Eye Lake (16 page)

Fallout

O
n the morning of the fourth day after George went missing Virgil led me into the living room, away from the men in the kitchen, and said, ‘I'm going to be straight with you, Eli. Things aren't looking too good. We haven't found George and time's against us now. I'm going to ask you again – and think as hard as you can – is there anything George said to you, about plans he had or things that were happening – anything at all? It might not seem like it was important but you never know. It might give us a clue. I'm not going to lie to you. This is a bad situation, Eli. This is a really bad situation.'

I looked down at the floor and said nothing. My head felt like there was an iron band tightening around it and my stomach felt like it was going to fall out of me onto the floor.

‘I know he's your friend and you're upset but you have to think, Eli. Anything. Anything at all.'

I kept staring at the floor. My tongue felt like it was too big for my mouth. I wanted to tell him everything. But I couldn't. George had made me promise.

‘That's okay,' he said, ruffling the hair on my head. ‘I know you've tried. And we're going to keep trying too. We're going to do everything we can.'

The week before, George and me had been fishing with bobbers by the railroad bridge. I'd caught a slube and was trying to get my hook out of its mouth without cutting my fingers on its teeth. George wasn't even looking at his bobber. He was telling me about how Eskimos ate raw whale blubber and liked the livers
most. He picked a stick up from the bank and threw it into the river like a spear.

‘George McKenzie had mastered the art of polar hunting,' he said. ‘It was vital for the success of his expedition that he learned how to survive on the land.'

‘You're going to scare the fish,' I said.

‘Eli O'Callaghan was slow to learn the necessities of polar survival. I explained to him the art of harpooning.'

He threw another stick into the river. He was wearing the fur hat he'd worn all winter, with big flaps that hung down over his ears. The snow and ice had melted a while back, so it was too warm for it now and I could see beads of sweat dripping down the back of his neck.

‘You're not going to catch nothing if you keep throwing those sticks.'

‘It was vital for his men to learn how to adapt to this wilder- ness … '

‘You'll have to wear a normal hat when you come back to school,' I told him.

‘I'm not coming back,' he said. ‘My dad doesn't want me to. He says it's not safe for me in Crooked River anymore.'

‘Your mom told my nana your allergies were gone.'

‘It's not my allergies,' he said. ‘It's the
situation
, Eli. It's bad. It's not safe. It's
imminent
. Nobody understands the situation properly, not even my mom.'

‘You mean the end of the world.'

‘The conflict is inevitable. The question isn't
if
, it's
when
. Those who don't understand that are living in a fool's paradise, and for those who aren't prepared … '

‘If you're not coming back to school then where are you going to be?'

‘I'm going to stay in the underground place, the shelter. I'm going to survive in the bush. I know all about it – Dad and me have been practising the necessary skills.'

George made it sound just like he was going off on another of his trips.

‘You have to promise not to tell anybody, Eli.'

‘I already promised.'

‘Maybe it'd be okay for you to come and visit. I'll ask Dad.'

And then I felt mad again, like before, thinking about the end of the world and Nana and Dad and Virgil.

‘I don't want to come,' I said. ‘I think it's dumb. I don't think there's going to be any end of the world.'

‘I don't expect you to understand all these things,' George said.

‘I think I understand just fine. I reckon your dad's nuts, like Billy said.'

George had picked up another stick to throw in the river, but instead of throwing it he hit me in the face with it. My cheek was stinging. Before I even knew what I was doing I had the slube by the tail, raised it high, and whacked him on the side of the head with it. His hat flew off onto the ground. There was a patch of slime sticking to his hair and oozing down the side of his face.

‘I don't want you there anyway,' he shouted, with the slime beginning to drip over his top lip. ‘I don't want you to visit – ever. And then you'll all be sorry. Just like Dad says.
The whole lot of you'll be sorry. This whole stupid town!
'

After Virgil went back into the kitchen to talk to the rest of the men I sat there thinking for a long time. They weren't ever going to find him. I'd seen their maps and they were looking in the wrong places. Then I started thinking how Mr. McKenzie was right there across the street, behind his fence. He knew where George was. He'd taken him there. So why wasn't he there with him? If he reckoned it was the end of the world why wasn't he there in his underground place too?

On the day George went missing they'd gone straight over to see him, Virgil and the search party and Sergeant Hughie. They'd
asked him a bunch of questions. Then they'd offered to let him join the search party. When Virgil came back he told Nana that Mr. McKenzie had had some kind of nervous breakdown and wasn't much help. He told Dad that Mr. McKenzie was a useless fucking lunatic and wasn't fit to be a father.

On the evening of the second day, while I was lying in the porch and the men were in the kitchen looking over their maps and making plans for the next day, I'd seen Mr. McKenzie slip out from behind his fence and sneak down to the river. But he must've come back by the following morning because I saw Sergeant Hughie going over there to talk to him some more. Later that same morning Gracie had come by to see Nana. She sat on the couch in the porch and her chest started heaving like she couldn't breathe.

‘Oh God,' she kept saying, gulping for breath.

When I walked through the porch and she saw me the gulping got worse.

‘Oh God,' she said. ‘Oh God.'

And I'd wanted to run over and tell her – that George was okay, that he was living out at the underground place. My head was hurting with wanting to tell her. But I'd promised George.

I sat there thinking for a long time and then decided I was going to go get George myself.

When I got to the river I couldn't find Mr. McKenzie's canoe anywhere. I trudged up and down the banks, pushing through the bulrushes, until my shoes were soaked. He must've moved it and hidden it somewhere different. Back at number one O'Callaghan Street the men from the search parties were coming and going all the time, so there was no way I could get Clarence's canoe without them seeing me. Then I remembered how Buddy kept a rowboat on the landing near the railroad bridge that him and Brenda used to go on picnics sometimes.

At first I thought I wouldn't be able to shift it. It was made of heavy, varnished pine, with
3BBB
painted in gold on the side. I heaved and heaved, until eventually I managed to turn it over. There were two frogs sitting underneath and, beside them, two oars.

I don't know how long it took me to drag it to the water. It felt like it took forever. Every few minutes I had to stop and catch my breath and when I looked I'd still only be a couple of inches further on than the last time I checked. The line in the sand where I'd dragged it was like the beginning of a word I couldn't spell – I didn't know how I was going to get the pencil to the end of it. And it seemed like the sun was getting higher and higher and at any moment someone was going to walk past and see me.

The moment I got the bow into the water I heard a voice behind me: ‘Why are you stealing our boat, Eli?'

I turned around and found Billy sitting there, grinning, near the side of the old bridge. He must've been watching me for a while.

‘I'm not stealing it,' I said.

‘It sure looks to me like you're stealing it.'

‘I'm just borrowing it,' I said. ‘I'm going to bring it back.'

‘Why are you stealing it?'

‘I'm not stealing it.' It was getting later. It was getting close to lunch and since George went missing Nana said I had to be back for lunch at the right time. When I didn't she came out to look for me.

‘I need it for fishing,' I said. ‘I've got a new spot.'

‘Where's your rod, then?' Billy said. ‘Can't go fishing without a rod. I'm going to tell my dad you're stealing our boat.' He looked real pleased with himself when he said that.

‘Please,' I said. ‘Don't tell him. I'm not stealing it. I'll bring it right back. I promise.'

‘That's our boat,' he said, walking down to the bank and grabbing hold of the oarlock. ‘And you're stealing it and I'm telling.'

I could hear the sound of one of Buddy's planes taking off in the distance. I didn't know what to do then – I felt like if I didn't go get George right that second I'd never get the chance again – so I
picked up one of the oars and whacked Billy on the shin with it. He gave a loud yelp and started hopping around, holding his leg.

‘You crazy fucking retard,' he was shouting. ‘Now I'm definitely telling. About you stealing and you hitting me. My dad's going to have you put in jail.'

I hit him on the other shin and he fell onto the ground and rolled up in a ball, clutching both knees close to his chest. He was trying to say something but there was only a kind of squealing noise coming out of his lips. Then I pushed the boat the rest of the way into the water and started rowing as fast as I could.

Out on the river the current carried me quickly downstream. The melt water had swelled it after the thaw and it was still running strong. After a while I hardly needed to use the oars at all, except for steering, and in a few minutes the town was behind me.

In some places dead trees and branches had got snagged in the middle of the current, and when I swerved to avoid them I could see the reeds and rushes unfolding themselves and getting their colour back after all the months frozen in the snow and ice, and below me, in the shallows, the long underwater weeds called mermaid's hair because they looked like hair blowing in a breeze. It seemed like a long time since I'd first come this way with George. Sometimes the shore would seem familiar and then I'd look again and it wouldn't. Sometimes I'd steer the boat in towards the bank, thinking I'd reached the spot, but it'd turn out to be just another bed of reeds and rushes and outcrops of rock; and then, in front of me, a bend in the river would appear and I'd think I recognized it from before. In the end I was lucky. I spotted a little piece of orange in the trees. George's marker was still hanging from the branch he'd put it on.

Making my way over the outcrop of rock and into the woods, I kept expecting to see George. I reckoned he'd probably be out exploring or something. I called out his name a few times but there wasn't any reply.

In the clearing it was still and quiet. The only sounds were the cawing of some ravens, hopping from branch to branch above me. Watching them I noticed how the clearing had been cut real carefully: it was only the smaller trees that'd been cleared – the taller ones, with the longest branches, had been left standing. You would've never been able to spot it from above. Someone had covered the whole mound with dead brush so it looked just the same as a pile of blowdown. If you didn't know it was there you'd probably never have found it. When I went to check I found the bear trap still there and still set, with its teeth gone all rusty like old pine needles.

I called out George's name and again there wasn't any answer. There were no signs of anything anywhere. No footprints or nothing. The place where the door used to be was hidden beneath the brush and when I cleared it I found a big rock there instead. It was then I began thinking I'd made a mistake.

I checked a second time for signs, more closely this time. If there'd been footprints then somebody must've rubbed them or something because I couldn't find them. Or not recent ones, anyhow. There were a few marks in the moss and pine needles but they could've been anything. If George was here he would've been stomping around everywhere. I would've seen something. I would've known. Sitting down on the moss I tried thinking hard, like one of George's detectives, while the ravens kept up their cawing above me as if they reckoned I was too stupid to figure anything out. I felt mad at myself for being dumb and it got hard to breathe, like the cord was around my neck again. Nobody was here. Nobody had been here for a while. It didn't make any sense to me. My thoughts were like the ravens' calls – hoarse and ragged and teasing.

And then I had an idea.

If Mr. McKenzie was in his house then maybe George was tooMaybe he was just hiding him so he couldn't go back to school or live at Gracie's. It suddenly made sense. That was why Mr. McKenzie wasn't here. That was why he'd built his fence so
high and everything. To hide George. I got up then to go. I was going to tell Virgil and Gracie and everybody. I was going to tell them I'd figured it all out and I wouldn't have to say about the underground place or nothing. I wouldn't be breaking any promise. As I was leaving I stopped for a second to throw some pine cones at the ravens. ‘See,' I shouted at them. I figured it. I figured it out on my own. They flew off pretty quick.