NOT SO LONG AGO

6

The March.

If Roland had always considered himself a field rat, a real countryside kid, accustomed to hard work and sustained efforts, he now saw that handling a pitchfork to lift hay bales didn’t develop the calves.

The march, the true march, the one that didn’t stop when the cramps were twisting their blades in the flesh, this march was an ordeal, a cross to bear.

There was no chance that the man with the straw hat would have pursued them so far. Yet none of them slowed down. A confrontation with the ego, silent, tacit, urged them to surpass themselves. Whoever fails first will bear the burden of shame. And so they walked with jaws clenched and breaths held to avoid revealing their weakness to the others.

Adam was holding on. Of the three runaways, he was the one who had the most to prove. He was the youngest, the smallest, the most fearful, the puniest. The most everything. But the light that shone in his eyes radiated an unfailing determination.

“Where are we?”

“Not far from Angely,” Roland judged. “I’ve been to this area before, with a foster family.”

“How far are the scrublands?”

“I don’t know. Sixty or seventy miles...”

Erma stopped. The dog didn’t leave her anymore. She flung her backpack on the gravel and put her hands on her back to stretch. One of her vertebrae cracked. For an hour, they walked alongside a paved road, positioning themselves about ten yards from the track so that they could scatter into the forest in case of danger. They had seen four vehicles come their way. Every time they had heard the roar of an engine, they had hidden behind a bush.

“Do you think we can hitchhike? We must be far enough, right?”

Roland nodded.

“Yeah. But before, we eat.”

The sun now beat down on them like July vacationers. But unlike the day before, they welcomed its scorching and oppressive attacks with euphoria. Erma knew the word “pneumonia”. One of their cousins, on their mother’s side, died two years ago after falling into a river in November.

A little earlier, in the morning, when the redhead had woken up cold, her body and hope crumbling, she had convinced herself that the cold had infested her blood. And she had thought back to that word, “pneumonia”.

She closed her eyes and bent her neck back to beg the caress of the rays, as bathers did on the beaches of Riverdale. She had, in her life, accompanied her father fishing fifteen times. She was content with the mere distraction, folding the nets, sorting the fish, but she loved those moments—the old man was less angry at sea. The first time, when the boat had landed on the blond sand and she had discovered these tourists in colourful swimsuits, most of them overweight, stretched on their backs on a little cotton towel, she had wondered. She didn’t understand what drove people to drag themselves on the ground like seals, doing nothing. “Ugh... lazy people.” Daddy had sputtered, spitting into the water. For him, tourists and idlers were of the same breed. “What are they doing, daddy?” A frown from the fisherman. “What are they doing? They’re sunbathing. They’re not doing anything. They watch the workers work, these rots. They’re not like us, Erma. All fit for the rubbish tip, these bastards...”

Erma was no longer cold.

They shared a can of tuna—the last—and swallowed bits that dotted the bottom of the can without losing a single piece. Stomachs rumbled once again after the food was gobbled up. Since the march was interrupted, all minds turned to the other major problem of their journey: food. They would have liked to think of nothing, to ramble on unconcerned about trivial topics, but the harassment of their aching bodies took over their attention. They still had enough to hold for a day or two. Walk, eat. Walk, eat.

They agreed that they were far enough away from their starting point to hitchhike. As their destination—the scrublands—was not localized, they could ride with anyone and for anywhere. For now, only the need to swallow the miles counted. Since the time Cay had dragged his boots into the region, everyone knew him, and his reputation as a brute was well established, but forty miles from Herne, they thought they were safe.

Of course, they weren’t.

Erma was appointed to take the lead. Roland would walk two yards from her, a little behind. Adam would keep at a distance, ready to go into the forest if he were given the order. The most difficult thing would be to explain to a potential motorist why 12-year-old kids were on the road. Having conferred, after having agreed, they felt that the most plausible thing would be to make them believe that they were older than they looked. “You’ll see,” Roland had asserted with self-assurance. “I’m going to sucker them with my banter. You, you make them stop, and I take care of the rest.”

The first car passed in front of them without stopping—a red saloon with a bulging hood. No matter, only vehicles of a certain size would take them as passengers, and this one was not suitable.

It was only a quarter of an hour later, after three more failures, a kind of livestock transporter—which looked vaguely like an American pick-up truck seen in the waiting room magazines of the doctor’s clinic at Whitstable—stopped beside them.

As planned, Erma pulled back a bit and Roland approached the lowered window. The driver leaned over the passenger seat.

“Let me do it,” said Roland to his two comrades.

He swallowed his saliva. He had been preparing his sales pitch for a while. Once again, it was his reputation as a smooth-talker that was at stake. He should on no account let the driver get a word in edgewise. He should anticipate all objections and make sure that once his long-winded speech ended, the man agrees to take them without any questions. Of course, he would have suspicions, but they would have to be swept away quickly, in two or three unstoppable arguments. And then there was Scram, the flea-ridden mutt, that no one would agree to transport...

Before Roland could utter a single word, the man made a gesture towards the back and said simply, “Come up”.

Erma eyed the rear of the truck. She twisted her mouth and gave a sarcastic chuckle.

“Well done, Roland. Didn’t even need to talk.”

Then she hoisted herself on the loading platform by standing at a bar welded to the side of the door and lifted the dog which was jumping energetically on the spot. She settled back against the outside of the cab, to have a clear view of the way they travelled. Adam came to settle on her left and Roland had to move some construction equipment—carpenter’s hammer, mallet, shovel—to make a small place against the spare wheel.

They drove west for several minutes, and then took a secondary road. None of them had a clear idea of where they were going but, curiously, there was no anxiety. The rough but regular jolts plunged them into a gentle torpor. If they had been in the cab with the driver, they would have had a thousand questions to ask him, but on the flatbed, they had no reason to chat anymore.

The truck forked west, but Roland was already too listless to notice. He woke up with a jolt about ten miles further ahead, when the truck entered an exit lane leading to a petrol station.

The man came down from the vehicle and they were able to examine him for the first time. He was whistling what sounded like The Platters, Only you, which was a big hit, remaining at the top of the charts for several weeks. The man was in his forties. Rather tall and thin. A baseball cap screwed on his oval skull. Adam, who knew the sport through his comics, was captivated.

The man approached them. He put his forearm on the edge of the flatbed, smiled, and said:

“I’m going to have a drink. Stay here, okay?”

“Okay,” said Erma. “Just one thing: where are you going?”

“I do odd jobs in the area. Where you headed?”

“To the west if it’s possible.”

“That’s exactly where I’m going.”

He gave a friendly pat on the bodywork and entered the station. Adam straightened up and stifled a yawn. The scorching sun cast reddish-purple reflections on the shop window so that no one could see what was happening inside.

Finally, five minutes later, the driver returned. Instead of returning to his seat, he suggested that the children accompany him and have a cold drink. After making sure they were guests and that they wouldn’t have to pay for their drinks, everyone nodded, struggling to curb their eagerness. They jumped off the truck and followed their benefactor. The dog cavorted nearby.

“Mint or grenadine?”

The attendant—a gawking nitwit with dandruff hair—served them by blinking nervously. Then the adults began to talk about the World Cup football, extolling the merits of Fontaine or Pelé, cursing Batteux or Vavá.

When the children had finished their glasses, the man offered them another.

“Go ahead, enjoy it. Then we’ll go and drive for a long time. I need to rest a little bit before.”

Half an hour passed again. Of all, Roland was the most impatient. He stamped and kicked the table leg. Outside, a sky blue car parked. Roland scratched his left knee, the one that itched from the trip in the truck. He readjusted and found himself facing Erma’s tense face.

“Erma? What’s wrong? You’re all pale.”

Erma swallowed and held her index finger toward the car park. Adam followed the movement and opened large bulging eyes.

“There,” she said, stammering. “It’s Hollis, Daddy’s friend.”

“And there,” added Erma in a deathly voice, “that’s Daddy.”