Chapter 39
JOHNSON
The following day, Ronnie’s phone rang while she was under the large Kubota changing the oil. Incoming call from unknown number. Assuming it was Nev calling to tell her that she had lost her phone again, Ronnie jammed the phone between her ear and shoulder. “Oi.”
“Hiya Ronnie, it’s Taylor, how ya goin’?” Nev’s kid sister who had just graduated from the University of Auckland.
“Hiya, good to hear from you.” Ronnie stood up and wiped her hands on a dirty rag.
“Congratulations! I heard you guys got Rainbow back! She’s your daughter, now, officially?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I’m really happy.”
“Did you have a party to celebrate?”
“Yeah. How are things with you?”
“This is the best. You two are such good mums. Listen. I need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Nev’s refusing to get the testing done to see whether she has the gene our mum had. I need you to help me pressure her.”
“What?”
“You know, the breast cancer gene. I thought she told you.”
“No, she didn’t.” She could already tell Nev wouldn’t get the test. “Would it change anything?”
“They can do preventative things.”
“I’ll talk to her. No promises.”
“Thanks. Congratulations again.”
Ronnie added Nev’s sister to her contacts, then opened a bag of potato crisps. Nev must have given Taylor her number when she went to Auckland for the graduation last month. She was flattered that Taylor thought she could make Nev do anything she didn’t want to do.
Another incoming call. This time it really was Nev.
“If you’re driving, pull over,” Nev said.
“I’m here at work, at your house. Where are you?”
“Down at Johnson’s place. Your luck’s turning. He wants to sell those scrubby hectares he’s been grazing cattle on.”
“Johnson? Don’t joke about that.”
“The place is a dump. It isn’t worth a penny over forty.”
“Hand me over,” she said.
A pause, then a deeper voice. The grouchy neighbor. “Madonna?”
“How much do you want for it?”
“For the lot without the house or barn, fifty. No inspection. As is.”
“I’ll take it. I’ll go to my bank in the morning.”
“Livestock not included. What bank do you use?”
Ronnie told him.
“I’ll meet you there at ten,” he said.
Nev’s voice again. The neighbor had handed the phone back. “He would have given it to you for forty.”
“He still might.”
The next morning, she took Nev with her to the bank for moral support.
It turned out that wasn’t necessary. A man in a tie said she qualified for a loan. She thought she had misheard him. This week kept getting better and better.
A bigger man in overalls arrived in the conference room behind the bank.
She recognized him, had seen him riding his tractor down the road.
He had short grey hair and a gut, looked like he had been out riding the tractor earlier that morning.
Johnson had one of those closed, judgmental faces that she could imagine muttering nasty things.
He shook her hand. “Can you pay?”
She could.
She played hard ball. He cracked, gave it to her for forty, without inspection or ecological review.
In the truck, Nev took the papers from her lap, then read them out loud before starting the engine. “Look at you, adulting.”
Ronnie leaned forward in the passenger’s seat, head in her hands, then burst out laughing. “I feel like I just robbed a bank.”
“More like the other way around.”
Butterflies in her stomach as they drove towards her new property.
Her friend turned off the Gillies onto the unpaved Boar Pocket Road, then stopped in front of a rusty cattle gate beside a boulder that faced the road. Two vertical iron pipes with a third welded across the top flanked the old gate.
The entrance was overgrown with lantana and mile-a-minute vines.
A flock of lorikeets flew overhead, pink and blue.
Ronnie unlatched the gate, which had a dummy lock, pushed it open on its wheel across the remains of a dirt road. “Ever snuck in and poked around?”
Nev shook her head. “Other than that time you showed me the pomegranate trees, no. This is all floodplain. A geologist would charge thousands of dollars to tell you that.”
She wiped red clay dirt onto the thighs of her jeans. “Good for grazing sheep, though.”
“We’ll see. You might have better luck selling dirt.”
A well beside a burnt-out concrete foundation appeared to be in good condition, relatively new judging by the lack of rust.
“Did you know there was a well?” Ronnie asked.
Nev shook her head. “This is where they moved the original Madonna house before they built the dam and flooded the valley.” Concrete outline of old ruins. The clay soil around it was flat.
Over the top of a line of gum trees Nev’s red tile roof was visible, as were the lavender field and plant nursery up on the hill.
The lowlands would need work before they could return to use as hay fields or sheep pasture.
Thickets of wild brambles spotted the dusty fields.
Clearing it would keep her busy for years.
Grass, lantana, wattle, eucalypts. A haven for wildlife, but a challenging ecosystem for humans.
She would put up a barn first.
The stainless-steel pipe topped by a red J-shaped handle stuck out of the ground. She pumped the handle to see if it still worked. Nothing came out.
Nev fetched a plastic water bottle from the truck, carefully poured water into the hole at the top of the well-head where the handle joined the shaft.
“You have to prime an old well first.”
This time when Ronnie pumped the handle she felt resistance deep inside, could hear and feel the lever catch on something heavy. She kept pumping. The pipe breathed, gasping for air.
Several pumps later, clear liquid gushed out and spilled onto the dirt.
It smelled like nothing.
Nev cupped her hands, tasted it.
Ronnie released the handle. Her friend pumped while she cupped her hands under the flow. It tasted like the tap water at Upsend Downs.
She laughed. “That well’s worth at least ten grand.”
Nev offered her palm. “Welcome to the neighborhood. Bail me out during fire season?” It was fire season now, but hopefully they wouldn’t have another bushfire like the last one here for years. Interestingly, land liked to be burnt—fire was good for native species.
She shook Nev’s small hand. “What about you? Return the favor?”
“Always. I’ll help you build a house. Reckon you’ll put it here, where it won’t flood during the wet?”
Ronnie had plenty of lumber. She had milled enough to build a tiny house and a barn. “I’m leaning toward putting up a barn first. That way I can rent out stalls and get an income stream going while I work on the house.”
“Practical. Good girl.” Words like a warm hand running down her back.
Ronnie shivered. “Oi.” She scratched her neck where the ghost of KITTEN itched. “Taylor called. She wants you to get tested for that thing.”
Nev frowned and crossed her arms.
“I told her I’d talk to you, but no promises.”
Nev raised an eyebrow. “She shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“You gave her my number.”
“I get mammograms.”
“You don’t want to know if you’re a carrier?”
Nev shook her head.
“It’s your call.” Ronnie let it go. For now.