Colin joined him and soon they were in the waves, as perfect as ever, and too clear to be imagined, because Colin had never seen a beach like this in all his life. Gino swam out past the last of the breakers, the same as the day before, and Colin, who even in his future dreams was no swimmer, stood in the shallower water and watched him.
But this time was different. Colin felt it in his stomach, even before he noticed it with his eyes. Gino kept swimming, farther and farther out until his head was just one more dot of darkness in the sparkling dips of the ocean. Colin stood helpless, watching Gino leave his dream, salty tears running down his face and feeding the ocean.
‘I shouldn’t bother with crying if I was you.’
Colin turned to see a boy about his age, with red hair and white skin, and a voice that seemed to belong somewhere else, although he couldn’t place where, standing beside him.
‘It’s easy for you to say,’ Colin replied, wiping away his tears.
‘Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,’ the boy replied, but before the conversation could go on, there was the morning crashing against the door, and Colin was awake.
THREE
Dougal
COLIN stood before the house, feeling the numbness spreading through his feet. The wind was colder today, and it mocked his thin white legs as it passed. He wanted to run, the same as he did every morning. Turn and run, and keep running, put this place behind him. But he didn’t. Six more days he made it, before the Welfare Officer called. He stood and waited while before him the house he was forbidden to enter filled with stomping and groaning, then spewed out Mr Sowby.
‘What ya standing here for Pommy boy?’
He swayed on the verandah. Colin stood his ground.
‘The fence I told you to fix last night, what the hell sort of job do ya call that? The cows are out. Yer bloody useless. Well? What are ya waiting for? Don’t just stand there. Go and bring them in. There’s milking to be done. What are ya waiting for?’
‘My trousers.’
‘My trousers,’ Sowby mocked, and it amused him enough for his cough to become a laugh, and the laugh to become a cough again. ‘Take them then, have your bloody precious trousers. And hurry up, you’re milking alone this morning.’
Said as if that was something special, but it wasn’t. Mr Sowby’s drinking had become heavier. Colin would hear the truck driving in late, and the arguments Mr Sowby would have with his wife on the nights she locked the door and abused him out the window. The trousers landed in the mud at Colin’s feet and Mr Sowby stayed long enough to watch him put them on. Then he turned back into the house and Colin was alone again, and he liked that better.
The slush of yesterday had turned solid with the cold, making it easier to run, and the movement slowly warmed him, so each step hurt his bare feet a little less. They ask me to fix fences but they give me no wire, Colin practised in his head, they don’t feed me like they should, they don’t even let me inside with them, and in his head the Welfare Officer, who would be warm and kind but strong too, strong enough to stand up to them both, smiled and nodded and wrote things down.
Colin followed the muddy hoofprints through the gate, which the night before, Mr Sowby had forgotten to close. The patched hole farther up the fenceline had held. To the northeast a small semicircle of pink was testing out the morning sky. Colin walked on, up the hill into the beginning of the scrub that still smelt of last week’s burn-off. He heard crashing above him; the cows hadn’t strayed far. It wouldn’t take so long then. Time enough to shit. Better here than down at the longdrop. He squatted facing the valley, the first rays hitting the tops of the bush-covered mountains on the other side, the lakes still dark at this hour, and too broken up with the wind to sparkle anyway.
‘I could’ve killed you, ya know, and you wouldn’t even have seen me.’
Colin froze. His heart stopped, his breathing waited, his bowels tightened and he forgot the ache in his legs. He listened to the silence, unable to turn, or move, or even speak.
‘Don’t let me stop you. It’s a beautiful view wouldn’t you say?’
The voice was different. It didn’t belong here.
‘Go away.’
‘I’m not watching you, ya know. I’m looking at the same thing you are.’
It was the accent, a voice from another place, without the sharp twang of the locals, but that wasn’t what stopped Colin’s blood. He’d heard it before, inside his head, inside his dreams.
‘What’s that?’ Not wanting to give his fear away.
‘The land I own.’
‘You’re not old enough to own land.’
‘How do you know that, when you haven’t even seen me?’
But I have, Colin thought. ‘You don’t sound old.’
‘You should use grass you know.’
‘You’re younger than me.’
He was. Colin could see that, now he was standing and could face the stranger. And whiter too, he could have said. The boy’s mass of hair was just as red in real life, and his face was so pale it shone. It was the same boy, Colin was sure of it, and the certainty terrified him.
‘Not too young to be laird of this.’ He swept his hand dramatically before him. ‘You from Sowbys’ aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m your boss then, your real boss. The land they’re on is mine. I’m Dougal. You won’t mind if I don’t shake your hand. You have especially warm shit by the way. It’s still steaming.’
‘It’s a cold morning.’
‘This isn’t cold. Back home a day like this we’d go swim ming.’
‘Then you’re stupid as well as a liar.’
‘Who are you calling a liar?’
‘Who does it look like?’
‘I dare you to say it again.’ Colin looked at Dougal. It wouldn’t hurt to hit him, just to see if he was real.
‘You’re a liar.’
But Dougal moved too quickly, and all Colin’s saved-up anger fell limp in a glancing blow. Then they were together, and although Dougal was small there was a manic energy about him. As soon as one blow was blocked another was on its way. Colin felt hands at his neck and both boys fell to the ground, rolling through the long grass. Colin tried to fight back, to make some use of all the rage inside, but he could tell Dougal was laughing as they wrestled, closer to a giggle even, and it was impossible to be angry with that.
‘Say I’m not a liar then,’ Dougal wheezed, his knees pinning Colin at the elbows now. Colin looked at the face breathing close above him. There was a scar down one side of his forehead, as smooth as melted wax, and around his eyes were wrinkles, as if he had spent all of his short life caught in laughter.
‘Say I’m not a liar.’
‘I’m saying nothing,’ Colin replied.
‘Then you’re nothing to me. Nothing but shit.’
Too fast, Dougal leaned forward, scooped a handful off a nearby cowpat and smeared it across Colin’s face. Then he was standing, dancing his victory out amongst the manuka.
‘There you are. You can follow their scent now. You’re lucky we weren’t closer to your own shit, I would say. I have to go now. I’ll be seeing you later though, I would think.’
Colin sat forward and watched Dougal run back down the hill, as barefooted as Colin was, and as happy as he’d like to be. And although he was ear to ear in cow shit, and none of it made sense, somehow he knew it was a start.
* * *
The dreams stopped then, no matter how hard Colin tried to bring them back, and although he kept his eyes peeled along the perimeter fence for signs of Dougal he didn’t see a thing. He watched the driveway too, waiting for the rolling dust of the Welfare Officer’s car. Although summer was well finished and the days were shortening, it had remained dry. Colin’s body had become used to the work. His arms had changed colour, turned to a brown he’d never seen before. His face too, probably, but he didn’t have a mirror. He was stronger. He liked to watch the lines in his forearms when he worked at some
thing heavy, and these days he wasn’t as tired when evening came. Three days he watched, and practised his speech inside his head, and the fourth day the Officer came.
‘What are you doing?’ Mr Sowby demanded.
They were digging a hole to bury a cow that had died in the night. Colin, who had heard the car approaching, had stopped and was leaning on the end of his spade.
‘A car’s come up the drive.’
‘That’s nothing to do with you.’
‘Yes it is. It’s my Welfare Officer,’ Colin told him. He could see the surprise on Mr Sowby’s face, that he might know about the visit, and that he would answer back.
‘You looking for a hiding?’
‘No.’
‘Get digging then.’
The hole was almost finished and they set about scooping out the last of the dirt, but Colin could see from Sowby’s sweating face that he was thinking about the Welfare Officer too.
‘Here, you get it in and be sure to cover it over properly. I’ll go and see what that car’s all about.’
‘But I…’
‘You’ll stay here if you know what’s good for you.’
Mr Sowby wandered off, hitching his trousers up from behind the way he did whenever he walked. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a belt. Colin had felt it often enough. Colin desperately wanted to follow, but he had been doing as he’d been told for too long, and his legs wouldn’t take him. Pumped with frustration he climbed out of the hole and dug his spade hard beneath the back of the dead cow, watching its carcass shudder at the impact and feeling the resistance tingle back along his arm. Using the spade for leverage, the way he’d seen Mr Sowby do it, he pushed up against the handle with all his strength, gritting his teeth and swearing as he dug in with his feet. The weight of the cow fought back, impassive and seemingly immovable, but Colin wouldn’t let it go. He pushed again and the huge body, settled at the side of the deep hole, rose slightly. The weight shifted and suddenly there was no resistance at all. The cow tumbled gracelessly into its grave. Colin looked down at it, the froth of the last struggle still bright on its mouth and nostrils, and he cried. Cried at the thought of them talking to his Welfare Officer, and telling whatever lies they had rehearsed. He threw the spade into the hole and stormed off towards the house.
Colin walked straight through the open doorway without knocking, into the house he’d never before entered. He expected one of them to shout at him, and tell him to clear off, but instead they said nothing at all, like seeing him there was normal. Mrs Sowby even smiled. All three were sitting at the kitchen table, cups of tea in front of them, as if the Welfare Officer was some old friend, and the visit purely social.
‘Colin, this is Mr Wilkes. He’s come to see how you’re getting on,’ Mr Sowby said.
‘Hello Colin.’
‘Hello.’
Colin didn’t know what he’d expected the Welfare Officer to be like, but he knew it wasn’t this. Not the same sunburnt leather neck, the same swollen ears, the same way of talking. Taller than Mr Sowby, and thinner, but the same.
‘Your spade broken is it Colin?’ Mr Sowby asked.
‘No, it’s fine,’ Colin replied, trying to be polite, not knowing how to say it, or when.
‘He’s a lazy little bugger,’ Mr Sowby told Mr Wilkes, winking. ‘But I suppose he’ll get better in time.’
‘I suppose he will,’ Mr Wilkes agreed. ‘I suppose he will.’
He turned to Colin and looked at him, as if wondering what he was doing there.
‘So Colin, how are you finding it here?’
Colin returned his stare, knowing the moment had come. In the background, out of focus, he could feel the Sowbys’ turning his way. It would have been easier without them watching, but he knew he only had to do it once. Then it would be over.
‘I, they’re mistreating me mister. They don’t let me inside the house, they don’t feed me proper. I have to wash from the tap outside, and use the old outhouse, and I do all the work here, and he just drinks and they swear at me and hit me too. I don’t like it here. I want you to take me away.’ The words rushed out, and the tears too.
‘Oh dear Lord.’ Mrs Sowby dropped her cup with a clatter. She brought her hand to her mouth in fake horror.
‘Bruce, how could he say that, why…’
‘He’s an ungrateful little swine is what he is,’ Mr Sowby answered her, making as if to stand. Mr Wilkes motioned with his hand for Mr Sowby to stay where he was and stood himself. Colin was aware then of his true height. He was a giant of a man, six and a half feet at least.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I will deal with this. Colin, I think we need to have this conversation outside.’
Mr Wilkes walked quietly from the room and Colin followed him, feeling the looks of hatred and warning on the back of his neck as he left. I don’t care. You’re over now. I never have to see you again.
Mr Wilkes walked as far as his car; black, with dust settled as high as the windows, but new and shiny next to the Sowbys’ old truck. Colin began again, even before Mr Wilkes had turned.
‘Come and see where they make me sleep mister. I’ve never even been in the house before. And he drinks most nights, so I have to milk by myself, and it doesn’t matter how hard I try, because he always complains, and finds some reason to belt me. And I don’t see anyone, or have anyone to talk to, and the whole time I’ve just been waiting for you, because on the ship they told me how you’d be coming and how…’
His words faded as Mr Wilkes stepped forward, towering over him and backing him into the car. Mr Wilkes held a hand up even though it wasn’t necessary. Colin could see his words weren’t reaching high enough.
‘Yes, I’ve been warned about you of course.’ Mr Wilkes said it with a satisfied little smile, like he’d just caught Colin out. ‘You and your trouble. Did you think we wouldn’t find out?’
‘Find out what?’
‘Talking to that stowaway. He was found you know, and arrested.’
He must have see the pain in Colin’s eyes then, but his smile only widened.
‘What, where, where is he?’
‘He’s been sent back home, don’t you worry. You’re lucky we didn’t do the same to you. But we decided to give you a second chance. Although seeing how ungrateful you’re being, for all the help the Sowbys here have been giving you, well I wish we hadn’t, to be honest. I’ve got my eye on you, young Master Winter. These are good people. They don’t have to help you in this way, you understand?’
‘I don’t want them to. I want to leave. I wish you would, I wish you’d send me home.’
‘This is your home Colin. You’re a Ward of the State. Do you know what that means?’
Colin shook his head.
‘It means that until you’re eighteen, you do what we tell you to do. And while you’re at it, learn a little gratitude. Now you get back to your work, I have some more details to discuss with the Sowbys.’
He stared Colin down and his stare was as empty and unfriendly as everything else in this land of shit and milk and dying. Colin turned and ran, back across the fields, running harder the more his legs ached and his lungs burned, because it was a better kind of pain. Running nowhere, because there was nowhere to run, up to the hills where he’d met Dougal, back along the fenceline to where the neighbour’s property began, down as far as the creek, hoping to see Dougal again, but mostly just running. He completed a circuit of the property and then, like one of the dumb animals that even when they got out through a fence never ran away, he came back to the hole, and the cow, and his spade. He slid down beside the animal and cried again until he was so exhausted it was as if he was asleep. But not quite, because he could see it all, and smell it all, and he knew he wasn’t dreaming.
Dougal was there, perched above him on the edge of the hole.
‘What are you doing, sitting in there with that cow?’ Dougal asked.
‘The cow’s dead.’
‘I can see that.’
‘We’re burying it.’
‘Who’s we? I don’t see no one else here.’
‘Mr Sowby’s back at the house now. He’s talking to my Welfare Officer.’
‘I know.’
‘How could you know that?’
‘It’s a funny way to bury a cow you know. You ought to stay out of the hole, at least for the last bit. You might end up being buried yourself.’
‘I wouldn’t mind so much.’
‘Well you ought to.’ Dougal stood up, brushing the dirt from his trousers and rubbing circulation back into his backside, as if he had been sitting there a while. ‘You ought to stop feeling so sorry for yourself.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘Maybe it is. Still saying it. You’ve no reason you know. If you’re not happy here, you should just leave.’
‘Who says I’m not happy here?’
‘You think I haven’t been watching?’
‘Where would I go?’
‘Anywhere.’
‘I’d need money. I’d need work, and a place to live.’
‘You know your problem,’ Dougal told him. ‘You’ve no imagination at all.’
Colin might have tried to argue, or at least asked him what he meant, but Dougal’s head jerked up suddenly, like an animal sensing an approaching predator.
‘I best be leaving you to your funeral I think. It looks like your Mr Sowby has finished with his talking. He doesn’t look too happy either, I would say. I’ll see you later.’
Dougal turned and his ghost-like features disappeared. By the time Colin was standing, his strange neighbour was nowhere to be seen. Colin climbed out of the hole just as Mr Sowby arrived.
‘Who was that?’
‘Who?’
‘I saw him just then, running off. Who have you been talking to?’
‘Nobody,’ Colin lied. ‘I was asleep.’
‘I heard you talking, you little liar. You lied to Mr Wilkes and now you’re lying to me. Do you know how upset Mrs Sowby is, after the things you’ve been saying? Do you?’
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