By EgmontGrigor2021
Chapter 1
Slouching in outdoor lounge chairs on the wide veranda on their farmhouse in isolated rural South Australia, Gwen and Keith Bullman shared a glass of iced-water while looking aimlessly across the flat and practically featureless 73-acre fallow wheatfield, the fourth largest paddock on their 387,800-acre cattle-cropping farm.
Gwen yawned widely before saying, "Raina spent much of last night in the bunkhouse with the men again."
Running a thumbnail between his two front teeth, Keith said, "What's new about that? Our daughter may be a tomboy but she's 25 and has sexual urgings just like anyone else."
"Well, Keith fucking Bullman, this may be news to you, but most daughters are probably not permitted to sleep in a room of five men aged between forty-two and sixty-nine."
"Yeah, yeah. Change your tune, mum. Same old problem. Same old bitching about it. Same lack of ineffective motherhood."
"Then you provide the solution, you critical arsehole."
"I might."
"When?"
Keith scrubbed his jaw with a grimy hand.
"I'll do it now, given proper incentive."
Gwen's face creased into half a smile.
"I'm off to bake an apple pie. Go fetch me six frozen Granny Smith apples from the garden shed freezer."
Keith limped off to the shed, happy as Larry, whoever he was. Gwen Bullman was famous for her apple pie within 200 miles from whatever direction the wind blew.
Two weeks later, Raina Bullman left the farm with a shipment of thirty-eight cattle being trucked off to a fattening farm south on the more fertile coastal land.
It had been a heart-breaking scene. She'd been paid off by her father and told to go and find a city-career and a half-decent husband around her age.
Mum and dad were crying and shaking in their grief and even two of the five farmhands stood, heads bowed and clutching their hats against their midriffs, were shedding a tear or two.
Raina waved, crying for one of the few times in her life, and suddenly she was no more, swallowed behind the billowing wall of dust sent airborne by the huge, multi-wheeled stock truck, as it gathered speed down the dirt farm track to the secondary highway.
"That was quite some farewell, Miss Bullman."
"The name's Raina."
"That was quite some farewell, Raina. I got the sneaking impression that some of them must have had their way with you."
"They all have at times, sir, apart from my mother."
"Holy whiskers," Raina. "Call me Jake, and you don't need to come on to me because I'm gay. Um, let's talk about the weather and, um, music."
"Fine. Play Bad Bunny."
"Are you testing my musicality as a listener, lass?" the driver asked, tapping on one of his key pads and from the multiple speakers came the sound of Bad Bunny. Raina reached across and pulled hair spouting from Jake's ears and cried, "C-o-o-l!"
He grinned at her, yellow teeth showing under his floppy ginger moustache.
Five hours later, Jake stopped at a road junction to re-fuel and to drop Raina off.
"Thanks Jake. Nice ride and even nicer company. I really enjoyed my escape from the farm."
"Escape, you were blubbing when we drove away."
"Yes, Jake. That was appropriate because I wasn't taking the people from my childhood onwards with me. I may never see them again, including my parents."
They were standing at the side of the truck and she kissed the burly driver affectionately on the cheek.
"Oh shucks," said Jake, his face turning the colour of his hair -- rusty red.
Raina, in awe and feeling rather lost in the big wide world after her life-long rural confinement, caught a bus to Adelaide, went by taxi to the airport, and four hours later, dead tired, had secured a cancellation and was on a flight to Brisbane.
The 21/2 hour flight arrived at midnight.
She sat in the back seat of a taxi, outside the airport terminal, and the driver said to the almost asleep young woman, "I repeat, where to, Miss?"
"To Aunt Nellie's please," Raina yawned.
"Address please."
There was no answer.
Bert Childs was non-plussed. He was father of three adult children and knew young people could be a pain in the arse. But this was ridiculous. The fare had entered his cab and fallen asleep.
A cabbie from his company, Emma Smith, knocked on his window.
"What's up, Bert. Is she drunk?"
"I don't think so. I reckon she's dead tired, probably having travelled for much of the day."
"What's her name?"
"Sorry, Emma. Have no idea. She told me to take her to Aunt Nellie's."
Emma smiled and said, "Right, then take her there."
"She gave no address."
"Well shake her awake and wring the address out of her."
"Emma, if I did that I could be accused of improper conduct."
Emma nodded and said she'd pull her cab up beside Bert's and he could help her to get the fare into her cab. Her shift was about to finish and she'd take the woman home and give her a bed for the night.
"Bert, call dispatch and explain all of this so there's a recording of our actions."
* * *
Sunlight was leaking in around the edges of window drapes when Raina heard a guy repeat, probably what she'd heard him shout, awakening her: "Mum, where's my button-down collar light blue shirt I put out to wash last week? I need it, in a hurry."
Raina jumped out of bed, conscious that she was wearing only panties, strode out of her room and across the hallway and into another bedroom where a nude guy was standing, idly tweaking his partly erect dick.
"What the fuck!" he yelled, placing two hands over his dick, looking at the blonde stranger with shoulders as wide as his below which were a pair of great-looking boobs.
"Have you looked properly for your shirt?"
"Of course," he snorted, answering automatically.
She strode across to the open wardrobe, ran her hand over the shirt hangers and parted the first jacket at the end of that line of shirts and sneered, "Then what's this?" pointing to a light blue shirt under the jacket.
"My missing shirt."
"Idiot."'
"Who the hell are you?"
"Raina, from South Australia up Renmark way."
"Are you lost?"
"Probably."
They stood staring an one another when a woman, pulling a wrap around her, rushed in and said, "Good lord, you two. Have you been at it?"
"With him treating his mother like a slave, I think not," said the young woman.
"Mum, how the fuck is this happening? You promised to give up bringing deadbeats home after that last guy stole all of your housekeeping money."