Sure, thinking of himself as a farmer didn’t feel real yet, but one day it would, right? Time and hard work and determination would see to that.
And maybe the surprise find in his cowshed could help speed up that process … because if he could get the bank off his back he’d be happy again, he just knew it.
Kirsty started. ‘Okay, until a few days ago, I didn’t know about this farm … that plane … or Clarence.’
‘What happened a few days ago?’
‘I inherited a suitcase.’
A tremor shimmered just under her words, so he nudged her boot with his, just a touch of mud-spattered leather against mud-spattered leather. ‘Full of family secrets?’ he guessed.
Gus must have felt the mood turn from chatty to serious, because he smooched up closer to Kirsty (or to the fruitcake) and burrowed his long snout into the crook of her arm. Her fingers plucked grass seeds from the dog’s ear as she told him about the find, and the help Carol at the museum had offered her.
‘This place had been derelict for years when I bought it, but someone must have known that plane was there. I wonder what was going on in their lives that they had to abandon it?’
She shook her head. ‘I know, right? There has to be a reason; that’s one of the things I’d like to find out. And it’s hard to picture it now, because of the scrub and whatever, but Old Bill must have maintained the field in front of that shed as a grass air strip.’
‘Flat as a tack,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ve got twenty steers on there fattening up, which Amy says is a barbaric plan, of course. She thinks the field should be fenced in and turned into a safe haven for endangered native animals.’
‘Amy … your wife? Your daughter? I wondered who’d prettied up the mailbox with all those flowers.’
He leaned back on his hands. ‘Amy is my niece. Eight years old, with the heart of a political activist. She hangs out here with me when her mum—my sister Daisy—needs a sitter.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘A niece. Well, um, anyway, to get back to Bill. He flew that plane—that exact CA-5 Wirraway—against enemy fighters in New Guinea in 1942. It crashed, but after the war he went and retrieved it and got it back into flying order.’
‘The plane in my shed is from World War II?’
She nodded but whatever she’d been about to say seemed to get stuck.
‘Kirsty? Are you okay?’
‘Sorry,’ she said, pulling up a corner of her shirt and pressing it to her eyes. ‘It’s dust or something. I’m totally fine.’
Gus rearranged himself and made a grunting noise. You heard that great fat lie, too, did you, buddy, Joey thought, and rested his hand on the dog’s flank. Perhaps now wasn’t the time to push his ownership claim, so he decided to lighten the mood instead. ‘Gus doesn’t like it when I ask women questions that make them cry dust out of their eyes.’
His ruse worked. Kirsty gave a little chuckle, and the sound was so warm and so sweet, it had all his caveman pheromones jumping to attention again. He leaned back against the verandah post and took a bite of the cake.
‘I never cry, Farmer Joe.’
‘Farmer Joe,’ he murmured. He liked that. He liked that a whole lot.
She flicked her eyes down him, from hat to boots and back up again, and hefeltthe smirk that time. ‘To be honest, we don’t see many farmers wearing paisley print work shirts down where I come from. Looks like something you’d buy in the city rather than in the local hardware and fodder store.’
‘Ouch. Did you hear that, Gus? Run inside and hide the rest of the cake.’
She laughed, and the sound distracted him from the burning question of what exactly the plane was worth. ‘Well, you got me there, Kirsty. I’m new to this farming life. And it’s true, I haven’t worked on the land for years, but I grew up here … well, a few kilometres away. My family are from an off-the-grid community. As kids, we learned real quick that if we couldn’t grow it, barter for it, or climb a tree to pick it, we didn’t get it. Food included.’
‘I thought I had it tough!’
He laughed. ‘Oh, we didn’t have it tough. We just had it different. So how about you, where are you from?’
‘All over. I like to move around every few years. At the moment I live in Port Augusta. The city is an industrial port, so I live on the outskirts on the old steam-train route, where it’s pretty and historical and quiet.’
‘What do you do in Port Augusta?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve been working as a pilot for a medical transport organisation. That’s where our base is located, but we fly an area of about three hundred thousand hectares.’
‘Just like Bill Bluett,’ he said.