was a bit forced. Then Mum laughed and Ben tried to laugh, even though he didn’t think it was that funny.

  “That was all. But since you didn’t want to pull over, I’ll have to run your license, all right?” The laughter petered out. “It’ll only take two seconds.”

  Dad took his time finding his wallet. Ben could see it on the dashboard but he didn’t say anything.

  “It’s on the dash,” Dan Toohey said.

  “Oh.” Dad passed his license through the window.

  “Ray Silver … Back in a minute.”

  “Excuse me,” Ben said to the officer from the backseat.

  Mum shot him a glare.

  “Do you have any police things you give to kids?” Ben felt like an idiot so he added, “For my sister.”

  “Is not, Poo Face!” Olive said. “It’s for him!”

  “No, yeah, no worries. Let me think. I’ll have a look in the car for you.”

  “It’s okay,” Dad said. “Don’t worry about it. He’s just—”

  “No trouble at all. It’s good to encourage the young ones. Otherwise the fire department gets all the new recruits. You a budding officer?” He smiled at Ben, who felt embarrassed and didn’t say anything. “Actually, you know what I’ve got? They’ve just started giving us these business cards and I dunno what to do with them.” Dan Toohey took a velcro wallet from his back pocket and passed a card through to Ben.

  It bore the name Dan Toohey and his rank, constable, with the New South Wales police logo—a circle of green leaves with a red crown on top and a wedge-tailed eagle in the center. At the bottom were the words “Culpam Poena Premit Comes.”

  “Maybe you can use it like a policeman’s badge or something,” Dan Toohey said.

  Ben looked up and said quietly, “Thanks.”

  “I’ll just run this license. Back in a minute.”

  Dan Toohey headed to his car.

  “What’d you ask that for?” Dad said.

  “I—”

  “He’s just excited,” Mum cut in.

  “Baby,” Dad said under his breath, shaking his head.

  They sat in silence, the car filling with tension once more now that Dan Toohey and his belly laugh were gone. Trucks roared by, rocking the car with wind-rush.

  Ben studied the business card, mouthing the words “Culpam Poena Premit Comes” over and over again. He flicked open his notebook, slipped the card in, and wrote the words on the inside cover,
pressing hard to etch into the leather.

  Culpam Poena Premit Comes

  “Hey, Mum, what does ‘Culpam Poena Premit Comes’ mean?” He stumbled over the words.

  “I don’t know. I don’t speak Chinese,” she said.

  Mum seemed to call any language she didn’t understand “Chinese.”

  “Dad?”

  He was looking in the side mirror on his door. “Neither do I.”

  “You guys are old. Didn’t you do Latin at school?”

  Ben was thrust back into his seat as Dad floored the accelerator, spinning the wheels, spitting gravel.

  They drove away. Fast.

  Ben looked at the reflection of Dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Mum looked back at the police car sitting beside the road. Olive opened her mouth and stared at Dad, thumb frozen in midair a few inches from her face.

  “Wasn’t he coming back?” Ben asked. “You left your license.”

  Dad drove on, sitting up, arms straight, holding the wheel firmly with two hands now. He took the next exit up the road. Ben heard the siren as they turned right at the bottom of the exit ramp. They sped underneath an overpass and along a winding, narrow road past fields of sugar cane. The siren sound was moving closer when Dad took a sharp left down a dirt track. It was a trail between two fields of tall green cane. Ben sat up and looked back as their car fishtailed.

  Dad turned right down another dirt track and slammed on the brakes, switching the engine off.

  Sheets of dust blew in through the open windows. Ben heard the police car dart by on the road. His heart pummeled his chest.

  Olive laughed. “That was fun.”

  They sat, engine off, sound of a crow cawing in the sugar cane nearby, siren in the distance, dirt settling all around them. For the first time ever, Ben did not ask a question. Mum sniffed and covered her mouth and nose with one hand.

  They sat.

  “Must’ve been after someone else,” Dad said.

  The siren faded.

  “You got any of that drink left?” Dad asked.

  Ben picked up the soft drink bottle from the seat next to him and handed it to Dad, who guzzled it all and wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “What do we do now, Ray?” Mum asked.