CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fighting: the defining kind.
I insisted Travis shower first, knowing if we ran out of time before dinner, Ma would be scowling at me and not him. It also helped that he was naked and wet in the shower in the bathroom, and I was fully clothed in the kitchen with Ma. Because I’m pretty sure if I went in there with him, neither one of us would be eating dinner.
As it happened, everyone was back from their weekend in Alice Springs, and there was the usual chatter about what went on coming from the dining room. It all fell silent when I walked in, though, and I was reminded of how poorly I’d behaved the week before. I had them walking on eggshells because I’d been in such a pissy mood.
I gave them a smile and took my seat at the head of the table just as Ma was bringing in the last platter of food. I figured there was no time like the present for getting sorries out of the way. “Before we start, I just wanted to apologise for my behaviour last week. I was out of line, and frankly, I’m a little surprised you all came back to work for me.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
I looked around the table. “Unless you’ve all come back to tell me you’re not workin’ for me no more…”
George laughed, and Travis hooked his foot around mine under the table.
“Nah, takes more than that to get rid of me,” Ernie said, though I think he just wanted to start to eat. He was eyeing the food like he hadn’t eaten all weekend. He probably hadn’t.
“Please, eat,” I said. “Don’t disrespect the cook by letting it go cold.”
There was the usual clanging of serving spoons on crockery, but before anyone had had one mouthful, Travis said, “Um, I suppose I should tell y’all that the Immigration department is kicking me out of the country.” There was absolute silence, and every pair of eyes at the table was on him. “They’ve given me three weeks to leave.”
Almost comically, every one slowly turned from lookin’ at Travis to lookin’ at me.
I gave them the best smile I could manage. “He’s not going back.” Then, because that sounded a little psycho, I added, “Unless it’s his choice.”
No one moved. Hell, no one even blinked. So Travis said, “Charlie seems to think it’s just a mix-up or something. We’ll call them tomorrow to sort it out.”
“Can they make you leave?” Trudy asked quietly.
Travis shrugged. “I guess.”
“’S’okay, Mr Travis,” Billy said, wearing his usual half-face grin. “I can hide you. If someone comes lookin’ for you, you come with me. Ain’t nobody find you. Not even a Tracker’ll find you.”
Travis looked at him seriously. “Would I still be alive? Because that’s sounding very much like I wouldn’t be alive.”
Billy laughed, and it was the type of laugh that made other people smile. So with the mood somewhat back to happy, I said, “Please, everyone, eat.”
They didn’t need telling twice. The food was devoured in no time, and while they talked of their weekend, conversation generally came back to Travis. It was pretty clear they didn’t want him to go as much as I didn’t want him to go either. Well, maybe not as much, but close. These people were his friends, his Australian family.
When everyone had gone for the night, instead of sitting with me, Travis sprawled out on the floor in front of the fire. I didn’t mind one bit. It meant I could sit on the sofa and watch him instead of the stupid television. He had a wide-awake Matilda with him. She was out of her pouch, wobbling, still unsteady on her too-big feet, kinda trying to climb onto him. She would put her little front paws on his chest or face, and he’d laugh when her whiskers tickled his nose.
She was a cute little thing, not that I’d ever tell Travis that.
We hadn’t talked any more on what would happen with Matilda. And now with this whole immigration mess looming over him, I didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t want to fight with him, I didn’t want to upset him, because there was that miniscule flicker of doubt—that sinking, couldn’t-even-contemplate feeling that he might need to leave before her.
“What’s up?” Travis asked, looking up at me from the floor. He was on his side with his back to the fire, Matilda now curled up at his chest.
“Nothing, why?”
“You were frowning.”
“Was I?” I asked. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
Travis’s eyebrows knitted together. “About?”
“Tomorrow.”
“The immigration department?” he asked.
“Nah,” I lied. I scrubbed my hand over my face and sighed. “We should get a shade cloth over that garden so the frost doesn’t kill your seedlings. And we need to start running the fencing in the first southern paddock for when we bring the cattle down. We muster in two weeks.”
Travis grinned at the mention of it. “Cool.”
I checked my watch, and given it was a Sunday, it was almost time for his weekly Skype session with home. I looked at how cosy he and his kangaroo were, and stood up. “I’ll just get the laptop. You need to call your mum.”
When I brought the laptop into the lounge room and plugged it in, Travis was pointing his finger to Matilda, making E.T. voices about phoning home.
“You’re such a dickhead,” I said, shaking my head.
He put his hands up over her big ears. “Don’t use that language in front of the kids,” Trav said.
I shook my head at him and opened the laptop. “Fair dinkum.”
“Fair dinkum?” Travis said. The look on his face was a cross between confused and concerned. “What the hell is that?”
I double-clicked on the Skype icon, and while it was loading, I said, “I dunno. Just something we say. It’s like ‘oh, bloody hell’ or ‘are you serious?’ Maybe a bit of both.”
“Don’t ever hassle me for the things I say,” he said, shaking his head. “Fair dinkum.”
“Exactly. That was a good one.” I clicked on his mum’s profile and hit dial.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I wasn’t using it, I was taking the piss.”
“You’re getting this Aussie dialect down pat.”
Travis growled just as his mum came on screen. He didn’t even say hello. “Oh thank God, someone who speaks American.”
“What’s that, honey?” his mum said.
“Charlie’s using words like fair dinkum and crikey.”
“I never said crikey,” I cried, defending myself. Then I stuck my head in front of the screen. “Hello Mrs Craig. Nice to see you.”
There was a two-second time delay, and then she smiled. “Oh, hello, Charlie. How’ve you been?”
“Very well, ma’am. You?”
Travis pushed my head out the way. “Oh, I’m fine, Mom, thanks for asking,” he said sarcastically.
“Oh my sweet Lord,” she cried. “Is that the baby kangaroo? Look at her! She’s not in her thing.”
Travis laughed. “She’s not in her pouch, no.”
“Michael, come quick and see Travis,” she called out to Travis’s dad. There was a shuffling noise, then, “Look at them.”
A moment later, I heard his father’s voice, a deep Texan accent. “It looks like a mutated squirrel.”
I laughed, and Travis grinned. His whole face kinda shined. “Hey, Dad.”
“How you doin’, son?”
I stood up from the floor and left him to have some quiet family time with his folks. His story earlier about that kid Ryder explained a lot about him and his family, and it made my heart hurt a little knowin’ he missed them so much, but wanted to be with me instead.
I straightened up our room, put clothes away and generally made myself busy while trying to give Travis some privacy. When he was done, he found me in my office.
He was holding Matilda in her pouch again, feeding her a bottle. He looked at the desk and saw the letter in front of me. It was crumpled and kinda dirty, a little tattered. “Rereading it won’t change the words on it.”
“I know,” I said. I gave him a small smile. I stood up, walked around my desk and leaned my arse against my desk, then held out my arm for him. “Come here,” I whispered. He walked over and stood between my legs, and I pulled him in even closer, careful not to squash Matilda. “How’s things back home?”
“Good. Everyone’s well. My brother’s having a barbeque dinner. Everyone’s going around to his place,” he said. I could tell he was trying not to sound disappointed that he wasn’t there. It was, I’d imagine, the little things like that he missed the most. “I told them about the visa issue.”
“Oh? What did they say?”
“Momma just said it would work out the way it was supposed to.” He shrugged. “That’s her motto about most things.”
“Was she a bit excited at the mention of you coming home?”
Travis pulled back. “I thought you said I wasn’t going back?”
I gave him a tight smile. “Didn’t you hear Billy? He said he’ll hide you out in the desert,” I reminded him.
“Did you notice he didn’t answer me,” Trav said seriously. “When I asked him if I’d still be alive, he didn’t answer. I’ve seen Wolf Creek, you know.”
I snorted out a laugh and pulled him in close again and held on to him a little bit too tight. All I could see was material, a bottle, a kangaroo tail and two big ears. “Is she almost done?”
“Almost,” he said quietly. The words rumbled in his chest against my ear. “Then it’s bed time for this little one.”
“Bed time for us too, yeah?”
Travis leaned back in my arms so he could see my face. He had that look in his eyes, the one that was a mix of want and need. He nodded quickly, before looking at the joey in his arms. “I’ll just get her settled.”
Knowing he’d need a little time in the bathroom to get ready, I stood up. “Here, I’ll take her.”
He handed the warm bundle over and kissed me, a taste of what was to come, before disappearing down the hall. I waited for what felt like forever for her to finish her bottle and wondered errantly if this is what parenthood was like: sex, intimacy, daddy/daddy time being hindered by a hungry little thing who just wouldn’t wait.
I shook that fucking ridiculous notion out of my head, hung her pouch on the lounge room door handle, threw some logs on the fire and rinsed out the bottle, leaving it on the sink to deal with later.
I had more important things to do tonight.
I had only just stepped into our room and pulled off my shirt when Travis came out of the bathroom wearin’ only a towel and shut the door behind him. Then he was on me. His lips were on my neck, his hands were all over my back and then at the fly on my jeans. “I want to take my time with you,” I said gruffly.
“Charlie, if you’re not in me in the next five minutes, I’m pretty sure I’ll die.” I laughed, and he stopped and pulled back. “I’m being serious.”
I took his face in my hands and kissed him. He smiled against my lips, knowing he’d won, and in the darkened room he slid onto the bed. I stepped out of my jeans, took the lube bottle from the bedside table, and threw it onto the bed beside him. I crawled across the mattress after him. “We can’t have that now, can we?”
* * * *
Waiting for nine o’clock to come around was torture. I’d been up since five, despite the late hour we actually got around to sleeping. I was restless but did my best not to let Travis see it. I didn’t want him to know I had any doubt this whole visa mess couldn’t be sorted out with a simple phone call. I didn’t want him to know how terrified I was. I know we were supposed to be working on the whole honesty thing, but if I told him I was scared, if I admitted I had one ounce of doubt, then I was admitting he could be leaving.
And that was something I just couldn’t bear thinking about.
When nine o’clock Sydney time finally, finally, rolled around, which was eight o’clock Territory time, we sat in my office—and I’m pretty certain Ma stood in the hall, listenin’—while Travis made the call. He dialled the number and got the stupid voice activation robot I spoke to the Friday before. After being on hold for for-goddamn-ever, and just before my nerves split my skull, he spoke to an actual person.
I could only hear his side of the conversation of course, but he went through the time-wasting particulars like reference numbers, visa numbers and then they finally got down to the reason for his call. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” he said. “I’m sure I filled out the subclass 887…”
The person on the other end of the call did a fair bit of talking, and Travis bit his lip and listened. He got quieter and seemed to shrink in his seat a bit, and he most certainly wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He wrote some numbers down, thanked the person for their help and hung up the phone.
“So?” I asked, clear out of patience.
“I have to call this number,” he said, tapping the paper he’d just written on. “It’s an Outreach Officer.” He shrugged. “It’s local. It’s in the Alice, which is a good thing. Be more understanding, I guess.”
“What else did they say?” I pressed. “I mean, they spoke for a long time, they had to say more than just that. What was that subclass thing you said?”
He did that sigh-and-smile thing, but it seemed like more of a trying-to-breathe to me. “That guy seems to think I’ll need to reapply. Said it was just a temporary visa extension, not a permanent one. I mean, I don’t remember thinking anything about it when I filled it in, to be honest. I just wanted more time here. I didn’t think it mattered…”
He wasn’t sounding very hopeful.
“So we just have to call this person?” I said, looking down at the number. “Then we’ll call them. They’ll sort it out, and you can reapply.”
He whispered, “I don’t think it’s that easy, Charlie…”
“Why? What did they say?”
He shrugged. “He said if we couldn’t change it, then I’d probably still have to leave while a new application was being determined. Just because it’s being processed doesn’t mean I can stay.”
I shook my head, and then I shook it some more. “No. We’ll call this other person, this local guy, and they’ll fix it.” I looked at my watch. It was only half past eight here in the Territory. We had half an hour to wait.
It was quite possibly the longest half hour of my life.
Trying to stay positive, I suggested we pull out the old shade cloth from the back shed. “We’ll see what shape it’s in,” I said. “We might be able to use it over your garden.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind, or more to the point, like I didn’t care about the pending phone call he had to make. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Um, okay.”
“It’ll fill some time,” I told him, already walking out the back door.
He took a few quick steps and caught up to me, but he never said anything. Even when I was climbin’ up on top of old boxes and pulling stuff out all over the place, he was quiet.
I finally found what I was looking for. “I knew it was in here somewhere,” I said, throwing the folded up shade cloth at his feet and climbing back down. “We used to have this over the round yard for when we broke the horses in during summer. But it wasn’t much good for that, so we built the more permanent one that’s out there.” I figured talking was better than silence. “Anyway, my old man didn’t like to throw much of anything away.” I unfolded the shade with not much help from Travis. “Dunno what condition it’s in, but even if it’s no good, it’ll do until we can get something better.”
Travis nodded, and I handed him one corner. “Here, hold this and we’ll take it outside. It’ll probably fall apart as soon as it sees daylight.”
“Is anything likely to jump out of this?” he asked, taking the end of the folded up material.
“Well, it’s likely, yes,” I said with a smile. “But it’s not the jumping that you have to be careful of. It’s the biting.”
“You’re still not funny,” he deadpanned and walked out of the shed.
We dropped it on the ground and started to unfold it. There were no nasty surprises, of the slithering variety anyway, but there were a few redback spiders. Travis just stomped his boot on ’em all casual-like, and I laughed. “Remember when you freaked out over seeing one of them?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t freak out. And they’re deadly!”
“Oh, please. No one’s died from a redback bite in sixty years,” I said, straightening out the shade cloth. “Anyway, now you’re just stompin’ on ’em like a true local.”
“Yeah, great,” he said, kicking at the corners of the shade cloth, trying to flatten it out. “I wonder if the immigration department will take that into account. Maybe I should write that on my application.”
“Trav,” I said quietly. “We’ll get it sorted out. I promise.”
He huffed and mumbled something under his breath, then putting his hand through his hair, he looked out across the far paddock. “You can’t promise me. It’s not up to you.”
I lifted my end of the large square of shade cloth. “Come on, pick up your end and we’ll carry it to the house,” I said. I waited until he did as I asked, and when we dropped it on the ground near his new garden bed, I said, “And I can promise anything I like.”
He shook his head at me. “You know, some days I just don’t get you at all. One day you’re all bitchin’ that you can’t do anything, then the next day it’s like nothing can stop you.”
Ma, who was now standing on the veranda holding Matilda, snorted out a laugh, and when I turned to look at her, she was still smirking. “You know, as far as descriptions go, that wasn’t accurate at all,” she said, rolling her eyes.
I lifted my chin defiantly. “Never claimed to be perfect.”
This time it was Travis who snorted and rolled his eyes. Ignoring my glare at him, he looked over the shade cloth. “One rainstorm and this will be ripped to shreds.”
“Well, we ain’t expecting rain for a few weeks now, so it’ll get through the coldest part of winter,” I said. “Then if we need to, you can just order some new stuff.”
He nodded and gave me a sad smile, but he had I-won’t-be-here-in-a-few-weeks written all over his face, which of course made him look at his watch. He exhaled through puffed-out cheeks. “It’s five past,” he said.
“Well, come on,” I said brightly. “Let’s get this cleared up once and for all.”
We sat in my office just like we had earlier. Travis sat in my seat with the phone, and I sat on the spare chair, hanging on every word. Ma stood in the doorway this time, still holding the pouch. There was a long tail sticking out the end and two bright brown eyes keenly waiting for the bottle Ma was swirling in her other hand.
Figuring I needed to do something with my hands other than fidget or sitting on them, I held them out toward Ma. She smiled and handed Matilda over while Travis dialled the number he wrote down earlier.
He gave the same details as before and when he was put on hold the first time, he looked like he was about to be sick. “Charlie, what if they say no?”
I gave him the best reassuring smile I could. “Then we go to Canberra or Sydney or where-the-fuck-ever we have to go. We do whatever it takes until the answer is yes, that’s what we do.”
He smiled then, just as the person on the other end of the line picked up. He did the whole spiel again, giving visa numbers and reference numbers and explained all he could over the phone, and then he listened. “Ah, yeah, hang on. I’ll find out,” he said. Covering the mouthpiece, he asked me, “When could we go to town? They need to see me.”
“Whenever,” I answered. “Today. We could leave now if you want.”
He smiled and spoke back into the phone. “Earliest would be one o’clock today. We’re three hours out of town…” He frowned. “Oh, okay. Excuse me for asking, but is that a little late? I’m running out of days…” He nodded. “Oh, I see. No, that’s fine. Thank you. I’ll see you then.”
He put the receiver down quietly and shrugged. “Monday after next. Two o’clock.”
“What? But that’s forever away!” I cried. “That’s, what—” I did the math “—sixteen days away. You’ve only got twenty!”
“I told her I was running out of days,” he said quietly. “She said it wouldn’t matter. She said she’d know a day or two after the interview.” Then he gave me the saddest fucking smile I’d ever seen. “At least we should be done mustering by then. It’ll be cutting it fine, but I guess it’s something.”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t give a flying fuck about the muster. I didn’t care about anything else right now. But I needed to keep my head. The last thing he needed was me going off the fucking deep end. No, he needed me to be strong and to act like it was just a minor detail.
I gently bounced a still-drinking Matilda on my lap and smiled at Travis. “Then we go to this meeting, and we sort it out. If she, or whoever, decides you can’t stay, then we invite them out here and hide their bodies where no one will ever find them.”
Travis’s mouth fell open.
“What?” I cried. “I’ve seen Wolf Creek too, you know.”
Okay, so maybe threatening psychopathic homicide wasn’t keeping my cool, but he managed a small smile, so it was worth it.
“I mean it, Trav. We will sort this mess out,” I told him softly, confidently. “Like I told you before, if you leave here, it will be because I’m impossible and infuriating and you can’t stand to be near me one more minute. Not because some arsewipe in a suit sitting in some city skyscraper gets to tick some boxes on his to-do list.”
Ma gave a soft rap on the door. She gave me an apologetic smile. “Ernie’s out the front. Wants to know about running those fences for the muster. I told him you were busy, but he said George told him to check with you…”
“It’s okay,” I said, then looked down at the still-bloody-feeding kangaroo. “Um…” I went to hand her over to Travis, but he stood up.
“It’s okay, I’ll go,” he said. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “It’ll help to keep me busy, and you need to finish that assessment anyway.”
“I ain’t doin’ no bloody assessment” I said. “Plus, you don’t know how I want the fence lines run.”
He looked at me from the door. “I know exactly how you want them done, and I’m sure Ernie does too. He’d be just double checking out of courtesy. You want ’em run just like last time, separatin’ lines for yearlings, heifers, bulls and steers in the first west and south paddocks, yes?” he asked, all smug and certain.
I glared at him, maybe huffed a little too. Instead of answering him—because he knew he was right—I looked down at Matilda, at her big brown blinking eyes. “This is all your fault.”
Travis chuckled down the hall, only pausing to put his coat and hat on before I heard the door close behind him. Then Ma was back in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to be listening,” she said. “But it was nice, what you said to him about staying. And Charlie, I can see you’re putting on a brave face for him.”
“I have to. I can’t even think about him going, Ma,” I said quietly. “So I have to stay positive, yeah? Though I’m sure he probably sees straight through me.”
Ma smiled and walked over to me. “Here, give her to me,” she said, taking Matilda off me. “You’ll find a way to make it right, Charlie.”
“I don’t know what I can do,” I admitted. “I mean, what does any government agency do for me? In this country, if it doesn’t happen in a major city, it doesn’t happen. Half the politicians in this country think their meat comes from a supermarket. They don’t have a clue what it takes to get it there: the hours, the sweat, the blood. All they want to know is that I pay my taxes on time.” I shook my head. “And now they think they can just dictate this shit to me? It’s bullshit!” And then because I was on a roll, I kept on ranting. “You know, I’d like to see any one of them come out here and do what he does. He has worked his arse off since the day he got here. You know, only a handful of people can survive out here, let alone love it. I’d like to see a pen-pushin’ politician do one freakin’ day out here. They’d be crying for a private jet to come get ’em before smoko.” I took a deep breath and tried for a little calmer. “He deserves to be here. He’s earned it.”
Ma was trying not to smile. “You done?”
“I ain’t nowhere near done.”
“Good. Then put that thinkin’ cap of yours on and figure out a way for him to stay. Like you told him, it’ll be because of your stubborn hide that he goes, not because they tell him.”
“I didn’t call myself stubborn,” I said lamely.
She patted my shoulder and took Matilda out of my office. I stared at the pile of textbooks I had no intention of reading and opened up my laptop instead. I went straight to the Immigration and Border Patrol website, clicked on visas and started to read.
The next thing I knew, there was another knock on my office door. It was Nara. “Mr Sutton,” she said quietly, “Ma told me to tell you that lunch is almost ready.”
I looked at my watch. Shit. It was near twelve. I’d been reading for three hours. I gave Nara a smile. “Thanks. I’ll be out in a bit.” I closed down the six tabs I had opened and went to my email, looking for one in particular. After double checking dates and times, I pulled out my mobile phone, just as Travis stood in the doorway. He looked a little windblown, a bit dirty and a lot of cute. I gave him a smile when my neighbour answered his phone.
“Charlie?”
“Yeah, hi, Greg, it’s me.”
“What can I do for you? Everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s just fine,” I said into the phone. Travis was still staring at me, and I looked right back at him when I said, “When did you say that Farmers Association meeting was on?”
“Weekend after next,” he said. “Will you be there?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at Travis. “Travis and I both will be.”