Page 82 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
He could see Lynette seated on a rail by the training yard, busy on a phone call. If the woman ever stopped working, he’d never seen it.
He paused on the front steps a moment. Wouldn’t hurt to check his emails before he went in to find his dad. A miracle might have happened, and a halfway decent publican might have been in touch.
He scrolled through the emails on his phone. Nothing from the employment agency. A few from his old team on the Combined Maritime Taskforce: how are you, hope you’re getting better, yada yada whatever.
One from his specialist in Wollongong.
I’ve reviewed the CT scans ordered by Dr Novak and the news is good and bad. The good news is that the shrapnel’s been encapsulated. This means the scar tissue is forming a cushion around it. The bad news is that it has moved deeper into the spinal sheath. You’re next scheduled to see me in September but I think we need to bring that forward. Call my receptionist and tell her to find you an appointment by end of July at the latest.
Regards, Jackie Tse.
Shit.
He tracked his father down in the room that had once been Bruno’s study but was now decked out like an aged care facility. It housed a wheeled trolley that doubled as a place to put meals, an oxygen system, and a hospital bed with a lifting mechanism so Bruno could get himself into and out of his chair without assistance.
‘Dad. You got a minute?’
‘Depends. What for?’
Tom ordered himself to keep his cool. ‘For some plain speaking.’ His back and mobility problem was not on the table for discussion, but he’d learned over the last few months that the injury wasn’t the only thing going on in his life. And he wanted to make sure those other things weren’t under threat as well.
Bruno looked at him for a moment, then grunted. ‘Pass me that rug, will you? If we’re going to do some plain speaking, I’d like to do it outside.’
‘Sure.’ Tom handed the blanket over and watched in silence as his dad’s hands tried—and failed—to tuck the heavy fabric down. There was no manual or pamphlet he’d found that gave a son life advice on how to care for an elderly parent who’d once drowned the pup he’d loved and then watched and done nothing as his only son ran away from home.
Bugger it. He stepped forward and tucked the bloody thing in. ‘It’s cold out, maybe snow coming above the treeline tonight. You want me to get a hot water bottle?’
‘Truth be told, Tom, it’s not the cold that bothers me, it’s the sitting on my bony arse all day. Bit of a jaunt outside in numbing weather might be just the thing.’
He followed his dad down the hall to the back door where a ramp had been installed a couple of years ago. A crushed gravel path led between huge pots of hydrangeas, sparse and pinched looking with autumn, to the paddocks stretched out beyond the fence.
Bruno seemed oddly chatty, so Tom let him run on.
‘Rosa Rugosa Grootendorst.’His dad patted a faded red bloom on a rose bush. ‘Planted this one the year you left. Been a reliable flowerer every year, keeps going well past autumn … I like to think it’s reminding me a fella can make a mistake or two and still have roses in his life so long as he learns from it.’
Tom frowned. ‘I didn’t think you owned up to mistakes, Dad.’
‘I’ve made plenty. As we both know, son. Your pup was just one of many and I’m sorry for it. Real sorry. Can you forgive me?’
His dad’s leathery hand was shaky, but it had some strength in it yet when he gripped it.
‘It’s in the past,’ Tom said. Just where he wished all his mistakes were. He took a breath and said what was on his mind. ‘I’m thinking I might sell my place on the coast and make Hanrahan my permanent home.’
‘What? I thought you had no interest in the stockhorses.’
‘I said I’ve got no skill with the stockhorses. What I’m saying, Dad, is do you want me here? At Ironbark? Because I can live in town if you don’t.’
‘You’re a Krauss, son. Ironbark Station will be yours one day. Pretty darn soon, maybe.’
‘Will it? You keep telling me I don’t deserve it.’
‘Well, why don’t you get on a fucking horse once in a while, son? I can’t bloody do it, can I? Did you think about that? Did you think about how it burns my gut to see you, all fit and strong, and you won’t even give your old man the pleasure of seeing you taking on the family business?’
He could tell Bruno about the steel shrapnel in his spine. But then he’d have to tell him about the operation he was one day—and quite soon, if that prophetic email from his specialist was any indication—to have. The operation with the risk factor that not even a bookie would issue odds on.
Nope, he couldn’t do it. Losing his ability to train his beloved horses had just about done his father in. He’d not bounce back from hearing his son was facing the same future. Better to think Tom didn’t ride by choice. Better the old bugger was angry about it than sad.
‘I hope you’ve put something aside for Mrs L in that will of yours. She loves it here, and we both know we couldn’t stop her turning up in the kitchen to cook for us even if we drove her off with a pitchfork. Be easier all round if she could lay claim to a little part of Ironbark Station that could be all hers.’
