Day Boy (24 page)

So I do, but I don't lower my knife. The bearded one looks like he might pat my head,
but he reconsiders at the last minute, and it saves him a finger. Sarah stops when
she gets to me, and gives me a steady, studying sort of look.

I can't help it. I feel myself get blushing. ‘I wouldn'ta let me in either,' she
says, and her eyes are flashing with humour.

‘Then you've not changed,' Dain says.

‘Oh, I've changed all right,' Sarah says. ‘Not in them fundamentals. But I've seen
a thing or two.'

‘Good,' Dain says. And that's where the conversation stops. He turns to me. ‘Get
them dinner,' he says.

It's the weirdest supper I've ever had. Thom and I sharing our table, a little out
of practice.

Rob sits there eating in silence, Sarah talks of the long roads, and how they're
longer now. How they once chased a man to the gates of Death, and how he wasn't a
man anymore. And once, they were stalked by a tiger, or something like it down the
Namoi way. She knows the stories we boys like.

She has a scar that runs from her wrist to her elbow on her right arm, and she catches
me looking at it, and gives me a wink. ‘Tough job we have.' She runs a finger along
the scar. ‘The road's long and full of them sort of things that would kill you, and
not just insurgents. Be dead but for Rob. He could say the same for me.'

‘We've scars all of us. Ain't that right, boy?' Rob says.

‘Got my share,' I say.

‘I bet ya do.' Rob gives Thom a long pale stare. ‘You don't look like you'd scar
easy.' Thom just eats his supper. Not one for eating and talking. I'm not either,
to be honest.

‘How long can we expect your company?' Dain asks.

‘Till we're done,' Rob says. ‘There's a host of unhappiness beneath the mountain.
You don't blow up train tracks and leave Them skipping for joy.' And he gives me
a look that says he
knows that I know what he's talking about, like I'm the cause
of it all somehow, which seems strange and unfair. Then he's gazing up at Dain. ‘Don't
worry 'tall, you'll hardly know we're here.'

After supper I'm making up the spare rooms. Rob helps with the sheets, and looks
into Dain's room.

‘So he don't sleep down beneath the earth?'

I'm noncommittal, and Rob laughs.

‘No need for that. You ain't responsible for the choices of them that lords above
us, no matter how peculiar. Not the safest of things for one such as him, though,
is it?'

‘There's nothing safe in this world,' I say, thinking to the time I told Anne just
that. ‘Anyone thinks so is a fool.'

‘Amen to that,' says Sarah, all of a sudden leaning on the door. ‘Amen to that, I
say. There's nothing safe, and no one. We're all monsters lurking under someone's
bed.'

I offer to make up the other room, and Sarah shakes her head.

‘Just one bed for the both of us,' she says, and I'm all at blushing again. ‘Now,
to sleep with you. Rob and I can take care of ourselves.'

‘And then some,' Rob says, and he gives Sarah such a look that I just have to be
gone and out.

I don't sleep so well that night. Tossing and turning, thinking of scars and miles,
and those long dangerous roads Sarah spoke about. Thinking of her smile and her wink.

If Thom has similar trouble he don't show it.

Late I hear the Master come in, and then talk. Low and a little heated, but it don't
last long.

Later I find some dozing. Just as the night's shifting, and there's colour edging
its way up the ridge, driving the shadows before it and pulling the new day behind.

Seems a moment later when Rob's knocking at the door.

‘Up,' he says, and I know my sleeping's done.

CHAPTER
35

I'M TIRED AS, leading them around the town, Rob catching me yawning twice, making
Sarah laugh at his mock of it.

They talk to all us boys, talk to the men and women in town. Rob has me take him
out to Certain's farm alone, and while Certain gets me at choring—and there's always
an endless lot of them, and can't he see I'm damn well knackered—he shares a smoke
with Rob. And when I'm done with finding eggs in the henhouse and fixing a gap in
a fence, they're sitting in the verandah, hands cupped around their ciggies, an old
tin full of the ash of those they'd already had.

Rob's laughing and so is Certain. But there's an air of formality to it, of pretend.
And something I don't understand. Like they'd much rather be putting away their smokes
and their banter and punching each other. But they don't because they know they can't.
Maybe because I'm there?

‘Took up a lot of your time,' Rob says. ‘You still need the boy?'

‘I'll send him along after you,' Certain says.

Rob straightens his hat, and saunters to the gate, looking back just once, to nod
at me as though Certain's not there beside me.

‘He's looking for someone to hang,' Certain says. ‘You be careful around him.'

‘He's friendly enough,' I say.

‘He's friendly enough, but there's a venom in him. Was a time I wanted what he got,
was a time I was ready to fight him for it.'

‘What happened?'

Certain looks down at his hands, and rubs a thumb over the scar above his knee, like
it's bothering him. ‘Bloodied noses, and me finding that I didn't want it. Still
not sure if he made me see it, or I came to my senses. Either way, it was the right
decision. You be careful like you've never been careful in all your life.'

‘I am the very bloody model of circumspection in all things,' I say as correctly
as I am able. Certain gives me a clip under the ear, affectionate even if I'm dazed.

‘And watch your swearing.' He looks to the back of Rob, and sighs. ‘What a world
this is to make men like him and boys like you. Thought I'd seen the last of him,
and here he is back like a ghost.'

‘You know Sarah too?'

‘Sarah's here?' Something passes across Certain's face, I don't know what it is,
but he looks all of a sudden like a man who might be given to drinking tonight.

‘You better be away,' Certain says.

And I know enough not to say anything.

‘And keep to your caution. Round him, and round her. Don't want you on the end of
no rope, not until the western fence line's finished.'

I give him a bit of a face.

He doesn't even smile. Just looks down at his hands as he rolls another smoke, careful
as if he's never done it before.

When they're done with their questions, they pack their horses, and ride with the
dawn. The Sun at their backs, like they're chasing their shadows. But they're back
early that afternoon air beginning to chill with a man tied up and walking behind
them.

Mr Stevens. It's Mr Stevens, the Signalman. He's been crying, his eyes are red, his
nose running.

‘Get the other boys,' Rob says.

And I do.

Certain's right. Rob is gonna get his hanging. Not until Stevens is bloody and toothless,
though. Sarah's there too, and while she don't join in, she don't stop him. Rob hits
that man hard and harder. He don't heed his cries. Pulls him close to listen a few
times, but he's not satisfied with whatever the man says.

His fists find their way past his raised hands, and only when he's done and Stevens
is panting and breathing like he's broken inside does he rope the man's neck from
the tree in the centre of town and yank him up slow and long. Mr Stevens' feet shivering
in the air. Not going to forget that. I've seen worse, we all have, but still.

We're all there to watch, because those we represent can't. Doesn't pass much for
entertainment. But we're called, and it's done that afternoon so the Masters have
no say in it.

‘This is what you can expect,' Rob says, just loud enough to hear. But he doesn't
need to speak any louder, every ear is straining. He taps Mr Stevens' leg, still
dangling and twitching. ‘Ain't no mercy for insurrectionists. Just death, brutal
and quick.'

Not quick enough, I think, but I must be learning a little something because I don't
say it. I don't say nothing.

Rob cuts the rope, lets the body fall. Walks over to me, face so blank it might as
well be stone.

‘We're done here,' he says. ‘Well. Not quite.'

Rob turns to Mick the constable. Rob's shorter than him by a handspan, but he don't
look it now. It's like Mick's shrunk in his shoes.

‘I've half a mind to put you up there, Mr Constable,' he says. ‘More than. We come
back here for some other reason, some other darkening plan hatching, and you
will
hang. Should never have happened; when we come, we come too late.'

Rob spits at the constable's feet and turns nice and slow, and I can see that Mick
is battling with the urge to hit him. Hard. But sense prevails, I guess, or fear,
which is just another sort of sense. I can almost respect that. Strike an auditor
and you might as well strike Death herself.

Rob winks at me. ‘C'mon, boy,' he says. ‘We need to talk, you and I.'

I walk and Thom follows until Rob raises his hand. ‘Ain't a talk for you, Mr Thom.
This is just between me and him.'

Thom doesn't look happy about that, he kind of hovers there, looking at me.

‘I'll see you at home,' I say.

Thom nods, and starts on his way back.

‘A man don't need a second shadow,' Rob says. I nod my head. And we walk awhile in
quiet. Heading back to the Master's house, down these familiar roads made strange
because of the fella I'm walking with.

‘Don't like this town,' Rob says. ‘A fella like Stevens killing all those folk. Don't
excuse what I done, mind. That was right and proper cruel, ain't proud of a bit of
it.'

‘But you did it.'

‘Do it again if I had to, you can't have people getting thoughts. This is the world
we live in now,' Rob says. ‘That man killed three dozen people. He destroyed the
train line. He got his due. But it leaves a ruinous taste, for sure. Taste a man
might need to drink away. Not here, won't let none of these bastards catch that.'

He stops and I can see the tears on the edge of his eyes. ‘You think I didn't start
all nice? He could have spoken then; he chose not to.' He sniffs once, long and loud,
and spits again, in the direction of the tree. ‘But I ain't walking with you for
forgiveness.'

He looks at me, then gestures west to the end of town. ‘Not everything begins and
ends here. What do you say? You want to come with us, boy? I've the authority to
offer such a boon. I know the measure of things. I can read a boy and see what he
will become.'

‘And what will I become?'

‘A deadset killer, if you don't get yourself killed. You stay here, and what have
ya got? Just fences to fix and monsters to feed and the boredom, that cold crushing
boredom. You know what I'm talking about. You look to the sky and yearn. Them like
us do. We ain't ever going to become like your Master, but
that don't mean we can't
find something better.'

He gestures at the sky. ‘You ride with me and Sarah and you'll see the heavens dance
at night in the far south, all colour and movement. You'll come to broke-down cities
filled with haunts and haunted, and seas as dark as that beneath the City in the
Shadow of the Mountain. Ain't a long life, and it's hard, but it's good and beautiful.
You'll see the great wide land.'

I look at him. Not even sure what to say. But I can feel the pull of it. Rob hesitates
a little, then the words spill from him.

‘Don't know much of the world yonder. Just the sea, and the odd island or two near
enough that a boat might make the crossing. That's a vast border, an unwalkable one.
The world curls away from us in all directions. And it's got bigger, like it shrugged
its shoulders, got itself a spurt of growth and wildness. The storms are madder
even than when I was a kid. The dark's darker. We didn't need the Masters when the
world was small, but by crikey we need them now.'

‘I hardly even know what an auditor does,' I say.

‘We'll teach you just what we are,' Rob says. ‘We're the thread that binds the land
together. We're tenuous, and frail, frailer even than that Night Train. But without
us, without the line, and the law, we're not a country, just a bunch of towns, sliding
into each other, drowning in their own meaninglessness, waiting to be devoured by
monsters.'

‘Monsters enough in this town,' I say.

‘Not like this, not like you'd believe. Once saw a thing, big as a train. Smoke pluming
from its great toothy face, saw it streak across the sky as if it was hunting for
something. I hid. Couldn't have been hunting me, something so small? But I hid anyway,
fear so deep within me that it ate at me like a sickness.
And the next town I came
to was torn apart. Devoured. Even the Masters dead, like it had hunted them first,
dug them out, like an echidna digging out white ants.

‘Only ever seen such a thing once. Far south and west of here. But you don't forget
something like that.'

‘What you trying to do, scare the boy?' Sarah's caught us up, just outside of Dain's
house.

‘I don't scare too easy,' I say.

‘No, you don't,' Rob says. ‘But you should. There's dark times coming for you, hungry
and wicked.'

I give my chest a puff. ‘Got my own wickedness to match.'

Rob scratches his beard, then pats my arm and walks inside.

Sarah chuckles. ‘He's a poet, can't you tell?'

‘He don't like me,' I say.