CHAPTER THREE
Shitville. Population: me.
“Travis,” I asked quietly. “What are you doing?”
He grinned and walked into the room, still holding a bundle of big ears and curious brown eyes. “Well, her mother met an untimely end,” he said, the corner of his mouth pulling down. “And when we went over to cut the carcass for dog food, this little one was there.”
“Travis,” I said, shaking my head. “We can’t keep a kangaroo.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because they’re a pest. They demolish crops for our cattle. You were out there to cull them, not keep them.”
Travis’s smile faded. “But it’s just a baby. I have no problem with eradicating pests, but I couldn’t just leave a defenceless baby out there. She would have either starved to death or dingos would have got her.”
“Or you could have shot her… it. Whatever. You could have shot it.”
Travis’s mouth fell open. He looked… horrified. “I couldn’t just shoot her!”
“Red kangaroos can open a grown man from sternum to stomach, Trav. Let alone what they do to working dogs.” I shook my head. “You can’t keep her.”
Travis looked down at the joey he was holding for a long while, and when he finally looked back at me, he had that stubborn, determined I’ll-do-what-I-damned-well-want look in his eyes. “Well, I am keeping her. At least until she’s big enough to fend for herself.”
“Travis,” I started.
“No, Charlie,” he said flatly. “No.” With that, he turned and walked into the kitchen.
I stood in the empty lounge room, not sure what alternative fucking reality I’d stepped into today. My boring, quiet, nothing-ever-happens life was getting rather not-boring. I scratched my head and considered following Travis, but figured he needed time to calm down and see reason. Sure, baby kangaroos were cute and fluffy, like all baby animals. But so were baby foxes, baby rabbits and even baby rats. And we sure as hell weren’t keeping any of those.
A pest is a pest.
And little baby kangaroos grow into big full-grown kangaroos, and red kangaroos were dangerous. They’d been known to attack and seriously injure or kill working dogs and even people. I just wouldn’t risk it.
So, deciding I didn’t want to argue with him anymore—and getting my head around everything else that had gone on this afternoon—I went to bed.
I stayed awake, waiting for Travis, for as long as my eyelids would allow.
I woke up alone.
I heard voices from the kitchen—it sounded like Travis and Ma—and given that he obviously didn’t want to see me, and not particularly feeling like conversation or worse, being ignored, I grabbed my hat off the hook and walked out the front door. I wasn’t technically avoiding Travis, but I had dogs to feed and shit to do before breakfast. Anyway, he was technically not talking to me first, and he didn’t sleep in our bed…
…my bed.
The bed. What the fuck ever. He didn’t come to bed last night.
I made myself busy in the shed for as long as I could. Well, until Ma called me for the second time to come eat breakfast. I put my hat on the hook and sat my cranky arse in my seat at the head of the table, next to Travis.
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t acknowledge him. I guess the others could sense my mood because there were quiet looks between them with quick glances at me and Travis. George, of course, either didn’t pick it up or didn’t care. He gave his orders, short and direct, and before I could get up and leave, Travis hooked his foot around mine in that under-the-table-foot-holdin’ thing he did.
I untangled my foot from his and stood up before my erratically thumping heart stopped me. I carried two empty trays into the kitchen, where Ma was. “How are you feeling this morning?” I asked. “I should have asked before now, sorry.”
“Better, I think,” she said, putting her hand on my arm. “You okay, Charlie?”
I didn’t make eye contact with her. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”
Then, like he took his perfect-timing cue from a stage director, Travis walked in. Which, of course, was my cue to leave. I didn’t look at him either.
“Charlie,” he said quietly as I passed him.
“Busy,” I called out from the hall. I grabbed my hat and let the front door slam behind me. So busy is what I made myself. All fucking day.
I spent some time with Billy and his cousin, Nara. She looked a lot better all showered and in clean, presumably borrowed, clothes. We talked for a while, I gave her the standard station rules, and tried to find out a bit about her. As it turned out, she couldn’t ride a horse or motorbike, she couldn’t read or write all that great, and I had no clue what I was going to do with her.
“’S’okay, boss,” Billy said. “She be my shadow ’til she picks it up.”
It was obvious Billy wanted his cousin to stay, but I was short on patience and long on not-in-the-fucking-mood. I took a deep breath and tried to get my shit together. It wasn’t this kid’s fault my boyfriend slept on the couch. “Sure, Billy,” I said. “Nara, you listen to Billy, okay? We’ll see where you fit in over the next few days.”
She nodded nervously. “Sure. Thanks, Mr Sutton.”
Nara looked about ready to bolt, and I couldn’t help but wonder what this kid had been through and what had really happened to make Billy give her refuge. I tamped down my mood and gave her a smile, trying to make her feel welcome. “It might not be terribly exciting for you,” I amended. “But these are good people. If Billy’s not here, you can come to me. If you’d rather not, Ma is usually around the house somewhere. You go talk to her. She won’t mind one bit.”
Nara nodded, and Billy gave me one of those half-his-face smiles. I clapped my hand on his shoulder and left them to it, deciding I’d spend the day with Shelby instead of waiting around for Travis to not speak to me. I called Shelby over, saddled her up and headed north before anyone could come out and question what I was doing.
I just needed time. Time to clear my head and time to breathe. I hadn’t spent a day riding by myself in six months, since Travis arrived, and after spending so long by myself before he got here, it was nice to have some time alone.
Maybe that’s why he’d volunteered to have four days fencing. Maybe he needed time away from me…
I tried not to think about that while I rode. Shelby felt good under me, fluid and familiar, and I was sure by the way her chin and ears were up that she felt good out here too. I think she missed this as much as I did.
“Been a while, hey, girl?” I said to her. “Is it good to be out here, just us, like it used to be? Or do you miss Texas riding alongside us?” No one really understood why I talked to my horse like she was human. I just always did. “I like it when Travis and Texas come along. Well, okay, I don’t like it. I love it. But it’s kinda nice when it’s just us, yeah?”
She didn’t answer, of course.
“You like Texas, yeah? He’s a nice horse, started out a bit silly, but most young guys do. We can’t help it. But Travis seems to have sorted him out just fine. He’s a good stock horse. Travis also seems to think it’s all his doing,” I said. “But we know it’s not. It’s because you and Texas spend so much time together—because Trav and I spend so much time together—that Texas learned good manners from you.” I leaned down and gave her neck a rub. “But we won’t tell them that.”
The winter desert took on different colours than it did under the summer sun. The ground was still as red as ever, but it was… softer. Maybe it was the different sunlight, or maybe it was the cooler air, crisp and clean. There was no blistering sun scorching everything it touched, and the air didn’t burn your lungs.
Winter had its own woes in the desert, but the cooler days and cold nights were my favourite. Especially now that I had a tall Texan body in my bed to keep me warm…
“Ugh.” I groaned out a sigh. “I’m entitled to be mad at him.” Then I growled. “Well, okay then. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I overreacted. But kangaroos are pests. They eat our crops, we shoot them. That’s just how it is. And then he didn’t come to bed. He slept on the couch… or in the spare bed or… I don’t even know where he slept, but it wasn’t with me. And what’s up with that?”
I sighed dramatically and pulled Shelby to a stop.
“So maybe I overreacted. But he did too.” I huffed. Or growled. Or something. “And what’s with the silent treatment? You don’t just ignore someone…” Even as I said the words out loud I remembered Travis had tried to speak to me this morning, and it might have been me that was ignoring him…
I sighed, long and loud. “How the hell am I supposed to know what I’m doing? I don’t have a freakin’ clue! I don’t have experience in this shit. I don’t know what it takes to make relationships work.”
Shelby shifted her weight and twitched her ears, which was horse-speak for “go home and apologise you idiot.”
I pulled hard on the right rein, turning Shelby around. “Yeah, yeah. Righteo, I’m going.”
It was possible I grumbled most of the way home.
I rode Shelby back at a walkin’ pace and was unsaddling her at the shed when Ma found me.
And I mean found me like how an angry piranha finds a bleeding swimmer.
I could tell by the look on her face she was pissed off. “Hey. What’s up?” I said weakly.
Ma raised her pointer finger at me. “You left without water and a phone. It was stupid, Charlie. You know damn better than that. You’ve known better than that since you were four years old. If you want to hide out in the desert all damn day, then go right ahead, but you tell someone where you’re going, and you take supplies.”
Man, she was pissed off. Her anger was a little surprising, then I remembered that she hadn’t been well. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “And I wasn’t hiding…”
She raised one eyebrow at me. “You gonna give him the silent treatment?” she asked.
“He started it.”
Yep, I said that. I was officially eight years old.
Ma didn’t even bother replying to that. She huffed instead. “Charlie, I love you dearly.” She stopped and looked at me. “But you need to grow the hell up.”
I’m sure my surprise was clear on my face, because she sighed, resigned. “He’s been worried about you.”
“I needed some time to clear my head.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“I didn’t mean to make anyone worry. I should have said where I was going. You’re right. I do know better than to just leave. Sorry.”
Ma was quiet for a while. “Don’t fight over the little things, love,” she said, softer this time. “But I suggest you go find him before it becomes a not-so-little thing.”
I nodded, knowing what I had to do, and picked up the saddle off the fence. “I’ll put this away and go find him.”
I didn’t have to go far. I put Shelby’s saddle away and found Travis inside the house. He was hanging one of my old flannelette jumpers off the lounge room door handle. When I looked closer, there was a rather suspect kangaroo tail poking out of it. Ah Jesus, he was using a sweater as a pouch for the freakin’ joey and hanging it off the bloody door.
He kind of shrugged me off and mumbled, “I need to wash my hands,” as he brushed past me. I followed him down the hall to the bathroom and stood in the doorway while he finished at the sink.
Travis turned around, and leaning against the bathroom vanity, he folded his arms across his chest. It was defensive, as was his tone. “Just say it, Charlie.”
My mouth opened and… shut again. I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“But I still can’t keep her?”
I didn’t want to fight about the kangaroo again. But I couldn’t find the words. I shook my head. “Travis…”
“Is this Charlie-my-boyfriend talking or Charlie-my-boss?”
“That’s not fair.”
He stood up straight, pushing off the bathroom counter. “Well, I’m not asking. I’m telling you. I’m not getting rid of her. She’s completely defenceless. If I go dump her somewhere, she’ll die anyway, and I can’t—I won’t—do that.”
I put my hands up and pressed them against his chest as he tried to walk past me, stopping him. “It’s not about the kangaroo.”
He searched my face. “It’s not? Then why are you so pissed at me? You brushed me off this morning and rode off not telling anyone where you were going. George said you weren’t headed to the lagoon, because you went north, not east.”
I shrugged. “Well, it was about the kangaroo, but then it wasn’t. I don’t know why. I just needed some time or something.” I was now fisting his shirt so he couldn’t leave or to keep me from leaving. I wasn’t sure. “But I came back…”
“You came back…” Travis prompted at my unfinished words.
“Shelby thought it was a good idea.” I wanted to give myself a facepalm for saying that out loud, but decided to play it cool.
“She did, huh?”
“Yeah. She thought I probably overreacted.” I let go of his shirt, but neither of us moved.
“She’s a smart horse.”
“She thought you overreacted too.”
Travis was now trying not to smile. “Did she?”
“Yep. But she thought the walk out through Arthur creek might clear my head, and that I should probably come back and apologise.”
“She really is a smart horse.”
I nodded and took a deep breath, looking to the floor between us. “She wanted to know why you didn’t come to bed last night…”
And there it was. The real reason.
Travis slid his hand over my chest and up to my neck before lifting my chin so I looked at him. “I had my dinner, and then when I was feeding Matilda I must have fell asleep. Charlie, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”
“Matilda?”
“The joey.”
“You named it?”
“Of course I did.”
“Matilda?”
“Yeah, you know that Australian song ‘Waltzing Matilda’?”
“I know it,” I answered. “Just don’t know how you know it.”
“Google.”
“Of course.”
“Were you really mad about me not coming to bed?” He seemed amused. “I thought you were pissed off because of Matilda.”
“It’s no big deal. Just stung, that’s all,” I admitted. “And I didn’t know how to deal with you not wanting to speak to me, so I left before you could tell me you didn’t want to speak to me, because thinking it is one thing, but hearing it is something else…”
Travis leaned in and kissed me. Probably to shut me up, but I didn’t care. It was the warmest feels-like-home kiss I think we’d had.
Travis slowed the kiss, pulling on my bottom lip with his own, then he nudged my nose with his to make me smile. “And you left this morning without talking to me,” he whispered. “And you moved your foot away from mine under the table this morning.”
“I’m sorry I did that. Your foot-holdin’ thing is one of my favourite things,” I said quietly.
“Foot-holding?”
I nodded. “Foot-holding and nose-nudges. It’s what you do.”
Travis laughed and kissed me again.
I pulled back a little so I could see his face. “I, uh… I’m not too good at this talking-about-stuff stuff.”
“I’m no expert either,” he said. Then he smiled like he was as relieved as me. “But let’s agree that no one rides off into the desert alone, okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve been riding off into the desert alone for twenty years.”
He ignored me. “And no one goes to bed alone. That should be a new rule. No one sleeps on the couch.”
“I like that one better.”
“It’s not that I missed you. It’s just that the couch is really not that comfortable.”
I smiled at that and breathed in his warmth, his smell. “I don’t like fighting with you.”
“Did you just smell me?”
“I can’t help it. I missed it… how you smell. You. I missed you.”
Travis smiled a just-one-corner-of-his-mouth kind of smile. “I don’t like fighting with you either.”
I looked at him for a long while. His light-brown hair was longer now and messy, his blue eyes matched his shirt. Well, it was my shirt, but I’d long given up protesting his what’s-yours-is-mine policy when it came to my wardrobe. “I can’t believe you called the bloody kangaroo Matilda.”
“You called my horse Texas.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it suits her. She’s cute. Wanna see her?”
I had a much better idea. “Maybe later.” I pulled him against me by his shirt and walked us backward into the bathroom. “I think we’ve got about ten minutes before—”
“Charlie?” Ma’s voice interrupted.
“Before that?” Travis asked with a laugh.
I sighed and readjusted myself. “Coming, Ma.”
Travis snorted. “And not in a good way.”
Reluctantly, I headed back out to the kitchen with Travis right behind me. Ma was at the sink. “Hey, Ma. What’s up?”
She turned around and smiled when she saw us. “I’m glad you boys are… talking,” she said, looking suggestively between us.
“Did you need something?” I asked. She looked better than she had, but it wasn’t often that she asked me to do something for her.
“Can you go out to the yard for me?” she asked. “I need eggs, spinach and carrots.” Then she turned back to the sink. “I would go myself, but I’m a bit behind. I spent the morning worrying where in the desert a certain twenty-six-year-old man-child was.”
I walked over and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, Ma.”
She tried not to smile and kind of failed. “Go on, the both of you.” She ushered us out. Just as we got to the back door, she added, “And bring in some more firewood!”
Travis and I stepped off the back veranda and walked toward the back area of the main yard. Between the sheds and the water tanks was where we kept some chickens in a large wired-in coop and where Ma grew her vegetables.
It was where we kept the four kelpies, each with its own kennel, and when they weren’t working, they were chained or on a run. If we left them off to roam as they wanted, they’d naturally want to round up the cattle, and when we didn’t want them rounded up, it usually didn’t end well. The dogs also served as a good deterrent for any dingos that might come in looking for a free meal of live chicken.
I opened the door of the chicken coop and went in, collecting what looked like a few days’ eggs in a bucket. Travis was on veggie duty and when I was done, I walked over to the raised vegetable beds. He hadn’t collected anything. Instead, he was digging in the first row.
“Trav, whatcha doing?”
He looked up at me. “What the hell do you call this?”
Well, I thought that was pretty obvious. I looked at the rows of spinach, carrots, potatoes and corn. “Not sure what you call this back home, but here it’s called a veg-e-ta-ble garden. You feelin’ okay?”
Apparently he didn’t like me sayin’ words slow like he was stupid. He glared at me. “Charlie, we need to fix this. This is bad.” He let some of the soil fall through his fingers to prove a point.
I put the bucket of eggs down at my feet and looked over the garden beds. Truth be told, I never really paid much attention to it. Ma grew seasonal stuff, and we tried to be as self-sufficient as we could, but he was right. It was in pretty poor shape.
“Well, yeah. It’s pretty bad,” I agreed.
“We can redo this whole area. It’s going to need new beds, new soil,” he said, panning his hand across what was there already. “We will reuse what we can. These old rail sleepers still look good.” He kicked the wooden edges of the garden. “We could go into town and get it all.”
“We could,” I hedged. Although I meant it like a question, I’m pretty sure Travis took it for gospel, because he grinned. “Trav,” I started to protest or to put in a disclaimer of some sort, but he ignored me.
“Here,” he said, stuffing spinach into my arms. “Hold this.”
“Trav,” I said again but almost dropped the spinach. “Wait… just… hang on… Trav.” I kept almost dropping the bloody spinach, and then I almost kicked over the bucket of eggs, and he kept loading carrots on top of the spinach.
“I’ll take the eggs,” he said brightly, picking them up and swinging the bucket and skipping inside like little Red fucking Riding Hood. Where I, on the other hand, juggled, almost-dropped, caught and juggled again armfuls of spinach and carrots all the way back inside.
I made my way to the kitchen, dumping the vegetables in the sink. Travis was standing with the fridge door open, drinking from a bottle of water. Ma was at the stove, not even seeing how I struggled with what Travis had made me carry. “It’s alright, Trav,” I said sarcastically. “No need to help.”
He grinned behind the water bottle. “I carried the eggs.”
“Thanks, boys,” Ma said, probably more of a shut-up-thanks than a thanks-thanks. Then she added, “Travis was just telling me you’re both heading into the Alice for the weekend.”
I looked at Travis. “Oh, are we?”
He swallowed the last of his water, closed the fridge door and just kept on smiling that shit-eating grin. “Yep. We’ll leave in the morning.”