I’ve had my share of breaks.
‘Here to see your Master,’ Certain says, standing at the door, and he’s dressed up a little. Shirt and long pants, shoes that are too long gone for buffing to bring out much good in them, but they’re cracked and comfortable.
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘Bit of both. Mainly for that whisky sour he’s got, I guess. You do have lemons, don’t you? Sugar?’
I don’t understand whisky, tried it once and it made me sick. Give me a cider any day. I pull a face.
‘You can come in, I guess.’
‘He out, is he?’
‘Not fer much longer.’
I pour him a glass of that rough stuff, squeeze in some lemon juice.
Certain raises his glass, peers at me through it. ‘Could do with some ice.’ So I’m down to the cellar and the ice chest. Shaving bits off the shrinking brick down there. Bring him back his glass.
Takes a good long sip. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he says. He leans back in his chair. ‘You given much thought to your what-comes-afters?’
‘What do you think?’ I say.
‘I think time’s moving fast. My last years did. Faster than I’d ever thought they could.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ I say.
‘Keep to that thought. Hold it, and you might just be. There’s coming a time when you’ll make decisions, even if it don’t feel like you are. What kind of man you’ll be. Or perhaps not a man.’
I snort. ‘No chance of that. ‘
Certain rattles the ice in his glass. ‘More peculiar things have happened. Man or monster. There’s different types of both.’
‘I’ll decide,’ I say.
‘Funny thing is, you never stop deciding. Never wanted to stay in this town, but that’s the way it turned out. And I’ve found I’m glad of the fact.’ He takes another sip. ‘Right now, you are what your Master decides, but one day…’ Certain looks into his glass. ‘This is empty. A refill if you please.’
Like I have a choice in that!
‘You weren’t the only one here today. And I’m not talking about our evening caller,’ Dain says, an hour after he’s finished his drinking with Certain, not even noticing the verandah, but you can bet he would have if I hadn’t tidied it.
‘Just me and Anne.’
Dain frowns. ‘You are not to consort with the child.’
He don’t like it, and neither does Mary, though she’s polite enough with me.
‘I don’t consort with no one, she helped with my chores.’
‘She should be at school, not with you. And I think her mother would agree.’
‘I don’t encourage it.’ I fold my arms. Dain raises an eyebrow.
‘Your mere presence encourages trouble. You’re a beacon for it, boy. Trouble sees you as it comes down off Mount Pleasance and it gets a little jump in its step,’ Dain says, but not without some fondness today. He ruffles my hair, and my scalp tingles with the cold touch of him.
He bends down to my height, and I can see the dark of his eyes, and the ring of fire they contain, the only thing that separates the pupil from the outer dark—his kind don’t have no whites of the eye. That ring’s burning bright.
‘She is not to come around here, by which I mean, you’re not to encourage it. As in, you are to discourage it. Understood?’ He says it in a tone that has no room for argument, which is his tone most times, so I don’t argue. Too tired for it, tonight.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to do what he says.
Sometimes you’ll hear the rumble of a distant machinery. Once I saw a shape fly overhead, rigid, not a bird. Moved as fast as it was still.
From the city, Dougie said matter-of-fact when I told him…
I believed him, but it could have just as well been a dream of a sky that had once been crowded with such things aeronautical. The world remembers everything, and sometimes those memories bump up against the now. The past haunts all. The Before was before, but it’s also now.
What happens to Day Boys gone old? Just what they tell us. We never see it, not Dav nor the other ones I remember, Peter and Sil, and Craver. Other Masters pass through, boys do on occasion as well, but they’re from different towns. Same Imperatives, different rules. Certain is the only Old Boy I know of. But he’s a quieter sort.
I don’t know where Peter is. Or Sil. They were old when I was young. Moderates in their way, they didn’t treat me bad. They sighed and sang, they ruled in ways louder than any of us.
Dougie often says they were real boys, gentlemen. And we’ll not see their like again—which is funny coming from him.
Wherever they are, they are gone. Sent south or north, or deep into the belly of the mountain. Grown into Masters or auditors or constables.
Or maybe they’re buried somewhere just out of town.
CHAPTER 12
NOTHING COMES OF that hot west wind. Nothing that I can see, and the town settles in the heat, in the dust, and the slow passage of the summer. Nothing happening until it does.
Back from marking another door, I catch Dougie smashing at Grove’s bike, kicking it to bits, his hat wobbling on his head. Have to try not to laugh. Still too sore for fighting. Always been something scratchy between him and Grove, but this time my mate must have done something particularly sour. Problem with Grove is, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed it. Dougie’s a boy of sensitivities. Grove’s Master being the most senior rankles him.
‘Don’t you tell him,’ Dougie says to me, boots bending frame and breaking gears.
‘I won’t.’ I don’t know what’s going on, but I know enough that Dougie needs this. Sometimes the right thing’s not the right thing at all. And Dougie’s near the top of the tree, and it’s sure not my place to challenge him. Not in this. The past binds all of us together. Done stuff together, sat in our Master’s halls and made faces. They sleep heavy, and you can get away with a lot. Sure we’re respectful, but we’re Day Boys, got limits to stretch. And Dougie and his Master, Sobel, possess the cruellest sentiments.
‘Grove finds this out, he’ll be coming for you.’
Dougie laughs. ‘What do you think I am? Stupid or something?’ He drags the bike behind the shrubs at Marriott Street. Grove’ll find it. ‘But you ain’t gonna tell him, and neither am I.’
I’m with Grove when he finds his bike, didn’t mean to be, but the world wanted otherwise. He frowns and shrugs. Can see he’s hurt, but he hides it well.
‘Not the end of the world,’ I say, and he almost laughs.
Not quite. Still, he says the words. ‘’Cause that’s already happened. You’ll help me fix it?’
‘Course,’ I say.
It isn’t so much fixing as remaking, but we get it done. Grove mostly, but he calls me when he needs a hand.
And when you fix a bike, you have to ride it. Don’t you? And you have to give it a good ride, test it out. And if you don’t it’ll sit there looking sad. Expectant. Until you do.
Two days of rain and we don’t have the chance. I’m talking real rain, the s
tuff that slides in from the south of a summer and just dumps until the river starts looking wild and white-edged and breaks its banks a little or a lot. So that’s how anxious Grove is to ride it.
And I can’t blame him. Since its ruin and resurrection, it’s grown a damn sight more impressive. He’s painted flames down one side, there’s a new set of gears and tyres that Egan brought in special for him from the City in the Shadow of the Mountain.
I’ve trouble keeping up along Main, and as we start on the steady slope it only gets harder. But I can’t bear Grove no ill will.
Grove’s just what he is. There’s something about him to make a girl swoon, or a boy if that’s his taste. Grove does something and you want to do it too. Makes anything seem possible.
He cut his hair finger-length short a few years back, and we were all doing it a week later. He’s a good boy in his way, can smile himself out of trouble with that wide grin he has—see, not every smile’s an arrow pointed at disaster.
Grove doesn’t do the things we do. Grove works harder for his Master than any of us, he won’t be at smoking or fighting—though he’s plenty of fight in him. And he can give you such a look of sad disappointment when you do, you feel it for near half a day. I’ve had whole afternoons ruined by that frown. Only afternoons, mind. I’m not Grove.
Mary has a fond spot for the boy, says his heart’s big enough for all of us. I reckon it’s easy enough to have a big heart when you’re a fella like Grove, when everything comes easy to you.
We pass Sally Dalton coming home from the schoolyard; she waves but I don’t stop. Thinking about her thinking about my end of days. Still, I give her the brightest smile I have—pure dazzlement. And there’s boys too, walking back from the yards, watching us with wide eyes. Sometimes forget they exist, these other boys, normal lads who don’t have Masters but mums, dads. We don’t mix, they seem timid things to us. They’re not, not really, they just don’t have the freedom of brazenness. They pay a higher price and they pay it in blood. They never get the heights we have, they’re not driven to them. It’s just the steady beat of their lives and their quiet dreams. I wonder if I can dream like them? Could be I’ll find out soon enough.
Grove’s laughing as we hit Wembley Road heading out of town. And I’m laughing too, coming onto another edge of our Masters’ domain.
We ride on a bit to where the road thins and becomes a trail. They say it used to broaden, but it doesn’t anymore. The Masters don’t encourage travel, only tolerate it along the line, on the Night Train to the Red City, mountain or coast.
So the trail’s rough going, but our bikes can handle it, till we get to the part where the ground softens, grows silty and wheel-sucking, and we sit on our bikes there beyond the edge of the town, sweating and panting.
Midfield behind us, next to nothing but scrub and plains ahead. The old rotting wood of the Patterson Yards—used to be cattle there, now there’s just termite mounds and fence posts sagging. There’s roos in the distance, tracking the shade. Keeping out of the Sun.
Grove frowns, starts to look a bit green, and then I catch it.
The stink of death.
We know enough of that to recognise it right away.
Off those bikes we get and follow the scent like two hounds, hesitant because we know what’s at the source, or at least part of it. Every death’s a damn story, even when it’s not your own. And every death can lead to another.
We find a clearing a short walk from the trail and there’s a shallow grave that some dingo or fox has dug up, unmarked but by the hunger of beasts. We catch bits of flesh and bone, and the boil of ants and maggots that dead things draw. Something’s had a good chew. Almost could imagine a bear. But there’s no bears in this country of ours, other than the slow sort that sit small and grunting in the trees at night and chew on leaves. Dougie reckons otherwise, says there was zoos and circuses and the bears and the like got out, but I’ve seen not a one of them.
Would like to. A bear now, or a tiger, what a thing to see.
‘Rain’s been heavy and the wind’s been blowing the wrong way, or we’d not be the first to find it,’ Grove says.
‘Not for us to dig it up. Wind’s turning.’
‘Yeah, so when the Masters find it, they scent us too, right? We need to get the word out, take responsibility for the finding.’ Grove isn’t one for slinking around anyway, but there’s a slyness to his thinking now that gives me a new bit of respect for him.
‘What, you reckon there’s killers amongst us?’ We both laugh. Course there are!
Grove gives me a look. ‘You thinking on killing me?’
I pat my chest. ‘Got a knife on me here somewhere.’
There’s a growling in the undergrowth, deep and low. And none too distant. Grove and me aren’t laughing anymore, we’re bolting back to our bikes. Something heavy moves slow behind us. I get the feeling it could catch us up in a few big steps and I can’t help myself, I look back at where we’ve been, still running but gawking too. I don’t catch nothing but a darkness moving between trees, moving away.
‘Watch it,’ Grove says. ’Cause I’ve nearly hit him from behind. Then we’re on the bikes and round the bend and there’s no looking back.
We’re on Main before we stop, and even then it’s only because we nearly collide. I hit a bump, end up arse over tit on my back, and panting.
‘You right?’ Grove says. Big hand reaching down to help me up.
I squint at him, winded a bit. ‘Right,’ I manage.
‘Just a dog,’ Grove says.
‘A dog from hell.’
‘Just a plain and simple dog. Maybe Certain’s.’
‘Petri don’t growl like that,’ I say. ‘Been chased out his farm enough times to know that.’
‘Just a grumpy old dog,’ Grove says.
‘If that’s what you reckon.’
‘’S what I know.’
CHAPTER 13
WE’RE TO TOWN Hall. The constable there squints at the pair of us. Name of Mick Jones—he don’t like me much but there you go, he’s laughing at some sort of joke. He laughs a lot, but he stops when he sees us.
‘You two look like ghosts.’
‘Seen a shallow grave out near the Patterson Yards,’ Grove says.
Mick gets out of his chair. He’s a big fella, bald head spotted with the Sun, has a long knife strapped to his belt.
‘You boys gonna show me?’
We nod.
‘You disturb anything?’
We shake our heads.
‘Something out there,’ Grove says. ‘Something that growled. Not that we would have poked around anyway, but we for damn sure didn’t hang around.’
Mick juts out his bottom lip. ‘Growled, you say?’
He jangles some keys in his pockets. Walks in the room behind. Comes back with a rifle and a shovel. Flat-headed.
‘You didn’t see this, boys.’ Guns aren’t exactly banned, but they’re not encouraged. Maybe seen three of them before, outside of the deer hunt, all owned by auditors, come in from hunting vagrants and the like.
‘See what?’ Grove says. I blink and look at him. That’s a sight more subtle than Grove usually gets. Mick reaches out to ruffle his hair. Stops mid-movement, realises what he’s doing. Pulls his hand back, and laughs deep and low.
‘Exactly,’ Mick says. ‘Exactly.’
Mick on his horse Charliegirl, us on our bikes, down Main and Marriott, onto Barra Road, past the pines. Mick doesn’t say a word, except some low whispers to Charliegirl. This time we can smell it long before we see it, like we’re attuned. The horse gets skittish and eye-rollery, but she keeps going, and Mick’s whispering gets louder. All It’s OK girl and Settle darlin’, settle.
We reach the edge of the road, and Mick drops to the ground.
‘You boys stay back,’ Mick says. ‘I don’t want none of you in this.’
We stay on our bikes.
Mick grabs the shovel and the rifle. Walks to the grave, looks down and something big and dark comes rushing at him.
Mick’s fast. Fella knows how to shoot, was city trained. He lifts that rifle and fires. Once and twice. And the big thing’s howling and dropped on the ground. Mick’s face is white. He aims careful and fires one more time, and it’s silent. Stops moving.
And I get the feeling that we’re at the end of another story, that it ended bad, and tragic. And that it’s coming into ours was only to falter and die.
Maybe all stories end that way.
Mick sniffs, spits at his feet. ‘You all right boys?’
We don’t say nothing; he can see we’re all, right.
He pushes the dog aside with a boot. Then makes gentle work with the shovel. A hiss of breath comes out of him when he uncovers them.
‘Is that a babe?’ Grove says. ‘Is that a woman holding a babe all dead in that earth?’
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