Hope's Road (30 page)

Chapter 50

‘What happened, boy?' The old man lowered himself onto the bed, the smell of dampness rising from his clothes. He was just grateful to sit and rest his weary bones.

He'd limped to the shed and got an old canvas tarpaulin, brought it back and spread it over Boots. He should've thought to ask Randal to shift the dog into the shed before he left, but he hadn't, so he covered the old fella instead until he found someone to help bury him. Boots couldn't feel anything now anyway, not where he'd gone.

But the child beside him could and he was huddled amid the grey woollen blankets. Joe cocked an ear. Not a single drop of water fell on the tin roof. Finally, it had stopped raining. Thank heavens for that. He turned his attention back to the child.

‘C'mon, Billy. I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong. What happened with Katrina?'

‘She didn't want me!' Arms and legs and blankets went flying and Joe shuffled slightly to the left. Billy appeared, his face the colour of his hair. Trackmarks of tears streaked down his cheeks, his chin. ‘My mother doesn't want me, Joe!'

Joe snorted. ‘Well, she'd be a bloody idiot then, wouldn't she? Can't think of a finer young man I'd like to know.'

‘But I wanted
her
, Joe. I wanted the whole Big Mac, just like the other kids at school.'

Joe moved on the bed slightly, trying to ease the ache he could feel starting in his hip. ‘Sometimes, Billy, we can't have everything we want,' he said, wincing. He shouldn't have lain out there in the rain.

‘But, Joe –'

‘No, Billy. Sometimes God or whoever's up there's got another plan for us. Oh, we mightn't like it at first, and don't I know that. But it's usually all for the better.' Personally he couldn't think how losing Boots could be for the better, but it sounded good. The sort of thing a grandfather would say.

A little hand crept up his leg and grabbed hold of his old weathered fingers. ‘You're going to miss Boots, aren't you?'

Joe ran his rough thumb over the boy's soft young fingers. He stared up towards the mended ceiling, trying to compose himself, before looking back at the child. ‘Yeah, boy. I'm gunna miss him. Heaps.'

‘He was a good dog.'

‘That he was,' said Joe, nodding.

‘My mum's good too,' said Billy. ‘Isn't she?'

The pleading note at the end of the question nearly broke what was left of Joe's heart. ‘Yeah, mate. She is. She just isn't built for staying in one spot, that's all. A kid like you, you need to stay put. Get a good schooling, seeing you're so clever with your books. Your mum, well, she's just not programmed to do that.'

‘My dad doesn't like staying put either,' said Billy. ‘That's why he heads bush. Why he liked being a boundary rider too.' The boy swung his legs around parallel to Joe's, so he was sitting hard up against the old man. ‘I think I'm the same. That's why I come and annoy you.' He smiled at Joe before adding, ‘And Tammy. But she's not a wanderer. She's got roots, she says. Roots that are sunk deep into the dirt at Montmorency.'

Joe snorted again. ‘She's got a funny way of showing it then, selling the joint.'

‘But she has to,' said Billy with a furrowed brow. ‘Didn't you know? That man, Shon. He's making her do it.'

Joe frowned. Shon? Making her sell up? He thought about that for a bit. It would make sense, he supposed. The bastard was pretty riled up the day they shot him off the property. Despite himself, Joe gave a small grin. That was one of the best days of his life, getting the better of bloody Shon Murphy. That and being on Montmorency again.

He looked down at the child. ‘So what else do you know about this?'

‘Not much,' Billy admitted. ‘Just what I overheard her say on the phone the other day. She has to sell the joint to pay him a shitload –' He clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘Oops! Sorry. A whole lot of cash.' He suddenly looked guilty. ‘I didn't mean to listen.'

Joe continued to frown. Thinking. Murphy wanted a divorce so he could be with Joanne. Of course he would want money. And what better place to get it than out of one of the best farms in the district? Why hadn't he seen that? He hadn't given Tammy the chance to explain. What a fucking idiot. He was as bad as Travis Hunter.

Travis!

Joe lurched off the bed. ‘Bloody hell, Billy. We need to find your dad and tell him I've got you! He was goin' out of his mind with worry. Was heading to town to find you.' The old man staggered to his feet, his young mate jumping up to steady him.

Joe chuckled. Cuffed the boy over the head. ‘C'mon. Let's find your father.'

While Billy tried the phone, Joe picked up his rifle from the verandah and peered through the scope. There was not a single patch of grass to be seen at the bottom of his hill. Well, aside from a stretch right near Montmorency's dairy. There was a huge crowd of dairy cows huddled there looking ­miserable.

‘Hey, Joe. The phone's not working,' called Billy.

‘Water in the lines,' muttered Joe. ‘Damn it all.'

He walked his scope across the paddocks towards the Montmorency homestead, swinging it around to see if he could detect movement anywhere.

Not a human soul stirred. His sight flickered past sheds and buildings. He spotted the tractor parked not far from the garden gate. Higher ground and a levy bank built years before had kept the flood from the immediate surrounds of the homestead itself. Still, he could see water lapping the concrete foundations of the back fence. It was gunna be close, that was for sure. He only hoped the flood had reached its peak.

Then another, more terrifying thought struck him. Had they been caught out by the water? Hunter had been going to Narree pretty much right when the flood would've been coming. Maybe he got caught on the bridge? Or on the flooded road? What if he had, and was drowned, and then Billy would have a mother who didn't want him and a father who was dead? Joe could feel his blood pressure rising. And those cows were waiting to be milked. Where was Tammy? Maybe she'd been washed away too? Oh my God – another one taken by the water. Mother and daughter. The gun started to shake in Joe's hands. He forced himself to get a grip, keep looking across the landscape with his gun.

There were a couple of utes parked in Montmorency's driveway. A small part of him wondered if one of them was Shon Murphy's. He pulled back his eyes, blinked a few times, took another look. Now he recognized the utes and neither of them belonged to Murphy.

‘Can you see my dad?' asked a hesitant voice.

The boy was staring up at him like he was God about to deliver Judgement Day.

‘I can't see him but I can see his ute.'

‘Really? Can I see it too?'

Joe thought about that. How would the boy take seeing his father at Tammy's and not with his mother, considering how much having a Big Mac family had meant to him? Only one way to find out, he figured. ‘Yeah, sure. Have a look. But be careful of the trigger. I don't want to have found you only to lose you again. Your father would kick my butt.'

Billy laughed, took hold of the gun and peered through the scope like a seasoned pro. ‘Where am I looking?' he asked.

Joe cleared his throat. ‘Ahem . . . well, just a little more to the right.'

The child moved the gun, then paused like he was sucking in a breath. ‘There's my dad! He's with Tammy!'

Joe snatched the gun off Billy and thrust it up to his eye.

And there they were, the pair of them, swinging down from the tractor.

Kissing.

It was only a fleeting kiss, Joe saw as he took another look. The pair were now running across the back lawn of Montmorency, towards the house. Tammy had stopped and was throwing her arm in the air like she was directing Hunter to do something. Travis reversed and ran like the devil was after him towards his ute, grabbing something off the seat. He pelted towards the old barn and quickly disappeared into its dark depths. A few moments later he reappeared, but up high in the doorway of the loft overhead. With a pair of binoculars he looked out across the farm, out over the flooded valley. What was the man doing?

Billy.

He quickly passed the gun to the boy. ‘I'll give them a ring. Let them know you're up here with me.'

‘The phone's not working,' Billy reminded him.

Joe kept on moving. ‘I'll give it another try anyway. Sometimes it gets through.'

He picked up the handset. It was dead. He jiggled the phone toggle. ‘C'mon, c'mon. Give over, you bastard.' He toggled some more. Finally, success. A dial tone buzzed in his ear. The piece of paper Tammy had left for him after the accident with her and Hunter's phone numbers was still stuck to the wall. Quickly he dialled Montmorency, not knowing how long he'd get before it went dead again.

The phone at the other end rang and rang. ‘C'mon, Tammy, answer the bloody thing!' The answering machine clicked in instead. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He hated these things.

‘Tammy, Joe here. Billy –' The handset went dead.

Fuck, fuck, fuck . . . He tried again. Toggled the darn thing, over and over, with no success. What was he going to do now?

Trav belted through the back door of Montmorency. ‘I can't see anything but bloody water out there.' He stopped as Tammy held up her hand. She was beside the phone.

‘There's a message from Joe. I just missed it.'

‘What'd he say?'

‘That's the thing. Could Billy be up there with him? Joe says something about him, and he sounds stressed or upset. But he just says Billy's name, then it stops and I can't get the phone to work now. Where's your sat phone?'

Trav's face drained of colour. ‘On the charger at home. Can't you get it to work at all?'

‘Nope,' said Tammy frowning, ‘I only just missed it so he must be up there on his hill watching us.' She thought a minute then her face lit up. ‘I know! There're some tins of cattle-tail paint in the dairy. Can you go grab the brightest colour there? Bring it back here?'

Trav was out the door before she even finished the sentence.

Tammy dashed into the depths of the house and appeared minutes later with a couple of huge white sheets.

She met Trav at the garden gate. ‘We'll take it all into the garage.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘No time to explain. Can you go get my gun out of the cabinet?' she said. ‘The .243 should do it.' Trav took off again.

She quickly laid the sheet out on the old concrete floor, took the spray can then set to work.

IS BILLY OK?

She sprayed the huge letters onto the sheet and stepped back as Trav arrived with the rifle. ‘Now we hang this on the clothesline and fire the rifle. Joe'll have to check out a gunshot. He won't be able to resist.'

They headed outside again. It hadn't rained since they'd left the tractor so the air around them was quiet and still. Just the thing for a gunshot to be heard for miles.

They wrestled the sheet onto the big old Hills Hoist and swung the material towards McCauley's Hill. They looked at each other. ‘This is ridiculous,' said Trav. ‘Like something they'd do on that old TV show,
F-Troop
.'

Tammy shrugged. ‘It's worth a try, isn't it?'

Trav nodded. Fired the gun into the air. The sound echoed around the valley, carried by the acres and acres of floodwater.

Up on McCauley's Hill, Joe was wrestling with the phone again. He was halfway through another abusive tirade when the gunshot rang out. He shuffled to the doorway. ‘You hear that?' he said to Billy.

‘Yep. It came from that-a-way.' The child pointed towards Montmorency.

Joe moved as fast as his hip would let him. Snatched up the gun, the scope to his eye. It really was all too much for ninety-year-old bones, this rollercoaster of a day.

He trained his eye on Montmorency. There was the tractor, the utes, the homestead. There was Tammy standing with her hands on her hips facing him. Staring right at him. And beside her was Hunter, looking for all the world like he wasn't sure what he was doing.