This fuck-stick was following a script I saw a mile away. He was leading me on, waiting for the perfect moment, then would deliver his own agenda as absently as he could. My patience was beginning to wear thin as I continued to watch his beady eyes stare at me. I could read the thoughts behind them, just as easily as I read the words on the page.
“How much is old Jimmy Steinberg offering? Must be a handsome sum the way you kept snapping at the bootheels of Mick. What’s in it for you? 5% commission? 10?”
I watched as every muscle in his face suddenly tensed, relax and tense again. His lips grew thin, their color momentarily disappearing as his tongue worked something inside his mouth. We sat silently for a few seconds as Ben tried to reassert his confidence, momentarily taken aback with my comment.
“Mr Steinberg’s offer is a generous sum of money for this property. You’d be wise to accept.” He sounded out the accept as if to deliver it via a shotgun. I could see he was rattled. I had interrupted his delivery, him trying to execute his lines like an actor on stage. He’d probably rehearsed the lines many times over. I imagined him in ladies’ underwear, standing in front of a giant mirror, one hand holding a play script while the other was down the front of his panties.
“I don’t need the whole spiel, Bennie-boy. Just tell me the fucken number so we can both move on.” This time he looked like his ears were going to burst into flames, the tips turning beet-red as his tongue worked overtime behind his lips. His face contorted a little, probably more from surprise than anything else.
But I was tired. Tired of playing a game where I had to keep portraying someone I wasn’t. I wasn’t a farmer. I didn’t care about cows, workers or watching the setting sun across fields that I now owned. What I wanted was a big fat cheque and to blow this joint. I wanted out, the sooner the better.
“Try not to choke on your tongue. Just give me the fucken number already,” I repeated. He put his hands palms down on the table, pursed his lips and took a deep breath.
“8 thousand pounds. That’s around 3 pound 20 per- “
“I don’t care about how much per whatever. 12 thousand. That includes the land, the cows, the workers, the equipment and the 2 corpses down by the creek. Take that to Jim and don’t come back without my cheque. Here, I’ll write it down for you.” I stood to emphasise the importance of my next line. I didn’t want there to be a single shred of doubt in his mind. “Don’t even think of coming back to negotiate. There is none. Deliver me a cheque in the amount I asked for, or I hand the farm to George to run, pay him 25% of the takings and live off the rest until Jimmy boy is fertilising his own fucken garden.”
I think I got my point across, because Ben Fordham didn’t speak another word as I wrote down the offer in duplicate. Once I finished, I signed both and had him do the same. Once finished, he packed his few belongings into his briefcase, gave me a final nod and left without looking back. A few moments later I heard his car start up and speed off down the hill.
I made myself a cup of tea and sat out on the veranda. There were a couple of mourners still down by the creek, no doubt engaging in further war stories. I didn’t care. I didn’t know them and I sure as hell didn’t want to listen to them. I wanted out and the sooner the better.
Chapter 6
1.
Two days was all it took for Ben to return. I’d given George a couple of days off, sending him home with a case of wine I’d found in one of the many wardrobes I rifled through. I’d begun to explore the lives of the home’s previous occupants, but as I opened the second wardrobe and discovered endless mountains of clothes, I simply closed it and returned to the kitchen table. I hadn’t shared my plans with George, simply telling him that I would let him know when work could resume.
There was nothing in this place that interested me. I didn’t care for any of it and the sooner I could leave the farm the better. The farm was devoid of life, save for the cows and myself. I was incredibly bored and just wanted to explore the world while I still had a chance. With the money I made from the sale, it would set me up for a very long time to come.
But I did have a strange thing happen to me that day after the funeral. It was what I called my ‘in-between’ day. It was a Wednesday and it was a day after the funeral and the day before my cheque arrived. There was absolutely nothing to do and so I took one of the rifles I found in cabinet, along with a couple of boxes of ammunition and headed for a spot about half way down the hill.
There was a small clearing to the side of the track, a stump and its fallen tree keeping guard over the valley. From that point I could see for a couple of miles, including the creek, graves, main road and the nearest neighbour’s roof.
I began by taking pot shots at anything I considered a target. A rabbit hopping around here and there, birds as they flew by, stuff like that. I took aim at some of the fence posts, cooing for joy each time I managed to snipe a bullet into one.
But that’s the thing. That’s when it happened. I blacked out. It wasn’t the kind
