‘It’s not big. On the Scone road. There’s a couple of blokes there keeping a watch on it, but I thought I should let you guys know.’
‘You could have phoned.’
‘I was passing and coming this way. It’s only a few miles outside town. And it’s not a big deal.’
In this sort of weather, every fire was a big deal, but now wasn’t the time to have that conversation. ‘Fair enough.’ Ben put the coupling down. ‘Justin!’
His brother emerged from the small kitchen area, a mug in each hand. ‘What’s up?’
‘We’re needed.’
‘Right.’ Justin spun on his heel and returned the mugs. Within a couple of minutes, the brothers were in the front of their vehicle, following the other man out of town.
The fire, when they reached it, was burning along one side of a wide gravel farm track just off the main road. A few wooden fence posts were burning, but the area was relatively free of trees, and the dry brown grass had been grazed short.
Ben caught Justin’s eye. When his brother nodded, Ben stepped forward and introduced himself and his brother. As Justin collected shovels from the truck, Ben started talking to the men who were already there.
‘This isn’t going far,’ he said, indicating the fire. ‘You’ve done a good job of mitigation. Trees cleared. And this ditch by the road helps, too. We’ll get this under control in no time.’
They all started swinging their shovels, using the loose soil to smother the flames. Justin collected a water-filled knapsack from a side storage area of the truck and walked away along the fence line, dousing the burning wooden posts as he went.
Ben liked his job. He liked the hard physicality of it. Soon he was sweating from the heat of the day and the exertion, and the heat from the fire. He liked the way dirt and ash suffocated the creeping flames. He liked knowing he was helping people, but it was more than that. When he was being brutally honest with himself, he liked the feeling that fighting fires gave him. It made him feel like he was important, not simply the second brother. It made him feel like he had some control.
‘Hey, Ben. I could come back later with a chainsaw and take a couple of these down.’
Ben followed the voice. One of the men was standing near a cluster of trees between the paddock fence and the road.
‘That would be a good idea,’ Ben shouted back. ‘This one’s not going anywhere, but that might stop something bigger jumping the road.’ Simply being asked the question made him feel worthwhile.
As the older brother, Justin had always been the leader of their teenage escapades. At school he’d been the captain of the cricket team. Top of the swimming squad. He topped their RFS classes and still held the record for the fastest run up the fire station tower with full kit. Not that he’d ever tried to make Ben feel inferior, he just had. And it could have been so different. Ben could have been a leader, too, if not for the lie their mother had told. She was the one who had made Ben feel less than he could be.
He deposited another shovel load of soil on the smoking remains of the fire in front of him. As he did, he heard the sound of an engine. An aged red station wagon was approaching, moving slowly on the edge of the road. He started to wave the driver on, thinking as he did that something about that car was familiar.
Instead of increasing speed, the car slowed even further. What was the driver doing?
The car stopped a short distance down the road and the driver, a woman, got out. She said something to one of the men clearing smouldering debris from the ditch. He pointed towards a tree a short distance inside the fence. Ben stilled as he watched her climb through the fence, exactly as she had in the video.
It was her. His mother. He watched her walk through the smouldering ashes and begin circling the tree, looking upwards.
She looked … older than he remembered. But of course she did, he hadn’t seen her for … He didn’t have to calculate. He knew exactly how long since he’d turned his back on her and walked away, his heart breaking and his soul screaming. Fifteen years. It would be sixteen years on the day before his next birthday.
Whatever she was looking for in the tree, she seemed to have found it. As she turned to walk back to her car, her gaze passed over him. She stopped walking and turned her head to look at him squarely. He saw her lips move, saying his name. Even at this distance, after this many years, she could tell him from his brother. Not that it mattered. Not to him.
He turned smartly and walked away from the woman. Up ahead, Justin was still spraying water on the flames. Before he reached his brother, he heard a car engine start. He kept his eyes fixed ahead in case she drove past, but she didn’t, and he heard the engine noise start to fade as the car drove back the way it had come. Watching Justin for a few moments, he realised his brother hadn’t seen her. He decided now wasn’t the time to tell him, and went to speak to one of the locals who was helping them.
‘Do you know who that woman was?’
‘Sure. That’s the koala lady.’
‘Koala lady?’
‘Yeah. She works with a wildlife rescue service. She comes whenever there’s a fire and if there are native animals hurt, she looks after them. Well, any animals really, but mostly koalas.’ The man shrugged. ‘We thought we saw a koala up that tree so we called the rescue people and they sent her. It looks like she didn’t find it. Maybe we were wrong, or it’s come down and found its own way out of here.’
‘Thanks.’ Ben noticed a flicker of dying flames some distance away and walked over, welcoming the excuse to be alone with his thoughts as once again, he started shovelling ash and soil to smother the fire.
***
Two kilometres away, Carol kept her hands firmly on the steering wheel. That way, they didn’t appear to be shaking. She hadn’t expected to see her sons at the fire. Even though she’d only seen Ben, she assumed they were both there. All through their childhood, they had never been far apart.
