Riddle Gully Runaway (10 page)

The man steered Benson away. Together they climbed into the ute. The engine kicked and gurgled. Pollo and Will watched as the older man twisted his head to reverse. Benson, though, stared down at his lap. Slowly they motored down the driveway and out of sight.

Will lowered the branch of a shrub with a forefinger to eyeball Pollo. ‘What was that about, do you reckon?'

‘I don't know,' murmured Pollo, ‘but it looks to me like Benson's old self is in strife.'

They were still crouching in the garden when a fellow, who from his clean shirt and trousers looked to be the boss, locked the front doors, crunched across the car park to his vehicle and drove away.

Will stood and stretched. ‘At least we know for sure Benson's working here,' he said. ‘And you heard that geezer — we know he's coming back in the morning.'

‘Unless we can get to him first,' said Pollo.

Just then, a dog woofed. Once. They couldn't see it, but it sounded big. Shorn Connery's ears flattened sideways.

‘Drats!' hissed Pollo. ‘I didn't think of a guard dog.'

‘Let's get out of here,' said Will. ‘I think it must be on the inside. But all the same, we don't want to get it started!'

‘I'm with you there!'

Pollo and Will untied Shorn Connery and cautiously stepped from the garden. Shorn Connery, though, remained rooted to the spot, his snout waving in the air. From the holding pen in the distance came the single sad cry of a sheep
. Meh-eh-eh!

Shorn Connery's ears pricked forward.
Baa-aa-aah!

Meh-eh-eh-eh!

Baa-aa-aa-aah!

‘Look!' said Pollo, pointing. ‘It's Ear!'

‘Here?' cried Will. ‘The guard dog? Where?' He darted to a tree and began scrambling up, bark showering down around him.

‘No! Ear!' said Pollo. ‘The ewe with a black ear that Shorn Connery fell in love with at Two Wells.'

Meh-eh-eh-eh!

Baa-aa-aa-aah!

Will hugged a low branch. ‘And that's why he's —'

‘— refusing to move … yes.'

‘Just great!' said Will, returning to earth with a thud. ‘Do you think he knows why she's here? That tomorrow she'll be … you know … L-A-M-B C-H-O-P-S.'

Pollo put Will's letters together in her head and shuddered. ‘He might have the general idea. This place doesn't smell like a farm. If you ask me, it smells like death. The sheep out here would sense something bad's going to happen to them.'

Meh-eh-eh-eh!
Ear had pushed her way to the front of the mob, her head now pressed against the bars of the fence adjacent to the empty expanse of the first holding pen. Pollo and Will could see her ears — one white, one black — twirling. She stared their way hopefully.

Baa-aa-aa-aah!
Shorn Connery lunged for the fence.

‘Pollo,' said Will, looking at the sun slanting over the paddocks, ‘we have a much better chance of finding Benson while it's still light. And there's that guard dog. It might have friends on the outside.'

Just then, they heard another woof — like a second warning shot.

Pollo turned to Shorn Connery, wrapping his rope lead around her fist. ‘Sorry, old buddy. We have to go.'

Together, Pollo and Will shunted Shorn Connery away from the fence and up the driveway to the main road, Shorn Connery bleating all the way.

Will and Pollo tramped into Princeville, Shorn Connery in tow. Dark clouds were piling on the horizon. As they'd done at Maloola, they crisscrossed its few side streets, keeping their eyes peeled for Benson and the red ute in which he'd left the abattoir. They hunched into their collars against the wind that drove in from the sea, snaggling their hair, burning the tips of their noses.

‘My Pop would call this a lazy wind,' said Will. ‘It doesn't bother going around — it just goes straight through you.' Pollo laughed, cupping her hands and huffing into them.

But they had no more luck in Princeville than Maloola. The light was fading and the mini-mart was about to close. They went inside and bought bread, cheese and a packet of Ginger Nuts, keeping as much of
Will's emergency money back as they could bear. When they stepped outside, the sun had all but signed off for the day. Fine needles of rain began pricking their cheeks.

‘Let's head back to that playground,' said Pollo. ‘It had a cubby.'

They reached the lonely playground and hunkered down in the derelict cubbyhouse. It was a little warmer there, especially with Shorn Connery blocking the doorway, looking hopefully back in the direction of the abattoir.

‘I guess there's only so much we can do,' said Will, staring hungrily at the cheese Pollo was digging at with her pen-knife. ‘Is this where we ring our parents?'

Pollo stared at him in astonishment.

‘Dad will be at the wedding by now! I'm not going to wreck his big date after all the trouble Sherri and I took to get him on it.'

‘HB and Angela wouldn't mind coming to get us,' said Will.

‘And bringing us back in the morning so we can find Benson at the abattoir?' said Pollo. She arched an eyebrow at Will. ‘And that's after you've explained to them why you're in Princeville and not Canberra!'

‘Oh, yeah,' said Will. ‘I forgot about that.' He wrapped
some bread around a piece of cheese and took a bite. ‘I know! We catch the bus back to Maloola and ask Mr Mallard to put us up!'

‘You haven't learned much in the year you've been living in the country, have you Will?' said Pollo. ‘There's no bus back to Maloola until tomorrow morning.'

‘What?' yelped Will. ‘You never said!'

‘You never asked,' said Pollo.

‘So we're stuck here in this dump of a place?'

‘If you were being a miserable pessimist, you might say that,' said Pollo. ‘On the other hand, an optimist might say we've enhanced our opportunities of finding Benson. We could do another sweep of Princeville later. We might still find him.'

Will snorted and shoved the rest of his bread and cheese into his mouth. He pulled his phone from his backpack and began scrolling through phone numbers with his thumb, his cheeks bulging. Shorn Connery, standing at the door, bleated mournfully into the wind.

‘Take another example,' continued Pollo cheerily. ‘If you were a miserable pessimist, you might say there was no point going back to the abattoir tonight to rescue Ear because we'd never pull it off. On the other hand, an optimist might say —'

Will spun his head to look at Pollo. ‘What? There's no way, Pollo! You can't be serious! I'm calling Angela right now!' With a flourish, he pressed the call button on his phone. He held the phone to his ear, glaring defiantly at Pollo. Outside, beyond the cubby walls, the ocean growled and the empty swing creaked.

Pollo cut more cheese while Will waited for his mum to pick up. After a minute, he put it down and mumbled, ‘She's got it switched off.'

‘That's because she thinks you're safe in Canberra,' said Pollo. ‘What's the bet she and HB are planning a lovey-dovey night in your absence? You don't want to go near that, do you?'

Will hastily shoved the phone into his backpack like it had suddenly sprouted fangs.

‘So what do you want to do?' said Pollo. ‘Sit here all night and freeze to death, or come back with me to the abattoir and spring Ear?'

‘There's other stuff I can do,' said Will sullenly. He tapped his backpack. ‘I've brought my paints, remember. I'll finish one of my art assignments.'

‘In the dark? Okay, then. Good luck with that.'

Will grunted. He took the packet of Ginger Nuts. It felt lighter than he'd hoped. He held it up to the dim
glow of the streetlight filtering into the cubby. Nearly empty. ‘Okay,' he sighed. ‘I guess we can give it a go.'

Pollo slapped Will on the knee. ‘That's the spirit! What's the worst that can happen?'

Will opened his mouth, but Pollo interrupted. ‘On second thoughts, don't answer that.'

Under the cover of night, Benson shouldered through the door of the shed out back of the Royal Arms pub, his ears stinging with cold. It was too early yet for the drinkers in the front bar to be rowdy, for the jukebox to be cranking up — late enough, though, for the concrete floor to have lost what warmth it had scavenged from the day. He had a few precious hours to himself now at least. He was done with skulking on the edges of town, counting down the daylight.

He scanned the floor with his torch. Despite what the Duke had said about Tony's missus knowing about him, everything seemed to be where he'd left it — the hessian sacks he'd laid on the floor, his book, his backpack amongst the old paint cans. He flicked mouse droppings, fresh since leaving for the abattoir
that morning, from the sacks, balanced his torch on his backpack and sat down.

He peeled back the lid of a tin of stew and shook its contents into his mouth, scraping out the last with his finger. Who had those voices in the playground cubbyhouse belonged to, he wondered. Delinquents-in-training sneaking something they'd nicked from a liquor cabinet? Maybe it was a couple of homeless kids. One morning last year, early, he'd gone fishing with his dad and seen two kids sleeping rough, rolled in a blanket on the dirt under a bridge. It hadn't looked like fun. If whoever was in the cubbyhouse was there again tomorrow night, he'd show them his shed.

Taking a grubby hoodie from his backpack, he lay down, bunching the hoodie under his head. He reached for his book,
Robinson Crusoe.
It was old, the story at least, written three centuries ago about a dude shipwrecked alone on an island — a bit like the
Cast Away
movie. The language was weird but you got used to it. His granddad had given it to him on his twelfth birthday, saying that the main character sure knew how to think for himself. It was lame alongside the Xbox Benson got from his parents, so he hadn't looked at it twice at the time. But he'd been going through some
stuff not long ago and found it. And now he wished the old guy was around to chat about it with.

His iPod had run out of juice so there was no music to get lost in. It was just him and the book now, and trying to swap the stink of blood and guts that lingered in his nostrils with imaginings of beaches and hilltops; trying to believe in his heart that sometimes, like Crusoe, you had to do hard stuff in order to survive — that the deal he'd struck with the Duke was a necessary evil.

This time on a Saturday, he was usually in Kal's garage practising with the guys, Kal's little sister bopping in the corner and complaining when they repeated a snatch of song till they nailed it. Kal, his penniless mate. At the end of every session, Kal would carefully wipe down the strings of the old guitar he'd borrowed from Bixo and polish the thing till it shone.

Could what he and Kal had done be called a necessary evil too — if they hadn't got caught, if they'd gone ahead with it? Kal wanting something so badly, just that once; him trying to help out a mate in need? Whatever, it had all gone south. He'd been given his suspension and straightaway been packed off to Riddle Gully; then that girl had put that stuff in the newspaper, telling the world what a scumbag he was. The whole
sloppy business had baked onto him somehow before he'd had a chance to put things right.

He couldn't go home, not now, not yet. He had something in common with Mr Crusoe. He was marooned … in Princeville — a thief, a bad person, his very own shipwreck. And he could feel the tide rising, the water beginning to wet his feet. No music, no money, no phone, no bed, hungry, reeking and three days till payday. He flicked a daddy-long-legs off his page and lowered the book to his chest. He lay listening to the scuttling of cockroaches and the base
boom-boom
from the pub lounge. He cracked his knuckles one by one. He'd go back to the abattoir tonight 'cos he didn't know what else to do.

Will and Pollo stood beneath the last streetlamp on the road out of town to the abattoir. Pollo held Shorn Connery by the head while Will, the end of a paintbrush to his chin, circled them slowly.

‘Nearly done,' said Will. ‘Just a dab … here … on his ear.'

‘It doesn't have to be perfect, Will,' said Pollo. ‘I'm freezing to death! Just so long as he looks more like a Dalmatian than a sheep! It's just a precaution.'

‘A precaution against everything going wrong and Shorn Connery getting mixed up with his mates on Death Row.'

‘The teeny-tiny possibility of things going wrong, Will! Stop being such a pessimist.'

‘I still don't see why we have to bring him,' muttered Will.

‘How else are we going to find Ear among five hundred head of sheep?'

‘What if she doesn't recognise him now he's covered in spots?'

‘We've been over this,' sighed Pollo. ‘She will. Trust me.'

‘Trust you?' Will touched up a blob on Shorn Connery's back. ‘Look where that's got me.'

Pollo huffed and turned to Shorn Connery. ‘Hold still, old buddy. It's for your own good. If anyone sees us we don't want you —'

‘— to be turned into C-H-O-P-S!' giggled Will, to a glare from Pollo.

Baa-aa-aa-aah!

‘We'll need to do something about that bleating of his, too,' said Will, adding a daub of black paint to Shorn Connery's nose.

Pollo leaned close to Shorn Connery and looked him in the eye. ‘You'll have to be quiet as a mouse!' she whispered. ‘You can do that, can't you?'

Baa-aa-aa-aah!

‘Hmm,' said Will. ‘What about this?' He stood and took a deep breath.
Woo-woo-woo-woof!

Pollo swung around, sprawling onto her backside, her head spinning, searching.

Will grinned. ‘Barking — it's my specialty. I used to sneak up and get Angela with it all the time. If Shorn Connery bleats at the wrong moment I can bark in sync with him!'