Past Dark

Summer, 1995

1.

THE DAY AFTER school broke for summer, Mr. Wilkinson reported his dog missing. It was early in the morning and already hot, the rising sun pushing away the chill of the night before.

Chris Peterson watched Mr. Wilkinson staple photocopied posters to the telephone poles along his street, a black-and-white snap of the nine-year-old German shepherd above the old man's handwritten desperation:

MISSING DOG!

GERMAN SHEPHERD: ANSWERS TO BEN

CASH REWARD GIVEN

That, followed by his phone number. Chris wondered how many prank calls the poor man would get before the dog turned up.

The year before, his Dad had been driving home in the company truck when he found Mr. Wilkinson on his knees by the side of the road. Ben lay limp before him, the dog's flank barely moving with the shallow rise and fall of his breathing, the fur matted with thick, red blood. Mr. Wilkinson's hands were crimson.

It turned out Mr. Wilkinson had been walking Ben in the woods adjacent to the road that led into town when the dog slipped off the lead. He ran straight into an oncoming Ford. The old German shepherd struck the front edge of the bonnet and flipped into the air.

The driver responsible didn't stick around to see if he could help. Mr. Wilkinson watched as the Ford swerved away, but he'd been too distraught to look for a licence plate.

Chris's Dad offered to take them straight to the vet. Together they lifted Ben into the back of the truck, laid him out on a tarpaulin. Mr. Wilkinson refused to leave the dog's side and rode in the back the whole journey.

"What happened to Ben?" Chris asked his Dad that night as he related the tale.

His Dad snapped the ring pull off a can of lager and took a long swallow before answering. "Seems okay. A dog that age, you never know. He's lucky to be alive at all."

"Was Mr. Wilkinson really upset?" Chris's Mum asked.

"Yeah, I'd say so," his Dad had said. "He's old. Lives on his own. The dog must be like a kid to him. People get attached that way to animals."

Chris remembered thinking, Glad I'm not allowed a pet.

As it was, old Ben made a full recovery. A short while after, when the dog was on the mend, Mr. Wilkinson dropped a bottle of whiskey off at the house as a way of saying thanks.

That was before. Now Mr. Wilkinson looked beside himself with worry.

Chris knew if his Dad were still around, he'd have helped find the dog. Steve Peterson had had his faults; no one could say he hadn't. He liked a drink. The whiskey from Mr. Wilkinson hadn't lasted long. Sometimes he and Chris's Mum argued, and usually it was due to the drinking. When that happened, Chris would lead his little sister Lola away. It made him mad the pair of them got into shouting matches in front of him and Lola.

Now he'd give anything to hear them row again, to hear his Dad's gruff voice one more time. Steve Peterson was the sort of man who'd drop change in a busker's hat as he walked past. Straighten a picture frame in a hotel room. Chris had never known his Dad to eat in a café and not take his plate and cutlery to the counter afterward. Or tip the waitress.

Yes, the man had liked a drink. And on the weekends, he enjoyed tearing up the back roads outside town on his motorbike. "I become the thunder!" he once told Chris, a big grin on his face as he sat there, still dressed in his leathers.

He liked a cold beer (or two, or three) and sometimes he enjoyed something a little stronger. But he worked long hours, never failed to provide for his family.

Years later Chris would be of the opinion that perhaps his Dad had deserved a drink now and again.

Chris's Dad had been dead for three months, and none of it was getting any easier to cope with. The wound was still raw. Seeing Mr. Wilkinson with his armful of MISSING DOG! posters brought back a lot of memories for him.

"Hello," Chris said as Mr. Wilkinson stopped outside his house to staple one of the posters.

"Morning Christopher," the old man said. He finished what he was doing, then handed a few flyers over. "Hand some of these out for me, will you? And if you see anything . . ."

"Of course," Chris said. "What happened?"

Mr. Wilkinson wiped sweat from his brow. It really was getting warm already.

"Don't know. I heard him go out the flap in the night, you know, and I thought it was just a call of nature. It's out of sorts for him, but I leave the flap unlocked just in case it happens," he explained. "Anyway, I think I nodded back off. When I got up in the morning he weren't anywhere to be seen."

"Weird," Chris said, not sure what else to say.

"Yeah," Mr. Wilkinson said. He thanked Chris for his help, said he'd let him know if Ben turned up. Chris watched him go, then grabbed the two milk bottles by his feet. He carried them inside to the kitchen. His sister Lola sat at the table eating a Rusk.

"Took your time," his Mum said, still in her dressing gown. She wiped soap suds off her hands with a tea towel.

"Mr. Wilkinson's dog's missing," Chris handed her one of the posters. She looked at it for a moment before handing it back.

"That's a shame," she said in a flat, disinterested tone.

"Mum . . . do you think he'll find him?" Chris asked.

She shrugged as she put the milk in the fridge. "I don't know. Animals sometimes run off. It wasn't so long ago the silly thing ran into the road. Lucky he wasn't killed. Watch your sister while I go upstairs."

His Mum left the kitchen. Lola – or Blondie as he called her sometimes – was too engrossed in her Rusk to care about anything beyond her two-year-old perception of the world.

Chris rolled the posters up and stuffed them in his jeans pocket. The paper tube poked out at the top like a baton. He watched his little sister eat, and wondered if she had any idea her Dad was gone. He wondered if she half expected him to come rolling through the front door, as he always had, smelling of work and old aftershave.

Seeing Mr. Wilkinson that morning not only reminded him that the death of his Father had left a wound, but it had rubbed salt in it, too. Especially now he watched Lola suck the edge of the teething biscuit, happy as could be.

She probably didn't even remember their Dad. Chris knew it would fall to him, one day, to tell her all about Steve Peterson: Recently Deceased. He couldn't imagine his Mum doing anything but what she was doing now, ignoring it. Pushing it away so she didn't have to think about it. That thought, more than any other, made him sad beyond words.

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