Red Dirt Heart 3 (29 page)

I jumped into the old ute, and Laura climbed in beside me. Sam climbed up onto the tray back and helped pull Ainsley up. I smiled at the horrified look on her face as she sat down on the dirty, rusted, cowshit-covered tray, and I drove out into the desert.

There wasn’t a track to follow, but Laura navigated using the tracking app on my phone, and it wasn’t long until we found them.

The cow, lying down and mewling, was weak, and the calf was not yet presented. At this rate, it wasn’t looking good for either one of them to survive.

I knelt at the business end of the cow. Laura surprised me, but I guessed with nurse training, it shouldn’t have. She knelt beside me. “Tell me what to do.”

“I need to check the calf,” I told her. “We need two front hooves and a nose first. If it’s breech… well, if it’s breech, they’ll both die.”

So, like I’d done about twenty times before, I gently slid my hand into the birth canal of the cow. Fully dilated, but unable to push, the unborn calf was literally stuck.

And I could feel it. Slimy, wet and hot, right where they should be, were two front hooves.

“Right. It’s in the right position,” I said, gently pulling my hand back out. Laura was still beside me. “Wanna feel?”

She nodded. “Can I?”

“Just be careful,” I told her. “Nice and slow. The cow can’t move her back legs, but if you’ve got your arm in there and she tries to roll, you’ll snap your shoulder.”

With what I presumed was a nurse’s inquisitive precision, Laura did just as I had done, and she looked up at me and smiled. “Two front feet.”

I looked over to Sam and Ainsley. Sam looked a little grossed out, whereas Ainsley had a look on her face that told me she hadn’t looked horrified before at the dirty ute. She looked horrified now. “Sam, there’s some rope coiled on the back of the ute. Can you bring it over, please?”

He ran over, grabbed the rope and brought it to me, but then took a quick few steps back. Obviously not his thing. I smiled. Sam and I might be full brothers and yes, we looked alike, but he was city through and through, and I… well, I was made of red desert sand.

I tied a double slipknot in the end of the rope and, holding onto it, went back inside the cow and secured the knot around the front two hooves of the unborn calf. “Ernie,” I said. “I’m gonna need your help down this end. Laura, I need you to hold the cow’s head. Try to keep her still.”

I dug myself a bit of traction in the sand near the cow’s leg, wrapped the rope around my hands a few times, and waited for Ernie to do the same. But as soon as we started to pull, the cow bellowed and started to roll, knocking Laura backward. She was quick to get back up. “I’m all right, I’m all right,” she said and went straight back to holding the cow.

I liked that she was so hands-on, but it wasn’t enough. I was just about to tell Sam he had to get his city-boy hands dirty when the new Cruiser arrived in a cloud of dust. Like some saving grace, and not a moment too soon, George was here. He’d done this more times than I could count—hell, he was the one who showed me how to do it—and I wanted him pulling with me.

“Ernie, get up and put your knee on the shoulder,” I instructed. “Put your weight on her. Hold her down.”

“She’s not looking too good, Charlie,” Laura said. “Her breathing’s laboured. Her eyes are rolling.”

Shit.

“George!” I yelled. “We’re out of time!”

And the knot slipped off. Goddammit. I went back into the cow up to my elbow to refix the rope around the calf’s legs when two knees dropped down beside me. I tightened the rope the best I could and slid my hand back out, holding the rope up to George.

Only it wasn’t George at all.

It was blue eyes and a Texas smile.

The world stopped spinning and there was no one else, nothing else but him. In that instant, I could finally breathe, and I wanted to laugh and cry and he was smiling at me like he’d never left. My brain kept telling me to say something,
say something, Charlie
. So I did.

“You’re late.”

He laughed, and I swear, everything—
everything
—was right with my world. “Missed you too,” he said.

“Ah,” Ernie said. “Trav, mate, it’s real good to have you home, but, Charlie, she’s losing it.”

Oh. That’s right. The cow. The calf.

I forgot what I was doing.

“Help me pull it out,” I said to Travis. “Grab the rope.” He did. “We’re gonna pull on three,” I said. “One. Two.” I wrapped the rope around my hand another time. “Three.”

And pull we did. Every muscle straining, using every ounce of strength we had, we leaned back and pulled. Two hooves first, then a bloodied, purplish nose, and we kept on pulling, until the baby Brahman calf was born.

It wasn’t pretty. We were covered in afterbirth, and the smell was even worse. We’d kind of ended up leaning right back, pulling the rope through our feet, and when it was done, Travis looked at me and laughed. “Is this your idea of a welcome?”

“It’s not over yet,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “Come on, help me lift him.”

Lifting forty kilos of slippery Brahman calf isn’t exactly easy, but we carried it over to the ute and lifted his back legs over the bullbar so his head hung down toward the ground.

“What are we doing?” Travis asked.

“Rub him down, hard, like this.” I ran my hands down the calf, from his hind legs to his shoulders, in hard, fast movements.

Travis started to do as I showed him. The calf was slimy, covered in blood and gunk, and not breathing. “How long have I gotta do this for?” he asked, suddenly more serious.

And then the calf made a half-cry, half-bleat sound.

“Until you hear that,” I said.

We carried the calf back to the mother, and everyone stood back and took in what we’d just been part of. It was a pretty remarkable thing.

“That was incredible,” Laura said. She was grinning from ear to ear. Even Sam was smiling. I’m pretty sure from the look on Ainsley’s face, that we’d just converted her into a lifelong vegetarian.

I finally looked at Travis. He was already staring at me. He took three long strides and damn near knocked me off my feet, he hugged me so hard. “You wanna tell me what
if this is your goodbye
was all about?” he whispered into my neck. “It fucking nearly killed me.”

“I thought you’d gone home for good,” I whispered.

He shook his head. “I
am
home,” he said. “Here, with you. I’m home.”

“You’re really here.”

“I really am.”

He pulled back, grabbed hold of my face and kissed me before hugging me again.

God, he felt so right. Like I hadn’t missed him, like I hadn’t felt alone and abandoned, he was here and when he held me like that, it made everything right.

I pulled back and pushed his shoulder. Hard. “I thought you left me, you arsehole.”

He half laughed, half cried and shook his head. “Never.”

I fisted his shirt and pulled him against me again, but George, who I hadn’t seen until just now, clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Um, there’s company, boys.”

I let go of Trav and looked at George. “A delivery from the co-op?”

He grinned at me. “Surprise!”

I shook my head at him. “You knew? You knew he was here and you didn’t say!”

George looked as happy now as he did when we bought Ma home from hospital. “It’s a long story, apparently. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it.”

I shot Travis a look. “He better.”

Travis pulled me by the neck and he kissed the side of my head. “I will.” But then he looked around at the expectant faces. He nodded to Laura. “Hello again.”

“Hi, Travis,” she answered with a smile.

“Um, Trav,” I said. “I’d like to introduce you to Sam, Laura’s son, my… brother.” It felt weird to say that. “And this is Ainsley, Sam’s girlfriend.”

Travis was stuck staring at Sam, then back at me, then back to Sam. “Holy shit.”

I laughed. “You’re not the first to say that.”

Travis wiped his hand on his jeans and extended it to Sam. “It’s real good to meet you.”

Sam smiled. “I’ve heard a bit about you. Nice to meet you too. Despite the cow-afterbirth handshake.”

Travis laughed and wiped his hands again, this time on his shirt. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Ah, Charlie,” Ernie called out. “The cow. She didn’t make it.”

Shit.

George and I checked her over, but there was no sign of life. It was always a shame to lose breeding stock. The barely standing wobbly kneed baby Brahman was indeed an orphan. I pulled back the hind leg of the dead cow, and George tried to get the calf to feed.

“It needs the colostrum,” I explained to the others. “Or chances are it won’t survive either.”

“Come on, little one,” George urged, milking a teat into its mouth. It latched on for only half a minute, but hopefully it would be enough.

I looked over at Travis to see him shake hands with Ernie and give him a bit of a side-on hug. “It’s good to have you back,” Ernie said to him. “Maybe someone won’t be lookin’ so lost now that you’re home.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but George beat me to it. “Come on,” he declared. “Let’s get this little one back home.” He looked at Laura, Sam and Ainsley. “You three can come with me. Charlie, you take the calf. It’s not going in the new car.” Then he told Ernie to come back and take care of the dead cow, and that effectively left me alone with Trav.

They’d barely driven away before Trav was in front of me. He put his hand to my face and looked into my eyes for the longest minute. “I have missed you so much,” he whispered.

“Why didn’t you email me?” I asked. “Or answer my calls, Travis. I know you went back for your grandpa’s funeral, and I tried not to make it about me, but it was a bit hard when you just ignored me. I thought you weren’t coming back.” I couldn’t stop the tears. It was so overwhelming. To be so sure he was gone, only to have him back again. “If you had just answered my email…”

“I’ll tell you everything,” he said, wiping my cheeks with his thumbs. “In fact, I can show you. When we get back home, I can show you. I didn’t ignore you, Charlie. I was always coming back. Always.” He put his forehead to mine. “You keep calling Texas my home, but I can tell you right now, going back to Texas made me realise something, Charlie. My home is here. With you. You keep saying I want to go home, well, I
am
home. Now. Here. With you.”

Then he pressed his lips to mine, softly, reverently, like he couldn’t believe it. When I opened my lips for him, he made a groany-whimper sound that made my knees go weak. He kissed me deeply, thoroughly, and held me so perfectly. Standing right there in the middle of the desert, surrounded by vast open plains of red, red dirt, with his touch, his kiss, his smell, he was right about one thing.

He was home.

Then the little hour-old calf near us bleated and scared the shit outta me.

Trav and I broke apart, half laughing, half trying to catch our breath. It was then I noticed the dark circles under his eyes. “You look tired,” I told him.

“I’ve only slept about six hours in the last thirty-something,” he explained. “It was a helluva trip to get back here. Five layovers, from Dallas to Vegas, to Sydney, to Darwin, then to Alice. I’ve been flying non-stop just to get here, Charlie. I don’t even know what day it is.”

I put my hand to his face. “It’s quite possibly the best day of my life.” He smiled and slow-blinked as though exhaustion had just caught up with him, so I kissed him softly. “Let’s get you home.”

Travis picked up the bleating calf, all forty kilos of it, and somehow managed to fit inside the ute. I climbed in behind the wheel. Seeing him smile at me made me almost giddy. It was ridiculous.

He leaned his head back, holdin’ the calf and lookin’ at me. He had a tired smile on his face and his blinks were peaceful and slow as he listened to me talk.

I told him everything that had happened these last weeks. From my bein’ elected onto the Board, to Trudy’s keeping-the-baby announcement last night, to meeting Sam and Ainsley, and to seein’ Laura in a different light today when she helped me birth the cow. I told him if missin’ him were miles, I’d have gone as far as the moon and back, and how I realised that I
could
be me without him, I just didn’t want to be. Not ever again.

He shuffled the calf a bit so he could hold out his hand. I took it without thinking, and he squeezed my fingers and sighed. He was just staring at me, not saying a whole lot of anything.

“You okay, Trav?” I asked.

He nodded. “Just wanna look at you.”

So he did just that, all the way home.

* * * *

We only got as far the holding yard, where everyone was waiting. They’d obviously heard Travis was back, and he was met with warm hugs and wide smiles. Hearing his voice and his laughter made my chest all tight.

He had a long hug from Ma, and I’m pretty sure I heard her whisperin’ warnings in his ear about breaking my heart, but he had yet to stop smiling. He wasted no time in trying to get the newborn calf to feed, which as it turns out was a female cow. “I think I’ll call her Delilah,” he declared.

“Delilah?” I questioned. “Is that the name of a singer?”

“Dunno,” he said. “She’s not like the rest. And I don’t think she’ll be ever getting on a truck, Charlie,” he stated, shaking his head. “Not her. She’s special.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “Special?”

He ignored the way everyone stared at him like he was crazy. He knelt beside the knobby-kneed baby Brahman. “We helped her be born, Charlie. She’s special. And she’s too pretty. Look at these eyelashes.”

I sighed, and instead of telling him no, instead of telling him that cow would be used for breeding stock or meat production, all I could do was smile. I was pretty sure right then, I’d have said yes to anything.

George barked out a laugh beside me and clapped his big hand on my shoulder. “Nothin’s changed, huh.”

When Travis was sure Delilah had fed, he climbed through the railings of the holding yard fence. Obviously not caring one bit about the ten other people still standing around, he put his arms around me. “God, you stink,” he said.