Two Man Station

by Lisa Henry

  Gio picked up his phone and took a photo of the back of the station. He sent it to Sophie: The view from my house. Remember when I used to be able to get away from work?

  He hoped she’d laugh.

  He set his phone down and closed his eyes. Drew a deep, slow breath.

  Today could have gone worse. The talk with Jason. It was indicative of how shitty his life had become when “could have gone worse” was the best-case scenario.

  No. It was okay. He was getting his life back on track. This detour to Richmond was only two years, and then he’d head south again. Not to the Coast. To Brisbane maybe. Somewhere he’d be close enough to Sophie and to Dad to lend a hand. Not that there was a lot to do, practically, but Sophie could use his support. Dad was . . . Dad was on a downward slide. Tiny memory lapses and moments of confusion for now, but he could still function. The doctors had said it might be a few years until it got bad.

  He’d never had the greatest relationship with his dad. His dad had never really come to terms with Gio’s sexuality. The old story.

  “Gio, he’s . . .” Sophie had sighed. “He’s a product of a different time.”

  “That’s bullshit, Soph. Don’t excuse him. Not to me, the finocchio.”

  “Gio . . .”

  He didn’t hate his dad. He never had. And he knew his dad didn’t hate him either, which made it more frustrating to know that his dad would never come around. But the blazing arguments of Gio’s teenage years were long behind them, dead and buried years before his dad’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and Gio had no interest digging them up again. It was what it was. Gio had learned to live with it.

  Gio opened his eyes and watched a lizard scuttle along the veranda rail. His gaze was caught by a small figure crossing the yard, his backpack bouncing. Taylor. He was trudging along, dragging a stick and stopping occasionally to poke at things that caught his interest. He reached his front steps, discarded the stick. Then he dropped his backpack on the ground, upended the contents everywhere, and sat on the bottom step while he picked through the mess. He found his key at last, and held it up with a grin, shoving everything back in his backpack—including what had to be a fair few chunks of dirt—and then bounced up the steps to let himself into the house.

  Gio flicked through the games on his phone.

  Minutes later, the smoke alarm next door began to beep.

  The steps shook as Gio hurried down them. He crossed the space between their houses quickly, ignoring the stab of dried stems and bindies under his bare feet. When he reached the Quinns’ steps, he gripped the rail and hauled himself up them.

  “Taylor?” he called out, pulling the door open.

  Taylor appeared, wide-eyed and frantic, from the kitchen doorway. Smoke wafted out behind him.

  Gio darted into the kitchen. The microwave door was hanging open, and yes, there was definitely something burning inside on the plate.

  Taylor danced from foot to foot anxiously. “I only put it in for a minute and thirty seconds!”

  Gio grabbed a tea towel from the bench and reached into the microwave. He dumped the plate in the sink, and ran the tap, and then flapped the tea towel around to clear the smoke. The alarm was still beeping.

  It was a cheeseburger, the McDonald’s wrapper almost entirely cremated beyond recognition. Gio left the water running over it and grabbed a chair from the dining room. He climbed on it and removed the batteries from the smoke alarm, and then stepped down and set them on the bench.

  The microwave timer was flashing. There were four minutes and twelve seconds to go.

  “Did you maybe put it on for thirteen minutes instead?”

  Taylor chewed his bottom lip worriedly. “Maybe?”

  Gio sighed. “Come on. Come over to my place and I’ll make you a sandwich, and then we’ll call your dad and tell him what happened.”

  “Okay,” Taylor said, clearly downcast. Then he wrinkled his nose and his expression brightened. “Do you have Vegemite?”

  When he got a text later that night, Gio thought it might be from Richard. It wasn’t. It was from Jason.

  Thanks for today. For everything.

  It’s no problem, Gio sent back.

  Yeah. He and Jason could work together.

  This could be home for two years.

  Court days were a pain in the arse. The magistrate visited Richmond once a month, along with the police prosecutor, and Jason spent the day chasing up paperwork, and coffees, and whatever the hell else they needed to keep the wheels of the justice machine turning smoothly. Gio was on a day off, but he turned up in jeans and a T-shirt to the tiny courthouse in the main street because Patricia Howe would be here today. It wasn’t odd exactly, but Jason wouldn’t have expected Gio to show up. Maybe he was more of a country copper than he appeared. The potential was certainly there.

  The Domestic Violence Protection Order was granted with no fuss, and Jason made sure that Brian Howe didn’t kick up a stink about it. He nodded to Gio across the small courthouse foyer as Gio escorted Patricia back outside and Jason ran interference with Brian.

  “So this is it, huh?” Brian asked, waving a sheaf of pages in Jason’s face. “You take my bloody wife and my bloody guns!”

  “And there’s nothing keeping you from getting either of them back,” Jason told him calmly. “Provided you abide by the conditions of the order.”

  Brian shot him a narrow-eyed look and stomped outside into the blinding sunlight. Jason followed him.

  Gio was standing at the bottom of the steps.

  “Did Patricia get out of here okay?” Jason asked in a low voice, watching Brian storm towards his battered ute.

  “She’s with her friend,” Gio said.

  “Good. Brian needs to cool off.”

  Gio nodded.

  Jason swung his car keys around his index finger. “Plans for your days off?” he asked as Brian’s ute lurched past them, the transmission whining.

  Gio flashed him a wry smile. “Does Overwatch count?”

  “Is that a video game?”

  Gio’s smile grew. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

  Jason laughed. “And suddenly I feel old. Thanks for that, Gio.”

  Colour rose in Gio’s cheeks.

  “Listen,” Jason said. “I’m rostered a corro shift tomorrow, and I’m doing a run to Charters Towers. I thought I’d take Taylor, grab some stuff at Target or whatever.” He shrugged. “There’s not a hell of a lot to do in the Towers either, but you’re welcome to come if you want.”

  Gio’s eyes widened. “Yeah. Okay, that sounds good.”

  “Good.” Jason nodded. “We’re leaving at about seven.”

  Gio smiled. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Oh, wow! Is that a Captain America shirt?” Taylor’s eyes almost bugged out of his head when Gio approached the back of the station early the next morning. “That is so cool!”

  Gio ducked his head when he laughed.

  “Is he your favourite?” Taylor asked. “He’s my favourite. Dad, who’s your favourite?”

  “Loki,” Jason said.

  “Daaad!” Taylor was clearly outraged. “He’s the bad guy!”

  Gio laughed again, and he looked loose and comfortable. His hair was still damp from his shower, curls springing free. Jason imagined running his fingers through Gio’s hair, tugging on those curls. He remembered the feel of Gio’s pulse racing under his touch, and the scent of his skin. He tore his gaze away.

  “Seat belt, Taylor,” he said, opening the back door so Taylor could climb inside.

  Gio settled into the passenger seat, and clipped his belt on.

  Jason reached for the radio. “Two-eight-nine, VKR. Booking on.”

  The voice from Comms came through on a burst of static. “VKR, two-eight-nine. Go ahead with shift.”

  “Working seven to three, VKR.”

  “Go with payroll.”

  “User 4010273. Show me heading into the big smoke of Charters Towers.”

  The dispatcher laughe
d. “Copy that. Have a good one, Jase.”

  “You too, Jen.” Jason set the handset back in its cradle.

  Gio was looking at him with raised brows. “You know their names?”

  “Only the ones who’ve been there awhile.” Jason turned the ignition over. “Is your seat belt on, Taylor?”

  “Yep!”

  “Then let’s get this show on the road.”

  It was a three-hour drive to Charters Towers. Taylor, hyped up at missing a day of school, chattered away for the first hour before his enthusiasm flagged and he fell asleep with his head against the window. Jason rarely got weekends off, so day trips to Charters Towers with Taylor were rare. Jason tried to limit Taylor’s absences to one day a term. The last time they’d tried it, a road train had rolled on the highway between Richmond and Hughenden, and they’d had to turn around and head west again. It had been in Hughenden’s division, but a big job like that? A crew from Charters Towers had been dispatched as well. The road train had been carrying cattle, and Jason hadn’t been able to eat steak for a month without his stomach turning.

  Today the drive was uninterrupted. Gio did a few rego checks on the iPad, but nothing that brought up any flags.

  Jason had worried there might be some awkwardness between them after the kiss, and maybe they would never have the same easy camaraderie that he’d shared with Dan, but this was okay.

  The day was bright and hot. The clouds that had rolled in a few days ago had passed over them. The wet season was still a few weeks away, when the lows would form in the gulf and the monsoonal rain would flood the northwest of the state for weeks. The dry riverbeds would fill with water, and burst their banks, isolating the more remote towns and properties for weeks on end. Gio would get his real introduction to country policing then: hours spent trying to get through floodwaters to stranded motorists, arranging evacuations with the State Emergency Services, and coordinating food drops with the army. That was a level of interagency collaboration that was reserved for ranking officers in the city.

  Jason stole a glance at Gio. He was running another rego through QLiTE. Jason snorted.

  Gio looked across at him quickly, eyebrows raised. The sunlight made his brown eyes appear almost gold.

  “You’re on a day off, remember?” Jason tapped his fingers against the steering wheel.

  “Right.” Gio smiled, and slid the iPad back into the pocket beside his seat. “I’ll bet you could do this drive in your sleep, couldn’t you?”

  “Unfortunately, yeah.”

  A six-hour round-trip to Charters Towers, and a ten-hour round-trip to Townsville. It didn’t matter how many times he did these drives for work, it was always Alana he thought of, and that barrage of frantic specialists’ appointments they’d had to deal with at the beginning of her diagnosis. Sometimes Taylor had come with them, strapped into his child seat and grizzling all the way. They’d shared some of their lowest moments on those long trips as the flat countryside slid away on either side of the car. Some of their highest too, laughing and singing.

  Jesus.

  Jason didn’t know how they’d ever managed to laugh, even for a little bit.

  “Jason,” she’d whispered to him one night, her voice hitching with tears. “Jason, it’s not fair.”

  Jason glanced at Taylor in the rearview. Everyone said how much Taylor looked like his dad, but Jason could see Alana in him too. The quick quirk of his mouth when he smiled. The shape of his chin. The untameable cowlick in his hairline.

  Jason fixed his gaze on the road again.

  Taylor was growing so fast, which was part of the reason for this trip. He’d shot up a few inches in the last few months, and was rapidly outgrowing all his clothes. Jason figured he could get him to pick out at least a few new things before he was completely distracted by the games section in Target.

  They arrived in Charters Towers just before ten. The police station was in Gill Street, most of which was filled with heritage-listed buildings that dated back to the gold rush. The station was no exception: a two-storey red brick building with wooden verandas and a steel hipped roof, fronted by a small garden with a white picket fence.

  Jason pulled into a parking spot out the front and turned to Gio. “Do you want to come in?”

  In the back seat, Taylor was snuffling awake.

  Jason watched the indecision cross over Gio’s face, and wondered what it felt like to be in his shoes. To be hated the way he was, when nobody this far north had any hope of even knowing the truth.

  “I’ll come in,” Gio said. “I mean, I’m going to meet them at some point, right?”

  “Yeah.” Jason got out of the LandCruiser and slammed the door shut. He opened the back door and helped a yawning Taylor down, and then reached in for the stacks of paperwork he had to deliver.

  Taylor stepped onto the footpath, stretching. “Dad, can we go to McDonald’s?”

  “Work stuff first, then clothes shopping for you, and then, if you behave, McDonald’s.”

  Taylor grinned.

  “Right,” Jason said, and met Gio’s gaze. “Let’s go and make some introductions.”

  The station, Target, McDonald’s, and back in the LandCruiser.

  “Anything else you want to check out while we’re here?” Jason asked.

  Gio dug into his fries. “I’m good, I think. It’s, ah . . .”

  “Not exactly the Gold Coast,” Jason finished for him. His gaze was caught by the way Gio’s mouth shone with grease from the fries, and he imagined leaning over and licking Gio’s lips clean. Then he remembered they were in the car park at McDonald’s and his kid was sitting in the back seat, which put paid to that little fantasy.

  He started the engine.

  The station visit had been awkward, but nobody had been overtly hostile towards Gio. Speculative, maybe, which might have been just as difficult to bear, but that was probably the best Gio could hope for. It was unfair, but Jason didn’t mention it. What good would that do? Gio already knew it was unfair. He didn’t need Jason to confirm it.

  Gio huffed out a small laugh. “Not exactly. But it’s been nice to see someplace different.”

  “Seeing the World, huh?”

  Gio threw him a questioning look.

  Jason pulled out of the car park. “They used to call this place the World, back in its heyday. It was the biggest city in Queensland outside of Brisbane.”

  “Really?” Gio sounded dubious.

  “Apparently. More hotels and brothels than you could poke a stick at during the boom.”

  “I know what a brothel is!” Taylor piped up from the back seat.

  “Good for you, mate,” Jason told him.

  Gio snorted and passed his remaining fries back to Taylor.

  “It’s probably gonna take more than that to shut him up,” Jason commented.

  “Daaad!”

  Gio laughed.

  They headed west.

  They made good time returning to Richmond, stopping once for fuel, and once to help a bloke change a blown tyre. Gio seemed more relaxed on the trip home than he had this morning. He was leaning back in his seat, taking in the scenery, and occasionally nodding along to a song on the radio. The reception wasn’t always great out here. Sometimes it dropped out for minutes on end and left nothing but the hiss of static, but sooner or later it picked up again.

  Gio seemed almost happy. It suited him.

  The afternoon sun painted the sky in streaks of orange and gold.

  They rolled back into Richmond just past four, and Jason loaded Taylor up with shopping bags and pointed him towards the house.

  “Thanks for today,” Gio said, stretching. “I was probably going stir-crazy.”

  “I sometimes forget how it can get a little claustrophobic out here at first.” So much empty space, so much open sky, but a small town made its own small spaces and those small spaces could be stifling. That first year, he and Alana had thrown themselves into getting out of the house whenever they got the chance. Fishin
g. Camping. They’d gone looking for fossils once, even though neither of them had known what the hell they were doing and couldn’t tell the difference between a rock and a fossil in the first place. It had been fun. “It’s not so bad once you figure out how to entertain yourself.”

  Shift work and organised activities didn’t always work out though. Jason had been on the local footy team a few years back, but it was too hard to make practice, let alone the weekend games.

  Gio’s mouth quirked. “With something apart from video games, you mean?”

  Jason laughed. “Well, it’s your choice.”

  He turned and watched Taylor tramping home, a small, solitary figure, and felt the customary ache he so often did. It was no longer the sharp-edged bite of shock and loss. The years had blunted the edges, but it would always hurt a little. Some days more than others.

  Alana had been four months pregnant when she was diagnosed, and together they’d made the choice to terminate so she could start chemo straightaway. Jason tried not to think of it as a baby, so it didn’t feel like another thing he’d lost as well. And in moments of cold honesty, he thought it was better the way it had happened. He wouldn’t have coped alone with Taylor and a baby.

  Asking his parents for help hadn’t been an option.

  Dan and Gabby had stepped up when Alana had been diagnosed. They’d only been new to town then. Jason had hardly known them, but Dan, quietly earnest, had taken him aside one day and said if there was anything he needed, anything, then he only had to ask. And Gabby had visited every day, cooking meals and throwing on the washing, and taking Alana out for coffee. They’d shouldered a lot of the day-to-day burdens. They’d been there to the end, and beyond. When Jason had barely been able to function, Taylor had still been fed and looked after.

  He’d felt so lost without Alana.

  He turned back to Gio. “Do you want to join us for dinner? I mean, if you haven’t had enough of us already.”