Page 49

Story: Delicious

The next afternoon, I come home from drafting ewes and their lambs into different mobs to find a fresh-baked peach loaf on my doorstep.

I know without tasting it that the peaches will be Golden Queens from my orchard last summer. Benji must have bottled the excess ones I gave him.

This is how Benji has always repaid me for the fruit and vegetables I give him, by baking or cooking something for me in return.

He must’ve spotted my microwave dinners at some point because once or twice a week, he gives me casseroles, pies, or stews, things I can easily freeze in smaller portions and then reheat.

Our food exchange is almost wordless now, completely unrelated to how we argue over everything else.

But tonight, I don’t need to reheat one of Benji’s meals because I’m grabbing dinner at the pub.

Before I get ready, I’ve got one chore still to do.

The orphan lambs are waiting by the fence, bleating their impatience.

“Keep your wool on,” I tell them gruffly as I measure the milk powder. They’re getting stronger every day, which means they’re also getting more demanding about their feeds.

The smallest one, with the black spots around her eyes, still needs some encouragement, so I settle on an upturned bucket, letting her lean against my leg while she drinks. Her soft wool is warm against my calloused palms.

Lambs fed, I head into the house and jump through the shower, grimacing as the hot water hits the fresh scratches on my arms from wrestling with those bloody brambles in the north paddock.

I drag my razor through three days’ worth of stubble, nicking myself twice because I’m rushing. My good jeans are folded in my drawer, the ones without any fence wire tears or stains. They feel strange after a day in work clothes, like they belong to someone else.

For some reason, as I get ready, the conversation I had with Lance the night before his and Emma’s wedding creeps into my mind.

We’d been having a few whiskeys in the back room of the Royal Hotel—the same place our father had taken us for our first legal drinks—when Lance had started talking about how Emma completed him. It sounded like something from one of those romance movies Mum used to watch, but Lance had said it with such conviction that I didn’t take the piss like I normally would.

I’d let his words wash over me while I stared into my glass.

“What about you, big brother?”

His question had forced me to jerk my head up.

“What about me?”

“Don’t you want to date, get married? I mean, I don’t think you’ve had a proper girlfriend for a decade now. And you’re not that hideous. It’s definitely not due to lack of trying by the women around here.”

He was right. Ever since I hit puberty and grew to be a replica of my dad, six foot one, broad shoulders, dark hair and eyes, I’d never had a shortage of female attention.

I’d taken another gulp of my drink, but the whiskey couldn’t wash away the familiar feeling of somehow being broken. Watching my mates at school fall in lust at first sight, hooking up with strangers at parties, while I never understood the appeal.

“I can’t be bothered with that nonsense,” I’d replied.

“Maybe you just need the right person to come along,” he said.

I’d made a noncommittal grunt and then moved the conversation on by asking about his plans for rotating the winter feed crops. Farm talk was safer than examining the hollow feeling his words left in my chest.

The memory of that conversation rattles in my head as I grab my keys from the hook by the door.

Country pubs in New Zealand are all cut from the same cloth. The Royal’s got its share of wobbly tables held steady by folded cardboard, walls covered in faded photos of local rugby teams, and regulars wearing grooves into the barstools. It’s the sort of place where your beer appears without you having to order it, and everyone knows whose dog is sleeping under which table.

I arrive and head over to the table where Lance is already deep in conversation with Pete the stock agent and Doc Wilson. Doc’s the local GP who’s been patching up farmers around here since before I was born. Given the number of times he’s stitched me up after farming accidents, I reckon he knows the scar pattern on my hands better than I do.

“’Bout time you showed up,” Lance says as I pull out a chair.

There’s the usual shuffle of chairs and lifting of pint glasses as I join them, everyone automatically shifting to make room for me.

Tilly the barmaid has barely got my pint in front of me when I spot him.

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