Home Boys by Bernard Beckett Read Free Book Online Page A

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 unfriendlyas 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 ofthe 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 Wilkesand now you’re lying to me. Do you know how upset Mrs Sowby is, after the things you’ve been saying? Do you?’
    Colin shrugged, which seemed to anger Mr Sowby more. He picked up the spade at his feet and swung the dull blade of it hard against Colin’s stomach, winding him and taking his balance. Colin fell back into the hole, landing directly on