A submersible pump is a stainless-steel cylinder that usually comes in two parts, both of which might be mistaken for a silver flask. There are no stainless-steel cylinders in this box. When I finally get the packing removed, I find flat stacks, big bricks of something solid. Six of them. They are wrapped in a type of thick plastic film that seems to be from another era. I have a bit of a chuckle to myself. The ways that these companies come up with to cheat me are ingenious or monumentally lazy, but always entertaining. I guess the bricks contain plain old paper-fill, and it does seem like a kind of justice. I rip back the last film of unneeded protection, and look at what I have paid for. What I see is $100 notes in stacks, like in the movies, neatly packed and wrapped. Weird green-blue in colour, thirty centimetres high, three wide, two deep. The only time I have seen more than two $100 notes together at one time was at the races with my father when he bet big on a long shot just to show off.

I jump back, curse in rapid fire, and then lean forward and shove the box hard, off the bench, and away from me. It thuds on the floor without losing a note. Is this a nasty trick? I need money. Everyone knows that. Has someone sent these bricks of cash, undoubtedly fake, photocopied, to ridicule me? Could Sarah, my wife, now in the city, have done this? No, never. But who else? A local business? The truth is, I’m not significant enough for people to hate me. I’m no longer a big-enough player for local businesses or any of the other farmers to pay much attention to me. The only time I come up in their conversation is when they ponder how long I might hold out for before selling up. They’re greedy buggers.

I take a few steadying breaths, pick up the box, and check the lid and the outsides for letters conveying a prank, or threat, or at least an explanation. There is nothing — no directions, no explanations. If the money is real, I must have received someone else’s mail: a drug dealer, a bikie, a crooked cop. Very soon, they will work out that their money has gone missing, and will come looking for it. They will have no trouble finding it or me. I can look forward to being bashed or killed, or both. But I am making assumptions. The only knowledge I have of this sort of carry-on is from the TV.