14

Kaydon woke late. The stockmen already had the cattle mustered, ready to process and take to the feedlot. He left his phone sitting on the side dresser. It was filled with messages from Chrissy. He started to wonder if it had been a good idea to give her his mobile number. She had badgered him all night while he was trying to get his science paper done for school.

Dad reckons there will be a journalist and a professional photographer at the ball.

Great.

Make sure your bow tie is red to match my dress.

I only have a black one.

Get a red one. It’ll match my dress.

Ok.

He would ask his mum to pick one up next time she was in town. He tried to get back to Newton’s third law of action and reaction. But she continued texting him.

Dad said the journo is going to take a photo of the first dance.

Ok.

Make sure you bid on it and win it.

If I have enough money.

The first dance was always auctioned off to the highest bidder at the Easter Ball. No doubt Mum had told Chrissy that she usually gave him a budget to spend at these dos; usually a couple of hundred bucks or something, to be spent strictly on auction items.

You will.

You rigged it?

Not exactly.

Eventually he had stopped answering. The girl was so keen. All he had to do was kiss her and he would be able to keep Dan’s reckless behind out of trouble long enough to get him back to Bentleigh next term.

He dressed, made a coffee, and skulled it while he headed for the front door. He pulled on his boots and jammed a hat on his head before hurrying across the yard, eager to spend the day with Aaron and his father.

Dust hung in the morning light. Dad’s fourbie was already gone. Kaydon saddled a spare horse and led it out of the stables. He ran into Aaron, who was tucking in his shirt as he walked across the yard.

‘You look wrecked,’ said Kaydon.

His cousin gave him a dirty grin.

Kaydon mounted and set off towards the yards. Before long Aaron cantered up behind him, his horse’s hooves lifting the dust off the ground with every stride.

‘Be good when we can move some stock over to the new place,’ said Aaron. ‘Not much feed left in these paddocks.’

‘So, you gonna come back?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

Kaydon’s spirits lifted. It was like having a big brother around with Aaron.

He spent the morning at the crush, recording weight gains and vaccinating calves. Stacey arrived and he was irritated at the way she would lean down off the fence posts and catch a flying kiss every time Aaron rode past. When he walked into the smoko shed at lunchtime and found them in a tangle of lips, he decided enough was enough and set off on his own to find lunch back at the house.

The sun burned fiercely and cicadas shrilled in the grass. As he followed the fenceline along the road, Pilot lifted his head and whinnied. There was a returning whinny. Ahead, an old mare he recognised plodded along with two people on her back.

‘Hi, how’s old Penny treating you?’ he called.

‘Look how clean her tail is. I brushed it,’ said Eva.

‘She looks good.’

Holly didn’t speak. She looked straight past him to the cattle yards.

Eva looked towards the homestead. ‘What’s that?’

He turned his head. ‘Oh, the marquee. Mum’s putting on a party.’

‘Looks like a big one,’ said Eva in an awe-filled voice.

He laughed. ‘Yeah, they usually are.’

‘Jake reckons Holly should go but she’s too chicken,’ said Eva.

‘Shut up, Eva,’ Holly snapped. ‘We’re too busy.’

‘Doing what?’ said Kaydon. ‘I thought the building job had been delayed.’

‘I’ll come!’ said Eva. ‘Can I come with you?’

‘No you can’t, Eva,’ said Holly. ‘You’re too young. Mum might be back in time to go anyway.’

Kaydon shrugged indifferently. He was taking Chrissy anyway, what did he care if this girl went to the Easter Ball or not? Eva gave him a knowing look and he shot her a conspiring wink.

Holly caught it and scowled.

‘Can I pat one of your cows?’ Eva asked.

‘You can help work them through the yards if you want. We’re drafting out some steers to take to the feedlot up the road.’ He reached down and began unlatching the gate.

Eva started kicking at Penny’s sides. But Holly held the mare steady. ‘You can’t, Eva.’ She looked at Kaydon. ‘Sorry, but we have stuff to do.’

‘We do not,’ said Eva. ‘That’s not true. You said this morning we had all day to ride!’ She wrestled for the reins in Holly’s hands and kept kicking. ‘I wanna see a cow!’

Holly’s mouth pursed. ‘They’re sending them to a feedlot, Eva,’ she hissed.

‘What’s a feedlot?’

‘It’s where they feed the cows a lot of food,’ said Kaydon, pleased with his own joke, even though it was a lame one. Kids liked lame jokes, didn’t they?

Holly rolled her eyes. ‘It’s where they intensively farm cattle,’ she said. ‘They lock them in tiny yards and fill them with growth hormones.’

Kaydon felt his hackles rise. ‘Normally we finish them ourselves without hormones. We’re sending them to the feedlot this time because there’s no grass for them here,’ he explained to Eva. He glared at Holly. ‘Did you notice there’s a drought, or don’t you city people ever look at a rain gauge?’

Holly lifted her chin. ‘I think it’s cruel. And I’m not from the city.’

‘So is letting them starve.’ He thought of Dan’s bony cattle, like clothes hangers scrounging for food.

‘Why is feeding them cruel?’ asked Eva, sounding confused.

‘Because all those people want to do is fatten them up and turn them into hamburgers,’ shot Holly before Kaydon could get his answer in.

‘People have gotta eat something,’ retorted Kaydon.

‘Try eating tofu.’ Holly snatched the reins from Eva’s hands and reefed Penny away.

‘Soy beans? I wouldn’t eat them if you paid me,’ Kaydon snapped back. ‘You’ll get cancer eating that genetically modified crap.’

Holly visibly winced. Her bottom lip trembled. Oh heck, she was going to cry again. Now what had he said?

‘My mum has cancer,’ said Eva, sounding almost proud.

Talk about foot-in-mouth disease. ‘Oh, sorry.’

Holly ran her hand over her eyes. ‘It’s okay. We don’t know for sure anyway. Eva, we have to go.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Eva defiantly. ‘I want to see a cow.’ Now she was going to cry.

‘Do as you’re told for once, Eva.’ Holly’s voice was rising.

‘No!’ Eva squealed.

Kaydon intervened. ’Why not let her come for a few minutes? I’ll have to get back to work soon anyway.’ He shot Holly a sideways glance and couldn’t resist a dig. ‘Just don’t bring any hidden cameras and post videos on YouTube when you see how cruel we are.’

Holly shot him a frosty glare but she allowed Penny to walk through the gate. Eva gave him an excited grin.

At the yards, the young steers and heifers swarmed noisily around the forklift as Aaron dropped a giant bale of hay into a feeder.

Kaydon slipped off his horse and walked through them, scratching their thick, beefy necks and running his hands over their backs. He cut the strings off the bale while wet, slippery muzzles dived into the hay all around him. One animal licked him with a long, grey-pink tongue, right in his ear.

He heard Eva hoot with laughter. ‘Did you see that? It gave him a big sloppy kiss!’

‘You gonna come and help?’ He leapt up on the fence in one swift movement and waved her over.

The kid wriggled out of her big sister’s arms, clambered off the horse and onto the yard rails.

‘Aaron’s been recording their weights and checking their eartags. He’ll send them out to this yard and we’ll sort the boys from the girls,’ he said.

Eva looked at Kaydon with big eyes. ‘How do you tell the boys from the girls?’

‘Steers have a hairy belly button,’ he said. ‘Heifers have pretty faces.’

He dropped back to the ground and then held his hands up for Eva. She threw her arms around his neck while he lowered her to the ground.

Holly still sat quietly on Penny. Her eyes roamed the yards.

‘You can help too if you want,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘I’ll just watch.’

He shrugged and joined Eva in the yard.

‘That one looks pretty!’ Eva brandished her stick at it.

‘Yep, that’s a heifer,’ he said, keeping hold of her hand. ‘She goes through that gate. Give her a whack on the bum, little ringer.’

He grinned at Holly, well entertained by her wild little sister. But she sat quietly on the fence, thoughts seemingly far away.

He noticed her running her hands up and down her bare arms.

‘Getting burnt?’

She nodded.

‘Grab that shirt if you want.’ He pointed to his wrinkled blue work shirt hanging over the back of one of the farm utes.

She stared at it as if it had cooties.

‘It’s clean,’ he assured her.

She disappeared for a while and then reappeared on the fence, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. Threads of her hair hung loosely around her face, under the brim of the weathered old farm hat and her plait fell over one shoulder. If it wasn’t for the surf shorts and lime-green crocs, he’d have totally forgotten she was a pious, animal-libber vegetarian.

She caught him staring and smiled; a small pull of her lips that reached her eyes in a soft and beautiful way. For a moment he was mesmerised.

‘You know, you should come to the Easter Ball,’ he said. ‘It’s heaps of fun.’ Boy, could this girl use some fun. And some rump steak.

She shook her head and her eyes dropped.

Kaydon gave up. Trying to make her smile was like doing a rain dance. There were clouds and rumblings, and a sprinkle here and there. But no amount of fancy footwork was going to make it happen for real.

When the weaners were sorted, Holly and Eva rode back down the road towards home. Kaydon loaded another round bale onto the back of the ute for the cows, who were bellowing noisily up and down the fenceline for the babies that had just been taken from them. Some hay would help settle them.

They’re sending them to a feedlot, Eva.

They lock them in tiny yards and fill them with growth hormones.

Kaydon’s hands gripped tighter around the steering wheel. He hated having to send the steers to the feedlot, but they would starve if they stayed out on Rockleigh. Couldn’t she see how dire the paddocks were? What did she think cattle ate?

When he found a clear spot, he accelerated, sending the ute careering across the paddock. Then he gave the wheel a sudden yank to the left. The rear end of the ute spun out violently and the half-tonne bale of hay went flying over the side. Now that was how to unload a round of hay. He watched it career down the paddock like a giant roll of toilet paper, unravelling at the feet of the hungry mob of cows. He knew in his heart, they’d done the right thing weaning the calves early.

His eyes wandered past the cattle and he imagined how Rockleigh would look planted out with leguminous crops and rotated for grazing. Would the stock be any better off if he could convince his dad to do things differently?

Not in the short term. And now that Rockleigh had become Hockleigh, there was no long term for the moment.