Page 36 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
His doctor was right, damn it. Drifting along was not a workable solution. To anything.
Those meddlesome coffee drinkers at the café were right, too, although it irked to admit it. He’d been so busy not seeing a future for himself that he’d cut himself off from seeing what was happening in his present.
He’d spent the drive home realising his apathy was a total cop-out. He wasn’t immobilised by his injury, not yet anyway, so why was he behaving like he was?
His dad’s bellow felt surprisingly welcome. Pubs to open, friends to help, old family wounds to rip open … it was action.
It felt bloody good.
‘You heard me,’ Tom said.
Oh, sure, he could pretend he and his dad were getting into an argument about the Ironbark Campdraft, but they both knew the fracture dividing the Krauss household ran a whole lot deeper than who was running what. The confrontation had been brewing long before he got home. Since he left, in fact, over a decade and a half ago. And now the atmosphere at Ironbark was a powder keg, and the old bloke wasn’t showing any sign of wanting to improve relations. Nope; Bruno was like one of the old anvils they kept down in the stables: high tensile steel and bloody near impossible to budge.
True, he’d thought their blow-up, when it came, would be about something else entirely—the reason he left home; why he wouldn’t commit to learning how to train stockhorses; him being an eternal disappointment, yada yada yada—but whatever. The powder keg’s fuse was about to be lit. If a few more family skeletons got blown up, so what?
‘I rang Colleen McNulty, secretary of the Southern Campdrafters Association, and put the Ironbark Station campdraft back on the calendar.’
‘You’re a bloody idiot.’
Tom rolled his eyes. Like that sort of insult would knock him down. ‘Yeah, I know you think so.’
‘I decide what goes on at this station. Not you.’
‘Not this time.’
‘Have you got any idea of the work that’s involved penning two hundred cattle, grading the roads, manning the competition, dragging water troughs up fro—’
‘I have no idea, no, but that doesn’t mean I won’t get it done. With—’ he took a breath ‘—some help, of course.’
‘Myhelp? You’ve got a bloody nerve asking for my help.’
‘Well, sure, if you’re happy for me to make a pig’s ear of it, then fine, lock yourself away in your study and don’t be a part of it. Colleen’s so thrilled we’re back on the calendar she said she’ll send me her notes. She’s got a list of farmers in the Snowy Monaro we can approach for cattle if we don’t have enough, and there’s people who’ve put up their hands to volunteer. Roger Kettering. Kev Jones and his wife.’
‘Marigold! That woman’s not setting foot on Ironbark. She’ll be up here, eyeing off my parents’ gravesite, in my ear about bloody civic by-laws and bloody Barry O’Malley. Call Colleen. Call them all. Tell them it’s off.’
‘I won’t do that.’ He wanted to ask what on earth Hanrahan’s mayor and the old station cemetery had to do with Marigold Jones, but decided that was an argument for another day.
‘Are you defying me, son?’
‘Yes. I am. And it’s not the first time, is it, Dad?’
‘I was just waiting for you to fling that in my face.’
‘Talking about why this family got ripped apart is not flinging stuff in your face, Dad.’
‘You shouldn’t have carried on like a pork chop over a routine farm matter.’
‘The wayIcarried on?’ That was rich. ‘I was an eighteen-year-old kid, Dad, and you had that pup in a hessian sack and in the dam with a brick so quick I hadn’t ahopeof saving it.’
He’d tried though. He’d thrashed through the brown water till his lungs burned and his eyes felt like sandpaper. The pup was found all right, but all he managed to do was swap its watery grave to a dirt one.
‘A timid dog’s no use as a working dog. You spoiled it. Ruined it with your petting. Your generation’s too soft.’
‘That’s such bullshit. I could have found a home for it. You were just mad at me for wanting to go to university instead of staying here and having the future you’d picked out for me.’
‘Soft, see? And you still are, by the looks. No wonder you didn’t stick it out here. No wonder you didn’t stick it out in the Navy, either. You can’t stick when it gets tough, can you, son?’
Tom snorted. ‘Well, let’s see how well I stick to running this campdraft. Oh, and while we’re getting some home truths sorted, here’s another: your solicitor is a drunk and he’s done bugger all to secure you a tenant for the pub. I’ll be sticking at that, too.’
