Shooting with Rick

"Oh heavenly I'm sure. So you are progressive enough down there to have school buses?"

"It may interest you to know that guy credited to splitting the atom grew up in Nelson about 850 miles north where I'm sitting."

"That can't be true."

"Oh so an American was first to split an atom."

"I'd have to say that's more likely that a Kiwi kid growing up to do that in when was it, 1940?

"Actually it was 1917. We always do have interesting conversations Lara. You have a lively mind. Would you please tell your dad as at last night we have 17.5 miles of the 23 miles of ring deer fencing completed and I'm placing orders for the supply of red deer and that we have gained approval to place a very low compacted earth dam with spillway across a swamp to provide a shallow ponding area of almost 50 acres to attract water fowl for our hunters."

"Wow things really sound on the move."

""Yeah well I must go. Don't forget to come back here. Even on your honeymoon you'd be welcome. Bye."

"Bye," Lara sniffed.

* * *

When Lindsey and Fraser arrived home from their after-dinner walk, Lara told them Rick had called.\

"Oh god is Rick okay?"

Lara looked at her mom and said, "Yes and I'm surprised that you even remember who Rick was."

"I'll never forget that boy," Lindsey said and Lara felt her face burn.

"Well he's taken a month to call to say he's arrived home safely," Lara said sharply.

"You could have called him," said her father, and Lara said Rick had been the traveler; it was up to him to call.

"Why did he call?"

"To tell dad they have 17.5 miles of their 23-mile ring of deer fencing up and they will have a 48-acre lake created from ponding a swamp, to attract water fowl for their hunters to bag."

"Jeeze, 23-miles of deer fencing. Did he say anything else?"

"No, it appears he really called to say their local school is in crisis and will close unless it gains replacements for two teachers who have left. I guess being a country school it has to have a minimum number of students to continue operating."

"Omigod he wants you to go to that school to teach and in filling that position there will be some sort of immigration benefit."

"He made no mention of that mom."

"Well call the school and find out. What's the name of the school?"

"It's at a small country community called Hallett. But mom I'm not going to give up my life her to go to that remote area to stupefy."

"Or to have the best time of your life," Fraser said. "During that road trip he and I took up north he told me story after story of the adventures he had growing up in that area and the wild country hunting his father gradually eased him into until they were hunting in the really mountainous country of the Southern Alps that create the spine of the South Island."

"Did it want you to go there dad?"

"Well you go when he opens his game park and take some of your pals with you. I'll be staying here looking after mom."

"Your mom will be going too," Lindsey said. "I want to see the game park and I want to meet his sister."

"Sister? Did Rick tell you he had a sister?"

"Yes, I asked did he have any brothers or sisters. Didn't you ask him that."

"No I didn't," Lara said, turning and running from the room crying.

"Hormones playing up?" Fraser asked.

"If it's a hormone called Rick I'd say yes," Lindsey said. "I'll talk to later when she's had time to settle. God I'll hate to lose Lara."

"You can't mean..."

"Something tells me she'll be returning to New Zealand within a couple of months."

Lara wiped her tears and booted her computer. She entered the question on Google, 'Who first split the atom' and the answer came up Lord Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. She found his hometown of Nelson was at the top of the South Island and the atom was split in 1917.

Lara burst into tears. How could a guy she thought didn't care a fig about here reach so deeply into her core from 7000 miles away. Then she remembered once telling Rick she loved him.

She ran weeping to find her mom, aware at twenty-six she was acting like a teen but that didn't deter her.

* * *

Rick had spent most of the day touring the completed fence lines with his father and the general manager of the fencing contract company. They inspected the places where additional work had been done to satisfy the client's requirement that the entire fencing system must be of the highest integrity in construction and to be hold game animals in and neighboring farm animals out.

The acceptance document was signed and the contractor grinned when told to call Shirl to arrange to pick up his final cheque.

"I'll see her down at the tavern tonight," said Ewan, a locally-based fencing contractor. "I need to keep my boys in beer to celebrate finishing this job, our biggest deer fencing job by far. Also everyone is gathering to get a slice of pork from that wild boar that came down off the hills and was shot by Constable Barr outside Marshall's Pizza Parlor when trying to mate with the front tire of a pickup."

"You have to be kidding," Bruce said.

"No mate, my wife saw it happen. Alf from Alf's Meats estimated the boar would tip the scales at more than 400 lbs. There's a big dinner at the tavern tonight hosted by the school board to welcome the two new teachers whose appointments meant the school would remain open. Alf convinced Shirl to put on a $20 cover charge for admittance to the tavern bar tonight with all proceeds to go to the school's sports equipment fund. Alf is preparing the pork at no charge and notices have gone up on shop windows inviting everyone to the tavern tonight to taste a piece of the legendary boar killed by the town's cop for indecent behavior with a vehicle tire."

With record trade at the tavern likely, Rick was helping out behind the bar when he heard a woman with an American accent call out, "Where can a girl get some action around here?"

Guys biting into their piece of legendary pork stopped eating for a moment to call out, "Over here ducky" or invitations to that effect.

Off duty Constable Barr called out sternly, "It is illegal to solicit for sex in this bar" and then his wife told him to button up.

"It's fine Charlie, she's with me," Rick said, vaulting the bar and managing to land between two back-on couples, just brushing them, perhaps the only clear space in the entire room.

Rick pushed past people to get to her.

"Lara," he said.

She cooed, "Rick!"

"Aaaahhhh," chorused many of the females in the bar watching the couple kiss while many of the guys, all locals, stared and looked as if they were wondering how Rick Chambers always seemed to land the babes with decent breasts.

Mrs Church, chairman of the school board called from the doorway, "Miss Kennedy, as one of our two newly recruited teachers, would you kindly return to the dining room where the speeches of welcome are about to commence. I must say it didn't take you long to get your arms around Rick Chambers, the top eligible bachelor in this district."

THE END