CHAPTER SEVEN
Where the wannabe-Sunday School teacher wants to perform an exorcism on Travis in aisle seven.
Grocery shopping with Travis was fun—well, as much fun as we could have in Woolworth’s. It was such a domestic thing to do, an everyday thing, that most couples probably took for granted, even whinged about. But at the risk of sounding like a lovesick schoolboy with hearts in his eyes, it was the first time we’d ever done it.
I tried to put our earlier conversation about homesickness to the back of my mind and just enjoyed this trivial, domestic chore for what it was.
We had a trolley each and a rather long list of stuff to get. At the station we were pretty self-sufficient, and we did online orders and had things delivered, but there was always things that got missed, and whenever someone went into town, they were given a list of stuff to get.
Our trip was no different. We could have split the list and done it in half the time, but we didn’t. We went, side by side, down each aisle. By the third aisle we were having a sliding contest, which I totally won.
“You cheated!” Travis cried.
I laughed at him. “It’s not cheating just ’cause you can’t steer straight.”
“Straight never was my forte,” he said, smiling at some old biddy who was scowling at us. I think it was the same little old lady he almost collected in aisle two. “Plus I have a wonky wheel.”
I laughed and threw a jar of Nutella into my trolley.
“That’s not on the list,” he pointed out. “Ma won’t approve.”
“Ma won’t know about it,” I said quietly. “It’s only for… private consumption.”
A slow smile on Travis’s face became a grin. “Should we add small paintbrushes to the list? You know, body art?”
“A basting brush, maybe?” I asked with a shrug.
Trav laughed. “Add it to the list.” He leaned on the trolley until his feet were off the ground and he coasted into aisle four. “I’m going to see what other goodies I can find.”
After I’d collected ten kilos of flour, three kilos of sugar and two boxes of UHT milk, I found Travis in the personals aisle. He was up the far end, so on my way to him, I threw in a bunch of shampoos, conditioners, soaps, deodorants and toothpastes into my trolley. That was when I realised what he was looking at.
Lubes.
Fucking hell.
He turned over an orange bottle in his hand, reading the label, and when I got beside him, he looked up at me and smiled. “This one tingles!”
“Jesus, Travis.”
“Or there’s grape flavour.” He made a face. “Why the hell someone decided that was a good idea, I’ll never know.”
“Trav, we’re in a supermarket,” I whispered. “I’m sure we don’t need to discuss this here.”
He looked around at the people in the aisle, who were mostly minding their own business, and he shrugged. “They don’t know it’s for us,” he said quietly.
I knew what he was saying, but jeez, I was barely comfortable being out in public where anyone might think we’re a couple, let alone discussing personal lubrication in the middle of aisle seven.
Small steps and deep breaths, Charlie.
I sighed and became extremely interested in the other side of the aisle, which thankfully, was razors and shaving cream. I added a few packs of both, and then spotted the cold and flu stuff and thought I could get some to help Ma shake her head cold.
I added some lemon-sipping stuff, Echinacea tablets and then I threw in multivitamins for women, because well, Ma’s a woman, and I’m a guy and it made sense to do that.
I looked back at Travis, to show him what I picked out for Ma, when I noticed he was looking toward the end of the aisle, holding up a bottle of lube and showing it to someone. I followed his line of sight and saw the little old lady he nearly collected in aisle two—the same lady who eyeballed him in aisle three—was staring back at him.
Then Travis held the lube like he was showcasing it on The Price is Right. He even turned, giving her a view of the bottle from left and right. “Silicone based, lasts three times as long,” he said, loud enough for her to hear, in a phoney salesman’s voice.
“Jesus, Travis,” I hissed at him. “What are you doing?”
He hiss-whispered, “She’s being all evil-grandma, and I figured if there’s anything in this store she needs, it’s this!” He held up the lube. “I just need to find the dildo section so she can go fuck herself.”
I rubbed my temples. “Trav, they don’t sell dildos in Woollies.”
“Woollies?” he asked, obviously confused. “Is that a euphemism for cock-socks? I didn’t ask for those.”
“Woolworth’s,” I explained.
“See? You do shorten everything. Woollies? Seriously?”
“Yes, Woollies. What’s wrong with that?”
“It sounds like socks or thermal underwear.”
“Can you put down the lube?” I asked.
He glanced back over at the lady with the demon-glare and gave her a blinding smile. I risked a quick look. Jesus, she was coming straight toward us.
She was all of five foot tall, three foot wide and had hair that oddly resembled a grey helmet. Fucking hell, she was even wearing pearls. Her vitriol was aimed right at Travis. “You’re a hooligan, young man. I should have you reported,” she said, her tone full of contempt. “You almost hit me back there, young man, and then you continued to parade around in a reckless manner.”
I blinked, stunned that she was saying this shit, and that she was serious.
Trav, on the other hand, smiled. “Can I interest you in a survey on personal lubricants?” He grabbed a pink bottle and held it up for her. “Strawberry flavour, perhaps?”
She put her hand to her heart and pressed her thin lips into a frown. “Well, I’ve never…”
“Well, you should,” Travis said. Then he smiled his best you-can’t-not-like-me smile. “My name’s Travis, and I’m a sociology and psychology major, conducting an experiment on secularisation of consumers and emotive behaviours in confrontational advertisements. I’d like to thank you for taking part, somewhat unknowingly.” Then he laid on his accent extra thick and tipped his hat. “I meant no offence, ma’am. Just playin’ a part for my end-of-year thesis. And if I don’t say, you played your part perfectly.”
The woman blinked, clearly not expecting this from him. “I, um, well, I…” she stammered.
I was stunned, yet somehow not surprised at all.
Travis, still grinning, tilted his head just so. The woman had traded the demonic look in her eyes for a confused, dazed look. “Your reaction was textbook upstanding citizen, concerned and not afraid to speak up. Well done.”
He wheeled his trolley around and left her staring, open-mouthed and absolutely silent. I gave an apologetic shrug and followed Travis. When I caught up to him, he was looking in the baby product section.
“What the hell was that?”
Travis looked at me. “What was what?”
“What you just said to that lady?” I whispered. He smiled, of course. “You’re not a major in sociology or psychology.”
He laughed. “She doesn’t know that. It’s a tactical self-defence manoeuvre. I’ve always done it. Someone starts yelling, change direction. Simple.”
“Simple? How was that simple? She’s still in aisle seven stuck on the word secularisation.”
He laughed again. “You liked that word?”
I shook my head at him. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I know, right!” he said proudly. “You know, when I was high school, I got called into the principal’s office for making a fart bomb in science.”
“A fart bomb?”
“Yep. One part ammonium sulphide, lime sulphur and sulphuric acid,” he said.
“Of course it is.”
“Anyway, the principal started yelling, so I stood up all concerned, asking him if he felt okay. I told him he didn’t look well, and I thought he should sit down. I asked him if he was on blood pressure medication, and called out really loud for his secretary to come in.” He smiled as he spoke. “Anyway, he sat down pulling at his tie, the receptionist called 911, and my lecture and subsequent punishment was forgotten.”
God, he made me laugh. “You’re unbelievable.”
With his lips curled in a smile, the way they always were, he pulled a baby bottle off one of the hooks. “What about this one?”
“What on earth for?”
“For Matilda.”
Oh, the fucking kangaroo. “What’s wrong with the poddy calf bottles you’ve been using?”
“They’re too big, and she chokes a little because the flow’s too fast.”
“Seriously?” Oh dear God. He was serious.
“What would the equivalent be?” he asked. “This says for one month old, but it’s not like baby humans and baby kangaroos are the same.”
“I’ll be in the toilet paper aisle,” I said, leaving him to find whatever freakin’ baby bottle he wanted.
When he caught up to me, he had quite the collection in his trolley. “I’ll pay for these separate.”
“Three bottles?” I asked. “I think I can afford that.” Then I actually looked at what he’d chosen. “Is that a nappy bag?”
“The diaper bag?”
“What the hell do you need that for?”
“What if I need to take warm bottles with me?”
I stared at him with my mouth open, dumbfounded. I tried to think of something to say—something funny, something reasonable, something, anything. In the end, I sighed. I knew once he’d decided on something, there was no going back.
“Can you get the extra soft toilet paper?” he asked, obviously moved on from the nappy bag conversation. “You know, considering, you know—” He looked around to see no one could hear us. “—what you actually do to my arse, I’d appreciate some soft ply.”
I picked up some wet wipes and showed him. “Like these?”
He smiled slowly and looked at me like I’d just given him a bouquet of flowers. “Aw, you’re so sweet.”
It made me laugh, and I looked around, disappointed that the crazy-lady from aisle two, three and seven wasn’t there to see it. I threw a few packs of them into Travis’s trolley just as my phone rang.
It was Greg Pietersen, my closest neighbour. He ran Burrunyarrip Station, which was 250 kilometres east of Sutton Station. I’d helped him muster in some cattle earlier in the year, and he’d come over to help search for Travis when he was lost in the desert. I answered the call. “Greg?”
“Charlie,” he answered warmly. “I hear you’re in the big smoke.”
He must have called home first. “I am. In the middle of Woollies, actually.”
He scoffed into the phone. “Sounds… interesting.”
“Well, we just had a wannabe-Sunday School teacher want to perform an exorcism on Travis in aisle seven.”
He laughed loudly. “How is he going? The knee heal up okay?”
“Yeah, he’s okay. When he’s not offering little old women surveys on personal lubricants.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I answered quickly. “What can I do for you?”
He had to stop laughing first before he could talk. I held the phone out until he was able to speak. “I’ve joined the Board of the Northern Territory Beef Farmers Association. And I was actually hoping you’d join me.”
I stopped walking. “Join you with what?”
“On the Board,” he explained. “As a director.”
“A what? With all those old farts. The median age is eighty. You’ve just notched it down a decade.”
He laughed again. “Not quite, but that’s exactly my point,” he went on to say. “They need shaking up.”
“They need bringing into the twenty-first century.”
“Exactly. That’s why I want you. The industry needs young blood, not these old-generation farmers who refuse to accept it’s a different game these days.”
I ran my hand through my hair. I was flattered—honoured, actually—that he was asking me, but I just couldn’t. “Ah, Greg, I wish I could, but I kind of can’t right now. I have a lot going on. I’ve actually just signed up to finish my degree. I’m doing it externally, but still, I have assessments and shit.” I didn’t bother explaining about Billy’s cousin coming to stay or the fact that two of my employees had hooked up. He didn’t need to hear my staff problems. “Plus we’re coming into the winter muster. I’m all out of spare time.”
He sighed, and it sounded an awful lot like disappointment. “Look, don’t decide right now. We’re having a Territory Farmers meeting next month, and the Annual General Meeting to decide the Board isn’t until well after mustering season. It’s a few months away yet. Think it over. I’ll be in touch.”
When I clicked off the call, Travis was standing in front of me. “What was that about?”
“He wants me to run for Director of the Beef Farmers Association.”
“That’s awesome. You should do it.”
“I told him I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because some arsehole signed me up to finish my degree, that’s why,” I said. “Plus I have mustering in three weeks.”
“We have mustering in three weeks.”
I ignored him. “Trudy and Bacon have hooked up, that poor kid Nara looks about ready to run any given minute, and someone is up every three hours doing night feeds for a joey.”
“And?”
I sighed. Okay, it was more of a huff. And when he was still looking at me like “Is that all you got?” I looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. “And I need to spend time with you,” I whispered.
He raised one eyebrow. “Need? Like a charity kind of need?”
I snorted. “No. Need like I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t kind of need.”
He grinned something special. “And you think you’re not romantic.”
Before I could blush myself stupid, I pushed my trolley and headed for the checkout. “I never said that.” Then I stopped dead and turned to him. “Wait! Did you say that?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re far too easy.” He pushed past me with his trolley. “Come on, we’d better hurry and get this stuff home, or Ma will send out a search party.”
* * * *
It was weird going home. I’d always had a sense of warmth, of familiarity, a sense of centre, when I drove home. Normally, like I was out of alignment or off kilter until we turned off the Plenty Highway, every kilometre we got closer to home I’d start to feel like my world was righted.
But it was different this time. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go home, because I really did. I just didn’t want my time with Travis to end. There had been some realisations this last weekend, and I needed to get my head around them.
By the time we’d unloaded everything and Travis had set up and tried out his coffee machine, it was later in the afternoon and I found myself in the kitchen with Ma.
It wasn’t that I wanted someone to talk to exactly… Anyway, she knew me too well. “What’s got you hanging around me for, hun? You need to talk about something?” She studied my face. “You look a mix of relaxed and depressed. What happened?”
I couldn’t look at her. Before I lost my nerve, I swallowed hard and told her what I’d equally expected and dreaded. “I think Travis wants to go home.”