Red Dirt Heart

by N. R. Walker

  George and Greg came back with a few longish sticks; there wasn’t much to pick from out here. “These’ll have to do,” Greg said.

  George crouched down to rifle through the medical kit. He must have grabbed it from the helicopter. I didn’t even think to bring it…

  “Here,” he said, holding out some rolled bandage. “This’ll have to do.”

  Travis lay back down, and we put the sticks either side of Travis’s leg. As gently as we could, we secured the splints. He hissed in pain as we moved his leg and dug his fingers into my arm harder than I thought was necessary, but he was obviously in a lot of pain. His leg needed to be more secure, so without thinking, I pulled my shirt over my head and wrapped it around his knee, both bracing and securing it.

  I lifted Travis’s arm around my shoulder and looked up at Billy. “Help me lift him.” Billy was quick to comply, mirroring my hold on him. “We’re gonna stand you up first,” I said to Travis. “Then we’ll lift you into my chopper, okay?”

  He nodded and grimaced when we lifted him upright. He stood on his good leg, and with his arms around our shoulders, Billy and I each put a hand under Travis’s ass and carried him to the chopper.

  Using what must have been the last store of energy he had, Travis pulled himself up into the passenger seat. He hissed when he swung his leg in and he paled, a fine sheen of sweat covering his brow, and I knew his leg hurt more than he was letting on.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He nodded quickly, not very convincingly. “I for, for—” He breathed out slowly, through the pain. “—forgot my hat.”

  He was struggling to get his seatbelt buckled, so I took it out of his hands and did it for him. “Don’t worry about your hat.”

  He could barely whisper. “Please.”

  I shook my head at him, but turned back and stomped over to the others. They were watching me, wondering what was wrong. I picked up his hat and mumbled, “Forgot his fucking hat.”

  There were a few smiles from them, mostly George. I looked at him. “You alright to get home?”

  “I’ll double with Fish.”

  I gave a nod and ran back to the chopper. I climbed in and started her up. Travis had his head back and his eyes were shut. “You okay, Trav?”

  “Hmm,” he hummed.

  “I’ll get you home, huh?”

  “’Kay.”

  I took the chopper up and headed home, watching Travis more than the scene in front of me. He kept his eyes closed, his face was sunburned and his lips were dry and chapped. “You scared me,” I told him. “You fucking took ten years off me.”

  With his eyes shut and his head back, I thought he might have fallen asleep, but after a long minute, he said, “I knew you’d find me.”

  A single tear ran from the corner of his eye, leaving a silver trail over the red dirt on the side of his face. I reached over and squeezed his hand. His fingers latched onto mine and he held on tight until I landed the chopper.

  When I landed back at the homestead, we had quite the audience. I got out quickly, before the rotors had fully stopped, and met Bacon at Travis’s door. We unbuckled him and lifted him out, carrying him into the house. “My room,” I said. Then like I needed to explain why, I added, “It’s bigger.”

  We lay Travis down on my bed and I lifted his leg up and gently put it down on the bed. Ma followed us in with her arms full of medical stuff, water and washcloths. “Doctor’s on his way,” she said. “Be here in an hour.”

  She handed me a water bottle and I put it to Travis’s lips, giving him small sips at a time. Ma said, “Travis, we need to get these jeans off you, and all tight-fitting clothes. We need to cool you down and get you rehydrated.” She left no room for arguments, not that he would have argued with her anyway. He was in no state to do so. “This leg’s gonna hurt when we undo this splint,” she said. “But we need to do this, okay?”

  He nodded at her, but just wanted more water. “Sip it,” I told him. “Or you’ll be sick.”

  Ma undid the shirt I’d wrapped around his leg, then the bandage. I undid his jeans and when we pulled them down and had to lift his leg, he let out a scream through clenched teeth.

  He fell back onto the bed, clearly exhausted and spent. His knee was swollen, the skin stretched tight and purple. I don’t know if something was broken or just twisted, but it sure looked painful.

  “Can we give him something for the pain?” I asked, pulling the sheet up to his waist.

  “Not until the doc gets here,” Ma said.

  Trudy, Bacon and Mick were in the room now, all checking in on him.

  “Right, all of you out,” Ma said. “I need to get him cleaned up.” The others left as quietly as they’d come, then she turned to me and handed me my shirt. “You best put that back on.”

  I’d been shirtless in front of them a hundred times, I didn’t know why now was any different. Ma looked over my chest and I followed her eyes. I had purple marks over my chest and my shoulder. Hickies.

  Love bites.

  Oh my God.

  They’d all seen me. Each and every one of them.

  I didn’t realise. I didn’t even know. It must have been from the night before last when we’d gone away from on our own. We’d spent the night together by the campfire and he’d kissed all over my chest while he lay on top of me. We got up early the next morning, then he’d gone missing. I didn’t sleep last night and left this morning before the sun was up. I hadn’t looked in a mirror in five days.

  Fuck.

  They all saw.

  There could only be one explanation. The only person I’d had more than two minutes alone with before Travis went missing was Travis.

  They all knew.

  Slowly, I pulled the shirt on over my head. Ma was still in front of me. She looked at me with sad eyes. “What you do in your own time ain’t none of their business,” she said softly.

  I suddenly felt every hour since I’d last slept. Tiredness hit me like a ton of bricks. “I’ll go get some icepacks for his knee,” I said despondently. I walked like an old man into the kitchen and pulled two bags of peas out of the freezer, taking them back to Ma.

  She’d wet down a washer and was wiping Travis’s face. I put the two bags on the bed beside him, not wanting to go outside to face my crew but knowing I didn’t have any choice.

  Ma put her hand to my face. “I know you’re tired, and you need to shave,” she said, scratching my bearded cheek. Then she looked at me seriously, “You’re still their boss, so you go out there and be their boss.”

  Just then the sound of Greg’s helicopter interrupted, followed by a motorbike. Everyone, with the exception of Billy—who’d still be riding his horse back—was here. I had no clue what to say, so I took Ma’s words about being a boss and walked outside.

  Everyone turned to face me just as George and Fish, along with Greg and Johnno, came walking around to the front of the house. “He’s kinda sleeping, he’s got a busted-up leg and he’s real dehydrated. But Ma’s with him and the doc will be here soon.”

  George went inside and no one said anything, so I looked at Greg and Johnno. “Thank you for coming. Thank you.”

  Greg held out his hand, which I shook. “Anytime.”

  “Please refuel here,” I told him.

  He gave a nod. “Lucky kid in there,” he said. “Smart. Heading east to the ridge instead of trying to find his way home undoubtedly saved his life.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Not many would have done that. Said he noticed the changes in the colour of different limestone,” I said, shaking my head, still nervous that they’d seen the love bites on my chest. Everyone just kind of stood around, and I kept waiting for someone to say something. It was like waiting for the executioner’s blade to drop.

  But it never came.

  Greg and Johnno refuelled their chopper and left, and the others, under my instructions, went back to the holding pen of cattle to check water, food and fences before dinner.

 
; I filled in the hour or so until the doctor got there by avoiding eye contact with everyone and checking the cattle in the holding yards. It was getting hotter and we needed to keep the cattle as cool and as calm as possible. Having so many head of cattle in one confined fenced-off area was not only dangerous to the staff, but also if they weren’t treated right, the losses could be devastating.

  When the new Land Cruiser pulled up at the house, I made my way over. Tired as hell, I was barely managing one step in front of the other. Doctor Hammond had been the Outback doctor for as long as I could remember. I used to think he was old when I was a kid, and now I wondered whether he aged at all.

  There was an esky and his black doctor’s bag at his feet. I shook his hand. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem.”

  “Come inside,” I told him. “He’s in the first bedroom.”

  I led Doctor Hammond inside to my room. The door was ajar but I rapped my knuckles on the old wood door and pushed it open. Travis smiled when I walked in, then looked to the man behind me.

  “Travis, this is Doctor Hammond,” I said, making quiet introductions. “Doc, this is Travis Craig.”

  Travis was layin’ on his back, dressed only in his undies with the sheet kind of covering his waist but his injured leg was propped up on a pillow, bandaged and with two bags of peas on either side of his knee. He had a wet washer on his forehead and a bottle of water in one hand.

  He tried to sit himself up a bit.

  “Stay there, son,” the doc said. “I hear you’ve had quite the ordeal.”

  “Yeah,” Travis said. “Something like that.”

  The doc put the esky and his medical bag on the floor beside the bed.

  “You got beer in there?” Travis asked. “’Cause this water just ain’t cutting it.”

  The doc kind of smiled, then took an ear thermometer out of his bag, turned Travis’s head and shoved it in ear. “It’s an unquenchable thirst, yes?”

  “Yeah,” Travis said quietly.

  He took his blood pressure next, then pupil dilation and then pulled a clear bag of liquid-something out of the esky and some plastic hook-looking thing. He hitched it to the bed head and then set up a cannula in Travis’s hand, all the while asking questions about hours and exposure and fluid litreage and how much he’d peed.

  “I’ll just give you guys a minute,” I said quietly, making my way to leave.

  “You can stay right there, Mr Sutton,” the doc said. “I have questions for you too.” The old man turned back to Travis when he inserted the tubes and started the intravenous feed. “Charles never did like needles. Not as a kid, nor as a grown man.”

  Travis looked over at me and smiled. I rolled my eyes and gave the back of the doctor’s head a tight smile, which was probably a sneer, and parked my arse on the dresser.

  “Your knee,” Doctor Hammond said. “Any movement? Was there a snapping sound or a pop?”

  “Don’t know,” Travis answered. “I was too busy hittin’ dirt and countin’ the scales on a brown snake to notice.”

  The doctor smiled this time. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never smiled at me. “I don’t need to ask if you were struck by the snake,” he mused. “Because you’d be long past needing saline.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Travis said. Then he said, “It’s not broken. I did my ACL playing football a few years back. Feels a lot like that.”

  The doctor unwrapped the bandage from Travis’s knee and inspected the damage. He talked as he did his doctor-thing, asking Travis about America: where he was from and all those type of questions that were a distraction from what he was doing to Travis’s knee. When he was done, he said, “Well, I agree. It looks like an anterior cruciate ligament. And you’ve done a good job of it. No way of knowing without scans, but it’s at least a grade-two tear.”

  While they talked rest and exercise and therapy, I could feel my head getting heavier. I tried to keep my eyes open, but thought I could just rest them for a second while they talked. It wasn’t until something in my brain told me I was falling and two hands were on my shoulders, that I jolted awake.

  Doctor Hammond’s face was peering into mine. “How long since you’ve slept?”

  I blinked a few times and shook my head, trying to clear some room for thought. “Um, night before last.” I shook my head again. “I think.”

  “Mrs Brown!” the doc yelled. Ma appeared in the doorway. “This man needs food and sleep.”

  I stood up taller and tried opening my eyes wider. Ma stood beside me and put her hand on my arm. “I’ll be alright,” I told her.

  The doctor ignored me completely. “Mr Craig needs bed rest for a day or two, then he can do some gentle exercise but minimal weight. If the swelling doesn’t go down in the next two-three days, take him to hospital.”

  “Can he fly?” Ma asked.

  “Not without wings, Mrs Brown.”

  Ma smiled, but she looked more worried than anything. “He’s supposed to fly back to America in three days.”

  My gaze shot to Travis and his to me. I’d forgotten all about him leaving… “Three days,” someone whispered. I realised a little too late that it was me. I swallowed down the lump in my throat and breathed through the weight on my chest. How could I have forgotten he was leaving? How could I have not remembered that?

  Ma frowned at me and her eyes were glassy. “Charlie?”

  “I forgot he had to go,” I told her quietly, almost mouthing the words.

  “Charlie,” Travis said, but I didn’t dare look at him. I just walked out of the room with a hand on the wall to help steady me and walked into the spare room—his room—and lay down on the bed. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, it was morning.

  My stomach woke me up—I hadn’t eaten since god knows when—and it took me a while to get my bearings. I was in a strange bed in a strange room and I was still fully dressed. I was even still wearing my boots. I heard Travis and Ma talking, just the hum of voices, and then I remembered last night.

  Travis was flying back to America in three days.

  Correction, I thought. Make that two days.

  I always knew he wasn’t here long. In the beginning, we’d even talked about us having fun for the few weeks he was here. I’d just not thought of it since.

  I guess I kind of got used to him being around.

  Knowing I had to face him, I rolled off the bed and walked to my room. I stuck my head in and Ma, who was sitting on the bed next to him, stood up. “I better make a start on breakfast,” she said, patting my arm as she quietly slipped out of the room.

  I looked at him then, and it felt like my heart was about to stop or burst or something. He’d shaved at some point and looked a lot brighter. His knee was still bandaged and still propped up on pillows, but he was sitting up against the headboard.

  “How’re you feeling?” I asked him. “You look better.”

  “I feel better,” he said. “You look like shit.”

  I snorted out a laugh despite my mood. “Thanks.”

  “You slept in your boots?” he said, nodding toward my feet. “Must have been tired.”

  I ran my hand through my hair and cleared my throat. “Well, I didn’t exactly sleep the night before. Someone got himself lost.”

  “I wasn’t lost,” he countered. “I knew where I was. You didn’t know where I was.”

  I shook my head. “I thought I was going to have to call your mother,” I admitted quietly. “I thought I was going to have to tell her you were—” I took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. “—that you were dead.”

  Travis patted the bed beside him. I shook my head no.

  “Please come sit here,” he said.

  “I have to get ready,” I started to say.

  “Charlie, I can’t follow you out there so please, please come and sit down.”

  Something in his tone made me move. I sat on the edge of the bed near his hip and wiped my palms on my thighs.

  “
Why are you nervous?” he asked. “I thought we were past any reason to be nervous.”

  I let out a bit of a laugh. “I’m not nervous,” I lied.

  “Charlie, I was scared as hell out there,” he said. “But you know what?”

  I looked into his eyes then. “What?”

  “I knew you’d find me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t so confident. Hell, I was looking fifteen miles north. I wasn’t even close. I don’t even know how you got so far out or so far east.”

  “I was lost,” he said, letting his head fall back onto the headboard. “Hopelessly.”

  “You could have died.”

  “I know.”

  “One more day,” I told him, shaking my head. “If Billy didn’t find you when he did, if you were out there one more night, you’d be dead.” I was just about to tell him next time, he was to take water and a satellite phone, but then I realised it didn’t matter. There wouldn’t be a next time.

  He interrupted my thoughts when he reached up and lightly scratched my beard. “Not sure about this. A bit of scruff is good, but a full-on beard is a bit much.”

  I gave him a smile and went to stand up, but he grabbed my hand. “Thank you,” he said softly, sincerely. “Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for looking for me, for stopping at nothing to find me.”

  “I’d do it for any of my staff,” I said, not meaning it how it sounded.

  He pulled his hand away and hurt flickered in his eyes. “Right.”

  I stood up and walked to the end of the bed. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said lamely. “I mean, I would look for any of them too, but you were…” I looked out the window as the sun was rising.

  “I was what?”

  “Different.”

  “Charlie,” he started to say.

  I shook my head. “They know, Travis. They know.” I ran my hand through my hair again. “They saw me without a shirt. When I wrapped your leg in it. They saw the”—I almost didn’t want to say it—“the love bites all over me.”

  Travis’s eyes went wide. “Shit.”

  Figuring I was about to take a shower anyway, I pulled my shirt over my head. He scanned my chest, seeing the purple blotches he’d left, and his face fell. “I’m sorry.”