Hamish raised an eyebrow. That was about the most compassionate sentence he’d ever heard from his father. Dismissed, he loped back to the vehicles. ‘I’ll take the bike, Lach,’ he yelled, looking over his shoulder. ‘You can grab a lift back with Dad.’
He grinned at his brother’s expression. The homestead wouldn’t take that long to reach, although the ute wouldn’t be able to cut across the paddocks like the bike. But any amount of time locked in close confines with Dad was too long.
Matt Krueger was in surgery when Hamish rang, so he left his number on the clinic’s answering machine, then wandered into the kitchen of the farmhouse. He flicked on the kettle and spooned Nescafé and sugar into a mug, the brown powder floating on the cold milk he splashed in. Although Charity insisted it was still his home as much as it was Lachlan’s, the place hadn’t felt the same since Mum died; Charity’s personal touches were everywhere. He no longer knew where to find a cereal bowl and felt compelled—for the first time ever—to rinse any dishes he’d used. Mum would have appreciated that consideration, he realised with a pang of guilt. At least the biscuit jar, a teddy bear–shaped ceramic container that dated back to their childhood, was, once again, always full. There was also a stack of Tupperware on the kitchen bench, packed with baked goods.
Though Charity worked full-time, and he knew it was as much Lachlan’s job to cook and clean as hers, Hamish couldn’t shut down the flare of envy that insisted it would be nice to come home to a clean house and decent grub. Not that he was incapable of looking after himself, but sometimes his house echoed with loneliness, and he’d wonder what it would be like to share the space, to know that, regardless of his mood, there’d be somebody around to bounce off. Simply another presence, another heartbeat … someone else to consider, instead of having his thoughts always turn inward.
The phone in the office rang and he poured the boiling water into the mug and grabbed a couple of macadamia cookies before striding back across the hall to the small room.
‘Hamish.’ Matt’s voice crackled down the line. ‘Sorry I missed your call, mate. How’s it hanging?’
‘Swaying gently in the breeze, though I don’t want to brag. But we’ve got a problem out here. Half-a-dozen sheepthat we picked up at the market have gone down. Some of the others are staggering. Walking in circles or wedging themselves into the fence, like they do with lupinosis.’
‘Wrong time of year for lupe,’ the vet replied, but Hamish could just about hear the cogs turning. ‘I’ll come out and take a look, if you like, but I’m smashed for the rest of the day.’
‘Lachy reckons it could be listeriosis. What are the chances?’
‘Not something we have around here, but you picked the sheep up? Where were they from?’
‘Victoria. Though I’ll have to dig out the bill of sale to be more specific.’ He rooted around on the untidy desk as he spoke, squinting at various pages. Lachlan and Dad were both quick to dump any paperwork and slam the door, as though that filing system saw matters satisfactorily dealt with.
‘Ah.’ He could hear Matt clicking at a keyboard. ‘Yeah, it’s more of an issue across the border. How long have you had them?’
‘Picked them up a week and a half ago.’
‘Sounds about right: listeriosis shows up about ten days after a feed of bad silage. Plenty of sheep have listeria in their gut without it being an issue. But chuck in some rotting silage, or maybe wet feed, or a change of weather and, bang, you’ve got a problem. Any still alive?’
‘Yeah, Dad and Lachy are out putting some down. You don’t need a live sample, do you?’
‘Probably not. Those that are on the ground, are they paddling? Look like they’ve had a stroke, with one side of their face paralysed, eye bugging out?’
‘Yep. That pretty much sums it up.’ Like most farmers, Hamish did feel for his livestock. They might be ultimatelydestined for the meat market, but that didn’t mean they deserved poor treatment.
‘I’ll come out after clinic hours and take bloods, but I think Lachy’s probably called it. If it’s listeriosis, there’s nothing I can do. In the US, they try parenteral procaine penicillin G or oxytetracycline, but here we recommend cutting your losses. Burn the carcasses, move and isolate the survivors, keep the troughs disinfected. You know the drill.’
Fortunately, not too well. Mass stock losses were relatively rare. ‘Sure. I’ll see you sometime tonight, then.’
‘Will do. By the way, Roni wanted me to ask if you’re keen to do dinner at Mutfagim again. Or are you still burned from last month?’
‘Yeah, funny, mate.’ The verbal sparring with Jemma certainly hadn’t affected him. Not unless lying in his bed at night, wondering how he could have improved his conversations, how he could have been more interesting while being totally disinterested, counted. But there was nothing wrong with wanting to better himself—particularly if no one else knew about it. ‘Sure, I’m in. Rik’s got me playing there again in a couple of weeks, anyway.’
‘I’ll let Roni know to hook you up. I mean, include you,’ Matt corrected dryly.
‘Maybe you better nip off to the CWA in your spare time, mate. You can all get your macrame and matchmaking vibe on together. We don’t all need to get paired off.’ He scowled at his coffee. He needed to rein in his automatic response before Matt took him at his word. ‘Reckon this town’s about right for its quota of you boring old farts.’
‘It’s not a bad life,’ Matt said with a self-satisfied chuckle. ‘But it’s probably about time you looked at replacing your bedpost.’
‘My bedpost? Don’t follow.’
‘All those notches will be making it unstable.’
‘Ha. I’ll pay that one.’ He paused, his eyes on the ledger. Charity’s neat, rounded writing, exactly what he’d expect from a teacher, filled the columns. ‘Reckon I’m through adding to it anyway, mate.’
‘Done your dash round here?’
‘Been steering clear for years.’ His reputation had outlasted his local conquests by more than half a decade. ‘Like Dad says, shouldn’t shit in my own nest.’
‘He has a way with words, your old man.’
