What We Buried by Robert Rotenberg

Author:Robert Rotenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada
Published: 2024-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

KENNICOTT

KENNICOTT HAD BEEN TIED up and blindfolded once before. He was ten years old and alone at the cottage with his brother and Raymond, a friend of Michael’s from the cottage next door. Their mother and grandfather had gone to town to shop, and the older boys thought it would be fun to take some rope from the sailboat to bind Daniel’s hands behind his back and use Michael’s favourite bandana to cover Daniel’s eyes. They walked him out the screen door, across the back lawn and up the cottage road, turned him around and around a bunch of times, and left him to find his way back. Alone.

“Good luck, pip-squeak,” Raymond said, giggling, before he and Michael took off running.

If they’d expected Daniel to cry like a baby, they were wrong. Instead, he felt oddly empowered by the loss of sight and mobility. It was a challenge, and he was determined to think his way through it. He knew the road was on a hill, so the first thing he did was fall to his knees and kick some stones to see which way was downhill. Next, he shimmied to the edge of the road until he could feel the leaves from the overhanging branches brush against his cheek. Step-by-step he made his way back down the road and into the cottage backyard. He’d been playing on this lawn since he was born and could visualize everything.

Instead of going to the screen door and calling out to Michael and Raymond to tell them that he’d returned, he felt his way along the back wall of the cottage, tiptoeing to be sure not to make any noise. He stopped when he was far away from the door, sat down with his back to the wall. And waited.

As he thought would happen, after a while his brother began to worry. “Ray, we better go find him before my mom comes home,” he heard Michael say, and a moment later the screen door opened and slammed shut, then two sets of footsteps raced across the lawn out onto the road.

“Daniel, where are you?” he heard Michael call out.

Daniel sat still and smiled to himself.

“Daniel! Daniel!” Michael’s voice grew more and more distant and frantic as they climbed the hill.

“Dan,” Raymond bellowed. “Where are you? Come on, kid, this isn’t a joke!”

For a few minutes Daniel didn’t hear a thing. All at once, there was the sound of the boys running back toward the cottage. And moments later the rumbling of a car driving up the road.

“What the hell are we going to tell your mother?” Raymond called out as the two boys ran back across the lawn.

“I don’t know,” Michael said, panicked.

Daniel waited until he heard them approach the screen door. “Tell them that we had a good time,” he said, standing up.

There was a moment of silence.

“Jeez, you scared us to death,” Michael said.

Daniel heard his brother run up to him. He felt Michael’s hands shaking as he untied the bandana.

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