Zebra Forest (4 page)

The man was quicker. He shoved past me, rushed at Rew, and knocked the phone from his hands. It fell with a clang, taking the end table with it. Rew scrambled after it, but the man threw him aside, yanked at the phone cord, and ripped it sharply from the wall. Then he threw the phone out of reach, and the house echoed with the sound of its bell as it hit the wall.

Rew turned and ran for the front door. He fumbled with the lock, his hands shaking. I darted forward to help him, but the man grabbed at me as I passed, catching me by the hair. He jerked me back so hard, I lost my footing and fell against him, my head slamming against his ribs. Then his heavy arm came round my throat, and with his free hand he grabbed my arms and held me tight to his chest as I struggled to pull away. I kicked back as hard as I could, but his arm squeezed my throat and I held still, gagging.

“Stop!” he yelled at Rew, who had nearly gotten the front door open. “Go anywhere or call anyone and I’ll hurt her! You see? I will!”

And he crushed me with that arm, making me choke and struggle again.

Rew froze. He took his hand from the door.

“That’s it,” the man said. And I could feel, against my back, the furious beating of his heart. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, like I said. Don’t make me.”

I tried to say something, but the arm across my neck tightened until I could do nothing but rasp. I could almost see Rew’s chess mind working behind his eyes. Something had dawned on him. “You’re from the prison,” he said quietly. “Back there.”

I could feel the man nod. “And they’re looking for me, but they won’t look here. There was a riot earlier tonight, and a lot of guys broke out. Most of them went up the highway. That’s where they’ll go. No one else went for the woods. So if you just stay patient, I’ll wait it out, and I’ll go in a while. It won’t be long. Stay quiet, and you’ll be fine, and I’ll go away.”

If he hadn’t had his arm round my throat, I’d have thought the man was pleading with Rew, not threatening him.

Rew had no choice. “All right,” he said, taking a step from the door. “Don’t hurt her.”

We stood there like that for a long time, until I could feel the man’s heart slow, against my back. Gradually, he loosened his grip on my throat. But he didn’t let go. I took a breath, inhaling the sour smell of his sweat and the soft odor of mud that reminded me of the Zebra Forest.

Rew still stood looking at him, unsure what to do next. Finally, he asked, “Will you go in the morning?”

I knew he was thinking of Gran. Neither of us wanted to think what she would do if she came down in the morning and found an escaped prisoner holding us hostage.

“Not in the morning,” the man said, and now I wondered why he still held me, when he would let go. “But as soon as it’s safe. I’m leaving the country. I can’t travel for at least a week, though. Maybe more.”

If Rew could have gotten any paler, he did just then. His freckles stood out against his suddenly white skin. There was no way to keep this terrible stranger secret from Gran for a week. Not in one of her good spells.

But as it turned out, we couldn’t even keep him secret for an hour, because while we were all standing there, looking at each other, Gran came halfway down the stairs. And now she stood there in her nightgown, staring at the stranger behind my head. And she said the last thing either Rew or I would have ever expected.

“Andrew Snow,” she said. “Let go of my Annie B.”

I
’d known Gran to go silent. I’d known her to close her door and not come out for days, not even to eat. But I’d never known her to see things that weren’t there. Now I thought,
This strange man has taken Gran’s mind. It’s gone.

Rew clearly thought the same thing. In a voice so gentle and steady you wouldn’t think a mud-splattered convict had just stormed our house and taken us prisoner, he said, “No, Gran, this isn’t Andrew Snow. This is a man who came from the prison. On the other side of the Zebra.”

He said it as if the man whose arm still pressed against my throat had come for a friendly visit. A cup of tea.

But Gran was coming down the stairs. She acted like she hadn’t heard him. She came close to me, to the man, and peered up at him.

“Andrew,” she said. “Let her go. This is Annie.”

I was about to try and tell the man that my grandmother wasn’t in her right mind just then. That he ought to go and find some other house to hide out in, because he was only making her worse, and here she’d been having a good spell. But before I could say any of that, before I could say even one word, the man’s arm dropped from my throat. He let me go.

I stumbled away from him, away from Gran, too, who still stood close to him, looking up into his face. Rew came to help me, and when I was steadier, we turned to look at them. Gran was still staring intently at the man, searching his face for something, but he wasn’t looking back at her. He was looking, instead, at me. At me and Rew.

“I didn’t know,” he said, and his voice seemed to tremble. “I didn’t know you were here.”

A buzzing started in my ears just then. Gran once quoted some writer who said, “The blood will out.” I’d never really understood what she meant. But now I think it must mean that your blood knows things before your head does. Because even as I struggled to make sense of Gran’s words, and the man’s, the blood came rushing into my head, making me dizzy.

Rew, of course, understood right away. And his voice sounded like it came from under water when he said, “
You?
You’re Andrew Snow?”

And through my swimming eyes, I saw the man in the muddy prison uniform nod.

He was Andrew Snow. Andrew Snow. Our father.

And I realized suddenly, a minute after my blood did, that our father hadn’t been killed by an angry man, like Gran had said.

He was the angry man.

“L
iar!” Rew screamed. “You’re a liar!”

For a minute, I couldn’t figure out who he was screaming at, but the man knew.

“No,” he said. “It’s true.”

“You’re not Andrew Snow!” Rew yelled again. “Our father’s dead. Gran said it! Somebody killed him. He’s dead.”

The man looked at Gran, then back at Rew. “Last time I saw you, you were just a baby,” he said wonderingly.

Rew looked like he had gone mad. His eyes bulged and his face flushed, and he shook his head fast, again and again.

“Gran! Tell him! Tell him what happened to our father!”

Gran had begun to shiver. She shook so hard, she had to sit down, and the man helped her to the couch. As for me, I felt like I’d stepped out of my own body. The rushing in my head was so loud, I could only just hear what people said, and Rew’s screaming sounded like it was a million miles away. I looked at the man, and at Gran, and Rew, but they seemed almost as if they stood behind thick glass, acting out a play I could just barely hear.

“Andrew, Andrew,” Gran was saying, again and again. “You’re back.”

“He’s not!” Rew shouted. “He’s not! Don’t say that! He’s a bad man! This man ran away from the prison!”

At that Gran shook harder. “You didn’t, you didn’t,” she said. “Did you, Andrew? Did you?”’

The man stood there, face whiter and whiter, hands clenching and unclenching, looking down at Gran.

“I did,” he said. “There was a riot. I — I just ran.”

Gran put her head in her hands. “No,” she said. “No, you couldn’t have.”

Rew looked with horror at Gran, rocking there on the couch. “Make him get out!” he screamed at her. “He’s a liar! Make him get out!”

Gran put her hands over her ears and rocked harder.

The rushing sound began to die in my head as I watched her. I could hear Rew now, gulping air as if he’d just been running, and the man, Andrew Snow, breathing heavily too, watching Gran, watching us.

“Get out!” Rew screamed at him. “Both of you! Both of you! Liars! Liars!”

Gran lifted her head at that. She looked at him, and her lips trembled.

I yanked at Rew’s arm.

“Stop it!” I whispered. “Stop it! Be quiet!”

But Rew wouldn’t be quiet. He rushed at the man and shoved him hard. Though Rew was less than half his size, the man hadn’t been expecting it, and he staggered back.

“Get out!” Rew screamed at him. “Get out!”

Gran began to wail. I had never heard her cry before, and after all the things I had seen that night, this sound, more than anything, made me afraid.

Her wail was jagged and high-pitched, and she rocked back and forth, crying.

It made Rew pause for a moment, and the man, his face slick now with sweat, rushed at Rew and jerked him off his feet.

“Stop it,” he said, gripping Rew so tight his knuckles whitened. His voice had gone hard again. “Stop it. I’m not going. I’m here now, and I’m going to stay here. Stop it, or I’ll make you stop.” With each word, he seemed to squeeze Rew tighter, and I ran over and tried to pry his fingers loose, but he just shook me off.

He’d pulled Rew in close to his face, but at the last word, he shoved him away, sending Rew careening past the overturned end table. I caught my brother by the shoulders just before he fell and helped him right himself.

He was okay, but Gran wasn’t. Her crying had turned into jagged sobbing, as if she couldn’t get enough air in. I wanted to cover my ears like she did, and run from it. But instead, when I let go of Rew, I turned and took her arm.

“Gran,” I said. “Gran, come upstairs. It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt us. We’re okay.”

Gran hunched over so far, her head touched her knees.

“Gran,” I said again, tugging at her arm. “Come on, now.”

Her crying grew softer, and after a little bit, she let me pull her from the couch and lead her upstairs. I laid her down in her bed, covered her with her quilts, and left her there, whimpering, curled like a baby and clutching her own hands tight, one to the other.

When I came downstairs, Andrew Snow and Rew still stood in the front room, glaring at each other. With a sudden shock, I realized that one thing Gran had said was true. Andrew Snow did look something like Rew, with his red hair and his pale face.

I looked back upstairs, at the closed door of Gran’s room. And I knew that Gran had told me the truth all along. She had always said she was a good liar. Only until that night, I’d never known just how good a lie she could tell. Just how good a liar she was.

T
he three of us spent the night in the living room. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke to the sound of a chair toppling. In the night, Andrew Snow had pushed it up against the door. Now he’d just jumped up from it. He stood beside the front window, peering out.

I could hear an engine outside and got to my feet to look past him, out the window. Down the road, a police car was just turning at the end of the long, muddy drive that led up to our house. Andrew Snow jerked back at the sight of it, then looked wildly at me and Rew. Rew, who had fallen asleep beside me on the couch, was just lifting his head.

“You have a cellar?” Andrew Snow demanded. “A basement?”

I couldn’t help looking backward toward the kitchen, where the door to our rarely used basement was tucked between the table and the stove. That was all the answer Andrew Snow needed. He ran at us then, grabbing both me and Rew and dragging us toward the kitchen. Rew didn’t even have a second to get his bearings before Andrew Snow gave him a little shake.