The Swiss Family RobinZOM (2 page)

“
Ow!” Ernest said. “What
was that for?”

“
Swearing is swearing,”
Liz said, “whether the listener understands it or not.”

“
You swore at me?” Fritz
said, fist clenching tight.

“
Enough!” Liz said. “I’m
sending you out to prevent Jack from getting into trouble, and you
two are just as bad!”

Fritz glared at Ernest, who
poked his tongue out.

“
Give Jack a clip round
the ear while you’re over there,” Liz said.

“
With pleasure,” Fritz
said.

He
strapped himself into the winching harness, and used the
hand peddles to lower himself to the ground.

“
Do I have to go across?”
Ernest said. “Jack’ll never sit still and Fritz is going to get me
back for my Latin remark.”

“
Perhaps it’ll teach you
not to make such remarks,” Liz said.

Ernest hung his shoulders
and strapped himself into the
winch
harness. He turned back to look at Bill.

“
Dad?” he
said.

“
Yeah?” Bill
said.

“
When do you suppose the
monsoon season will end?”

“
Any day now, son,” Bill
said. “Why?”

“
So if one of my darling
brothers is going to have an unfortunate accident and drown, it
ought to happen soon…”

“
Don’t even joke about
such things!” Liz said.

“
Who said anyone was
joking?” Ernest said.

He pumped the peddles
with his arms to the ground. He crossed the open courtyard, somehow
managing to step in every muddy puddle along the way, strapped
himself into the second winch and hand peddled himself up to
Robin’s Nest. At the treehouse’s entrance Fritz was waiting for
Ernest, and kept pushing him back when he reached for the
ledge.

“
Fritz!” Liz shouted.
“Let him in! I said let him in!”

The rain thrummed so loud
on the roof she wasn
’t sure if he heard
her or not, but Fritz gave way and helped Ernest into the
treehouse. Once inside, Ernest pulled his arm away from Fritz. Liz
closed the swing doors, blocking the Marx Brothers
scene.

A puddle of water
coalesced on the floor from where the door had been left
open.
Liz picked up a towel and began
mopping it up. She wrung the towel into the sink and hung it up on
a line that ran over their heads. The space was large, mostly made
of wood. Water-damaged family photos of a former life hung on the
walls. Carpets covered every inch of floor.

“
Those boys,” Liz said.
“They’ll be the death of me, I swear.”

She collapsed into a chair.

“
Thanks for all your
help, by the way,” she said to Bill. “It’s important we show them a
unified front, and you were solid as a rock.”

“
I’m writing my journal,”
Bill said. “I can’t do everything at once.”

“
They need to learn to
work together,” Liz said. “Not fight all the time.”

“
What’re you going to
do?” Bill said. “Tie them together? They’ll kill one another before
they learn to cooperate. Let them grow up a little. They’ll grow
out of it.”

Liz folded her arms.

“
My sisters and I weren’t
like that,” she said. “We were always there for each other, no
matter what happened.”

“
You’re women. The fairer
sex. We’re boys. That’s what boys are like. I was the same with my
friends.”

“
They’re not friends,
they’re brothers. And this is not Switzerland. The world is a more
dangerous place now. They have to be prepared.”

There was a pause.

“
You’re right,” Bill
said, setting down his pen. “And one of them is
preparing.”

“
You’re talking about
Fritz?” Liz said with a smile. “I don’t know why he takes so much
care with his hair. It’s not like there’s a gaggle of beautiful
blondes next door.”

“
No, but one might appear
one day. A man wants to be prepared.”

“
Our little boys are
growing up,” Liz said.

There was the sound of
something smashing in the treehouse opposite
, followed by raised voices.

“
Some faster than
others,” Bill said.

“
I do worry about them,”
Liz said.

“
Me too. I don’t know
where they get their lack of respect for authority from.
Disgraceful.”

“
It’s not that I’m
worried about, and I know exactly where they get that
from.”

Liz
glared at Bill, who returned her expression with a faint
smile.

“
I’m worried about their
future,” she said. “What kind of life are they going to lead on a
speck of an island out in the middle of the ocean?

“
They’re going to live,”
Bill said. “That’s enough for now. Later, when the time comes,
we’ll take them to the mainland to find other survivors. For now we
need to focus on surviving.”

T
he thrumming on the roof slowed, and then stopped
altogether. Sunlight streamed through the windows, bringing warmth
with it. Birds sang.

“
Woohoo!” Jack’s voice
said from the other treehouse.

“
Has it stopped?” Liz
said.

Bill
peered out of a window.

“
Appears so,” he said.
“Though it might only be a reprieve. The monsoon season might not
be over yet.”

“
It can’t rain for weeks
on end and then stop suddenly like that, can it?”

“
Why not?” Bill said.
“Maybe the clouds just finally ran out of juice.”

Liz shook her head.

“
I’ll never get used to
this weather,” she said.

T
he swing doors smacked opened and Jack came running
in.

“
The rain’s stopped!” he
said. “It’s finally stopped! Can I go climb to the top of
Sharpie?”

“
It’s still wet and
slippery
,” Liz said.

“
I’ll be careful,” Jack
said. “I promise.”

Even
Nip the monkey had an excited expression on his face,
though he was likely just mimicking Jack.

“
Please!” Jack
said.

“
All
right
,” Liz said.

“Yeah!”

“
But be careful. Your
father says the monsoon season might not be over. It could just be
a break.”

Jack strapped herself into the
winch.

“
Okay,” he
said.

“
Feed the animals before
you go,” Bill said. “And take your brothers with you.”

“
Aw, man,” Jack said. “Do
I have to?”

“
Yes,” Bill
said.

Jack
sighed.

“
All right,” he
said.

Jack hand
pedalled his way to the ground. There was a
screech as Beauty fluttered her wings, floated into the treehouse
and alighted on her perch, where she sat and got comfortable. In
one talon she had two good-sized quails. Liz took them from her,
and patted Beauty on the head.

“
At least Beauty knows
the value of teamwork,” she said.

Two

Francis whistled
in a continuous high tone, and then dropped low,
before returning to the higher tone. After a pause he repeated the
tune.

“
He’s not coming,” Jack
said. “Let’s go climb Sharpie.”

“
He’ll come,” Francis
said. “He always comes.”

There was a pause, and then the
sound of trotting hooves. Lightfoot the brown donkey came running
toward them. He wore a straw hat that Liz had made for him, his
ears sticking out the top. It was a bit frayed around the edges
where the other animals had tried to eat it.

“
It’s just Lightfoot,”
Ernest said.

Francis gave the donkey
an apple, and then
pointed with a short
stubby finger.

“
Here he comes!” he
said.

The ground shook,
the vibrations rising up their legs. Lightfoot,
true to his name, took off. A large black shadow emerged from
behind a clump of trees. Jack, with Nip on his shoulder, took a
step back. Even Fritz and Ernest backed away, but Francis stood his
ground with a grin on his face. He extended an apple in the palm of
his hand through the slats of the fence. Two thousand pounds of
brute bull muscle approached the fence, which now looked flimsy and
childlike beside this leviathan. He lowered his thick neck down to
the apple, sniffing through his wide nostrils, blowing Francis’s
hair back, and with great delicacy opened its mouth and chomped the
apple in one go. Then the bull turned and ran back up the
field.

“
Well,” Jack said, “now
that’s over with, can we get on with Sharpie now?”

S
unlight streamed through the clouds and glinted off the
sheen on the broad leaves and native plants around them. Three feet
tall canes, no thicker than a man’s thumb grew rigid and straight
in clutches along the path. Jack snapped a cane off at the base and
put it to his lips, sucking out the sugar. Fritz snapped three
canes off and handed one each to Ernest and Francis. Sucking on
their sugar canes, they scaled Sharpie the mountain.

Thin rivulets of
rainwater wormed its way down the mountainside
like sap down a tree’s bark. Apes perched in the only cluster of
trees on the mountainside watched the boys pass by underneath them,
tucking into the sweet flesh of fresh fruit. The mountainside was
largely exposed with little decorating it. A wild pig dashed
through the undergrowth with piglets in tow. They paid the boys no
mind.

“
I never want to be
locked up in Falcon’s Nest for that long ever again!” Jack said.
“It’s so peaceful out here. Calm, fresh, and so much
space!”

Jack held his arms out to
the side and spun in a circle.
Fritz and
Ernest each held one of Francis’s hands and swung him between them
every few feet. It was a bit of a struggle for Ernest with his
weedy arms, but he did his best to hide it.

“
Wheee!” Francis said.
“Wheee!”

P
anting and out of breath, Ernest put his hand on a boulder
to steady himself, his legs shaking and weak. The boulder teetered
forward. A few small rocks broke away from the base and rolled down
the mountainside, but the large boulder stayed where it was. Ernest
breathed a sigh of relief. The boulder hadn’t rolled. There was a
long procession of similar rocks, each teetering on the edge. They
drew up to Sharpie’s peak. Jack stretched out his arms to embrace
the horizon.

“
Nature!” he said,
absorbing as much of it into his eleven year old lungs as he could.
“Aphrodite in her true form.”

“
Pretty eloquent for
someone who never pays attention in Mum’s classes,” Ernest
said.

“
Correction,” Jack said.
“
Appearing
not to be paying attention.”

“
You certainly do that
well.”

Sharpie
was on the south eastern tip of New Switzerland,
the highest point of land on the island. The sea battered one side,
and the island spread out before it on the other. The ocean
stretched out to white oblivion on the horizon. The sky was a
perfect sapphire blue without a single cloud to blot it. They
turned in the opposite direction to find the black flat-bottomed
anvil clouds of the monsoon, the rain still falling on a distant
stretch of ocean.

“
Yes!”
Jack said. “Hahaha! Get out of here, storm!
Flee!”

J
ack’s smile faded and he lowered his arms. He frowned and
turned his head to the side in thought. He tapped Fritz on the
shoulder. He didn’t respond. Jack punched him on the
arm.

“
Ow!” Fritz said. “What
was that for?”

Jack pointed to
something
at the other end of the island.
Fritz’s face paled. Run hard to ground on the soft sand of the Bay
of Safety was the hull of a giant ship.

Three

Fritz and Ernest, who had
a handle each of the
empty cart, felt the
reverberations up their arms. The wheels of the cart were solid
wood and did not take the uneven ground well. Bill walked out in
front, leading them. He clutched his machete knife tight in one
hand. Jack could see Bill’s knuckles were white, which only made
Jack grip his policeman’s baton harder. Bill checked every
direction twice before signalling for them to continue onward. They
came to the bank of a river, the water frothy white and surging
below.

Built across the river
was a
bridge made of thick bamboo. It had
been nailed together with thorns from the Acacia tree, and then
lashed with strong vines. They called it Family Bridge. Bill raised
his hand for the cart to stop. Bill walked across the bridge,
stamping his foot each step. Fritz and Ernest massaged their stiff
arms. Once Bill got to the other side of the bridge, and checked
the coast was clear, he waved the boys over. Family Bridge didn’t
so much as creak as the cart trundled over it.