“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.
“I’m going to climb this tree as high as I can and I’m going to try really hard this time to get help on the radio.”
“This tree?” Owen asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure that’s how radios work. I just covered that in my science homework. You don’t need to climb a tree. I think radio signals bounce off the atmosphere,” Owen said. “Did you do physics, Heather?”
On Goose Island, Heather had done physics with her mom for a few days in the trailer-park classroom whose big windows looked across Puget Sound to the snowcapped mountains of Olympic National Park. She’d taken in nothing. Her mind had been over there walking through the snow, through the rain, learning the tracks of cougar, black bear, elk, and black-tailed deer.
She’d never learned about radio waves or how radios worked. In fact, she had failed the science section of the GED exam. A classmate at South Seattle Community College had called her “simple” once. She knew she wasn’t simple. She did well in stuff she liked. She’d gotten all the biology and botany questions right. Even here, ten thousand miles from home in a landscape utterly unlike her own, she could identify lyrebirds and bowerbirds. A short-tailed shearwater was flying over the hill to her left, the same type of shearwater she had seen many times on the Sound.
The little shearwater gave her comfort.
“I’m going to climb it anyway. It won’t hurt to try this again,” she said.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Olivia agreed.
Heather looked at her. Olivia returned her gaze. Olivia’s mouth creaked up into an encouraging smile. Their relationship had changed between sundown yesterday and sundown today.
Heather climbed halfway up the big eucalyptus tree and turned on the walkie-talkie. “This is an SOS. This is an SOS. My name is Heather Baxter, I’m on Dutch Island in Victoria, Australia, and I need help as quickly as possible!” she said into the device.
She listened for a reply but all she got back was static.
“What did they say, Heather?” Owen yelled.
“Nothing yet.”
Wind was blowing through the leaves. Black bark crumbled under her toes. It was good to be in a tree in this little wood. Trees were older brothers; trees turned sunlight into food; trees were gateways to other places.
She pressed the Talk button again. “If you can hear this, please contact the police. My name is Heather Baxter, I am on Dutch Island in Victoria, Australia. My husband, Tom, has been murdered here by members of the O’Neill family. I have escaped from them and am hiding out on the island with two children, Owen Baxter and Olivia Baxter. We are in great danger. Please send help.”
She repeated this message several more times and listened for a response but there was nothing but white noise.
She tried all nine channels.
The battery life on the walkie-talkie showed only two bars out of four. She’d better conserve it. “Kids, do either of you know what the emergency channel is on a radio?”
“In America, channel nine is what truckers use for emergencies,” Owen said.
She turned back to channel 9. “My name is Heather Baxter, I’m on Dutch Island. I need help. I need someone to call the police and help me. Please. My life is in danger. Please. My name is Heather Baxter, I’m an American on Dutch Island near the city of Melbourne.”
A voice crackled through the static. “Heather, is that you?”
She grabbed hold of the tree trunk to stop herself from falling. “Matt?”
“It’s Matt…that you, Heather?”
She didn’t know whether to answer now or not.
“Heather…still there?”
She let the static be her reply.
“Heather…must have found one of our walkie…don’t know if you can hear me…only a half-watt rechargeable from Bunnings…range is on the back,” Matt said, his voice fragmentary in the blizzard of static.
“So?” she said.
“…bad news for you is that a half-watt radio transmitter only…range of a kilometer at most in the…no one coming to help you.”
“I’ll try anyway,” she said.
“…need to talk…serious conversation about Tom,” Matt said before his voice disappeared into the static.
She pressed Talk. “What about Tom?” she asked. Static. “Matt?” Static. “Matt?”
No answer.
She listened and listened but it was only hiss now on every channel.