“You must know Reg?” Debbie said.
“Not personally. Should I?” His name came up in the local rag sometimes for his intercultural advocacy work and his conservation efforts. He was on the board of directors of the tree-planting nonprofit that was always sending her passive-aggressive emails offering to replant trees along the creek in her sheep paddocks.
“He spent the last two years protesting in his camper outside the Youth Detention Centre down near Brissie,” Debbie said, squinting. “They just elected him Chief of the volunteer fire department. He’s a mover and a shaker. Grass doesn’t grow on him.”
High praise. Nev wondered what the kid looked like now.
“Tell him to send her around tomorrow.” She could find something for the kid to do. She wasn’t worried about the girl’s temper. Even a good dog will bite if backed into a corner. Shewas concerned that the girl might be a drug addict. Nev didn’t deal with addicts, as a rule, couldn’t hack it, like talking to a potted plant.
Nev finished her Carlton Mid, slid the empty glass across the bar. What was in it for Debbie Collins, to help the girl? What favor did the bartender need from Reg Madonna? Maybe nothing. Nev was paranoid, jaded from living elsewhere for too long. People here didn’t think that way. They were nice to each other for no reason. Karma was a close-woven basket here. It didn’t take long to reap what you sowed.
The next morning a dual cab black truck pulled down the drive, parked in front of the barn—what Nev would call a ute if it was used for farm work. This truck had never been used hard, looked pristine. Three people got out.
Nev shook hands with Reg Madonna. She recognized him from community events. Good-looking man—stocky, tanned, with warm brown eyes and short black hair.
Reg was around her age, maybe a little younger. He had grown up here; she hadn’t. Nev had moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, after her mother left her father when Nev was two. Nev’s grandparents with tin-mining money had lived out in Ravenshoe, highest town in Queensland with Queensland’s highest pub, in a different social strata than the Madonnas and Collinses.
“G’day, Madonna. Welcome to Upsend Downs.”
“G’day, Bickerman. Appreciate your time. Gorgeous spread you got here. This all your place?”
“It belonged to my parents,” Nev said, self-conscious of the wide view of the horizon from her front lawn. Upsend Downs looked like a rich person’s estate, but was a working farm, and she was rationing her inheritance to keep it afloat one year to thenext. “I came out here to shuffle the papers before they died, got trapped in the wheel.”
“I don’t believe it for a second,” Reg said. He swiveled, admiring the view again. “My nan had a dairy farm out here somewhere.”
“This was part of it. My dad bought this block in eighty from the bloke who bought your grandmother’s farm in sixty-five.”
Reg smiled behind dark sunglasses. “Small world. You look familiar.”
Nev forced herself not to glance back at the girl. “Want a tour?”
Reg shook his head. “Another time. You’re all right.” He turned to his adult kids. “This was part of your nan’s dairy farm.” Reg turned to Nev. “My father passed away in July.”
“My condolences. Mine passed away last year also.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it? Was that the original house?” Reg asked, gesturing to Stone House behind her.
Nev shook her head. “Your grandparents’ homestead was down where lake Tinaroo is now. On the left-hand side, see the dead trees? That’s where the homestead was, toward Kulara. Your grandparents moved the original farmhouse up to Boar Pocket Road in the fifties, but it burned down before we got here. Lightning. Wraparound veranda, ten bedrooms.”
“Families were bigger then,” Reg said. He eyed her thoughtfully, then turned to his kids. Nev heard him whisper to the young woman. “Don’t be a dick to her. She’s had hard luck.”
Nev blushed. Even before Rwanda she had been a semi-tragic figure in town. She was the type of well-behaved person mothers wanted to take care of. She gestured behind Reg. “These your kids?”
Two young people behind Reg towered over him. He chuckled. “Their mum is a giant. They’re both my kids.” Heintroduced them. Mattie, young man in his early twenties, looked like Reg. Ron, the young woman in her late teens, did not.
Nev laughed. The scrawny girl who had done the sloppy B&E had gone the way of all things. The woman behind Reg had a large tattoo up the side of her neck that said KITTEN in graffiti letters, had gained half her body weight in muscle and grown a hand taller. Funny how juvie took scared kids and turned them into hardened criminals. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, but had to be younger.
“What have they been feeding you in that place? Fertilizer?”
The young woman wearing sunglasses like her brother and stepdad uncrossed her arms to shake Nev’s hand and had a grip like a basketball player. Christ, she was tall. She hadn’t seemed so tall before, but then, it had been dark.
“You don’t want to know. Sorry to hear about your parents.”
“Thanks. Old age gets us all in the end, if we’re lucky.”
Reg looked from one to the other, then back again. “You two know each other?”
Nev grinned. “Never seen her a day in my life.” It had been nighttime.
