Chapter 14
Hamish
‘What do you reckon?’ he asked Lachlan. His brother had more years of experience on the farm than he did.
Lachlan blew out a frustrated breath. ‘If it was summer and only one sheep, I’d have put my money on it being a nope rope.’
Standing a couple of metres to the side, their father snorted. ‘But it’s not summer and you’ve lost five of the buggers. So, not a brown snake.’ It wasn’t a huge number, but depending on what was causing the issue, their flock could be decimated.
‘Nothing like stating the obvious,’ Lachlan muttered, and Hamish tensed.
A few months back, their dad’s remark would have been enough to spark World War III, but lately, the animosity between the pair had dialled back a bit to a simmering ceasefire.
Lachlan scowled as an obviously pregnant ewe staggered in tight circles. ‘I’m thinking maybe it’s listeriosis.’
Hamish squinted as he tried to recall the specifics of the malady. ‘Brain inflammation? Bit left field, isn’t it?’
The ewe blundered into the right-angled join of the wire fences, thrusting her head through and huffing in distress. ‘See the head tilt? Puffy eyes? Reckon I’ve heard them mentioned as listeriosis signs. You can check up on it. But I think we’re going to have to get Matt Krueger out.’
Calling the vet out to a flock would be an expensive operation.
‘We’ve never bloody had listy here,’ Dad grumbled.
‘Nope,’ Lachlan agreed. Hamish caught the tic in his brother’s jaw, and knew he was reading judgement into the comment.
According to Dad, everything had been done better before the boys took over the farm.
‘But the sheep I picked up at the market the other week might have brought it in.’ He kept his gaze on the paddock, and Hamish knew Lachlan was waiting for his father’s condemnation.
‘That’d do it,’ Dad said without raising his voice, and both Lachlan and Hamish looked at him in surprise. ‘We’d better set to burning the carcasses, then. I suppose the vet can test a live one—if we have any left, that is. He won’t need to do a necropsy?’
‘I’ll give him a call and check,’ Lachlan said, reaching for his phone.
‘Let your brother do that,’ Dad said. His blue-eyed gaze swung to Hamish, deep lines weathering the pale skin that harked back to their Scottish ancestry.
‘That buggered-up arm makes you bloody useless for shifting this lot,’ he said to Hamish, with a nod toward the dead sheep.
‘But at least you can get on to Krueger, find out what we need to do. Check whether PIRSA has to be involved. Let’s hope the hell not, or we could lose the lot of them. ’
Dad had spent years telling Hamish he was useless, but this was different.
His father was not only evincing a modicum of concern about his injured arm but also recognising his strengths in the administration of the farm.
It wouldn’t do to acknowledge the unusual display, though.
‘I can lend a hand here first,’ he said.
Dad held out his hand for the rifle. ‘You’ll be more use in the office.
Lachlan and I’ll take care of this lot.’ He turned to his eldest son.
‘The ones that are shoving themselves into the fences are goners.’ Four of the sheep had now forced themselves between the wires, evidently driven mad by the brain swelling.
‘Reckon we’ll split out those that can walk straight, though, shift them to another paddock?
’ Unusually, his words held the inflection of a question, and the plan implied a collaboration rather than the terse orders the brothers had become accustomed to over the years.
‘Yep.’ Lachlan whistled up his kelpie, Bodie. ‘And cross our fingers bloody tight they’ll pull through.’
‘You move them. I’ll put down the others. Can’t let the stupid animals suffer.’
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 sheep that 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 ultimately destined 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?’