CHAPTER EIGHT
When it rains, it pours.
Ma was immediately concerned. “What do you mean?”
“I think he’s—I know he’s homesick. I think he wants to go home, as in America.”
Ma was quiet for a little while, and then her eyes narrowed. “You think? Or you know?”
“He said he was homesick. He admitted it.”
“Of course he is, love. That’s only natural. He’s a long way from home. But did he say he wanted to leave, or are you assuming?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She sighed, a sound of relief. “Of course it matters, Charlie. Goin’ off assuming the worst, without actually talking about it, is a recipe for disaster. You said he admitted it?”
I answered with a nod, still looking at the floor. “There’s so much he misses because he’s stuck out here. Coffee, going out, having fun, takeaway food, green grass.”
“Is that why you bought him the new coffee machine?”
I looked at her then and gave her a sad smile. “It doesn’t really compare, but I had to do something.”
“Well, he’s awfully pleased with it. I think you did great!”
I tried to smile, but it didn’t feel right. “He sat down in the park in the middle of town with his bare feet in the grass,” I said, almost a whisper. “I can’t compete with that.”
“Compete?”
I felt stupid for admitting this stupid shit. “Yeah. He’s all green grass, and I’m more of a red dirt kind of guy.”
Ma put her hand on my arm. “Oh, hun. You need time to adjust. It’s been a huge life change for both of you.
I was frowning and feeling a dozen shades of self-pity. “Well, I learned something else from our weekend away.”
“What’s that?”
“That it was great. That I loved it,” I admitted. “And that I can’t go back to the way it was before him. Without him.” Then I whispered, “If he were to leave, I’d never get over it.”
Ma sighed. “I’ll tell you one thing too, Charlie. You’re both as stubborn as each other. You need to talk.”
The sound of the back screen door slamming put a stop to our conversation, and we waited for whoever it was to arrive at the kitchen door. I knew by the footfalls who it was before I saw him.
“Look who I found!” Travis said, his grin made my heart stutter. He was holding Matilda like she was a human baby, not a joey. She was snug in her makeshift pouch; all that was protruding was the end of her tail and her too-big ears and bright-brown eyes.
“You found her?” I asked. I couldn’t help but smile at him.
He looked so damn happy. “Well, I had to find Billy first, then together we found Nara, who did a mighty fine job looking after her. And then we found Matilda.” He looked down at the bundle in his arms. “I think it’s afternoon tea time, though. And I thought I could try one of her new bottles.”
I turned to Ma. “He thinks the poddy calf teats have too much flow, so he bought some—”
Ma cut me off. “I saw them.” Then she looked at Trav. “Her special formula is in the fridge.”
Travis opened the fridge door with his foot and shuffled around, trying to hold Matilda and get the milk at the same time. It was almost comical, until he looked around and shoved the bundle of kangaroo into my arms. “Here. Hold her.”
I was gonna object, until I looked down and two big brown eyes with the longest eyelashes ever looked back up at me. I huffed instead, and Ma pretended not to smile.
“It’s not funny,” I mumbled.
“’Course not, love,” she said, biting the inside of her lip, still trying not to smile.
Travis took one of the new bottles from the steriliser and busied himself heating the milk then pouring it into one of the new bottles. When he was ready, he took Matilda from me. Once she was settled back in his arms, he tentatively put the new teat to her mouth.
Ma and I kind of leaned in to see how she’d take it, and lo and behold, she took right to it. Travis grinned at us, and I’d be lyin’ if I said it didn’t make my heart thump funny. He had this way of making me love him just a little bit more by doing the simplest of things. The littlest of things.
Maybe she caught me staring at him, or maybe it was the way he looked right back at me in a way that made the world disappear, but Ma blushed. “You boys go along now,” she said softly. She cleared her throat and spoke louder. “I need my kitchen, or there’ll be a riot come dinner time.”
Ma pushed us out the door, and I followed Travis to the lounge room. He sat down on the sofa, still holding the bundle of baby kangaroo like a real baby, watching her feed. Realising I was just standing there watching him watch her and not doing anything at all productive, I wiped my hands on my jeans. “Well, I’ll be in the office, then,” I announced.
Trav gave me a smile that seemed to grow wider the longer I just stood there. I made myself walk out, sat my arse in my office chair, shook my head at Travis being all cute and making me stupid, and checked emails. There were the expected emails from the bank, the phone company, the feed supplier invoices, the transportation company reminder and the Alice Springs co-op confirming the order we’d made, which was being delivered tomorrow.
There was also an email from Greg.
I opened it, and had only read the first line before I sighed. Have you reconsidered my offer? The Northern Territory Beef Association board nominations close in a few weeks.
I hit reply and tried to think of a polite way to tell him, my friend, to sod off. I wasn’t interested. With everything going on at the farm, I simply didn’t have the time, and even if I did have the time, I lacked the inclination. To put it bluntly, I didn’t fucking want to. I’d help him out with anything else, anything, but not this. I’d already told him no once, but that didn’t seem to work. I just didn’t know how to phrase “not fucking likely” in a way not to piss off my closest neighbour.
I closed the emails instead of answering at all and opened the weather tab. I checked it every day to see the forecasts, short and long term. I remember my father would scoff at the weatherman on TV. He said if a farmer didn’t know what the weather was doing by the way the animals were behaving, he wasn’t a real farmer.
I mean, that’s kind of true. Ants and birds and horses were a good an indicator as any barometric instrument, but my father also wasn’t a farmer in the age of the internet. I looked at the usual information, on percentages, pressure, forecasts and figures. And from all indicators, besides the cloud cover over Western Australia, we were getting rain. Lots of it.
Then I heard Travis, somewhat muffled through the wall. “Nara, come in.”
Nara was so soft-spoken I could barely hear her, and if she came into the house, it must have been for something important. Not that I was eavesdropping, but I’d barely got more than two words out of that poor kid—so I was totally eavesdropping.
“Isn’t she the cutest thing ever?” Travis said. Nara must have said something, because then Travis said, “No, you did a great job looking after her! You can babysit her anytime.”
I heard her soft murmur but couldn’t make out the words.
Travis laughed. “Nah, I’ll do tonight. You should get more than three hours of straight sleep tonight. I’ve had two nights off.”
It was quiet for a second, and whether Nara spoke I wasn’t sure. I could hear Travis’s voice easily when he spoke next. “Well, I’ll need your help tomorrow.”
I heard her this time. “What for?”
“We’re making a start on rebuilding Ma’s garden,” he told her. “We’re expecting a delivery tomorrow sometime, and I’m gonna need all the help I can get.”
I stood up from my desk and walked as quietly as I could to the lounge room door. I wasn’t surprised that if anyone on this station could get a conversation out of Nara, it’d be Travis. And I was curious.
And nosey, and possibly a little bit jealous. Not crazy-jealous, but niggly-jealous, that she’d approach Travis to talk openly, yet look like she’d rather bolt into the desert when I spoke to her.
I stood in the doorway and Nara, whose eyes went wide when she saw me, went to stand up. I put out my hand, palm forward. “You can stay. Please, stay. I was just in my office,” I said with a smile, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. Then I looked at Travis. He was still sitting with Matilda and an empty bottle at his feet. “Trav, I heard you mention the garden. I just checked the weather. We’re expecting rain this week, so you might want to put off starting it…”
“Or start extra early,” he prompted. “I know you don’t get much rain out here, but it’s only water, Charlie. It won’t hurt me.” He looked at Nara and gave her a dramatic roll of his eyes. I’m pretty sure he was trying to show Nara that I wasn’t someone to be afraid of. “Plus, Nara’s gonna help me.”
I think she was going to protest. She blinked a few times and shook her head. “I, um—”
Trav nodded in that of-course-she’s-helping-me way that meant Nara didn’t have a choice. He only had to smile and most people did what he wanted. “Yeah, I can’t do it all by myself.”
It was obvious Nara didn’t know what to say—her mouth opened and closed a couple of times—so she nodded instead. I smiled at them and left them to it. “I’m going to find George.”
I found George at the back of the shed by the stables. He was mucking ’em out, not payin’ me any mind. “Surely someone younger around here can do that?” I asked.
He groaned when he stood up straight and held the shovel out to me. “Yep. Here he is.”
“Someone younger, and someone who’s not me,” I said, but took the shovel anyway. I started where he’d left off while George stretched out the kinks in his back. “Why aren’t you using the longer-handled shovel?” I asked him as I continued to shovel hay and shit.
“I was using that one out the yard and thought I’d just start on this in here,” he said. “Then I kind of didn’t stop.”
I laughed at him. “You’re a glutton for punishment. Your back will remind you of this for a week.” Then I stood up and looked at him. “Not that you’re too old for this.”
He smiled, slow and warm. “I am too old for this.”
“Never,” I disagreed. I started shovelling again as I told him, “Just checked the weather channel. They’re sayin’ there’s two inches of rain coming this week.”
“I know.”
I looked up at him, mid-shovel. “Your bones tellin’ you that? Or arthritis, old man?”
“The internet, smart arse.”
I barked out a laugh and kept mucking, scraping the shovel on the stable floor to pick up the last of the straw. I leant the shovel against the wall and walked over the pile of clean bedding hay. “Well, you know what two inches rain means?” I asked.
“Arthur Creek comes down. It’ll be impassable.”
“Yep. And we’re drovin’ in two weeks.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said in that casual, ever-patient way he did. “We could head ’em east and bring ’em down above the ridge line.”
I nodded. “Sounds like we’ll have to.”
George gave a hard nod, no doubt already making mental plans. “We can do a flyover tomorrow and peg out the best route.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I told him. “We’re getting a delivery tomorrow. Travis wanted to build Ma a new veggie garden.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” I said, spreading another layer of hay. “He said it was disgraceful and a complete miracle that she could grow anything.”
“He said that?”
“Yep.”
“We built that.”
I looked at him and laughed. “That’s what I said!”
George chuckled. “You’ll go and spoil her,” he said. “Makes me look bad.”
“I’ll tell her it was your idea.”
George laughed at that. “Then she’ll know you’re lyin’.”
I walked over to the side gate. “Speaking of spoiling our girls,” I said, giving a waiting Shelby a scratch on the forehead. “You can smell fresh hay, can’t you, girl?”
All out of patience, she snorted and threw her head down, making me laugh. I took my hand off the metal latch on the gate. “You stomp your foot and I’ll make you wait.”
So, of course, she stomped her foot.
I unlatched the gate anyway, and Shelby pushed it open so she could walk into her stable. George laughed behind me. “You were never gonna make her wait.”
“She’s spoiled bloody rotten,” I grumbled. Then I spoke up to Texas. “Come on, you too. God forbid you get left out.”
“Are you picking on my horse?” Travis asked, walking over. He was smiling, as usual.
“Picking on him?” I scoffed. “You mean, spoiling?”
Travis’s grin was all white teeth and smiling eyes. “Ah, so you’re trying to get him to favour you? You giving him sugar or something too?”
“No, but that’s a good idea” I said, pretending to consider it. “Except for the fact that Shelby would kill me if I gave Texas sugar and not her.”
Trav shook his head, then looked me over and stated the obvious. “You’re all sweaty.”
“Mucking out stables will do that.”
Trav looked genuinely alarmed. “Oh, I could have done that.” He headed toward the stables.
“I have arms and legs. I’m not completely useless,” I said, following him. “Anyways, George started it. I felt bad, so I finished it.”
George, who was looking on, spoke slowly and patiently, just like always. “Made him think my back was crook. He did the whole lot while I watched.”
Travis collected a horse brush off the shelf and started to stroke down Texas’s neck. “I just got caught up talkin’ to Nara.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yep. She looked after Matilda just fine while we were gone. Did night feeds and everything.”
“She seemed happy.”
Travis eyed me cautiously. “Oh, please tell me you’re not jealous!”
My eyes darted to George, who just shook his head and laughed as he walked back toward the house. “No,” I hissed. “Jeez, no.”
“She’s a kid,” Travis said, back to brushing down his horse. “And she’s a she.”
I snorted quietly. “I’m just glad she talks to someone, that’s all. She seems to be settlin’ in okay.” It was a fishing-for-answers question.
Travis nodded. “She’s much happier here. That’s all she’s really said about it.”
I played with Shelby’s mane for a bit. “She seems scared of me.”
“I think she is a bit.” Travis shrugged. “She’s jumpy. Wherever she came from can’t have been too good. She’s settling in, though. Give her time.”
He was right, and we both knew it. “She likes you, though.”
“I asked her to look after Matilda to make her feel needed, appreciated,” he said with a shrug. “Same with the garden tomorrow.”
“It’s a good idea. Very thoughtful,” I told him. “But I could help you with it, if you want. I mean, it’ll take a few days, I’m guessing, and it’s gonna rain so the quicker the better…”
“You, mister academia, will have your nose in textbooks.”
“What?”
“Your university degree? Remember?”
Shit. “Oh, the one you signed me up for without my permission?”
He grinned without shame. “That would be the one.”
“I don’t really have the time…”
He stood in front of me with his serious face on. “Four days of rain is plenty time for you to do some assessments. Anyways, you’ll be stir-crazy after four days of rain.”
A flood of memories swirled through my head. “Remember the last time we had four days of rain?”
Travis laughed, a warm throaty sound. I think it was part-groan. “I won’t ever forget it. I was laid up in bed with my sore knee.” He leaned in real close so I could feel his breath at my ear and whispered, “And we switched.”
I remembered how he was flat on his back with his bandaged knee, and I straddled his hips and eased myself onto him. I could feel my cheeks heat as the memory warmed my blood. My voice was gruff. “Well, you couldn’t move much… so it was only fair.”
Travis leaned his face against mine, our eyes were closed and my breath quickened. He did that nose-nudgin’ thing—barely a touch—and a ghost of a kiss. My heart thundered and my knees went weak.
Then I remembered where we were.
I took a step back and shook my head, more for thought-clearing than a no. “We shouldn’t be doin’ that here,” I said, all out of breath.
Travis, lookin’ kiss-drunk, glanced around the shed. “Ain’t no one here but us.”
I cleared my throat. “It’s not that,” I clarified. “I can’t think straight when you do that, and I”—I readjusted my dick—“might throw you down on the hay.”
Travis smiled at that. “I’m sure Shelby won’t mind.”
“I will. I just put clean hay down.”
He snorted. “Yeah well, if it’s any consolation, you smell like sweat and horseshit.”
“You didn’t seem to mind just now.”
“I happen to like how been-workin’ smells on you,” he said, goin’ back to brushing down Texas. “So maybe over the next few days I’ll get to see what been-studyin’ smells like on you instead.”
* * * *
The next morning at breakfast, where me or George usually ran through everything that needs doin’ that day, this time it was Travis who spoke. Normally we’d just say what needed to be done, and he’d just get stuck in and do it, but this time he told us.
“Delivery from the co-op should be around half-nine this morning. All the new fencin’ gear is coming, but we’re also redoin’ Ma’s vegetable garden. I was thinkin’ me and Nara could make a start, Billy too if you want?” Travis looked at Billy—more of an offer to stay close to his cousin than asking for his help.
Billy looked to me, probably preferin’ to take orders from me. I just shrugged. “Not up to me, apparently.”
Travis either didn’t pick up on my shot at him, or he didn’t care. “But we got two or so hours before the truck gets here”—he looked at me then George—“so unless you need me for anything, I’d like to get started on the garden.”
I tried to think of something that wasn’t funny or inappropriate and came up blank. I shrugged instead. George was tryin’ not to smile. He said, “Well, I was thinkin’ we should probably head up to Arthur Creek. If the forecasts for rain prove true, the water should come down by Wednesday. Gives us three days to get the first of the herd south of the river. Me, Ernie, Trudy and Bacon can do that easily enough. It’ll make it easier come musterin’ time.”
Travis must have known I was about to say I’d join them, or maybe it was how my face lit up at the thought of spending the day on Shelby out in the desert as opposed to being stuck inside studying. “Charlie’s got an assessment due,” he said quickly. Everyone just kind of stared at me, at him. So Travis added, “He’s gonna finish his university degree.”
I kicked his foot.
“Ow, don’t kick me,” he said.
I ignored him and the way everyone was tryin’ not to smile. Except for Billy. He was just straight-out grinning right at me. I took a deep, calming breath, and explained, “It was decided—not that I decided, mind you,” I added, aiming a glare right at Travis, “that I could finish my uni course, while someone here”—I narrowed my eyes at Travis again—“not long finished his degree and should probably do the whole thing for me. Because it was his idea, and he didn’t ask me before he pretended to be me and signed me up.”
Travis lifted his coffee cup to his lips, probably to hide the fucking smile. “I really do like my new coffee machine, thanks.”
I made a huff-snarly sound that made George laugh and stand up. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Right. That’s everyone sorted.” He looked at Trudy, Bacon and Ernie, who I think were all a little confused and a lot amused by seeing this side of me and Travis. “We’ll take the Land Rovers and leave in half an hour,” George told them, back to business. They all nodded and cleared out. Travis walked out with Billy and Nara, leaving the room empty and quiet, while I resisted the urge to bang my head on the dining table.
“You had enough to eat, love,” Ma asked. I hadn’t noticed her come in, with my head on the table and all.
I looked up at her. “He’s really impossible.”
She chuckled and sat down in what was normally George’s chair. “They all are.”
I sighed. “He’s so infuriating.”
“And the worst part,” she added, “is that they’re normally right.”
“That’s the worst part!” I cried.
Ma gave me a few moments to sigh again and run my hands through my hair a few times before she started to clear some of the plates. “Leave it. I’ll carry them in,” I said. Then I changed subject completely. “Want a cup of tea?” I asked. “If you put the kettle on, I’ll clean up in here and then you and I can have a cuppa.”
She patted my hand and smiled, but she left me to pack and stack plates and trays. By the time I was done, the pot of fresh tea was made.
The first thing she asked was how Matilda was going. I told her that she liked the new bottles better, according to Travis.
“Is he still doing the night feeds?”
“Yep. Twice a night. He doesn’t complain, says he doesn’t mind one bit,” I said. “But he gets back into bed and puts his cold feet on me.”
Ma laughed, but her smile soon faded. “Travis is so taken with her.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “It’ll be hard on him when he has to get rid of her.”
She nodded sadly. I didn’t have to explain to her how dangerous full-grown red kangaroos could be. “It’s a shame.”
“It is,” I agreed with a sigh. “I don’t want to make him unhappy.”
“I know you don’t. He knows that too,” she said. Then when I didn’t say anything, she prompted me. “Things between you okay?”
“Yeah, I mean they are.” My shoulders sagged. “I agree that we need to talk more, but we just haven’t yet. Not really. He Skyped with his mum last night, and then his sister and brother turned up and they got talking for ages. He was telling them everything he’s been doing, and he showed them the kangaroo.”
“And?”
“I think he misses them more than he realises.”
“Did you talk to him about it?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Well, it was late when they got done.” I let out a long sigh and whispered the truth. “I don’t want to talk to him about it because what if he says he wants to leave?”
“You know, Charlie, I love that you can tell me these things. I wouldn’t change that for the world. But you’re telling the wrong person. You need to tell him all this.”
“It’s easier to tell you.”
Ma laughed. “Why?”
“Because you won’t break my heart.” I meant to think that, but I’m pretty sure I said it out loud.
Her eyes softened. “Oh, love. I wish you could see the way he looks at you.”
“What?”
“The way Travis looks at you. Like you went and hung the moon.”
I smiled into my tea cup. “Really?”
She shook her head in wonder and quite possibly a bit of so-God-help-me-you’re-so-stupid. “Do me a favour, hun?”
“Sure.”
“When you get into bed tonight, try talking instead, ’kay?”
I’m sure I turned a dozen shades of red. I coughed out my embarrassment. “I’ll um, try?”
Ma patted my hand. “Well, it’s been a great little chat, but you can’t put off hitting the books forever.” She gave a pointed nod toward the door. “Go on. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be done.”
So I sat in my office, read my emails, sorted payments and knew I’d reached my limits of putting shit off when I started the filing. With a petulant sigh, I opened up the email, and using the login they sent me, I signed in to the university’s online student profile. I’d read through this briefly with Travis the other day, but I hadn’t really read it. He was skimming through it, and I was kissing down his neck not really looking at the screen at all. He’d grabbed a textbook and sat me on the sofa, tellin’ me to read, read, read, but it only took about ten minutes before he was loungin’ there with me and we were whisperin’ sweet nothings that had less than zero to do with agronomy.
So I read through it properly now. After sorting out what was important, what was bullshit, I went through my core units and added assessment dates to my calendar.
My first assessment was due in three weeks, the same time as the winter muster. And my second assessment four weeks after that. I read through the list of textbooks I was expected to read and group discussions I was supposed to join in on and I could feel my blood pressure rising at the thought of it.
I was officially swamped. And my first assessment on meta-analysis being a promising approach in agricultural and environmental sciences made me want to scream or sleep or quit. I couldn’t decide.
Thankfully, the sound of an approaching truck was much more appealing.
We offloaded the fencing gear first. All wire, mesh, droppers and star pickets were taken to the far shed, and then the truck backed up and dropped a few cubic metres of organic soil, some drainage pipes and gravel where Travis was pulling apart the old garden beds.
I was surprised by how much he had done. He’d only been busy for two hours, but he had all of the crops harvested, which Nara was now sorting through and cleaning, and he was moving old railway sleepers with a crowbar.
Dumping the new soil meant having to move it twice, but Trav wanted to do it properly. He wanted to remove all the old good-for-nothing soil first, then run aggregate and drainage lines and reharvest the water seepage for its nutrient value.
I was starting to think he just loved to work. Always busy, always smiling. He was happiest when he was doing some, the more constructive the better.
As soon as I’d signed for the delivery and the truck left, Travis picked up the crowbar again and continued to lever out the old sleepers. He was jimmying either end a little at a time and straining to do it. The muscles in his arms were taut, his face was red, and even in the cool winter air, he was sweating.
“Here,” I said, grabbing hold of the crowbar. “I’ll help you.”
“You’re supposed to be studying,” he said, still trying to pull down on the crowbar to move the old sleepers. “What the hell did you put these down with?” he asked. “It’s like friggin’ concrete.”
I took a better hold of the bar and helped him. “Baked clay, remember?” I said, rocking the crowbar back and forth and pulling on it as hard as he was. It was starting to move. “Jesus, I think the timber sleeper has petrified.”
Trav snorted out a laugh, but the sleeper finally gave in and rolled as we levered the crowbar underneath it. “You can help with these,” he said, kicking the other offending sleepers. “But then you have to go back to your books.”
We both held the crowbar under the next sleeper and started the process all over again. “I remembered something,” I told him, putting my back into the work. “About my uni degree.”
“What’s that?” he said, his face reddened as he strained, pushing down on the crowbar.
“That I hated it.”
He laughed this time and moved the crowbar to the other end of the sleeper. We both pushed down on it again until the old timber moved some. “You know,” I said, looking up the clouds rolling in. “If you wait for the rain, these railway sleepers will move a helluva lot easier. They’ll basically slide in the clay.”
He didn’t even look up. He kept working the crowbar, a bead of sweat running down the back of his neck. “I want the drainage pipes down before the rain comes. I can do the rest in the rain, but I need to see how the water runs so I can get it right.”
I smiled at him, though he didn’t see. Maybe it was just as well he didn’t see the you’re-so-fucking-adorable look on my face. I think the dogs might have seen it from where they were chained up, because they started to bark. “Oh shut up,” I grumbled.
Travis stopped pushing down on the crowbar. “You okay? Having conversations with yourself again?”
“I don’t have conversations with myself,” I defended myself. Then because I can’t lie for shit, I added, “It’s more in my head than with myself.”
Travis laughed, and when I looked over at Nara, she was looking at us. She was smiling a little. “He’s making fun of me,” I told her.
“Well, you don’t make it difficult,” Travis said.
“You wanna do this by yourself?” I asked, just as the stubborn sleeper moved. We both bent down, picked up either end of the timber log and moved it to the other pile of already-moved sleepers.
Travis walked over and grabbed the crowbar. “Well, actually, yes.”
I grabbed it out of his hands. “You’ll bust yourself trying to do this on your own.”
So the next four sleepers we jimmied, prised and moved without speaking. Once they were stacked out of the way, Trav picked up a shovel. Oh dear God, he was gonna try and move this by hand.
“Hold on,” I said with maybe more frustration than intended. “You can’t move it by shovel. Let me bring the smaller tractor around. It’ll take fifteen minutes instead of five hours, and it’ll save your back. Or your knee. You’ve only gotta turn on it wrong once, and you’ll be back on crutches.”
I didn’t wait for him to argue, I just walked off toward the machinery shed. There was no way I’d let him do that job by hand. He could argue all he damn well wanted, but those clouds weren’t getting any better.
I drove the tractor with the small bucket around the other side of the house and came in to the deconstructed vegetable garden from under the big tree. “Where do you want the old stuff?” I yelled out over the roar of the engine.
He pointed toward the way I came, so I didn’t hesitate. I scraped and bucketed as much of the old, deteriorated soil as I could. I think once Trav saw how the tractor struggled to scrape the bottom section, he realised there was just no way he could have done it by hand. He still hadn’t stopped, though. He was shovelling and turnin’ soil anyway, stopping to feel it in his hands every now and then.
Forty minutes later and the area was cleared. I cut the engine. “Anything else need doing?” I asked.
“Don’t take it too far,” he said, walking over to the tractor. He grabbed hold of the rollbar and stepped up onto the foot rest. “Have you got an auger for this tractor, maybe eight inches?” He held out his fingers a good eight inches apart.
I smiled and said, “I know what eight inches is.”
He rolled his eyes. “An attachment, for digging holes and trenches?”
“Yes, we have an auger.”
“Can you get it?” he asked. “Or you want me to?”
Just then, Ma opened the back door. “Boys, lunch.”
I hadn’t noticed Nara wasn’t outside, but when we walked inside, I was surprised to find her in the kitchen. She was standing in front of the table, which was covered in carrots, corn, spinach and potatoes, all the vegetables she’d harvested and cleaned from the old garden. Her hair was pulled back in a tidy ponytail and she was smiling proudly.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot of food.”
“We’ll prep it all, blanch it and freeze it,” Ma said. “That’s this afternoon’s job, isn’t it, Nara?”
The girl nodded. She looked genuinely happy. It was very good to see. “Oh, good,” I joked. “Because I thought I was having the world’s biggest salad for lunch.”
Travis snorted behind me, and Ma rolled her eyes. “Your lunch is on the table,” she said, waving her hand in the general direction of the dining room. Then she looked us both up and down. “But don’t even think about sitting at that table until you’ve cleaned up.”
I hung my hat on the hook as we walked toward the hall that led to the bathroom, and Travis did the same. I scrubbed my hands and face with soap and water, and when I was bent over the sink, Travis put his hands on my hips and rubbed himself against my arse. I might have wiggled a bit for him and widened my stance.
“Oh Jesus,” he groaned.
“You started it,” I said, standing fully upright. I wiped my face on the towel and stepped aside, making room for him.
Travis kept his eyes on me but leant over as slowly as he could, sticking his ass out as far as possible. He gripped the countertop and rocked forward, giving a low moan, and his eyes rolled.
“Ugh,” I groaned, having to readjust my cock. “You don’t play fair.”
He burst out laughing and started to wash his hands. “But I win, every time.”
Still holding the towel, I twisted it and towel-flicked his arse. “Ow!” he said, scrubbing his face with soap. “Ow, I got soap in my eye.”
I laughed all the way to the dining table. About a minute later when he walked in, his left eye was red and he was pouting, which might have made me laugh some more. He sat down in his usual seat, and I leaned right in and softly kissed the corner of his eye, then his cheek and the corner of his mouth. “Better?”
He shrugged a little. “What about where you got me with the towel?”
“I have every intention of kissing that better later tonight.”
His pout twisted into an almost smile. “Just as well.”
I pushed the plate of sandwiches and fruit to him first. “After you.”
He picked up half a beef and salad sandwich and ate the whole thing before he spoke. “Thanks for helping me,” he said, taking another half of a sandwich.
“I’m sorry for the soap in the eye.”
“I’ll consider forgiving you,” he said with his mouth half full. “Depends on how well you kiss my towel-flicking wound later.”
I laughed and shoved the rest of my sandwich in my mouth. “Deal.”
“And you can help me dig the drainage lines, but then you have to study.”
I might have grumbled. “I hate it. It’s boring as hell.”
“And you’d prefer to be diggin’ in the dirt with me?”
I nodded quickly, hoping it was an invitation. “Hell yes.”
It wasn’t. He just smiled and changed the subject. “What’s your first assessment on again?”
“Meta-analyses in agronomy or some shit.”
Travis laughed as he bit into a piece of apple. “What will be your focus?”
“You.”
He snorted out a laugh and chewed the last of his fruit. “I don’t think your professor will appreciate your expertise on that subject.”
“At least I’d pass.”
“With honours.”
“A high distinction even.”
Trav laughed and pushed the last of the cut fruit to me. “Eat up. We have work to do.”
I shoved the last of the apple in my mouth, carried the plate to the kitchen and spent the next hour running drainage lines for Travis. He stood in front of the tractor with the auger at his feet and directed me, calling out what he wanted me to do. I manoeuvred the machine as he bid, and we’d made a grid of lines, ten metres by fifteen, in no time.
The skies were rolling and rumbling with heavy clouds, and when I’d put the tractor back in the shed and was walkin’ back to the yard, I could feel the change in the air. I called out to Travis, “You got thirty minutes before she hits.”
He looked up at the sky, and seein’ how the clouds were getting low and dark, he nodded. I jumped up onto the veranda and went inside to radio George, tellin’ him to head home if he wasn’t already. And knowin’ I actually had to make a start on this bloody assessment, I grabbed my books and went straight back outside.
I figured if I had to read through this shit, I might as well do it where I could enjoy the fresh air and the view. And by view, I meant Travis. Because I knew damn well he’d work in the rain, and the only thing better than a hot and sweaty Travis was a wet Travis. That, and the smell of rain was purely a bonus.
So I on the back veranda, pretendin’ to read but really was just watching Trav. He was shovellin’ out the trenches, getting ’em perfect no doubt, then shovellin’ in gravel as the first of the rains fell. It was just a light mist to start with, but the smell it brought with it was heavenly. It was a washing-the-earth-clean kind of smell that soothed and healed somehow, and the smell alone could conjure memories of childhood summers or of nights of lovemakin’ and no-sleepin’ to the sound of rain on a tin roof.
I watched as he laid the ag pipes in the trenches, and by the time he was backfillin’ with a mix of gravel and what we’d excavated, the rain was heavier. But he never stopped. He’d run the drains to meet at the far end where I’d used the tractor to dig out what would be a filtered catch point. It was his idea, of course, so all nutrient-rich runoff could be harvested and reused. I’d seen it used on grander scales of crop irrigation, so in theory it should work.
By the time he’d lined the catch-pool with black poly tarp and put in the tub he’d requested at the co-op, he was soaked through. His hat was keeping most of the water off his face, but it was pooling on the brim, his jeans were darkened with water and his shirt was clinging to him in a way that I was most truly thankful for.
“You actually readin’ any of that?” he called out.
I didn’t realise he’d stopped workin’ and was looking at me. I smiled at him, not even pretendin’ to look at the book in my lap. “Every line.”
He just laughed and kept on working. Kneeling down in the mud, he fixed elbow-joints to the pipes and started to join all the drains together.
It was only when I heard the others come back to the homestead that I started to do some actual reading. It wasn’t like I could let them see me just lazing around ogling Travis while he did all the hard work. Even though that’s exactly what I was doing.
Only George and Billy came up to the house, the others went to their respective homes. George gave me a nod and a sly smile as he walked past; Billy was wearing his usual grin.
It was then he saw Nara, sitting out in the rain on the huge pile of old-garden soil. She was riffling through it for the worms, throwing them into the bucket at her feet. She was covered in mud and soaked through, and when she looked up and saw Billy, she grinned. It was easy to see they were related when she smiled like that.
“Having fun?” Billy called out.
She nodded. “Yep.”
Then Billy looked at me. “She been okay here today?”
I looked back out to Nara. “I think she’s had a real good day,” I told him. “Travis made mention that we should have collected the worms for the new garden and she just went out in the rain and started digging.” Then I told him, “She’s been helping Ma all morning too.”
Billy smiled and seemed a whole lot relieved. “I’ll leave her to it, then,” he said. “George and me will be in the shed. The others are done, I think, Mr Sutton. This rain ain’t much good for workin’.”
I held up the stupid textbook I wasn’t reading. “Tell me about it.”
Just then, George came back out, holding a baby bottle full of milk. I was gonna say something funny, but then he handed it to me. It was warm, which meant one thing. I looked up at him from my seat with what I’m sure was my best I-don’t-think-so face.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said flatly.
The back door opened and Ma held it while a certain one-foot-high, unsteady-on-its-too-big-feet kangaroo slowly made her way outside. Matilda took a few more steps, her front paws down as her back feet caught up, and she looked around. Of course she spotted me holding the bottle and headed my way.
She was no bigger than a cat, her back feet were twice as long as she was, her ears were the size of her head and her tail was barely long enough to keep her steady. I watched in horrified silence as she reached out her front paws, wobbled a bit, then put her little hands on my leg.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
I looked at George, who wasn’t even trying to hide his smile, and a still-grinning Billy, and then Ma, who was looking at me like there was something wrong with me.
“Pick her up,” she told me. “She’ll get cold.”
I looked out into the rain to find Travis stopped, shovel midair, looking at me and smiling that smug fucking smile.
With a this-is-such-bullshit sigh, I threw the book on the seat next to me, put the bottle at my feet and with one hand at the base of her tail, I scooped the kangaroo up and tucked her into my arm, kinda like holding a footy.
I picked up the bottle and shoved it in her mouth, ignoring the chuckles from everyone watching and the way her little paws touched my hand or how her eyes fluttered closed as she fed.
I glared at Travis, because this was all his fault, and even in the rain I think I could see that look in his eyes Ma talked about—the one of me hangin’ the moon—and it made my heart beat all out of rhythm.
I shook my head at him. “Oh, shut up.”