stayed in the restaurant and had that apple pie,” Billy grumbled, as once more he struggled to his feet and gathered up the gear and flashlight.
By the time he got back to the camp, the fire was a welcome little blaze that was throwing off generous amounts of both heat and light.
“Made it,” he announced.
“I thought maybe you’d gone back to town!” Bearman was sitting on a stump rolling a cigarette. “You can use the brown one,” he said, pointing at one of the sleeping bags.
“Thanks.” Billy set the equipment down and sat on the other stump. He looked around the shadowed campsite for a long time. Then he looked at Bearman. “Uh . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I was just wondering. Where’s the tent?”
“What tent?”
“Well . . . the tent we’ll be sleeping in.”
“No tent. We sleep under the lean-to.” Bearman indicated the canvas wall. “It’ll keep us dry and the fire’s close enough to keep us warm. Nothin’ short of cozy.”
“Cozy,” Billy repeated. “I was thinking more about the bugs . . . and the bears.”
“It’s September. Too cool at night for most of the bugs.” Bearman took a small branch from the fire and, with the red-hot end, lit the cigarette he’d finished rolling. “As for the bears, well, any bear that wanted us bad enough, a tent wouldn’t keep him out anyway, at least not for long.”
Billy stared at the fire and thought about bears and sleeping in a lean-to and staying out of the way of the police. A lot had happened in the hours since he’d tiptoed softly from his room and out the back door of the mobile home.
“Geez,” he said. It was a general comment and not directed at anything in particular. Bearman didn’t answer.
After awhile Billy pulled his gaze away from the mesmerizing fire and looked at Bearman, who was also staring fixedly at the dancing flames. He was still smoking the cigarette, apparently deep in thought.
He’d taken off the coat to reveal a red-checkered shirt and a striped blue bandanna tied around his neck. Billy realized that he’d been wrong in the restaurant. He could see now there was no beginning of a beard on Bearman’s cheek. In fact, the long narrow face with all of its angles and juts was perfectly smooth. The darkness of Bearman’s appearance came solely from the deeper brown of his complexion. Like his skin, Bearman’s eyes were dark and he tended to narrow them almost to slits when he looked closely at things . . . or people. He was looking at the fire that way now and as he did, he absently ran a hand through his hair, hair that was long and black and didn’t look like it got combed much. Bearman wasn’t small but he wasn’t big either, although Billy noticed that his hands were large, almost too large for the rest of his body.
They sat for a long time in the moon quiet of the forest, the only sounds the crackling of wood in the fire and an occasional hoot from a distant owl.
Bearman threw away the cigarette and began rolling another. “So, what was the problem at home?” The words, spoken softly, seemed to echo through the trees.
Billy still wasn’t sure he wanted to answer the question. “I don’t usually talk about it,” he said. “Actually, I never have. Not to anybody.”
Bearman didn’t say anything. He lit the cigarette and moved a couple of sticks around in the fire. And suddenly the words were on Billy’s lips, ready to be spoken, wanting to be said.
“My stepdad . . . he . . . he beats us . . .” His voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Us?”
“My sister and me. She’s two years younger. He . . . just gets mad all of a sudden . . . sometimes . . . a lot . . . and then he beats us, with a belt or a stick and once he hit me with a metal pail. He hurts us pretty bad sometimes.”
Bearman looked over at him. “What does your mother do when he’s knocking you around?”
“Not much,” Billy replied, shaking his head. “Maybe she’s afraid to or maybe . . . she . . . she . . .”
Bearman stood up and added three more logs to the fire. “I’ll finish building this up and then we can hit the sack. We should be toasty warm for most of the night.”
Billy watched as the fire burned yellow at first, then orange, and finally when it was hottest, a bright, dark red that reminded him of pictures he’d seen on T.V. of molten lava from volcanoes.
“Are you sorry you asked me to come now?” He looked at Bearman.
“Why should I be?” Bearman poked at the fire with a stick. “We all got our problems, Kid.”
Billy waited for Bearman to say more but he never did. Billy decided to change the subject. There was something else he wanted to bring up. Something important.
“Uh . . . what do we do about a bathroom around here?”
“Well . . .” A flicker of a smile appeared at the corners of Bearman’s mouth. “For washing, there’s a creek not far away.” Billy noticed he pronounced it ‘crick’. “We’ll go down there in the morning and clean up. As for the other use of a bathroom, we have several thousand acres we can use. Just step behind the tree of your choice.”
Billy started in the direction of a stand of poplars and spruce growing together not far from the fire. The poplars had lost all but a few of their leaves but together with the spruce might provide some cover. He took small, uncertain steps. When he reached the trees, he looked back, then stepped carefully behind them.
“By the way, you didn’t have gravy tonight, did you,” he heard Bearman call, “on those french fries I saw you eating?”
“Yeah, why?” Billy called back.
“Oh, nothin’.” He could hear Bearman’s voice and the fire’s crackle behind it. “It’s just that bears love gravy, it’s probably their favourite food in the whole world, and if you happened to spill any on your clothes or . . . oh well, forget about it, it’s probably nothing to worry about.”
Billy hurried out from behind the trees, still doing up the zipper to his jeans. He could see Bearman watching him as he trotted awkwardly back to the fire. The older boy was laughing softly, and the sound rolled around the trees that surrounded the little camp.
“Very funny,” Billy said. He picked up the brown sleeping bag and began laying it out under the lean-to. He would have to try to get used to Bearman’s sense of humour. And there was a lot more out here in the forest to get used to as well. A lot more.
CHAPTER
3
Billy had been sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep in the unfamiliar and frightening surroundings. So he was surprised that it was fully daylight when he opened his eyes. Bearman was out of his sleeping bag and crouched down near the fire. Billy unzipped his own sleeping bag and pulled back the cover. The chill of the September morning hit him and he shivered.
“Brr
