Hero Read online

  “I’ve looked everywhere; he’s nowhere else. What if he is down there? What if he’s hurt and waiting for someone to come and rescue him?”

  And then I wish I hadn’t said it because I could see the hopelessness of a small dog stuck in the rubble reflected in that fireman’s eyes.

  I held his arms so he could see into my eyes, how serious I was.

  “You have to get him out.”

  “Son.” He knelt on one knee. “We’ve got a lot of work to do first. It’s lucky nobody’s been hurt. We’ve got the best possible people coming to make everything safe and sound. And, when that’s done, I promise you, as soon as we can secure the area, we’ll send someone down that hole for the dog.”

  He opened the barrier and firmly guided me back, pushing me towards the people who wanted to know more.

  “Who’s missing?”

  “Who’s unaccounted for?”

  “Jack Pepper,” I said, hanging my head.

  “Grizzly Allen’s dog?”

  “That nice little dog a boy saved from the pond?”

  “The one on the posters down our road?”

  Someone recognised me. “It’s Leo Biggs, isn’t it? Ben’s boy. You’re the one that saved him before.”

  It didn’t feel like praise any more. They patted my shoulder, they smiled with their mouths, but their breath was full of sighs and their eyes full of sadness.

  Nobody had questioned the holes in my story about my bike and the cat because I think everyone wanted to believe in heroes and something good happening.

  “Aren’t they going to do anything?” It was George, standing beside Beatrix. He barely looked at me, but he went up to the barriers and asked the fireman, “How long will it take?”

  “We’re working as quickly as we can,” he said.

  “Today? Tomorrow?” George asked. “When?”

  “We’re doing the best we can.”

  “And if there was a boy down there?” Beatrix asked. “Would you do better?”

  There was no answer to Beatrix’s question, only the promise of as soon as we can.

  “Thanks,” I said to George and Beatrix.

  “We’re not here for you,” Beatrix said. “We’re here for the dog.”

  They stood together, shoulder to shoulder. George wouldn’t look directly at me. I lost a dog that stood by me. I lost my best friend who probably would have stood by me if I’d told him the truth.

  “Mr Allen asked me to come and find you; he wants to talk to you.” George said. “Have you told him his dog might be down there?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He moved away with Beatrix, as if we had nothing to do with each other.

  Grizzly was hanging over his gate, his head drooping, turned a little just to let me know he knew I was coming.

  “You’d better come in before one of us changes his mind,” Grizzly said.

  I stood there for an age by Grizzly’s gate and tried to imagine time rewinding, to see Jack Pepper there again and things turning out differently. But it didn’t work. It couldn’t work.

  Grizzly held the door open, stood back, let me in. I saw him dreading it as much as I was. I wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to say to me, why he was waiting, but it felt like a ton of bricks was hovering, about to tumble.

  Jack’s empty bed was still in front of the coal fire, no lights on, curtains half drawn, an uneasy flicker of light from the dying flames, two mugs of tea on the mantelpiece.

  “Been looking out for you,” Grizzly rumbled. “Saw you coming down the road. Had a brew ready. One of them’s for you.”

  We took our time, sat, nervously tested the tea. I wished I had something hopeful to tell him, but the best I could do was to say that we’d made posters. Kirsty and Milly had drawn them and I’d put them up.

  “I saw them. Very nice. Good likeness.”

  Heavy silence. We sipped our tea.

  “I’ve been looking,” I said, but it didn’t sound like my voice. It was just words, filling the space, the cavern of emptiness we were in, the muddle of lies I was tangled up with. “But I think … I think … I know where he is.”

  Grizzly’s hands shook. He spilled his tea. He put his mug down, wiped at his trouser leg.

  “I told you about that fight I had with Nicky Sullivan, didn’t I?” I nodded, grateful for the distraction, as every word I’d said was like a jab to our chests.

  “I was an eighteen-year-old kid at Sullivan’s club, sparring on a Friday night. Nicky used to put on his big championship belt with the shiny gold buckle for us and we’d get swept up in the glory of it all. I tried it on once, thought I’d like it to fit me.” A smile flickered across his face. “Nicky saw me in the ring, said I’d make a good boxer. He asked me to stay behind late that night, spar a few rounds with him. There was just him and me and his manager. And a girl. The cleaner.”

  I imagined him then, younger, with fuller hair and livelier flesh, like a lean gladiator.

  Grizzly shook his head like he decided it wasn’t worth telling me any more. He laughed sadly at himself. “I’m too old to get up and fight these days. Not like you. You’re just beginning to see the fights you might have to take on. And I don’t mean in the ring.”

  The responsibility of still being seen as a hero by Grizzly was too much, but I knew then that I couldn’t tell him what I’d done, ever, not even if I wanted to. There’s only so much disappointment a person can feel. And then, in the silence that followed, the weight of knowing that neither Grizzly nor I wanted to admit that Jack Pepper was down that sinkhole caved me in. The smoke from the fire got in my eyes.

  “Fights aren’t necessarily what you have with fists or swords,” Grizzly said, his voice so low I could feel it vibrating in my chest. “Sometimes we’re just trying to put things right. On the inside. And it’s not right that you’re giving up on yourself. Because I can see that’s what you’re doing.

  “I’m telling you now, Leo, I’ll fight and Lucy … my girl … will fight too, to forgive what’s happened to Jack. That’s what I’ve always taught her to do. And you have to fight not to blame yourself or let this change you into someone else, someone who won’t fight. We’ve all seen the hero in you, Leo lad.”

  He picked up the teapot, poured some more tea in our mugs.

  “Lucy’s going to be back in a few of days,” he said as if he was talking to himself, preparing himself to tell her what had happened. “Now drink your tea before it gets cold. You need your strength. You’re not fighting in your dreams any more. You’re fighting to keep your heart as good and whole as it should be.”

  George was by himself, waiting down the road for me. I couldn’t take anyone else telling me how disappointed in me they were. I already knew. If he’d known, he’d have told me every good reason why I shouldn’t have gone to the Rec to meet Warren Miller and his mates that night in the first place.

  That’s the thing about friends: they see the things in you that you don’t like either, not because they think badly of you, but because they believe much better of you. But I knew that had all gone now. George and Beatrix didn’t think anything good about me any more. I didn’t deserve any friends, even though I wanted them back.

  I wanted Jack back most of all though because I truly believed he was the only one that could make everything right again. Just being near George made me feel worse about what I’d done to Grizzly and Jack Pepper. I walked past him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” George said. “Jack Pepper is most likely to be down the sinkhole.”

  I stopped and turned around.

  “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “Beatrix thinks he’s down there too.”

  “I know, George, you don’t need to rub it in.”

  I walked away.

  “I’m only telling you because we believe he’s still alive,” George called.

  That stunned me because that’s what I felt deep inside, or had to believe. Something that was part of me, still beating, still hoping, still fighting,
needing this to turn out right. But I didn’t dare wish.

  Mostly I believed Jack Pepper was in the sinkhole because I couldn’t imagine the goodness in him gone for good.

  “He would have waited outside the shop because I asked him to,” I said. I didn’t say what that might mean if he was down there. I had nothing but hope keeping him alive in me. And it didn’t feel like enough. I needed someone else to believe he was alive too. I needed George to believe.

  “How long can a dog survive without food or water?” I asked because George was the one who always knew the answers.

  “Depends,” George said. “I looked it up and you have to consider all the circumstances. The weather, how old Jack is; he’s young so that’s quite good. Also if he’s injured …” He caught my eye for a second and knew not to say any more. “Probably three days at most, in these conditions. It’s really cold.”

  I nodded, turned to go, thinking how little time the emergency services had to rescue Jack.

  “Mr Allen asked me to do something else for him,” George called, but I was already running down the road. I didn’t want to listen. I had to do something, ask the rescue services again. I had to get some help. I ran back to the barriers in Great Western, but I was told to step back, to leave the professionals to get on with their job. Frustration and a whole heap of other things rose in me like I wanted to roar, but it wouldn’t come out.

  George had followed me. He put a hand on my shoulder and I turned around.

  “I promised Mr Allen I’d help you,” George said. “But this doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

  It was the killer blow even though I didn’t deserve George as a friend anyway. I knew then that Jack Pepper had followed me to the pond that day. He was trying to stop me getting into trouble, just like George would have done. I’d lost George as a friend now, so it wouldn’t matter what he thought of me, but I couldn’t stand lying to him any more and how that was eating me up inside. I grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the other people.

  “I didn’t rescue Jack Pepper from the pond,” I told him. “He was trying to rescue me, George. Me!”

  George turned his back for a second. I could hear him breathing, big angry breaths through his nose.

  “You wouldn’t understand, George,” but I couldn’t find the right words to explain why.

  He marched away.

  “You have to make this right, Leo!” he shouted.

  “I know! But I can’t!”

  My voice was lost like something small in a dark pit, and, before I had the chance to say anything else, George turned back and said, “I do understand! You wanted to be a gladiator, to be a hero. So stop pretending. It’s about time you really were one.”

  I dreamed I was digging in a sand dune, desperate to find a bone that Jack Pepper had buried somewhere and was lost. I kept digging because I knew if I found the bone then I’d find him. But the sand pile got bigger and bigger and slipped away in my hands, and I was hiding from the lion, but I knew he was there, behind the dune, about to find me. And then I was falling and falling.

  “Leo?” It was Dad, his voice soft. I woke with a jump. “You’re all right, son. You’re in the sitting room, safe, at home.”

  I opened my eyes, not sure where I was.

  “Was he sleepwalking?” Milly said.

  “I think he was trying to find Jack Pepper,” Dad said.

  I was lying by the fireplace, in pyjamas and shoes and coat.

  I rubbed my hands over my face. There was coal dust on my palms. My hands were black. There was ash and soot all over the hearth.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Seven o’clock,” Dad said. “There’s no school. With the roads out and all the cars and buses diverted, nobody’s going in again today.”

  That’s not what I was thinking. I was wondering how many hours Jack Pepper had been down the hole. Was he still alive? Alone. Hurt? Still waiting for me? Something was different today though. I was carrying him, somewhere inside of me. I felt stronger, and I wasn’t going to let him go.

  “I’ve got to go back to the sinkhole,” I told Dad.

  I washed off the soot, put on some clothes. Dad caught me in the kitchen when I didn’t eat the pile of toast he’d made.

  “Leo, I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, son.”

  “Yeah, Dad.”

  “I mean it. Look at me, Leo … I’m proud of what you did before and I’m proud of what you’re doing now to try to find Jack. I didn’t realise a little dog like that might mean so much to you.”

  “No, Dad.”

  Someone else I couldn’t ever tell, not now. I already knew what it was like to lose pride in yourself. I’d let so many people down even though they might not know it, and I couldn’t do that to Dad.

  “Whatever happens, nobody’s going to blame you, Leo. Jack falling into the hole wasn’t your fault.”

  I wondered, did it matter what anybody else thought of me when I thought nothing of myself?

  I was the first one at the barriers, the first person to watch and hope and believe that the emergency services would find Jack down there. People slowly joined me, lined up along the barriers, rubbing their arms against the cold.

  We exchanged something, with every new person that arrived, a message in our eyes that we were all here for a good reason. We were all useless because we couldn’t help, but we were all fighting on the inside for Jack Pepper.

  “Any news?” someone asked as a policeman came up to the barriers.

  “Anyone found that lovely little dog?”

  “Is anyone looking for Jack Pepper yet?” I said.

  “They will,” he said. In the meantime, all we could do was wait. All of us willing good news, all of us standing vigil over the sinkhole.

  News rippled through. Someone had heard that a crane was coming this way, but was stuck on North Road because cracks had appeared. They had to stop and put up scaffolding first to make the buildings safe.

  There were dozens of people in uniform between the barriers and the hole. Scaffolding was also being put up round a building on Great Western, two doors up from the dress shop. That’s how close they were to making it safe enough to climb down into the hole and search for Jack Pepper. But it might just as well have been a mile away.

  The hours trudged by as we watched the slow progress as more scaffolding went up.

  There was a commotion at the edge of the crowd, the smell of a familiar ingredient. It was my dad, loaded up with bags of chips and boxes of fried chicken.

  “Help yourselves,” Dad said, offering them around. “You need to keep your strength up.”

  Dad was happiest when he was filling someone else’s belly. People offered him money, but he said, “Put it in the charity box; there’s always someone else who needs it more.”

  People passed the food along to the emergency services, handed it out to everyone and anyone who wanted it. Kirsty came with a supermarket trolley filled with paper cups of tea and milk and sugar for anyone who needed warmth inside them. Mum and Milly carried a bag of bottles of squash and plastic cups for the children.

  I thought of Grizzly then, how he said we all needed our bodies fed and fit for fighting. I could almost feel the strength of everyone growing in the smell of fried chicken, all of us fighting inside for things to turn out right, for Jack Pepper to be found, bright and alive.

  “Dad said you didn’t eat your breakfast,” Kirsty said.

  “I wasn’t hungry. I can’t stop thinking about Jack Pepper,” I said quietly.

  “None of us are giving up,” she said. “We should think of him, and we should send him our thoughts, and we just keep holding on like that.”

  “I don’t see how that helps,” I said.

  “What else can we do?” she said through her teeth.

  Kirsty stared at me like she had something else to say, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. She turned away. Even my sister thought what Miller had said about me was true. Even s
he believed that I had scared Jack, and she’d known me all my life.

  “I’m going home to check the phone,” Kirsty said. “Just in case someone has found Jack and called.”

  Time is the most uncomfortable thing in the world, when there’s nothing you can do.

  A mountain search and rescue team arrived in a van. They appeared like real hope in orange jackets, with ropes and clips and hard hats and other equipment. We all pushed closer to the barriers, huddled and pressed against each other, but the police moved us away from the team, gave them room. This was the first movement we’d seen from our end of the street, the first time someone really looked like they were going to do something.

  “Are you going to get our dog?” I said, clinging to the barrier. Our dog. Not Grizzly’s dog, not Lucy’s. Ours because everyone standing nearby was there for the same reason.

  I called to the rescue team. “He’s been down there for more than two days. Please, get him out!”

  “We’ll do what we can,” one of them said.

  People blew on their hands and stamped their feet against the bitter day. I couldn’t think about how cold Jack Pepper might be or that he wasn’t alive. I just thought and hoped and told him inside, You hold on, Jack, just wait a little bit longer. Someone’s coming. But I didn’t understand why the emergency services were just standing around and talking.

  The minutes ticked past like dripping treacle. Machines humming and buzzing, people murmuring and sighing. People talked about Grizzly, how long they’d known him, stories from the past. They all knew something about each other. The stories were good: they were about the good things in all of us. And I felt left out because all I’d been doing lately was telling lies.

  Police radios crackled. We heard that a huge digger was now trying to approach the sinkhole from the other end of North Road.

  A policeman got a message through his radio. I saw him scanning the crowd, picking me out. I saw he wished he hadn’t caught my eye and he turned away.

  I ran over. “What?” I said. “What do you know?”

  I saw him take a breath, wrestling with himself whether to tell me or not.