Red Dirt Heart 3 (24 page)

“I wish I was there with you,” I told him.

“I wish you were too,” he said quietly. He looked so sad, I just wanted to reach through the screen and touch him. “I tried calling a few times. I’m just gonna head upstairs to bed. I haven’t really slept since I left you, but I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Yeah, I missed your first calls. I was in the holding yard. We got some day-old calves in yesterday that aren’t feeding too well, so we’re gonna try tube feeding ’em. It’s a last resort, but we gotta try, right?”

Trav gave a weak smile. “Yeah. How many?”

“There was three yesterday. We lost one already, so now there’s two.” Then I told him, “We haven’t named ’em yet.”

Travis kind of laughed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “When’s the buyer’s vet getting there?”

“Tomorrow,” I told him.

Trav nodded slowly, and even as exhausted as he was, he still looked beautiful to me. “I’m so tired, Charlie. Feel like I could sleep for a week.”

“Go to bed, baby,” I whispered.

One corner of his lips lifted in a crooked exhausted-cute smile. “I like it when you call me that.”

“Call you what?”

He shook his head. “You just called me baby.”

“Did I?” I didn’t remember saying it.

He stared at me for the longest time. “It’s so good to see you.”

Just then his mum came into the screen and put her arms around her son. “Hi, Charlie,” she said to me. “Travis hasn’t stopped talking about you.”

“Hi, Mrs Craig,” I said. “Look after him for me.”

She smiled but looked as tired as Travis. “I will.”

“I’ll send you an email,” Trav said. “When we’ve worked out what we’re doing here and figured out time zones, I’ll let you know what times we can chat, okay?”

I nodded. “Call me anytime,” I told him. “Even if it’s three in the morning, Trav, you can call me. I don’t care what time it is.” He smiled then, but his blink was slow. “Go to bed, Trav. Get some sleep.”

He nodded. “’Kay. Love you, Charlie.”

My whole body flushed with warmth at his words, and I grinned. I think I even laughed.

He shook his head at me, then looked off screen. “Mom, what’s a famous singing duo?”

I heard Mrs Craig answer. “Um, Sonny and Cher.”

“Call them Sonny and Cher.”

“What?” I asked.

“The calves. Call them Sonny and Cher,” he said.

I sighed, but I hadn’t stopped grinning. “Sonny and Cher it is. You know the boys’ll give you hell for that.”

He snorted out a tired laugh. “Tell ’em I said.”

“I will,” I told him. “Get some sleep. And Trav?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.”

We disconnected the call, and the screen froze for a few seconds with a picture of his tired one-sided smile before cutting off. I sat there smilin’ and starin’ at my computer screen for I don’t know how long.

Ma walked slowly to stand at my office door. She had a smug told-you-so smile on her face. “Believe him now?”

I nodded. It was kind of hard not to.

But either way, breathin’ got a little easier after that.

We were expecting the supermarket’s contracted vet around nine, and true to my keeping-myself-busy plan, I did exactly that until not one new Land Rover turned up, but two. It wasn’t one vet, but three. There were other people with them, more like a road crew than anything else. Their cars were laden with what looked like enough supplies to get them through the Simpson Desert. As far as I knew, that’s exactly what it was for.

After initial handshakes and introductions, the lead vet, who was not a man like I’d presumed but a lady by the name of Jean, clapped her hands together and said, “Right. Where do we start?”

Straight to business, no bullshit. I liked her immediately.

The other two clipboard-holding vets followed her lead, and me, George and Billy showed them the holding yard first. There were thirteen Brahman calves in there, ranging from two days to one week old. Not that these vets were here to inspect veal quality, that’s not what they were looking for at all. They wanted to see how he we handled our cattle, how they were treated and, basically, if our practices were humane.

They didn’t say that exactly. But I knew damn well if these guys saw anything they didn’t professionally or ethically agree with, the deal would be off.

I had nothing to hide.

One of the vets, a younger guy called Aaron, nodded to the length of plastic tube that hung over the fence. “What’s that for?”

“A few of ’em weren’t doin’ too well when we got ’em in yesterday,” I explained. “So we tried tube feedin’ ’em.”

Aaron raised his eyebrow. “How’d that go?”

“Alright. They didn’t like it, but at least it got milk in their bellies. They’re doin’ better today.”

Jean looked over the calves. “Which two?”

“Um, Sonny and Cher,” I said, pointing. “The two at the back.”

Her stare was blank. “Sonny and Cher?”

“Oh.” I cringed. “Long story.” It wasn’t long actually. It was just stupid.

“Name all your cattle?” she asked, trying not to smile.

I shook my head and cleared my throat. “Just the poddies.”

She climbed through the fence and her two associates followed. They checked Sonny and Cher over, nodding satisfactorily. “They look okay,” she said. “Those bigger ones”—she nodded at the first ones we brought in over a week ago—“how long will you keep them here?”

“I’ll turn them out as soon as they eat more feed than milk,” I answered. “That’ll depend on the animal.”

The other vet, I think his name was Kevin or Devin, maybe it was Bevan, chuckled. “Suppose they have names too?”

“Well,” I hedged, “those three bigger calves are the remaining Beatles. John Lennon didn’t make it.” The three of them looked at me like I’d lost my freakin’ mind. I put my hands up, palm forward. “Wasn’t me who named ’em. Just so you know.”

Billy, who was standing beside, clapped my shoulder and laughed. “Bet Travis is sorry he missed this.”

I smiled at him and spoke through gritted teeth. “If he
was
here right now, I’d kill him.”

George and Billy both laughed, and the two younger vets scribbled down notes as Jean spoke quietly amongst them. When she looked up at me, she smiled. Jean was very thorough in her questions, asking me everything I’m pretty sure Blake would have already told her about stock ratios, land size, annual rainfall and feed storage. Then she looked out toward the north. “How far have we gotta go ’til we find some cattle out there?”

“We’ve got the cows and calves in this first paddock here,” I said, nodding to the first western paddock. “There are two bores that service water troughs. How about we start there?”

We spent the rest of the morning doing exactly that. And it wasn’t until we were headed back to the homestead at lunch time that Jean pointed to one of the cows and asked “What’s that on her neck?”

She was pointing to the solar-powered detection collar around the cow’s neck. “That’s like a tracking device,” I said, explaining how Travis’s idea worked. “I only brought the satellite phone with me, not my smartphone. But I can show you how it all works when we get back to the homestead.”

Which is what I did. Then, at her request, I showed her the invoices showing what type of grains I fed not only the cattle but the horses as well. I showed her all vet records, vaccinations, worming treatments, insecticides and pesticides—you name it. Jean wanted to see it.

Like I said: thorough.

She loved the tracking device concept, and when I’d shown her a basic tutorial of how it worked, she said something that struck a chord with me.

“Shame you can’t monitor your bores from here. You’d save yourself some days in the paddocks, I’m sure.”

The convey of vets left, smiling and shaking my hand. Jean said outright she was very happy with what she found out here, and she was happy to sign off on it.

Just like that.

But I couldn’t get what she said about the bores out of my head. So I spent a bit of time looking up the Department of Agriculture’s website that Travis had found the collars on and started doing some research.

It was a good distraction to say the least, but it was also productive. Travis sent me an email saying he’d hope to catch me on Skype at ten o’clock at night, my time.

I was layin’ on the floor in front of the fire watchin’ Nugget run himself in circles at nine thirty, waitin’ waitin’ waitin’ for the Skype call to come.

Of course just after I hit answer and Travis’s face appeared on the screen, Nugget decided to run across the keyboard and disconnected the call.

I hit redial as quick as I could, holding the little shit under my arm this time, and Trav answered straight away. He laughed. “All I saw was a brown blur and then you yelling at Nugget before it cut off.”

I shook my head, but I was smiling. “I couldn’t believe it.” I held Nugget up to the screen. “Say hello to Dadda,” I said.

Travis gave a sad smile. “Aww.”

I waved Nugget’s little paw at the screen. “Say goodnight. It’s bedtime for him. I just wanted you to see him.”

Trav looked like smiling—or even talking—was a real hard thing to do.

“Hang on one sec,” I said, getting up and putting Nugget in his bed, and quickly going back to my spot in front of the fire. “Okay, he’s gone now.”

“Thank you,” Travis said. “I wish I was there.”

“Me too,” I said. “How’s things over there?” I didn’t want to ask outright how his grandpa was, but Trav understood.

He told me he went to the hospital again last night. His grandpa wasn’t doin’ too good, but was hangin’ on. Travis looked like he’d slept some at least, but he still looked tired and sad and just too damn far away.

I told him about the vet appointment and how the lead vet loved his tracking collar setup. “She said, ‘Be sure to tell that Travis fellow that I’m impressed,’ and I said, ‘Good Lord, no. I’m afraid his ego might not let us recover.’”

Travis laughed. “Thanks a lot. Did she really say that?”

“Yep.”

“You told her it was my idea?”

“Of course I did. I tell everyone it was your idea,” I told him. Trav smiled kinda shyly, so I added, “I also told them you named the poddy calves Sonny and Cher, so any credibility you might have had is gone.”

He laughed this time, and it warmed my chest to hear it and to finally see him smile.

Then he said, “You got my email, obviously, about what times we can Skype?”

“Yep.”

“But we can’t tonight. There’s a bit of family dinner on for me,” he said. “Everyone’s coming over so I can see them.”

“That’s okay. That’ll be good for you to see everyone,” I said, even though I was disappointed.

“But we can talk again the day after,” he was quick to add.

“Sure.”

“You’ve been busy, no doubt,” he went on to say.

“Always.” I was going to tell him about my idea the vet had given me for the pump houses, but didn’t want to bore him with work. “Is it good to see everyone? How’s your sisters and brother?”

“They’re all fine. Paige bought me a tub of Blue Bell. I near ate the whole thing. Felt sick afterward,” he said with a laugh. “But I told ’em all about you and everyone there. How’s Ma?”

I smiled at him. “She’s doin’ okay. She’s better every day.”

“Tell her I’m thinking of her.”

“I will.”

“I miss you,” he said again, back to frowning.

“I miss you too.”

“I’ll call you in two days.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I love you, Charlie.”

“Love you too.”

We disconnected the call, and I lay there on the floor in front of the fire, wishin’ with all my might I could just touch him. Just hold his hand or smell his just-showered skin. Just any one little thing.

But I couldn’t.

I packed up my laptop and went to bed, then spent the next two time-crawlin’ days with my head down and my heart achin’ in my chest.

Keepin’ busy for those next two days outside checkin’ on calving cows suited me better than sittin’ inside wishin’ my laptop would ping with a Skype call. But on the second day after dinner, when I finally got around to some office work, there were emails from Sydney University thankin’ me for submitting two assessments.

My two final assessments, which I most definitely did not submit. Hell, I hadn’t even thought about them.

I was still sitting at my desk when my laptop told me Travis was calling, right when he said he would. Just seein’ his face was like a full breath of air to starvin’ lungs.

“Hey you,” he said.

“Hey you too,” I replied. “Um, Trav?”

“Yeah?”

“Care to tell me why Sydney Uni thinks I’ve done two assessments that I really haven’t done?” I asked. “Actually, care to tell me
how
you did that?”

He laughed. “I tried getting the subject out of you at the airport, but you wouldn’t tell me. So I logged in to your email and read what they sent you,” he said simply. “And then I logged in to your college website and uploaded them. It really wasn’t hard.” Then he added, “You really should change your passwords, Charlie.”

“Yeah, God forbid someone hacks into my email and finishes my degree for me.” I couldn’t believe he did that. “Isn’t there some law that says you can’t do that?”

“Probably is. There’s also probably a law that says I shouldn’t have used my old school assignments and passed them off as yours, but I did that too.”

“Travis!”

He laughed. “I changed them a bit. I’m sure I read somewhere that there needed to be fifteen percent difference or something,” he said with a shrug. “So I changed them up a little.”

All I could do was shake my head. “I can’t believe you did that.”

His smile faltered and he sighed. “I didn’t want you to fail because of me.”

“Oh, Trav.”

“Like you said, I threw you head first into finishing your degree, without asking, and when you didn’t have time. Then when it came to the final assessments, when you were so busy with everything else, instead of helping, I had to leave,” he said. “I wanted to do something to help, Charlie. So, from the other side of the world, I helped out the only way I could. Please don’t be mad.”