NOT SO LONG AGO

3

The objective was obvious: despite the lack of sleep and the stress that plagued their legs, they had to move forward, to walk without haste but with regularity. No break, no doubt. Sink into the horizon.

The police and the boarding school staff who had been entrusted with Roland wouldn’t lift a little finger to find him. Whereas, Daddy Cay, him, would make it a matter of honour. His pride shone so high and strong that he would see the escape of his children as a personal outrage, a scathing and humiliating insult. It would be a duty to catch them as soon as possible, and then give them his hand.

If Erma and Adam were used to corrections, the one they would get if their father caught them would be one for the books. This time, it wouldn’t be a question of an ordinary belt blow on the lower back. This time, the blood that will flow from the wounds wouldn’t be staunched with a simple tissue handkerchief. “If he catches up with us, he’ll kill us,” Erma concluded, to give them heart and make Adam keep up the fast pace they had established. To stick imaginary blinkers to their temples, to forget the cold of this late night and the heavy rains to come, to silence the hunger, to deceive the thirst, to numb the cramps. To laugh at the blisters that wouldn’t fail to bloat the soles of their feet. One hell of a line; One that they crossed from the first movement towards somewhere else.

“It’s the first hours which are going to be important,” Roland had asserted with a certain composure that contrasted with his usual rashness. “If your father or if the police chase us, we need to put as much distance as possible between them and us when they discover that we escaped.”

“But we don’t even know where we are going!” retorted a determined but perplexed Adam.

“We go straight ahead. We said we were going to hide in the scrublands, right?” said Erma.

“Yes.”

“Well, the scrublands, it’s all the way over there.”

It didn’t matter what the destination was, only the walk and their willingness not to stop as long as they felt an icy shiver going through their spine.

Fear was the most powerful of motivations; an engine that never broke down. To urge her brother to surpass himself, Erma constantly reminded him of what he would endure if their escape failed.

The first glimmers of a threatening dawn slipped between two untimely clouds. There was so much courage in the hearts of the fugitives that none of them dared to propose a well-deserved break. Finally, realizing that Adam was labouring, Roland, who walked at the head of the group, stopped and raised an authoritarian hand. He had seen a cowboy act like that, with the same deliberate gesture, in a western shown at The Hollows cinema the week before.

“You want us to stop a bit?” he asked.

“Fine. Uh, whatever you want,” replied Adam.

“Not long then. Just enough time to swallow a sip of water.”

They sat in a circle on the edge of a sweet chestnut forest. After crossing the main road that led home, they had gone straight, away from the more populated villages towards the smaller ones deserted at this unearthly hour. Crossing the wheat fields seemed to them more sensible than following the paved roads Cay surely wouldn’t miss. At worst, they ran the risk of meeting a furious farmer who would order them to leave his property. Nothing really serious. In such a case they would simply give him a finger and pick up the pace to lose him.

“How much have we walked?” said Adam, trying in vain to control the beating of his heart. “Fifty miles? Sixty?”

“Are you kidding? We’ve done seven or ten miles total, right, Erma?”

She nodded.

“Rather ten than seven, I think.”

“Only seven or ten?” replied the youngest of the fugitives. “Please! I thought we had done more than that.”

“That’s why we have to continue, even if we’re tired.”

“We’re not in such a hurry, right? We don’t even know where we are going...”

“You see up there, Bambino?” Erma asked.

Candidly, Adam raised his eyes in the direction of the sky his sister pointed to.

“And?”

“Well, what you see is the sun. And if we see the sun, then that means as we speak, Daddy must be looking for us. I guess he’s already in the vineyards, down the field, yelling. In less than an hour, when he understands that we’ve made off much farther than he believes, he’ll go to the port to look for his friends. And they’ll be on our trail.”

“Yes, but only seven or ten miles in over three hours... I’ve never walked so much in my life. He’s going to do that by car in just a few minutes. It’s useless... We’d better hitchhike, right?”

“We agreed on this,” Roland replied cheerfully. “As long as we’re around here, there’s too much risk that we’ll come across someone who knows us if we hitchhike. The plan is to get far away from here on foot. We’ll see after.”

One by one, they drank a large sip of water from Roland’s canteen. On their right, a stony path snaked between hawthorns and brambles. Erma trotted over and picked some wild blackberries, which they enjoyed as they smeared their chins.

“We have some money, don’t we?”

“Not much. In all, if we put together what we saved and what you stole from your old folks, we have twenty pounds for the three of us,” said Roland.

“Twenty pounds!” exclaimed Adam. “And you say it’s not much? You’re mad! Can you imagine all the comics you could afford with that?”

“We’ll barely have enough to feed ourselves for a few days, you’ll see...”

Their gear weighed heavy on their shoulders. Adam no longer regretted that Erma made him get rid of the comics which cluttered his backpack. He was ready to get rid of anything that seemed useless, the temptation was strong to dump some more of his load. Since he felt himself a full member of the team, even though he was the youngest, he stopped procrastinating and dared to suggest:

“What if we threw out all the plates and all the stuff that will be useless? It’s heavy, all that...”

“What’s wrong with you?” Erma shouted. “We’ll need it, all that. When we can set up a real camp, we’ll be very happy to have them. So shut up and walk.”

Adam faltered as he struggled to get up. The way he stumbled left him in less-than-concealed dismay. He glanced furtively at his companions, praying that it would have escaped them. Erma looked at him, preoccupied.

“Oh! Bambino, how are you?”

“Damn, I just tripped... Besides, why are we leaving right now? We haven’t eaten anything...”

“We have to save our reserves, you know that. And don’t change the subject. Are you able to walk?”

“Of course. Who do you take me for?”

Adam gave two slaps on his shaky thighs and took the head of the column, his step uneasy. Erma thought she heard him sob, but as his chest didn’t move like he was whimpering, she concluded that she was mistaken.

After a quarter of an hour, seeing that the boy was weakening, Roland sped up to join him. He took advantage of the width of the trail to bond with the youngest of their team.

Adam frowned when the orphan’s face appeared in front of him. He watched his sister’s friend with obvious embarrassment. Some kind of ruffled swollen flesh had encroached upon the bottom of his left ear. The whole lobe had been torn off, but no one knew how it had happened. Roland was silent on this subject and immediately bridled if questioned. The problem is that because of the lice, the welfare service children all had shaved heads. Nobody broke the rule, including those who had a good reason for wanting to hide a scar or an unsightly blemish under thick hair. Tall and skinny, however, you could guess a combative energy in Roland’s behaviour. This lad is the hotheaded type, Adam thought. Like beating three or four lads who were stronger than him who looked at him wrong. If he was my brother, Dad would have killed him by now.

“You don’t have to overdo it, you know,” said Roland in a low voice so that the conversation would escape Erma.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re smaller than us. It’s normal for you to be tired.”

“I’m not tired, firstly. And secondly, why don’t you mind your own business?”

“Gently, Bambino. I told you that to be nice.”

“You can’t call me that. It’s just my sister who calls me that.”

“It’s okay, calm down. I just wanted to be nice. I know your ribs hurt so I wanted to…”

“Shut your mouth and leave me alone.”

Annoyed, Roland clenched his fists. But he relaxed suddenly and accelerated. Adam wanted to keep up with him, but in a few hundred yards, out of breath, unable to keep up the effort, he let himself fall behind.

With this cruel little smirk that was the smile of kids of his age, Roland turned to Erma, bringing up the rear, and said:

“He’s a fool, your brother. Isn’t it true you’re a fool, Bambino?”