“Business or pleasure?”
Nev turned back, surprised that the girl was still talking. Eye contact was there, although it broke under her gaze.
“I go every year,” Nev said.
“What is it like?”
“Green.” And red. “They had a genocide there.”
“Fuck.”
Correct response.
“What was your favorite subject in school?” Nev asked.
The kid hesitated, probably didn’t have one. “Band.” Interesting. Not what she expected. “I was homeschooled. By my mum. But we didn’t really do school.”
“Lucky you. You’ve had an interesting life,” Nev guessed. For someone so young.
“It’s been a lot.”
“Your dad’s a good bloke?”
The girl nodded.
“You’re safe at his place?”
Hesitation, averted gaze.
Shit…“You’re not safe there?”
“I don’t like my parole officer.”
“Tell your dad. You can talk to Kazi and Barney, too. I don’t know about Ric-Rac, he’s kind of a nong. But they’re good kids. Once you’ve been here a while they’ll have your back. Teamwork makes the dream work, eh? Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
Two weeks later Nev’s plane landed back in Cairns on a Monday afternoon. The taxi from the airport raced to beat traffic, got her back to Upsend in record time, an hour twenty. A pile of papers on her desk welcomed her home. Kazi had not sorted the unpaid bills from the requests for charitable donations; Nev did it now. At the bottom of the stack of mail on her desk was a tax form, filled out in neat handwriting with small round letters.
She picked it up. Was it the great Reg Madonna’s handwriting? Or the girl’s? Hard to guess. Based on the birthday written on the form, the girl was eighteen. Nev let out a breath.Thank god…Dodged a bullet there. She was still a creep for finding her attractive. Her new farmhand was a Sagittarius.
How long would she last?
She found Ron poking around the machine shop early the next morning staring at chainsaws. “You like them?” The old boom box played gentle Scottish folk music from the seventies.
Ron shrugged, and turned off the music. Interesting. She hadn’t been studying chainsaws, she had been daydreaming. “How was your trip?”
Terrible. Challenging. Sobering. Emotional. Horrifying. Same as usual. “Humbling.”
“How many years have you been going?”
“This makes nine. You know how to ride?”
“I know the general idea,” Ron said. In Lionheart, there were two types of country kids: those who grew up riding horses and those who grew up riding four-wheelers. Nev suspected her new employee fell in the latter category.
“Come on, then.” Nev showed Ron how to saddle and put tack on Dreadnought, the great bay mare. Tighten the girth, the belt under the mare’s belly. Put the toe of her boot in the stirrup and throw her leg over Dreadnought’s back. Reins held between fingers and thumbs. Pressure from heels and tension on the reins told the mare to go forward, left, right, and stop, back up, or go faster.
Post in a trot or the saddle will slap your arse. A canter is nice, smoother.
“That’s it. You’re a natural.”
