Red Dirt Heart 3 Read Free

crap out of Fisher.” I shrugged. “To be honest, I’d rather not know.”
    Travis ripped open the plastic cover and discarded the front address sheet of paper. He didn’t even have to open the magazine to find out whether I got mentioned or not, because my face was on the cover.
     

CHAPTER TWO
One step forward. Two steps back.
     
    Sitting at my desk the next day, I was still staring at the magazine. There I was on the cover, with Greg and Allan, under the heading “Farming in the Future”. I guessed it was better than “Farming for Fairies”.
    I remember some photographs being taken that night, but after I’d come out to a room full of fellow farmers, called old Jack Melville a few choice words and then proceeded to knock an ex-employee’s two front teeth out, I never gave the photos another thought.
    Last night, as he was leaning against my desk while I fed Nugget, Travis had read the article before me, I guess to soften the blow if me coming out as gay was mentioned. But it wasn’t.
    The article was pretty decent and very clearly Greg’s doing. He’d obviously got in the ear of the interviewer and told them of his plans to change the face of farming the outback. He told them the days of the past were finished, that the younger generation, naming me and Allan specifically, were ready to take on the Australian beef industry and the twenty-first century.
    There was no more than one whole paragraph of me in detail. All it said was that it was a welcome sight to see the new face of Sutton Station after the death of my father over two years ago.
    Still, I stared at the magazine on my desk. It had been a restless night. It was good to be back in our own bed after almost a week away, and Travis had done his best to distract me. But I had to get up twice to feed a hungry wombat and spent a whole lotta shoulda-been-sleepin’ time wide awake and staring at the ceiling.
    The reception to me ‘coming out’ as gay within the small-town farming community hadn’t been too bad. I’ll admit, I expected it to be a lot worse. But I still didn’t care; I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’d met brief resistance from Brian at the co-op, but shut him up pretty quick when I’d threatened to take my business elsewhere. He knew my father well enough to know that when a Sutton made a promise, it was made for life. If he didn’t want to take my ‘gay’ money, I’d thoroughly enjoy making sure no one else spent their money with him either. Spiteful, maybe. Stubborn, yes. I was a Sutton. And as many times I’d wished it otherwise, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
    Despite the lingering issues I had with my dead father and what he might think of the stand I’d made, I’d never felt freer or more myself, than I could ever remember.
    But in the last few months, since Travis’s visa got sorted and I’d agreed to nominate myself to be elected on the Board of Directors of the Beef Farmers Association, life had been a bit of a blur.
    I’d been doing a bit of groundwork with Greg and Allan on getting a public profile, creating a slow but steady push in the farming movement. By the time elections rolled around, we were hoping to create enough momentum to vote the redundant, afraid-of-change old timers out.
    I’d been studying—and quite possibly poutin’ and stompin’ about doing it too, but my brattish gripin’ didn’t bother Travis none. He’d just smile, more stubborn than me, and tell me to shut up about it and get it done already.
    And funnily enough, I was getting through it. I’d done three subjects so far and only had two to go, and the university degree I’d started years ago would be done. It was an accomplishment, another one I could thank Travis for.
    I was starting to see how all his push-push-pushin’ to get shit done just made me a better me.
    And not just me. His influence was all over the farm, not just out in the paddocks, but in the homestead as well. His warmth to Nara, the