Mary: Happy Farms

Another day in Port Victoria and another perfect morning. Josh and I were back at it early, out on Keane's boat attempting to find Crayton's house from far out on the water. It seemed safer to me to play voyeur out on the ocean instead of attempting to creep up on land, though never having tried using binoculars at sea I was unprepared for just how maddening it is to focus on anything while being tossed about by the waves.

Regardless of the difficulties, by late morning we succeeded in locating what we thought was the correct address. It turned out to be an entire ranch (or "station" in Aussie slang) complete with sheep, pigs and cattle.


KEANE: Ugh, I'll be stuffed. I've heard of that station. Happy Farms, it's called, at least by the locals.

ME: What have you heard?

KEANE: They get a trespasser and they're set to spit the dummy. Was a mate of mine from school took a dare once and snuck on. The jackeroos [ranch hands-ed.] caught him and beat the absolute stuffing out of him. Put him in hospital for a month, but at least the station owner paid the freight to avoid the divvy van.

JOSH: The divvy... never mind. Why's it called Happy Farms?

KEANE: Even though the owner's a complete bastard, apparently it's a great place to work. No one's ever seen one of his people without a big smile on their face.


Josh and I exchanged looks, and I told them to bait the hooks on the lines so we could pretend to be fishing while we spied on the property. We spent the next hour just floating and watching. The main house was built on the edge of a small cliff about thirty feet high in the middle of a small cove, and right behind the house was a large dock, capable of comfortably mooring a boat the size of the Liberator, but the dock floated empty.

Farther out to sea we could see a pod of whales hunting for food, their blowholes punctuating the afternoon with irregularly-timed hisses. To the south stood the now-familiar sight of Wardang Island, but we had already gone around it a half-dozen times and found nothing. Reluctantly, we moved on so as not to draw too much attention to ourselves from shore.

The first mate Lachlan, already on his second "tinny" before noon said, "Maybe it's not here yet... still in transit, eh?" I thought about it, then shook my head. "How d'ya reckon?"

"Hunch."

He shrugged, uninterested in contemplating it much further as he was being paid by the hour anyway. The boat chugged through the chop back to Port Victoria's harbor as I sat on the aft deck, glumly pondering our next move.

Once back in port we retreated again to Keane's trailer where she barbecued some shrimp and fresh fish, all still in her bikini, which Josh certainly never failed to notice.

After lunch we sat in reclining lawn chairs on the beach. Lachlan kept an eye on his beer, Keane surreptitiously watched Lachlan, concerned for his sobriety, Josh drooled over Keane in her bikini and I divided my time between tsk'ing Josh and staring out to sea. We kept this up for a good hour before Keane's cell phone rang with her mother on the line asking if she could go out and bring her a few groceries in town.

Suddenly I had my idea. "Why not call him?" I got blank looks all around, then continued, "What if I called Crayton? Have him go meet me somewhere? Then we move in and have a closer look?"

Josh looked dubious. "What about the Smile- what about his helpers?" He caught himself. "I doubt he'd take them all with him."

"True, but at least we wouldn't have to deal with him and his tricks. And we might get to learn a little something if he slips up. As long as I call from a public phone, I don't see what we have to lose." He still appeared unconvinced, but Keane shrugged and Lachlan let out an enormous belch, so I took that as a majority vote for yes. "We'll wait until sunset, then make the call. Keane, I'll need to know a town about a half hour away from his house that I can have him meet me in, along with the name of a restaurant or diner, someplace public." She nodded. "Good. Have the boat ready to leave by dusk. In the meantime, I've got to think of how I'm going to ask out my 'date'."