Free Day Boy by Trent Jamieson

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