Stallo Read Online Free Page B

was just someone,’ she says quietly, moving her spoon among the steaming pieces of vegetable. ‘Someone who walked past in the forest and saw us throw away the bat. There are lots of people here, fishing and camping. It’s just someone having a joke.’
Does she think it is a good joke?
‘No,’ she replies. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Neither do I,’ he says to his plate.
*
They play cards.
‘Snap!’ he yells, and shuffles the cards with the blue chequered pattern on the back. His mother rests her elbows on the table and pretends to be annoyed. He likes that.
She is wearing a strappy top with horizontal stripes. The skin shines on her jutting collarbones, and the outside of her upper arms are sunburned. You can see where the towel covered her. It has left a line.
When she wants to stop playing he becomes sulky and tries to play cards on his own, but it is not the same. He finds a fountain pen and scribbles in some of the comics, on the white spaces between the squares. Then he draws on his knuckles, mainly to see if it works, but the ink rubs off.
It is only when he looks to see if the hare is still there that he catches sight of the fox. It is standing at the bottom of the path, staring with round, shiny yellow eyes at the window.
The boy leaps up and shouts out loud.
‘Come here! Quick!’
His mother puts down her book and walks to the window.
‘Well, look at that,’ she says, leaning forwards and resting her cheek against the boy’s.
In silence they study the fox for a few moments, until she says:
‘It knows there has been a hare around here. The smell stays in the grass for a long time. It thinks the hare is here somewhere.’
‘It is,’ he says. ‘It’s there!’
He points and she cranes her neck, seeing that the boy is right. The hare is like a dark-grey patch behind the tufts of grass beside the woodshed.
‘I’m sure it’s all right,’ she says. ‘It’ll get away, you’ll see.’
The fox has opened his ears so they stand like two scoops on top of his head. He directs his black nose towards the hare.
‘Now he can sense it,’ she says. ‘The trail.’
Behind the dipped back and skinny dog’s body, with ribs defined like bars, the fox’s tail projects like a grey and bushy burden. The corners of its mouth point downwards. The animal starts to creep closer, edging forwards with its head to the ground. The quick, slender legs are dark at the front, as if it has stepped in a forest pool.
The boy feels a whispering breath against his hair.
‘It smells very strange because we’ve been out there too, so he can’t find the hare.’
But he can.
The fox walks in a straight line to the pair of long ears that are sticking up out of the grass. The two animals regard each other for an instant and then the fox sits down, immediately next to the hare. And there they sit, beside each other in the grass, their eyes directed at the cabin.
‘It looks like they’re friends!’
The idea of the hare and the fox being friends makes the boy’s mother crane her head forwards. Her eyes are staring behind the lenses of her glasses.
Finally it becomes too much for her and she slaps the palm of her hand against the pane of glass. The boy, who has climbed onto the table, jumps at the sound. She slaps the window again and then thumps it with her fist, making the glass rattle.
‘Don’t do that!’ he wails.
But the animals are not scared by the sound.
They merely sit there.
His mother fetches a couple of saucepans from the kitchen, but on her way to the door she exchanges one of them for the axe.
The animals jerk when the door flies open and the woman comes out onto the step. They move apart slightly but they do not run away. She calls to the boy to stay inside, but he disobeys her. He pads out behind her. He also wants to see.
There is a clang, cling, clang! as the axe hits the saucepan.
Stamping her feet, she strides forwards.
The fox stands up and runs a short distance away, looking at her over its shoulder. Its