CHAPTER FOUR
A weekend away together. What could possibly go wrong?
I dropped the duffel bag down in the foyer at the front door and walked into the kitchen. It was before breakfast, and in fact, Ma didn’t look like she’d been up long. But it was Travis who took my breath away.
He was sitting at the kitchen table like he’d done two hundred times. But this time he was holding the kangaroo like it was a baby, feeding her a bottle of milk. Travis looked up at me, and knowing I wasn’t a fan of this bloody new addition, I could see in his eyes that he was ready for me to say something not altogether pleasant.
I looked from Travis’s eyes to the big brown eyes of the kangaroo and how it had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen and even had its little hands up on the bottle Travis was holding. I sighed and felt whatever fight I had in me about the joey drain out of my body. “Do you have to be so cute? I’m trying to be mad at you.”
Travis finally smiled, slow and wide. “She is cute, isn’t she?”
I walked in and kissed the top of his head. “I wasn’t talking about her.”
Travis laughed, and Ma smiled at us. “I told him to use a bottle from the poddy calves supply. It’s a bit big for her, but better than nothing,” Ma said. “Can I make you a pot of tea, love?”
“How about you sit down and I’ll make us both one,” I said. It was still well and truly dark outside and cold, so when I sat down and handed Ma her tea, her hands automatically went around the cup. I’d learned not to come right out and ask if she was feeling okay, because she usually replied by ripping my head off. Instead, I hedged around it. “I’ll stoke up the fire before I leave,” I said. “And there’s plenty of wood beside the mantel. I told Bacon to keep an eye on it if you get low, and he’ll bring some more in.”
“Charlie, you don’t have to babysit me,” she started to say.
“And Trudy will make sure you don’t lift anything too heavy,” I said. “I told her that you’ll be too stubborn to ask and that you’ll tell her she’s just in your way. I told her to be in your way as much as possible, so if you want to yell at someone about that, yell at me, not her.”
Ma sighed. “Charlie.”
“And I asked Nara to take care of Matilda while I’m away,” Travis added. “She can keep her here in the house all day and just come in to feed her every four hours, but she can take her to her place overnight so it’s easier to do the night feeding.”
Ma looked at both of us, probably realising that arguing with the two of us at the same time was pointless. I also knew damn well the second we walked out the door, she’d do as she pleased anyway and she was looking much better this morning. But at least she knew we cared, and the others knew to keep an eye on her.
“I feel better,” she said, looking at her untouched cup of tea.
“Good,” I said. “Then don’t overdo it, and you’ll be better.”
She smiled, but it was a would-you-shut-up-about-it-already kind of smile. She changed subjects. “So, Trudy and Bacon, huh?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. Then I remembered something. I gave Travis a pointed stare. “And you knew about it and never told me?”
Travis was about to reply when Matilda conveniently fussed with her bottle. “Well, would you look at that,” he said, holding up the nearly empty bottle and ignoring me completely. “You was a hungry girl this morning,” he said to Matilda in a baby voice. He stood up, still holding the kangaroo like a baby, carried the bottle to the sink and mumbled something about fixing her pouch as he walked out the door.
I stared at the now-empty doorway, then looked back at Ma. “Do you two take avoiding-answering-questions tips from each other? Because you both have it down pat.”
Ma laughed and stood up. “You two better hit the road.”
“You just did it again.”
Ma patted my shoulder. “Have some fun this weekend, Charlie. Let your hair down a bit.” She took my not-quite-finished cup of tea. “Oh, Charlie,” she said, remembering something. She opened the fridge and handed me a paper bag. “Take these for a breakfast on the road.”
I looked in the bag to find some of my favourite Ma’s-breakfast-egg-and-bacon-pie things. “Oh, yummo.” I kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Ma.”
“And there’s a thermos of coffee on the counter for Travis.” She handed me the insulated bucket of coffee. “You know how he likes that stuff with his breakfast.”
I smiled at her. “I do.” I stood there, a little unsure of leaving for the weekend. “You have my mobile number, and I told George to call me if I’m needed. For anything, okay? I don’t mind.”
She was ignoring me again, already pulling trays of bacon out of the fridge. “Now hurry up and get out of my kitchen. I have breakfast to organise.”
* * * *
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said, looking over at Travis. I was driving, heading along the highway into the Alice. The sun was just coming up, and we’d already been travelling for an hour.
Trav leaned down into the bench seat of the old ute and stretched his long legs out the best he could. “You’re allowed to have a weekend off.”
“I could have ordered everything online or over the phone,” I added.
“Yes, you could have,” he countered simply. “And I know you’d be quite happy to spend every day of forever on Sutton soil, but I need a weekend away.”
“What?” I turned quickly to look at him. “Why didn’t you say something earlier? If you’re sick of being there, you should have told me.”
Travis snorted, smiling his you-missed-the-obvious smile. He shook his head at me. “I’m not sick of being there, but one weekend out of every six months isn’t asking too much.”
“Oh.”
“I want to go out and have a few drinks with you, and have dinner with you, and I want to eat some Mickey-dee’s and—”
I cut him off. “Eat some what?”
“Mickey-dee’s,” he explained. “You know, McDonald’s.”
“Macca’s?” I stared at him. “Really?”
“Yes, McDonald’s.” He shook his head. “Do you really call it Macca’s?”
“Do you really call it Mickey-dee’s?”
“Yes, we do, and truth be told, I never ate a great deal of it before, but because I couldn’t have it for six months, now I want it. I’ll probably regret even considering it about twenty minutes after eating it, but yes I want Mickey-dee’s.”
“Macca’s.”
“I’ll use words like ute and mozzie, and I’ll even call a cell phone a mobile, but I draw the line at using the word Macca’s.”
I laughed at that. “We don’t shorten everything.”
“You’re the only person on the planet to call me Trav.”
I smiled at him as I drove, my eyes darting between the road and him. “Trav suits you.”
“Anyway,” he went on, ignoring me completely. “As I was saying, we can go out and have a drink and a dance.”
“Dance?” I said, probably an octave higher than normal. “I don’t dance.”
“Yes, you will.”
“No. I won’t.”
“You will dance with me,” he said lightly in that you-should-know-better-than-to-argue-with-me tone that I hated. And loved.
“Wanna know what I want most of all?” he asked, looking out the window. “I want to stay somewhere that has showers we can both fit in, and that has enough water that we can spend half an hour in the shower together, and I want to spend Saturday and Sunday morning in bed with you until lunchtime.”
“Now that I can do.”
He was quiet then, smiling at the passing scenery. It was growing lighter as purples turned to blue across the horizon as the sun came up. “Hey, did you wanna drive?” I asked.
“I’ve told you before,” he answered simply, “you sit on the wrong side of the car, and you drive on the wrong side of the road. No, I don’t want to drive.” Trav then sprawled out some more so he was almost lying down across the seat with his head on my shoulder and his feet up on his window. He pulled his hat—my old hat—down over his eyes and smiled. “Now shut up and let me sleep.”
* * * *
I booked us into a double room in one of the nicer hotels in town, so when the lady behind the counter spotted Travis outside at the old truck, she didn’t seem to think anything of it. I even joked with her that I’d take the queen-sized bed and he could take the single.
There was always that stabbing fear that someone would know. They’d somehow be able to tell we were together. I know Travis didn’t give a shit if people knew…
But I did.
I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t ready for Sutton Station to die a homophobic death because other farmers wouldn’t trade, buy, sell or even talk to a gay farmer.
Travis said he understood. And at home, when it was just us, or even if Ma and George were around, we didn’t have to hide anything. We were free to be us. We kept our private life in the homestead and were completely professional when we were working, and the last six months had been pretty fucking awesome.
But this was our first weekend away, together, as a couple. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared.
“You okay?” Travis asked. He was looking at me a bit funny. “You’ve got your overthinking-shit face on.”
I couldn’t help but smile at him. “Yeah, it’s all good.” I threw him the hotel room key and grabbed our bags from the back of the ute. “We can offload our stuff here and head straight to the co-op.”
Travis opened the hotel room and walked in first. I followed him in with our overnight bags to find him staring at the bed. “Or we could stay here for a while first.”
I threw our luggage into the middle of the big white soft-looking queen-sized bed. “That’s why we need to go to the co-op first,” I told him. “I know if stay here, we’ll never make it to the store before they shut.”
Travis sighed, and his tone was deeper. Huskier. “I’m sure we could get all the gear we need in the morning.”
I was very familiar with what the change in his voice meant. “I’m sure you won’t want to get out of bed in the morning either,” I said.
“You mean I actually get to sleep in?” he said. “Later than six o’clock? No dogs to feed, no horses to water and feed before the sun comes up. Ma’s not here yelling at us to get our lazy bones outta bed. Jeez, it’s like a vacation!”
I know he meant no harm, but his words kind of stung. I smiled at him, but it was an effort. “I guess.”
He put his hand on my hip. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “I was just joking.”
“I know,” I replied, still trying to smile. I knew he was joking, but the truth was, he’d just described every morning of my entire life like it was a bad thing. I needed to change the subject. “Come on, let’s go clean out my bank account at the co-op.”
And we very nearly did. Well, not quite, but I needed to replace all the fencing wire we’d used the other week and buying over two kilometres of fencing wire wasn’t exactly cheap. The poor kid behind the counter thought I was joking when I ordered it, then Travis thought the kid behind the counter was joking when he told us the price.
The manager came over—an older guy named Brian who I’d known since I was a kid—calling me by name when he saw me and shook my hand. I introduced Travis as one of my station hands, and we talked for a while—about the farm, about my old man, who Brian had known all his life, then about the weather and what was news in the town.
Eventually we got around to ordering everything else we needed, and I signed off on our account, organised everything to be trucked out to the station on Monday and we were done.
When we climbed back into the ute, Travis was quiet. “You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said quickly. After a while it must have got the best of him. I thought he might have been pissed off that I introduced him as staff, but it wasn’t that at all. “That was a lot of money. And I know it’s not my business to be asking, but can you seriously afford that?”
I threw the ute into reverse and backed her out of the car park with a laugh. “You worried the account won’t clear?”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I knew it was gonna cost a lot, but Jesus, it was thirty grand! If I had of known it was that much, I wouldn’t have added all that garden stuff on for Ma.”
“A few bags of soil, some aggregate pipes and some old railway sleepers hardly made a dent in that amount of money,” I told him. “Plus, Ma will love it. You’re right, you know. I should have done it years ago.”
He ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. He said nothing for a while as I drove through town, but as I pulled into the hotel drive, he looked at me. “Charlie, you don’t have to answer this and you can tell me to mind my own business, but is Sutton Station doing okay? I don’t know why I never thought of the financial implications of what we do. You take care of all that or send it off to your accountant or whatever, I don’t even know, and it’s none of my business”—he cringed—“but you’d tell me if things weren’t great, wouldn’t you?”
I parked the ute and turned off the engine. “Trav, things are fine. We had a pretty good season.”
“I have some ideas on diversification,” he said quickly. “We could set up some smaller yards—”
“Trav,” I said, cutting him off. “You don’t need to worry. It’s all fine. We work on a four-year cushion, like most farmers here do. The money we’re spending today was earnings from four years ago. It allows for a few years of drought, or tough times. We still watch what we spend, of course, and we budget and plan everything. It’s the only way you can survive out here.” Then I added, “Some aren’t so lucky and work year to year, but like I said, we’re doin’ okay.”
He nodded but didn’t seem too placated. “I just don’t want to be a burden.”
“A burden!” I scoffed. “Travis, please.”
“Okay, so maybe that was the wrong word,” he amended. “But I just wanna help out if I can.”
“You already do, Trav. More than you know,” I said and opened the door to the ute. “Now, about that shower for two…” I looked back at him with a smile. “Wanna waste some water with me?”