Red Dirt Heart 04 - Red Dirt Heart 4 (5 page)

We fell apart, both of us yelping, him cupping his groin, and me hopping on one foot. The culprit, Nugget, scampered behind his bed box.

“You got me,” Charlie squeaked, falling back on the sofa. He was still holding his balls. His voice was high, tight and hilarious. “Boner killer.”

I landed right next to him, holding my now-bleeding foot, trying not to laugh. “Your wombat bit me!”

Charlie made a groany-whimper sound and finally opened his eyes. I held my foot up to show him the blood and bite marks. “I’m really sorry, but he bit me and it was reflex, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to knee you.”

He took a deep breath, then took my foot in his hands. He looked over the bite marks. “We should get that disinfected and cleaned up.” He let out a somewhat nauseated breath. “Jesus. Ugh. Just give me a minute not to puke.”

I chuckled. “I
am
really sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

He was even sweating a bit. God, it must have hurt. He gave a bit of a laugh. “’S’alright.” He cupped his balls again and exhaled loudly. “But you’re gonna have to kiss ’em better.” Then after a pained second, he added, “Maybe tomorrow or the day after.”

I laughed at him. But I helped him off the sofa and the both of us hobbled to the bathroom.

* * * *

Charlie was up earlier than normal—which was already too damn early for me—to get his morning chores done so he could spend the rest of the morning getting the house ready for Gracie’s first birthday party. It was a mix of sweet and ridiculous, and all I could do was smile at him.

He’d ordered ‘Happy Birthday’ banners online and there were balloons and streamers. If there was a contest to see how much pink a person could fit into one room, I’m pretty sure Charlie would win.

Trudy walked in and stopped. Her eyes went wide and I sighed. “He’s… he… I couldn’t stop him, sorry.”

She shook her head. “He’s lost his freakin’ mind.”

Charlie walked in and grinned when he saw Gracie. He held out his hands in front of her and she leaned out to him with her little arms up for him to take her. I mean, Charlie was besotted with this little girl, but she just loved him right back. “Look,” he said, walking her over to the balloons. “All these balloons are for you.”

Then Bacon walked in carrying gift bags and stopped beside Trudy. He looked around the room, just shook his head and smiled, putting the gift bags on one of the sofas. It wasn’t long before Nara, Billy, Ernie, Ma and George all filed into the room, piling one wrapped gift on top of another.

And as much as Charlie adored Gracie, he never stole the spotlight from Trudy and Bacon.

It was their party, although he’d decorated the room, but Gracie soon wanted her Momma back and Charlie happily handed her over. Gracie sat on either Trudy’s or Bacon’s knee while there was cake and photos and Charlie looked on and laughed with the rest of us as Gracie grabbed chubby handfuls of cake.

He would never detract attention from the family that was Bacon, Trudy and Grace. And they were a cute family, a loving family. How Trudy ever doubted her ability to be a mother I’ll never know, because it was by far her best job yet. She just shined. Admittedly, she had a lot of help and between Charlie, Nara and Ma, Gracie was one very loved little girl.

Charlie watched Trudy, Bacon and Grace with a look of longing that I don’t even think he even realised he had. He’d watch how Gracie climbed all over her mom and dad, and how her big eyes would light up and she’d giggle finding each new discovery even better than the last. Charlie didn’t have to tell me he wanted kids.

It was there in the way he watched Gracie.

As they opened gifts, Charlie sat on the floor and laughed along with Bacon as Gracie was far more interested in the boxes and wrapping than the gifts themselves.

Trudy almost died when she saw what Charlie had given her. She held up the tiny pink R.M. Williams boots. “They must have cost a fortune!”

“Kinda,” he admitted. “But how cute are they? They’re a bit big for her yet, but we’ll get her a pony from the sales in at the Alice and by the time she fits into ’em, they’ll be good as gold.”

As they laughed and discussed ponies, Ma sat down beside me. She was just about beaming. It’s the best I’d seen her in a long time. “How you feeling, Ma?”

“Well, between you and Charlie’s surprise last night and this birthday party today, I couldn’t be happier right now,” she said with warm eyes.

I smiled with her and she nodded toward Charlie and nudged me with her elbow. “Look at him.”

Charlie laughed as Nugget rumbled through the wrapping paper and little Gracie squealed with delight. His shoulders were relaxed, he was smiling like no one was watching, and there was a happiness, an inner peace, in his eyes.

“I know,” I replied.

Ma didn’t stop smiling all day. Even Charlie’s mood never waned. He grinned and laughed all day, even doing the jobs he hated, and when I found him in his office after dinner, he was beaming still.

Sitting in the chair across from him, I pulled off my boot and sock and stuck my bare wombat-bitten foot on his desk. “My foot still hurts where Nugget the shithead bit me.”

He looked at the sore on my foot and chuckled. “I can tell you, I’d prefer to get bitten by him than kneed in the balls by you.” He paused. “You still owe me kisses where you kneed me too.”

“Is that right?” I laughed.

He grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Yep, they feel up to it today.” He still had that life-doesn’t-get-any-better-than-this look in his eyes.

“You’re in a good mood.”

“I am,” he said. “And…”

“And what?”

“And I replied to that email about another exchange student.”

Well, that surprised me. “Really?”

He laughed at my expression. “Yes. So if we get some idiot from God-knows-where, you’re stuck with babysitting them.”

“I thought you didn’t want to jinx yourself?”

He snorted. “Well, after copping a knee in the nuts, I figure nothing can be worse than that, right?”

“Well, now you’ve really jinxed yourself.”

“Yeah, I’ll be waiting for the axe to fall on something,” he said. “Surely life can’t be this good for this long.”

And then the axe fell.

A few weeks later when fall had crept over the station, I’d just finished tightening the girth on Texas when Charlie crossed the yard and walked toward me. He’d been on the phone to the student exchange program—the same program I’d been selected for—discussing details of the email he’d sent a few weeks back. “What did they say?” I asked.

Charlie put his saddle rug on Shelby’s back. “Actually, they said the next intake won’t be until next year. Same time of year you got here. I guess they had enough places or I left it too long or something.”

I watched as he put his well-worn saddle on Shelby and started doin’ up the buckles. “Really?”

“Really. They thanked me and said next time for sure.” He gave Shelby a rub on the neck. “Maybe it’s a good thing. We’ll get through this winter muster in a few months without anyone else and maybe we’ll have some crazy foreign kid for the summer muster instead.”

I wasn’t real sure what to say. I was a little disappointed. “Well, I hope they like the heat.”

He fixed Shelby’s bridle and rubbed her forehead, for which she nudged him a few times. I think Charlie was disappointed too. “Yeah. God we forbid we get another guy from Texas.”

I snorted. “You should be so lucky.”

“One is enough,” he said, finally giving me a smile. “And believe me, I’ll be reading the background profile report this time.”

“Profile reports?” I asked. “Like student history or something?”

He nodded. “Yep. A full background check.”

“Did you get a background check on me when I applied?”

Charlie smiled. “Yep. It said male, tall, blond, gives great head.”

There was a dull clunk from the other end of the shed. It sounded like someone had hit their head on something metal. “Jesus, Charlie,” George called out. “Keep it PG-rated, would ya?”

Well, Charlie just about died. I, on the other hand, laughed and laughed. And then I laughed some more.

George appeared at the open walkway, smiling and rubbing the top of his head, and Charlie was a dozen shades of mortified. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “I thought we were alone.”

“I’d reckon so,” George said, still smiling.

Charlie, still flame-faced, looked at me and cringed. “I’m sorry I said that. That was really disrespectful, sorry.”

I just laughed some more. “Funny, disrespectful
and
true.”

Charlie groaned and leaned his face against Shelby’s neck. “Stop it.”

George chuckled at us, then turned to walk back to whatever it was he was doing before. “I was gonna say have fun, boys, but in light of your recent conversation, I’ll just say don’t be late home.”

Still laughing, I put my foot in the stirrup and hauled my ass into the saddle. Charlie got on Shelby with a familiar ease and grumbled to himself the whole way out of the yard.

“I can’t believe I said that. I never say shit like that.”

“Not in front of anyone but me,” I corrected him.

Charlie sighed and shook his head, but after a few minutes in the saddle ridin’ out into the desert, he was soon smiling.

There was nothing like seeing Charlie be free, and he wasn’t freer anywhere else than out in his desert on Shelby. It was our “head-clearin’ time,” as Charlie called it. Open space, clean air, blue skies; the desert in fall was a beautiful thing. Most landscapes hunkered down, getting ready for winter, but the desert just seemed to stand head-on with its front foot forward.

Kinda like Charlie Sutton.

I’d been lost in my thoughts of him when his voice snapped me out of my own head. “Trav? You in there?” he asked with a laugh.

“Oh yeah, sorry. I was a million miles away.”

He shook his head at me. “That’s okay. Shelby listens to me,” he said, rolling his eyes. “At least someone does.”

I snorted. “What were you talking about?”

He shifted in his saddle as though irritated by having to repeat himself, but he did it anyway. He launched into a spiel about climate change and how politicians wouldn’t know the first thing about it. “How could they know, sitting in an air-conditioned office? Surely the irony of that is a joke.” He shook his head. “They wanna come out here and see what it’s really like. They wanna study the animals and the seasons; that’s what they should be doin’.” He went on and on, and by the time we got to the sixth bore, a good two hours later, we’d discussed climate change, we’d argued the pros and cons of farming goats instead of cattle—no guesses as to which side of the fence Charlie was on that topic. “Goat farmers,” he scoffed, like they were the punchline to a joke—which lead to talking about olive tree production and diversification.

We’d been monitoring the bore pumps from Charlie’s laptop and had seen that number six in the south-eastern paddock had been lagging, so we’d come to have a look. Not that we’d brought any tools with us, apart from the usual saddlebag Charlie carried with him of pliers, a small coil of wire, electrical tape, and his .22 rifle in the saddle holster to take care of any pests we might encounter. I had the backpack of water, sandwiches and the satellite phone, and I’d thrown in a small tube of lube, just in case.

Charlie had run a diagnostic and greased the piston, and it seemed to run a bit smoother after that. We sat in the shade of the bore shed, the horses had their fill of water, and we ate our lunch. Charlie riffled through the backpack and found the lube. He held it up. “Optimistic?”

I laughed. “Boy Scout.”

He snorted out a laugh, but we never used the lube. Charlie found Ma’s homemade cookies instead. After we’d eaten everything, we packed up, got back on our horses and headed home.

I was starting to think there was nothing wrong with the bore at all and taking the truck would have been a damn sight faster, but Charlie wanted a day out riding with me. I could barely begrudge him that. It was a perfect kind of day.

On the way home, Charlie was telling me about what he, Greg and Allan were doing for this next meeting. I was in a daydreaming frame of mind, half listening to him, half just enjoying the sun on back, when Shelby balked.

She shied, pigrooted and then reared back, and it all happened so quickly, so unexpected.

“Whoa, whoa girl,” Charlie said, trying to calm her down as he hung on. Shelby was almost vertical on her back legs, and Charlie did well to stay on her.

There was only one thing that made Shelby do that. I should know. She did it to me. Texas was unsettled too, and I held the reins tight to keep him steady as he turned, but then I saw it.

A snake.

It was a browny-red colour, not too unlike the dirt beneath it, but it was raised up in an attack position, ready to strike. Charlie and Shelby were almost right on top of it.

“Snake, Charlie!” I yelled.

He somehow pulled Shelby backward, and when she was finally back on all fours, he turned her and with a hard dig of his heels, he forced her out and around the snake. I pulled hard on the reins, giving Texas a nudge with my boots and we took off after them, adrenaline pumping, my heart hammering.

One minute we’d been riding along, peaceful and relaxed, then the next second, we were galloping flat strap, my blood pounding in my ears.

Charlie pulled Shelby to a stop and quickly slid off her. By the time I got near them, he had his hands on her neck, on her chest, all the while talking to her, soothing her. Holding her forehead against his chest, he kept whispering, “’S’alright, girl, ’s’alright, girl,” over and over.

I dismounted Texas, and holding the reins, I walked over to Charlie. Shelby had her head down, and Charlie had his hands near her mouth. She’d often kiss and nip at his hands like that, but then Charlie pulled his hand away and looked at it.

His hand was smeared with what looked like liquid rust, and Shelby leaned forward, as though unsteady on her feet.

“No,” Charlie cried. “No, no, no, no. Don’t, don’t, don’t you dare.”

He pulled her head up. She was bleeding from the nose.

“Shelby, no,” he whispered. “Not you, girl.”

Charlie obviously knew straight away what was wrong. It took me a second to catch on. The snake must have bitten her…

Oh sweet mercy, no.

“Trav, take her saddle off,” Charlie ordered. “Now.”

I did as he asked. My hands fumbled with the buckles, and as soon as I pulled the saddle off her and threw it to the ground, she seemed to sway.

Shelby leaned forward again, and Charlie was trying to hold her up. Her eyes were all wrong, and the blood bubbled out her nose. She stumbled and went to her knees, and Charlie was trying, trying,
trying
to hold her up.

She went down and he held her, going to his knees along with her. He held her head, touching her face, her neck, her mane, crying, “No, no, not you, Shelby. Please, not you.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face and my heart break in my chest. She was dying, right now, in his arms, and we were helpless,
helpless
to stop it. I dropped to my knees beside Charlie, and he put his forehead to Shelby’s and he sobbed.

When Shelby started to twitch and a pasty foam formed in the corners of her mouth, Charlie put his head back and roared the most tortured sound.

I put my hand on his back. I wanted him to know I was there, he wasn’t alone. I didn’t want him to suffer this alone.

I didn’t want Shelby to suffer either.

Looking over at the slumped saddle on the ground, I got to my feet and walked to it. I pulled the rifle from the saddle holster and slowly walked back to Charlie. I knelt beside him again and put the rifle on the ground beside me. “Charlie,” I whispered. “She shouldn’t suffer.”

He looked at the gun, then at me. His face was tear-streaked red dirt and devastation. “I’ll do it.”

I shook my head. No one should ever have to shoot their own horse. “No. No, I will.”

Charlie sat back on his haunches and looked up at the sky. I think he was trying to compose himself, trying to collect his thoughts. Eventually he nodded and slipped off Shelby’s bridle. He leaned down and kissed the side of her head. “I’ll never forget you,” he cried.

Charlie stood up, and with Shelby’s bridle in one hand, he collected Texas’s reins and led him away.

I knelt at her head. There was more blood bubblin’ out her nose and foam at her mouth. She was breathin’ hard and wet, and her legs were twitchin’. I swept her hair off her forehead and stroked her ear like I’d seen Charlie do a thousand times. “Ain’t nobody loved a horse like he loves you, girl. Rest easy, Shelby,” I told her. I picked up the rifle and got to my feet.

I flipped off the safety and engaged the chamber. The sound seemed so damn loud in the silence of the desert. It was like the world had gone quiet, a breath of peace for a dyin’ horse.

I put the barrel of the rifle at Shelby’s temple, whispered, “Please forgive me,” closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.