Crossbow Page 4

  “How come you ask so many questions?” I turned away and headed for the house. Amanda didn’t follow, and I didn’t feel so psyched anymore.

  “Did you hear there was another break-in?” Mom asked. She was slicing tomatoes by the sink. “Everyone at work is talking about it.”

  I stopped grating cheese for our tacos and turned to face her. “Did they catch the guy this time?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I heard the police have a few leads. They think it’s someone who lives here, maybe someone new to town.”

  “Whose place got broken into?”

  “Some house at the back of town near the old logging road. And, this time he took canned foods.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I don’t know, Matthew. The police like to keep it all hush-hush. But I heard a sleeping bag, pillow and tarp were missing too. It makes you wonder if he’s some poor homeless person just trying to stay warm and dry.”

  “I thought homeless people only lived in cities.” I went back to grating cheese.

  “They can be anywhere, Matthew,” Mom said quietly. “And they must get horribly cold at night.”

  On Wednesday afternoon, I raced home to grab my stuff and head out to practice. I was halfway out the door when I remembered I had to call Paul Edwards. I went back inside, looked up the number and punched it in. The phone rang four times before a voice replied, “You’ve reached the voice mail of Paul Edwards. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.”

  His voice sounded so familiar it hit me like a punch in the stomach. Paul and my dad used to be hockey buddies. They hung out together a lot. But after Dad lost his job he stopped playing hockey, dumped all his friends and sat around feeling sorry for himself. I hadn’t seen Paul for maybe a year and I couldn’t face him now. I started to hang up, but then I heard the beep and decided leaving a message would be easier than talking to him in person. And I had to talk to him soon, or else deal with Amanda and Tyler.

  “Uh,” I said, in my usual clever way, “this is Matt Henshaw.” An image of my father and Paul laughing together settled over me. “Uh,” I said again, “Doug’s son?” Saying his name brought a sick taste to my mouth. “So anyway, I need to ask some questions about forestry and stuff for school. But I’m going out now so I’ll, uh, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I slammed down the phone and raced out the door.

  On Thursday, Paul answered the phone. “Matthew!” he said, “it’s good to hear from you. I understand you have some questions? I’ll be glad to help out.”

  I told him about the report, and we arranged to meet on Saturday afternoon at three thirty. Perfect. I could go hunting early in the morning with Forrest and get to Paul’s place in time for the interview.The minute I walked into the school Friday morning, I knew something was up. Kids crowded around a ninth grade boy named Dylan. This guy was tall and husky, built of muscle from neck to ankle. He always wore a T-shirt that showed off the bulging muscles in his arms.

  I spotted Tyler lurking on the edge of the crowd and walked up beside him. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Dylan says his house got broken into yesterday,” said Tyler.

  “What did the Thoughtful Thief take this time?” someone asked.

  “Thoughtful Thief?” I whispered to Tyler.

  “Yeah. The police call him that because he always removes his boots when he enters someone’s house.”

  Dylan rolled forward on his toes, crossed his arms one over the other to show off his muscles and glared at Tyler and me for daring to talk. “He took my brother’s waterproof pants and the jacket he got when he started work last month. And...”Dylan paused dramatically and surveyed the crowd. “He took some warm sweaters and socks. and...” He paused again.

  I felt like walking away from Dylan’s little show, but like everyone else I held my breath, kept my eyes on Dylan and waited until he finally added, “The thief broke into our locked freezer and stole some venison.”

  Big deal. Food and clothes to keep some poor homeless person alive. Hardly worth mentioning if you ask me. I walked away, trying to ignore the little question that had settled at the back of my mind.

  chapter eleven

  Saturday morning I got up early, made a stack of ham and cheese sandwiches, and grabbed some apples, a few tins of chunky soup and a loaf of bread. I tossed everything into my backpack, and then I picked up a pen to scribble a note.

  Hey, Mom,

  Gone for the day. Hermit Haven calls!!

  See ya later, have fun saling.

  I thought for a second, and then I signed my name, Matt.

  Outside the kitchen window, fuzzy gray fog hung low to the ground and hid the sun. It was the kind of damp cold day that settles right into your bones. I put on my warmest jacket and reached for my father’s warm waterproof coat hanging on another peg. He wouldn’t be needing it, but Forrest could sure use something to keep him warm.

  Mom’s footstep in the hall changed my mind in a hurry. I pulled open the basement door, shut it quietly behind me and slipped soundlessly down the stairs. With the hockey bag over my shoulder, I slinked through the garage out into that dull morning.

  I had waited all week for this, my first lesson on how to provide food for myself. An important step toward my life’s goal.

  This time I approached the cabin from a new direction. Wind swished through the treetops to cover any sound from my cat-quiet footsteps. Forrest couldn’t possibly hear me coming, not this time. The acrid smell of wood smoke drifted toward me on the breeze. Forrest was awake. I crept closer, parted some tree branches and peered through.

  He was crouched by the fire, his back to me, coffee mug in hand. He wore a jacket and pants that looked so warm and new that I was glad I hadn’t embarrassed him by bringing my father’s old jacket. What was I thinking? Forrest didn’t need me. He could take care of himself. For a half second, I wondered where he got the clothes. Then I concentrated on choosing the right moment to surprise him. I would burst out of the bushes and say, Hey, Forrest! What’s for breakfast?

  Grinning, I pictured his startled leap into the air. He would swing around, surprise all over his face, and his coffee would go flying.

  “Are you planning to stand there all day, or come over here and drink your tea?” Forrest called. He didn’t even bother to turn around.

  My shoulders slumped, and I dragged myself into the clearing. How did he do it? I was ready to believe he really did have a sixth sense, an animal sense. No one could take him by surprise.

  Two blackened pots sat over the leaping flames. I moved to the far side of the fire, acting like I hadn’t spent the last half hour trying to sneak up on him. “Tea?” I asked, “I thought you only had coffee. Where’d you get the tea?”

  He glanced up sharply. “Who said I didn’t have tea? If you’d told me you hated coffee instead of pretending to like it, I’d have made you tea last week.” He handed me my mug filled with steaming tea. It tasted great.

  Thwang! Another arrow found its mark. It landed smack in the middle of the bull’s-eye. Matt made it look easy. I grinned at the look of surprise on Forrest’s face.

  He slapped me on the back. “Way to go, Matt! I’m impressed.”

  “I practiced every day.”

  “I believe it. Last Sunday you couldn’t hit the side of the cabin.”

  “Ha! Funny. But seriously, I’m good enough to go hunting now, right?”

  His eyes narrowed, and he stared at me as if I’d said something idiotic. “Hunting?”

  What, had he forgotten? After all my hard work? A quick prickle of tears stung the backs of my eyes, and I quickly turned away. “That’s what you said.”

  There was a long pause, during which I blinked furiously to get those embarrassing tears under control.

  “Well then,” Forrest said finally, “if that’s what I said, that’s what we’ll do. But only if you can hit the target ten times in a row from thirty-five yards. I don’t want any stray arrows biting me in the butt.”

  “Not a problem.”

  Thwang, thwang, thwang. One after the other my arrows slammed into the target. Four out of ten hit the bull’s-eye. The other six were close.

  “I never would have believed it,” Forrest said.

  We moved through the forest as silent as wolves. On and on and on we went, hour after hour, up forested hillsides, through mucky ground, across trickling streams and down slippery slopes. Forrest never spoke, never slowed down, never looked back to see if I was still there.

  If I stopped for ten seconds, he’d be swallowed up by dense bush, and I’d never find him again. I couldn’t ask for a break. He treated me like his equal, and I was determined to prove he was right. But with every step I wished I hadn’t swigged two mugs of tea before we set out. I needed to pee. Tea pee.

  Forrest stopped so suddenly I almost bumped into him. He raised his hand for silence as I moved up beside him.

  He nodded toward a small clearing ahead. I followed his gaze but saw nothing unusual. Forrest didn’t move, not even an eyelid, so I didn’t either. Then on the far side of the clearing, something moved. I couldn’t believe I had missed it before: a huge bull elk, as brown as the tree trunks that sheltered it.

  I had seen herds of Roosevelt elk near the roadside, but I had never been so close to one before. This animal, way bigger than a deer, stepped majestically into the clearing, its proud head held high. It sported a rack of branched antlers taller than the height of its body. Round, dark eyes searched warily for any sign of danger. Its nostrils flared as it sniffed the air, but we were downwind where it wouldn’t catch our scent. I felt honored to see such a beautiful animal, so wild and so free. It was everything I wanted to be.

  Slowly Forrest raised his crossbow. No!
He nodded at me. I hesitated for a moment, and then I raised mine too. I held the elk in my sights. Its beautiful head was still raised. This magnificent animal, this symbol of all we have lost. This endangered animal. I pictured my arrow finding its mark, slicing into the elk’s brain. I saw the elk’s mangled body fall to the ground, blood seeping onto the forest floor. No!

  My eyes flicked to Forrest. His hands were steady, his finger on the trigger.

  “No!”

  chapter twelve

  The elk leaped straight up like it was on springs. In one smooth movement it went over the bushes and vanished into the forest.

  Forrest swung around, his face twisted with fury. “What’s wrong with you, Matt? I spent all day tracking down my game and you scare it away? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Uh—” I couldn’t speak. This side of Forrest, the way he flew into a rage from one second to the next, took my words away.

  “I ought to leave you here. Think you can find your way home?” He turned and stomped away.

  “They’re endangered!” I called after him. “Here, on Vancouver Island, there aren’t many left. You can’t kill an endangered animal!”

  I couldn’t see him but could hear the crash of branches he pushed aside, the crack of twigs under his angry feet.

  I ran after him. “Do you even have a hunting license?”

  In the next second he was there, huge and fearsome, looming over me. “License?” he shouted. “You think a starving man needs a license to feed himself?”

  This time I refused to back down. “How do you plan to get a thousand pounds of elk meat back to the cabin anyway? Even if you could, how are you going to keep it from going bad? Last time I looked, my cabin didn’t have a freezer. And besides, how long are you planning to stay?”

  Forrest opened his mouth and flapped it shut again. He growled and turned away.

  “You’re not starving, Forrest!” I yelled. “What about all that canned food? What about the venison?”

  He turned slowly, his eyes like ice. “What are you talking about, Matt? You been snooping in the cabin?”

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t been inside my own cabin since Forrest arrived. “No, but I brought you lots of canned food. And you had venison that first day. Where’s the rest of the deer you shot?”

  He let out his breath and ran a hand over his whiskers. When he looked at me his blue eyes twinkled. “When you’re right, you’re right. A man should never take more than he needs. So what do you say we head back to the cabin and heat up some of that soup?”

  While we waited for the soup to warm we gobbled down the sandwiches I brought. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Matt,” Forrest said. “Killing that animal would be as wasteful as chopping down an entire forest to take only the prime timber.”

  “I hate all the clear-cuts up here.”

  Forrest nodded. “I used to own land. I practiced sustainable logging, milled my own lumber. I was doing all right too. I did my best not to harm the environment.”

  “What happened?”

  “Government changed the rules. I couldn’t sell my lumber without paying a huge tax at the border, and I refused to chop everything down to sell only the raw logs. It’s not right.”

  “What happened to your land?”

  “I had to sell it when I couldn’t afford to pay my taxes. A developer bought it and, guess what?”

  “They chopped down all the trees?”

  Forrest nodded and reached for the soup pot. “People need to realize they can’t keep destroying the environment without paying the consequences,” he said.

  “Hey, that’s what we’re studying in science class. I’m supposed to do a report on forests and climate change.”

  “Then I guess you already know that trees absorb masses of carbon dioxide.”

  “Yeah. I read something about it,” I said.

  “Here’s something to put in your report: carbon credits.”

  “What’s a carbon credit?”

  “Basically, it’s buying a license to pollute. So long as they pay someone else not to pollute, companies can go ahead and do all the polluting they want.”

  We sat by the fire and talked for hours. It turned out being a hermit had not been a lifelong ambition for Forrest. He tried to do his bit to make the world a better place, but when no one listened he gave up.

  The minute I reached our driveway that evening the door burst open and Mom ran out. She threw her arms around me, pulling me into the house. The kitchen smelled of melted cheeses, Italian spices and warm garlic bread. My stomach rumbled.

  “Matthew! I was about to call the police. Where were you?”

  I slipped my backpack from my shoulders, grateful I had left the hockey bag at the cabin. “What’s the big deal? Didn’t you get my note?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think you’d be this late. Matthew, I’ve been worried sick ever since Paul Edwards called to ask why you didn’t show up. What’s that about?”

  Uh-oh. I completely forgot! “Uh, it’s nothing, Mom. I need to interview him for a science report. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Is that the report you’re working on with Amanda and Tyler?”

  I nodded, wondering how she knew about it.

  “Then you’re a bit late. Amanda phoned, she and Tyler are coming over tomorrow to get your information and finish up the report.”

  “Not a problem.” My mind raced to find a way out of this one. “I’ll phone him tonight. I don’t need to see him anyway. I bet he can send all the stuff I need by e-mail.”

  “Do it right now.”

  “Can’t we eat first? I’m starving.”

  “How could you be hungry with all the food you’ve been packing out of here lately?”

  Oops, I had really hoped she wouldn’t notice. “Uh...I’m a growing boy, right? Besides, I’m stocking up my cabin.”

  She frowned. “Do you want me to dial the number for you?”

  “No, I’ll call from my room, that’s where my notes are.”

  I got Paul’s answering machine again. “Paul,” I said, “it’s Matt. Listen, I’m real sorry I didn’t meet you today but, uh, something came up. I really hope, if I send you some questions by e-mail, that you can answer them for me? It’s really important. Thank you so much!”

  chapter thirteen

  Someone laughed. Was that Amanda? No, I must have been dreaming. Still tired after that long hike, I turned over and tried to go back to sleep. Faint voices floated down the hall along with an inviting coffee aroma. I pulled a pillow over my head.

  Bang, bang, bang. Someone knocked on a door. It sounded far away. Did Mom invite the entire neighborhood over for coffee?

  “Matthew! Wake up!” Mom’s voice was muffled. I pushed the pillow away and realized Mom was knocking on my bedroom door. “Matthew, get up! Your friends are here.”

  Uh.

  I flew out of bed, leaped into my clothes, flattened my hair with my hands and ran for the kitchen. If Mom told them I hadn’t done the interview yet, they’d take turns strangling me. Even worse, they’d finish the report and leave my name off it. Another big zero for me, as if I wasn’t in enough trouble at school already. What a dope! I had a chance to get a good mark for once and I blew it.

  “Hi, guys!” I scratched my head and grinned around my fuzzy teeth. I needed to brush them. I needed to pee.

  Amanda was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by books. She looked up and smiled.

  “Hey, Matthew!” Tyler leaned his long frame against the counter, his arms folded.

  Neither of them looked angry, not yet.

  I glanced around. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Gone jogging,” Amanda said. “She was meeting someone.”

  “Did she say, uh—anything?”

  Amanda narrowed her eyes. “You mean, like, ‘Good luck with your report. See ya later’?”

  “Yeah, whatever. Listen, I need to check my e-mail. Paul was going to send me some stuff. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I ran to turn the computer on. From there I darted into the bathroom and did what needed to be done. I returned to the computer with an orange toothbrush sticking out of my mouth.

  “Please,” I whispered, and a fat gob of toothpaste slopped out of my mouth. I caught it in my hand just before it hit the keyboard. Please have the answers for me, I pleaded. Okay, here it comes. Receiving Mail—Twenty new e-mails. Junk, junk, junk, all junk. No, wait, there was one, no two for me.