HE FOUND A public phone in town with a battered yellow block of pissed-on pages. An old man in a beanie sat staring at him from a nearby bench. ‘It’s broken, ay,’ he mumbled.
‘I was looking for the phone book,’ said Luke. ‘Do you know where Centrelink is?’
‘It’s broken,’ the man mumbled again and then proceeded to tell Luke what he thought of all Centrelink employees.
Luke looked around for someone else to ask.
‘Got a dollar?’ the man asked.
Luke fumbled in his pockets and took out his last few goldies. ‘If I’m gonna be broke, I may as well be stony broke.’ He let them drop into the man’s gnarly old hand and set off to find Centrelink. It wasn’t a huge town – he’d find it sooner or later. As soon as they looked up his details they’d find out he was a missing person.
A car on the other side of the road honked. Luke looked up briefly. It was a Landcruiser ute, one of hundreds around here. Nothing to do with him. He put his head down and kept walking. It honked again and he ignored it.
‘Luke.’
It was a man’s voice, a Coachwood Crossing voice. He’d know it anywhere. Luke spun around. On the other side of the road, a man in his thirties, tall, with a big hat and big boots, closed the door of the ute and began walking across the road.
Luke could barely believe his eyes. ‘Lawson?’
Lawson walked straight at him, stopping a couple of metres away with his hands in his pockets, running his eyes over him.
Luke felt instantly self-conscious. His clothes were filthy and ill-fitting. He must look like hell.
‘Hey,’ said Lawson.
Luke nodded a greeting, while his mind tried to adjust. What did Lawson want? What was he doing here?
‘How you been?’ asked Lawson, his eyes resting momentarily on Luke’s plastered arm.
‘All right, I s’pose.’
Strange silence.
‘Want to talk?’
‘About what?’
Lawson put his hands in his back pockets and shrugged. ‘Everything.’
Luke’s head spun. He had just shut off all hope of ever making Coachwood Crossing his home again. He was walking in another direction. And now, here was Lawson, standing right in front of him, asking him to open it all back up.
‘Come and have a beer,’ said Lawson, tilting his head towards the pub over the road and looking at his watch. ‘Not quite beer o’clock yet, but we could call ourselves shift workers for the morning.’
‘Bouncer in that pub already kicked me out.’
‘He won’t if you’re with me,’ said Lawson. ‘Come on.’ He began to cross the road and looked back to see if Luke was coming.
Luke followed cautiously and Lawson waited for him to catch up. They walked side by side, both with their hands in their pockets.
In a quiet courtyard out the back, Lawson put two beers on the table and sat down. Luke left his untouched and waited for Lawson to speak, wondering what the hell was worth a three-day drive to come and talk about.
Lawson stared into his glass and picked at the calluses on his fingers. ‘Been thinking about what you said,’ he muttered after a while. ‘You’re right, Harry was the only family I had. Feel like a part of myself’s died.’
Luke stayed quiet.
Lawson kept talking. ‘I’ll never forget when he taught me to break in my first horse.’ He smiled into his beer. ‘Dusty. He was a brumby. A herd-bound little fella, had the strongest sense of his mob. Harry made me do all the groundwork over and over, wouldn’t let me even think of getting on him till I had his complete respect on the ground. He reckoned I’d never ever have a partnership with him unless I established myself as the leader.’ Lawson laughed. ‘Imagine trying to teach that to a thirteen-year-old kid. God, I just wanted to get on him and ride the buck out of him.’
Luke couldn’t help a small laugh. That was just so Lawson.
‘He was right, though,’ said Lawson. ‘Sometimes if you want respect, you do have to step up, be a leader.’
‘So did the horse buck?’
‘Nup.’ Lawson looked up and grinned. ‘I was so pissed off; my first breaker and barely a bloody pigroot. Where was the glory in that?’ He shook his head. ‘Geez, that little brumby turned out to be a good horse, though.’
‘That why you went and rode rodeo for a while?’
‘Yeah. The old man’s way was no bloody fun.’ Lawson laughed. ‘I left home at fifteen and rode steers and broncs for a few years, bulls when I turned eighteen. Harry was absolutely disgusted with me.’
Luke ran his hand through his hair and thought of Harry. He was such a brilliant old fella. Luke couldn’t imagine being so lucky as to have him as a real father, to be brought up with all that knowledge and guidance at your fingertips, every day in the round yards and in the stables. The almost-four years he’d had with Harry had been the best of his life. Lawson had had thirty years of it.
‘First horse I ever broke in with Harry was a filly. I got tossed halfway across the property,’ said Luke. ‘Landed outside the rails.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ grinned Lawson.
‘I forgot to take my spurs off.’
Lawson roared with laughter. ‘The old man woulda seen them, too.’
Luke laughed with him. ‘Yeah, he did, but he let me get on and make my own mistakes. I never did it again.’
‘I bet you didn’t,’ chuckled Lawson. He downed the last of his beer and sat quiet for a while.
Luke looked at Lawson’s face. It was so much like Harry’s: the big nose, the heavy-set jaw. He had a thick head of black hair, though. Harry was a bald old codger.
‘You weren’t the first foster kid we ever had come to live with us,’ said Lawson.
‘I know.’
‘We had a few of them when I was growing up. The old man thought they would be good friends for us, you know, because we lived a long way out of town.’ Lawson shook his head. ‘But I hated it. I had to share everything with them, my home, my room, my father. I never asked for any of them.’
Luke began to feel small again.
‘But you were different,’ said Lawson. ‘You always showed me some respect. You never cut in between me and the old man.’
‘You weren’t upset that he asked me to ride Biyanga?’
Lawson looked Luke in the eye and shook his head. ‘He saw you as a real mate and I respected that. If he wanted you to ride Biyanga, then that was fine by me. I just hoped you appreciated what a big honour that was. How much it meant to him.’
‘I did,’ said Luke.
‘I came up here to ask you to come home,’ said Lawson.
Luke wasn’t game to look up at Lawson’s face. Home. He had called it home. ‘Did Annie make you come up here?’
‘Nobody makes me do anything, Luke, you should know that.’ Lawson looked at him. ‘Annie doesn’t know where you are. If she did, she’d be here herself.’
Luke kept his eyes down. He didn’t want Lawson to read his face, read how desperately he wanted to come home. He had more to negotiate. ‘I don’t want to be a foster kid anymore. I want a job. Not just some crappy job – I could do that up here. I want to be a farrier.’
Lawson nodded. ‘You got it, Luke. You’d be a bloody good farrier.’
‘I would,’ said Luke, nodding and frowning and not sure if he should laugh or not. He took his first swig of beer and felt it swirl around in his empty gut. He was so hungry, he skulled the whole glass.
Lawson’s eyes were still on him. ‘Liquid breakfast?’
Luke nodded, embarrassed. Then he burped and laughed.