Red Dirt Heart 3 (26 page)

“The blue dots—” I clicked on one of them, and again, a screen of numbers filled the Smart Board. “This is bore number seven. And you can see right now, in real time, the numbers clicking over?” Most people nodded. “That’s how many kilolitres an hour that bore is pumping. And when a blue dot flashes, it means it’s not pumping, which means I can fix it before I blow a piston or a drilling rig that would cost me ten grand to replace.”

I held up my phone. “I can also see everything on this. It has, as part of the app, current stock rates, interest rates, weather forecasts and prices on feed and fuel. I can check almost anything to do with farming, right here, right now. I can make informed decisions on making the market work for me.”

I smiled at them. “And the question you’re all dying to ask? How much this costs me?” Nearly everyone nodded. “The collars cost three hundred dollars each. I have eleven collars, so thirty-three hundred bucks all up for the cattle collars, and they’ve saved me that much in man-hours in two months alone.” I let them think about that for a moment. “The bore beacons weren’t really designed to do what I use ’em for, but with the help of an American agronomy guy currently in the States—” I smiled to myself. “—we calibrated ’em via video chats on my laptop.”

I pointed back to the Smart Board. “This is what farming in the future looks like. It doesn’t take anything away from tradition or a lifetime of knowledge on your land. Nothing ever will. That’s not what this is about. This is working smarter. This is using technology to make our lives a little easier, because we’re spending more time in our offices now than we ever have. Paperwork, taxes, it doesn’t seem to end.” Everyone nodded like they knew all too well.

“So when we talk about driving this industry forward and taking it to the twenty-first century, this is what we’re talking about. And this information, or ideas just like it, needs to be discussed and trialled.
That’s
what this Association needs. We should be putting information out there for everyone to use, just like this collar system, not just to make us better farmers or to make one station better than another one, but to make us a better industry.”

I finished by telling them if any of them were interested to come see me afterward. I’d be real happy to help. My speech, if that’s what you’d call it, concluded the meeting and the chairman called it a day. We, of course, headed straight for the bar.

Greg handed me a beer and smiled. “You consider running for politics?”

I took a mouthful. “Shut the fuck up. That whole thing was painful.”

“That was brilliant,” he said.

I ignored his compliment and tapped my bottle to Allan’s. “As was yours, mate. There is shit we should talk about, like asking for help, and not treat it like it’s shameful or a weakness.” I took another mouthful of beer and swallowed it down. “And you know what? If we don’t get elected, we should still do this shit anyway. We don’t need the Association to accomplish things. I mean, the corporate umbrella is useful, but it’s not necessary.”

Greg shook his head at me. “Jesus, Sutton, you’re really into this, aren’t you?”

“It’s your fault I’m even here,” I said, pointing my beer bottle at him. “You and Travis. He push, push, pushes me to do the best, to be the best. He gets right up my arse about it.”

Greg grinned behind his beer bottle. “I bet he does.”

Allan spat beer across the table, and Greg busted up laughing so hard, I think he almost did himself some internal damage.

I thought about what I’d said…
Travis gets right up my arse…

Oh. My. God.

I must have turned every shade of mortified, which just made them laugh some more. I held up my wallet to the barman. “Bourbon, please.”

“How many?”

I looked at Greg and Allan, who were both still doubled over laughing, then back to the barman. “All of it.”

I hadn’t even got one bourbon when a guy from the meeting came up to me. “Charles?”

“Charlie.” I waved my hand at Greg and Allan, who were trying to compose themselves, and said, “Ignore these idiots.”

He smiled. “You said if we had any questions, just to ask.”

“Fire away.”

It turns out he had a couple thousand acres up near Tennant Creek, and was real interested in the tracking collars because he’d had some cattle stolen from his property. The next guy was interested in the bore metres and the one after that thought the whole thing was an ingenious idea and wanted to know where I got them from.

It was a funny night. Our circle of friends got bigger and bigger, and we talked of ideas and how traditional farming was morphing into the future and how we were excited to see where it goes. I wished and
wished
that Travis was there. He would have loved it. He would have been in his element.

When we’d called it a night, I went back to my motel room and tried calling Travis. I wanted to share my night with him, but my Skype calls went unanswered. Cursing time zones, distance and the deep pang of missing him, I went to bed.

I was just about asleep when it occurred to me that I didn’t see Jack Melville for the rest of the night. In the morning we found out why.

He’d withdrawn from the election.

With no explanation and barely even an apology, the man simply stood down.

“Maybe he wanted to lose with dignity,” Greg said. “That, or he didn’t want to give any of us the satisfaction of beating him.”

And when Greg, Allan and myself were announced as new directors of the Northern Territory Beef Farmers Association, the pill that old Jack Melville seemed to swallow looked particularly bitter.

I watched as the man walked away and wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I didn’t want the man to think he wasn’t good enough. I just wanted to show him that the industry needed to move forward.

Allan patted my shoulder. “Let him go lick his wounds. He’ll be back, in some way or another.”

I grabbed his arm. “Come with me,” I said, walking toward the door Jack just walked out of.

We got to the door, and I could see him and his wife hadn’t got too far. I called out to him. “Jack! Wait.”

The look on his face pretty much said I was the last person on the planet he wanted to see right now, and the smile his wife gave us wasn’t too kindly either.

“If you’ve come to gloat, Sutton, or for me to offer my congratulations, you’re out of luck,” he sniffed.

Jesus, this man was a piece of work.

“Actually, no,” I said. “I wanted to tell you thank you, and that you’re right.”

He looked between me and Allan, I guessed looking for some hint of sincerity. Allan was lookin’ at me like I’d lost my mind in offering this man any kind of olive branch.

“You want to thank me?” Melville asked.

“Yes. You’ve done this Association a great many years’ service, and that deserves thanks.”

I don’t know who was more stunned at my words: Jack, Allan or me.

I took a deep breath. “And you were right. I am
not
my father. I am a better farmer than him, because that’s what he taught me to be, whether that was his intention or not. I’m sorry you didn’t run for your old seat, and your reasons for withdrawing are yours alone and I respect that. It’s a shame, though, because we could have used your experience.”

Jack eyed me cautiously, like he was waiting for a punchline.

There wasn’t one.

I tipped my hat at his wife and bid them a good day, leaving them kind of speechless. When we got back inside, Allan looked at me. “What the hell was that about?”

“Yesterday, you talked of speaking up to people who need it, right?” I said. “So that’s what I did. I didn’t want him to leave here bein’ all depressed and shit. He’s been farmin’ out here for sixty years. That deserves some respect.”

Allan shook his head at me. “After everything he said about you?”

I shrugged it off. “Him spruiking off about hate and discrimination said more about him than it ever did about me.”

It seemed all Allan could do was shake his head. “Jesus. You’re a bigger man than him, that’s for sure.”

I snorted. “Yep, and now he knows it. And the fact I’m gay and have more spine and bigger balls than him must just be eating him alive.”

Allan laughed. “There’s the Charlie I know.”

* * * *

Not wasting a minute, we sat for our very first meeting, which was more preliminary than productive: we confirmed the date for the next meeting in Darwin, shook hands and went our separate ways.

I couldn’t wait to get home.

I was excited, almost bouncing in my seat the whole way, and quite often found myself smiling for no good reason.

I just couldn’t wait to tell Travis. He was gonna be stoked, and out of all the things we did and felt, Travis being proud of me was the best feeling ever.

Of course I had to relay the events of the last two days to everyone at home first, which only helped to feed my buzz. And by the time I finally got through to Travis on Skype, I was almost laughing as I talked.

As soon as I saw his face on my screen, I just started talking. A hundred mile a minute, I started telling him everything that happened, how my speech went, what I said and I laughed when I told him how I showed them all the genius ideas he’d come up with and I totally took credit for. I told him I got elected and how I owed it all to him…

But his face just looked all wrong. He looked distracted and like he’d barely survived an emotional cyclone.

“Trav, baby, what’s wrong?”

His eyes filled with tears and they spilled down his cheeks. “Charlie, my grandpa died today.”

Of all the things that distance put me through, helplessness was by far the worst.

He was hurting so much, and I couldn’t do one single thing.

I wanted to wipe his tears and hold him. I wanted to be there, to listen to him rant and rave or to sit in silence—like all the times he did that for me.

But I couldn’t.

“Tell me what to do, Travis,” I begged him. “Please. I’ll do it.”

“I need you,” he said, scrubbing his face.

The one thing. He needed me to do the one thing I couldn’t do.

“I wish you were here,” he said.

“Can I apply for something?” I asked. “Does the government have some special visa or lenience thing for people without passports? I can fly to Sydney tonight.” I looked at my watch. Shit. “Tomorrow. I can fly there tomorrow, and I don’t know, Trav, but there has to be something I can do. I need to be there.”

“There isn’t.” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “It’s okay, Charlie. I know you can’t. I just wish…”

“Me too. Trav, I wish so much.”

He nodded and looked down from the screen for a long second. “Maybe I should go. You had such a good day and I ruined it,” he whispered, putting his hand out as though to shut his laptop.

“No, no, Trav, wait,” I cried. “Don’t go. Please stay. Talk to me. Don’t go.”

“It’s late, and it’s been a horrible day,” he whispered. “I’m so tired.”

He looked it. “Climb into bed, baby,” I told him. I carried my laptop into our room and sat on our bed with my back against the headboard. When he appeared again on the screen, he was lying on his side, with a pillow and one arm folded under his head. The room was dark—the only light was the screen of the laptop he was using—and he was looking at me, much like he did when he was lying right next to me.

His hair was kinda flopping up, and I stupidly tried to touch it. And it shot an ache straight to my heart that all I could feel was my laptop screen and not the fine strands of his getting-too-long hair, or that I couldn’t swipe my thumbs over his cheekbones or down his jaw.

So I did what I could do.

I talked to him.

I told him of all the little things, the stupid, inconsequential things, the everyday things, and watched as his blinks got longer and longer. I told him how the other day I took Texas for a ride and how Shelby threw a too-damn-spoiled tantrum because I took him and not her, and how she refused to even look at me for a whole day, how it took me bribing her with an apple before she came around.

I told him how Nugget was eating more and drinkin’ less and how I was hoping he’d be quitting those night feeds soon. I told him the little guy was still funny as hell, and how I’m pretty sure the wombat knew damn well he had us all wrapped around his little finger. Or paw. Or whatever.

Trav closed his eyes and smiled. “I’m listening.”

So I told him about the poddy calves and how the little buggers had finally learned there was an art to the production-line feeding and it really worked better for everyone involved when it wasn’t a free-for-all. I told him the three surviving Beatles were doing just fine and that Sonny and Cher were growing bigger every day.

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t what I was saying, it was just the sound of my voice, but his eyes stayed closed. And if my words were a soothing blanket for him, then I would talk all night if that’s what it took.

So then I told him all about the holiday we’d take when he got back and this time I’d take him to Uluru, and how we had a Beef Farmers meeting scheduled for later in the year in Darwin, so we could take some time then and do whatever he wanted.

And I would. I’d do whatever he wanted.

His lips parted slightly, his eyes were closed. It was a sight I’d seen countless times. I sight I’d long ago burned into memory, a sight I swore I’d never take for granted, and yet, I felt I somehow had.

He was asleep.

I traced my finger on the screen along his eyebrow, across his lips. I told him I was sorry I wasn’t there when he needed me. I told him I loved him.

And I disconnected the call.

* * * *

I guess I didn’t have to tell anyone that my mood had gone from happy to helpless. I’m pretty sure it was written clear on my face. I told them in the morning that Trav’s grandpa died and how wishin’ wasn’t a strong enough word for how much I wanted to be there.

That night after dinner, Ma sat with me. She looked better, healthier, but her eyes were sad for me. “Oh, love. What a day, huh?”

“I feel so bad,” I told her. “There I was bein’ all excited and laughing, and he’d had one of the worst days of his life.”