CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Where my whole life changes in twenty-four hours.
Travis had the three large pizza boxes on the seat between us and had already devoured two slices in the barely two blocks we’d been driving when he said with his mouth half-full, “Oh! Can we stop at the co-op?”
I swung the ute around and headed for the store. “Sure thing. What did you want?”
“I need some lime and potassium of sulphate.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “Wait. You’re not planning on making another stink bomb.”
He laughed and swallowed his mouthful of pizza. “That’s ammonium sulphide. God, didn’t you study chemistry in college?”
“I was gonna say, after three pizzas you won’t need any help with making a fart bomb,” I said, pulling into the co-op. I laughed at Travis’s face as I got out of the ute.
I’d almost forgotten the events of the night before at the Beef Farmers meeting, and I certainly forgot that I’d seen Brian there. He certainly didn’t look too pleased to see me now. Brian had run the co-op for forever, and up until the look on his face just now, I’d have called him a friend.
When Travis and I walked in, he looked about as uncomfortable as he could get. He took a small step back and couldn’t even fake a smile.
So this was how it was going to be.
This is the exact reason I had never wanted to disclose my sexuality in the first place. It was the attitude of men like this, of business owners like this in small-town farming communities that could make life so much harder than it needed to be.
“Brian,” I said maybe just a bit too cheerfully.
He straightened up some brochures on his sales counter. “Charlie,” he said, not quite looking at me.
“Trust you had a good night last night?” I asked. “Entertaining… informative…”
He stammered, “It, ah, was, yes.”
Gone was the warm conversation, the friendly chats of news and sales. He was bein’ a whole lotta homophobic quiet. I figured I had two ways I could deal with this. I could either apologise for making him uncomfortable and leave or I could watch the bastard squirm.
I smiled at him. “Brian, tell me something,” I started. “You got a problem with me? You know, being gay.” I was getting used to sayin’ that out loud. It just kind of rolled off the tongue.
“I, um, I…”
“You got a problem with the amount of money I spend in your store?” I asked him. “Because, well, I ain’t sure on the exact figures off the top of my head, but it’s at least two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty thousand a year, isn’t it?”
He blinked quickly and swallowed. He wasn’t stupid. He knew where I was going with this.
“So here’s the thing, Brian,” I said calmly. “We’re gonna continue to do business, because it’s convenient for me and it’s a financially sound decision for you. But if you’re happy to never see another Sutton dollar again, I’ll cheerfully pay to have my gear transported from Darwin or Adelaide.”
His voice squeaked pitifully. “Look, I don’t think it needs to come to that.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “But if you’re going to be disrespectful to me or to Travis, then I will return the favour, along with any other stations in the Territory who I can convince not to spend another cent here either.”
Then he finally grew some balls and cleared his throat. “Charlie, I don’t have a problem at all.”
“Good,” I said with smile. “Because it’d be extremely unprofessional of me not to do business with you because of what you do in your bedroom, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t affect how you do business at all, does it?”
He got my point. He shook his head. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“Then we’re on the same page,” I said brightly. “Now, Travis needs lime and sulphate for Ma’s garden.”
“No problem. This way,” he said, walking off toward the back wall. “What size?” he asked.
I think Travis was stunned into silence. He was staring at me. “Trav, what size bag?”
“Oh.” He shook his head. “Um, maybe twenty pounds?”
“Can you talk in kilos?” I griped as we followed Brian. “One word for you, Trav. Metric. The rest of the world uses it.”
“Shut up,” he said and pushed me into an aisle of cane mulch.
Brian was lookin’ at us like we were an old bickering married couple. “Ten kilos is close enough?”
Travis looked at the bags of fertilisers. “Perfect.”
“Oh,” I said as I remembered. “I’ll need to order in new teats for the poddy feeder. We’re expecting calvin’ two-to-one this spring.”
Brian’s eyebrows rose. “Busy.”
“Always.”
“Teats come in packs of ten.”
“Gimme three. If I need more, I’ll let you know.”
We paid for the fertiliser, and I made a point of shaking Brian’s hand to show him goodwill. I meant no harm before, sayin’ what I did, I just had to prove a point. And by the time we left, I think he was okay with it.
I’d barely got us back onto the main road when Travis said, “Um, Charlie, you were kind of awesome and a little bit scary back there.”
“Scary?”
“Yeah, like The Godfather scary.” He made a gun with his hand and spoke in a low, husky, poorly done Italian accent. “The contract. Your signature or your brains.”
I laughed at him. “And you know what I reckon scared old Brian the most?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
I blew out through puffed cheeks and shook my head. “Jeez, I sounded like my father.”
Travis looked at me for a long few seconds. “Is that a good or bad thing?”
I smiled at him as I drove. “I’m okay with it. Today, back there, telling him I was gay and he could deal with it or lose one of his biggest clients, it felt good.”
Travis smiled. “Charlie, I think you’re officially out.”
I snorted out a laugh. I was grinning. “And you know what? I’ve never felt so…”
“Good?” he offered.
“I was gonna say free.”
“Free is good.”
“Free is awesome,” I said with a laugh.
When Trav had eaten as much pizza as he possibly could, he put the boxes down where his feet should be, leaned against my arm with his feet up by the window and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He slept while I drove, and for an hour or so, I tried to put a name to what felt different.
I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but something felt… different.
Better.
We still had a whole day to wait until the Australian Immigration department delivered their verdict, but even under that dark cloud of waiting, I still felt something shift inside. Something got lighter, less of a burden, and as I pulled into the Sutton Station driveway, I almost reckoned I had it figured out.
Now I know most people’s driveways are kinda short, some just a few feet long. My driveway, from mailbox to homestead, was thirty-two kilometres. I dunno whether it was the ute slowin’ down to make the turn off the road or if something in Travis’s sleeping mind told him he was close to home, but he woke up. I pulled the ute to a stop.
“What’s up? What’s wrong?” Travis said, looking around, still half-asleep.
I smiled at him. “Nothing’s wrong at all.”
He picked up the pizza boxes so he had somewhere to put his long legs. “Then why’d we stop?”
I took a deep breath and thought, what the hell? This talkin’ shit out seemed to be workin’ out pretty good. “I think I figured it out.”
Travis made a face. “Figured what out? Charlie, could you cut the cryptic? I need to take a piss.”
I laughed at him. “See? That’s why I like bein’ gay. We don’t have to mind our manners in front of a lady.”
“Is that what you figured out?”
“Well, no, I was just sayin’, you know, ’cause it’s true.”
“Alright,” he said slowly. He looked around outside, probably trying to figure out why I stopped where I did. “Charlie, you okay?”
“I’m very okay,” I told him. “I just wanted to tell you something before we get home and play two hundred questions with Ma.” Then I told him what I thought I’d figured out. “Remember the other week, when I was all out of sorts and being a stubborn shit?”
“Um, you’re gonna have to narrow that down for me, because well, there’s been a few…”
I laughed at that. “When I told you I felt caged in, or something like that.”
He nodded. “You said you felt bound. You used the word bound,” he said. The word had obviously stuck with him. I didn’t realise it had hurt him. “Not by me, apparently, but by this place.”
“Not by you,” I said quickly. “And that’s what I figured out. It’s not this place either. It was me.”
He frowned, confused. “What do you mean it was you?”
“It was me. And since we left town, I’ve been trying to figure out what feels different, and that’s what it is.”
“You feel different?”
“I do, kinda. Somehow. I dunno. I feel better. You said the word free, and I reckon that’s what it is. I’m free now. I always thought bein’ known as a gay farmer would kill me or my farm, but you know what? I think maybe the opposite is true.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “You don’t feel caged in anymore?”
“I didn’t even really know I did feel that way until I wasn’t anymore,” I tried to explain. “I think I got all antsy over the last few weeks because I had you here every day and it should have been perfect, but I still wasn’t able to, you know…” I shrugged. “I still wasn’t free to be out. I don’t know if that makes sense…”
Trav leaned across and kissed me. It was a pepperoni kind of kiss. “It makes perfect sense.”
“And it’s not that it’s just because I ‘came out’,” I said, using air quotes. “I think it’s because I’m not ashamed. I always figured if the local farming community knew I was gay, it’d be something to apologise for.” I shook my head and suddenly found the steering wheel interesting, looking at it instead of him. “But I’m kinda proud of who you let me be.”
He never said anything back, and when I looked at him, he was just sitting there, stunned. “Charlie, I don’t know what to say,” he said quietly. “I think that’s the best, most perfect thing you’ve ever said to me. That anyone will ever say to me.”
I smiled, then kind of laughed. It was a relief to have said all this out loud. “I just wanted you to know.” I started the ute again. “You ready to go home?”
“Nope,” he said, opening his door. “I really need to pee.” He got out, walked over to the fence and peed the Todd River on a post. There were a few cattle about a hundred metres away, and I laughed when he waved to them. When he finally finished, zipped up his fly and got back into the ute, he grinned. “Now I’m ready to go home.”
* * * *
I wasn’t far wrong from the two hundred questions I presumed we’d have to answer. But it wasn’t just Ma. Everyone was there and they all wanted to know every detail, especially about my black eye.
Travis, who’d picked up Matilda as soon as we got home and hadn’t put her down, told them about the Beef Farmers meeting and my subsequent altercation with Fisher. “He got in one swing at Charlie,” Travis said, nodding to me and the evidence that was my black eye. “But holy shit, you should have seen Fisher. Broken nose for sure, missing teeth. Rocky Balboa here sure as hell didn’t miss.”
I held up my right hand, showing the cuts on my knuckles. “He said some things that weren’t strictly polite,” I told them. “And this was after he’d told every business owner there that I—” I searched for better way to phrase it. “—didn’t fancy girls.” I had always avoided this subject with my team. They knew I was gay, of course, but I never, ever talked about it.
Until now.
“So chances are, if you’re in town, someone somewhere’s gonna say something to you about it,” I told them. This was the shitty part. “Brian, at the co-op this morning, tried to act like I wasn’t welcome.”
Everyone’s eyes widened, and Ma gasped quietly.
Travis was completely unfazed. He was all animated when he told them, “Then Charlie proceeded to tell Brian that he will keep doin’ business as per usual or he’ll see to it that everyone pays extra haulage to buy their stuff from Darwin.” Travis laughed. “You should have seen Brian’s face.”
I shrugged. “Ain’t no one gonna tell me my money isn’t good enough,” I said. “And if anyone says anything to you guys, just let me know.”
“Oh,” Travis added, “Charlie also told that old guy…” He looked at me. “What was his name?”
“Jack Melville,” I answered. Everyone here knew that name.
Travis snorted. He was talkin’ like he was proud of me. “Yeah, well, Charlie told him too—and everyone else there—that this is how it is, and you can like it or deal with it.”
I sighed long and loud. “I can guess there’s gonna be some repercussions. I didn’t really hold back any. I told ’em exactly what I thought of ’em. But I don’t care. I won’t bend to breakin’ just because they say so. It ain’t written anywhere that I have to play to their rules, and if it comes down to that, then it’s an easy fix.” I said, with a smile. “I’ll just change the rules.”
Ma smiled, all proud-like with tears in her eyes, and George gave me a knowin’ nod. I think he saw a glimpse of my father in me, laying down the law like that, and if that was the trait I took with me, that was fine by me.
It was Bacon who spoke next. “So, Travis, when do you hear back from that lady?”
“She said twenty-four hours,” he answered. “So tomorrow, I guess. Maybe after lunch?” He tried to keep up the confident smile, but it didn’t quite work. “She said she’d try and put forth a good argument in my favour, but she said she wasn’t too confident.”
No one really knew what to say to that. Except for Trudy. She summed it up perfectly. “Well, that sucks.”
I laughed, and all eyes turned to me like I’d lost my mind. I told ’em, pure and simple, just like Travis had said seven months ago, “He ain’t getting on that plane.” I clapped Travis on the shoulder and looked at Matilda. “Put that overgrown rat down. We got work to do.”
For the rest of the day and even during dinner, I pretended I wasn’t waiting for the axe to fall. It was coming, I knew it was. I just wanted the rest of my time not knowing to be as normal as possible.
I barely slept a wink, and I guessed Travis didn’t sleep at all. I must have dozed at some point, because when I did wake up, it was just after four and Travis was layin’ next to me, whispering to an bundled-up, wide-awake Matilda.
When he saw I was lookin’ at him, he stared at me for a long moment. He looked all pale and sad in the moonlight. “I was just telling Matilda that if I do have to leave, that you’ll look after her,” he whispered. Even in the darkened room, I could see his eyes well with tears. “You’ll look after her, won’t you, Charlie?”
I pulled him close, kinda squishing Matilda in between us. I was gonna tell him I wouldn’t have to because he wasn’t getting on that plane, but that wasn’t what he needed to hear. So instead, I kissed the side of his head and whispered, “Of course I will.”
The both of them slept for a while, snuggled into my arms, and I stared at the wall until it was time to get up, wishin’ hard and prayin’ harder that this wouldn’t be the day that broke my heart.
* * * *
I moved through the morning on autopilot. I barely ate my breakfast, and I had to force down lunch. We stayed close to the house, as did everyone, waiting for, dreading the ringing of the damn phone. We had a few other calls, and every time, my heart leapt into my mouth. As the hours crept on, it felt like every minute put a weight on my chest.
I was helping fix the shade cloth over Ma’s garden, and Travis was pretending I wasn’t bein’ a pain in the arse. No one really said much, the whole day seemed eerily quiet, so when Ma yelled, “Travis! Phone!” from the back veranda, it was so loud I dropped my pliers.
Travis wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at me with wide, this-is-it eyes. I gave him a nod and a smile, when truly, I felt like I wanted to vomit and it was getting harder to breathe.
We walked inside and into my office, one mechanical step after the other. Everyone kinda followed us in, kinda pretending not to be listen, but all waiting to hear. Travis didn’t sit down. He stood at the desk, took a deep breath, and put the call on speaker.
“Mr Craig?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Nerida Martin speaking,” she said. “Thank you for meeting with me. I know you’re very keen to know the outcome, so I’ll just cut straight to the chase. Your case has been reviewed.”
“And?”
I don’t know how he could even speak. I was standing to his side at the desk. I felt sick. I couldn’t look at anyone. I couldn’t let them see me on the verge of losing everything.
“In light of the contribution you’ve been making to the community, your application for a permanent visa has been granted.”
And just like that, with those simple words, my world was righted. My eyes stung, and I had fucking air for the first time in weeks.
He was saying something back to her and laughing, and his eyes were the brightest blue I think I’d ever seen them. I couldn’t really concentrate on what they were saying because my head was starting to spin and I still couldn’t quite get enough air. Everyone was smiling and happy, and I had to leave. Needed to. I had to walk outside. I couldn’t deal with the room of people, and I sure as hell didn’t want them to see me fall apart.
Because as I stumbled to the door, my eyes burned and I refused to let any of them see me fucking cry.
Travis was about two point four seconds behind me. “Charlie?”
I turned to face him, and the look on my face must have shocked him. He threw his arms around me like he was holdin’ me together. I let the stupid fucking tears fall and sucked back the deepest breath I could. “I feel like I’ve been breathing through a straw for weeks.”
He pulled back and put his hand to my face. His lips pulled down in a twisted smiley-frown. “Oh, Charlie.”
I scrubbed my face with my hands, my voice barely a whisper. “I was so scared.”
Travis took my face in his hands. “I’m staying. For as long as I want.”
I sighed and leaned my face into his touch. I couldn’t speak. I was still just trying to breathe. All I had was more stupid fucking tears.
Travis just pulled me against him again and held me so fucking tight. So tight. “You okay, Charlie?”
I nodded into his neck. “Yeah.”
“Happy tears?”
I laughed at that. “Very.”
“So you weren’t so confident that I’d be staying?” he asked. “You’ve been acting like you knew I would be all along.”
I shook my head. “God no. I thought you were going for sure. I didn’t want to deal with it. I couldn’t even bear thinkin’ about it.”
“So you let me worry all by myself?”
I pulled back so I could see his eyes, so he could see mine. “I’m sorry I’ve been such an idiot. I guess it’s just how I deal with stress.” I shrugged. Then I word-vomited. “I dunno. I just push everyone away. I don’t mean it. I’m so used to bein’ all caught up in my head and used to it just bein’ me. Bein’ alone, yeah? And then you came along and changed all that, and now I kind of can’t live without you. Well, then I very nearly had to because you were gonna have to leave and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I’m sorry. But I’ve been workin’ hard at trying to talk to you about stuff. I just couldn’t talk about you leaving. I just couldn’t…”
He held my gaze for a long, quiet moment. Maybe he was searching for something, maybe he was savouring the moment, I didn’t know. “You don’t have to, Charlie,” he whispered. He rested his forehead on mine and ever-so-softly nudged my nose with his. “You don’t have to.”
“Do that again,” I whispered with my eyes closed.
“What? This?” he asked, softly nudgin’ his nose to mine.
I smiled at the butterflies it gave me. “That’s the best thing ever.” I pressed my lips to his in a silent, perfect moment. I wiped my face and took a deep, thought-collecting breath. Sliding my hand over his, I led him back inside. Everyone was still in there, in the lounge room now, but they were quiet, waiting… I still had Travis’s hand, and I had no intention of letting it go. I didn’t care if they saw it, I didn’t care if it weirded them out.
“Sorry,” I told them. “I, uh, I just needed a minute.”
“So, Travis,” Billy said. He was grinning his half-face smile. “How long you stayin’ for?”
He squeezed my hand, but he smiled right at me. “For as long as Charlie will have me.”
Everyone’s eyes went to me, waiting for me to reply. I dropped Travis’s hand, but only so I could put my arm around his waist. I pulled him into my side. For the first time ever, my staff, my family, saw me touching Travis. I was smiling like some lovesick teenager. Hell, I think I even blushed. “I’m pretty sure I’ll piss you off somewhere between now and forever.”
Travis laughed. “I’m sure you will.”