Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau. Steve Tolbert

the valley’s Dean’s List in Paddock Reading.’ – using the local library service (though not through internet) or buying secondhand books and stowing them under his tractor seat. Next morning he’d head out in his ‘everydays’ – shirt, overalls, boots, bush hat, all specially chosen for their frayed and faded look – a thermos of coffee in one hand, a hidden pack of smokes and matches somewhere else. He might tighten or repair fencing in the ‘old bloke’s’ paddock for an hour or so, look towards the river, gaze at the sky and ground a while, before consulting his tractor library. He’d find a tree trunk to sit against, a secret fag to smoke, pour a coffee and read. Nick knew, but said nothing. His binoculars – strongest in the valley he reckoned – could spot a blowie lift its wings a hundred metres away.

      ‘During my pregnancies,’ his mum went on, ending her daydream interlude, ‘your father would drive me into town to see Doctor Healy and we’d come home and always find something on the stove: a casserole or a pot of soup simmering away. Or, at the back door, a side of lamb from old Mick over the back paddock.’

      ‘Low on maintenance, big on substance and tough as a two-dollar steak when she has to be,’ was how Nick’s dad described his mum, usually after a three-course meal and a couple of beers. That was about as wordy as he ever got about her, but it said a lot. They seemed good together: solid, never a sour word between them, at least when others were around. Didn’t socialise much past Gretna. Dad’s regular Rotary Club meeting in New Norfolk; a baking club one for Mum. Some Saturday nights an early parmigiana counter tea at the hotel where they might meet up with the rest of Gretna’s Rotary and baking set: the Rodens, Patels, Foxes, Godfreys, Woodruffs. Then it was back home in time for the last half of AFL footy or a DVD.

      ‘Later we’d get home from the maternity ward, my arms full of new life, and there’d be flowers and homemade scones and biscuits on the kitchen table. That night people would come around with more food and a bottle or two to wet the new head. Such warm, thoughtful people.’

      Typical: Mum mouthing great long sentences in praise of the valley and its people.

      Her of the power-of-friends and goodness-to-strangers school, as John put it, when he was home. ‘Yeah, good people, Mum.’ He recalled Ella asking her once how she’d met their dad.

       ‘Just met him, that’s all.’

       ‘Tell me.’

       She’d chewed her lip a moment. ‘During uni holidays I worked at the hotel. He came in one afternoon and sat at the end of the bar.’

       ‘A stranger?’

       ‘A lonely-looking one, yes.’

       ‘And so you decided to give him some company?’

       ‘I suppose I did, older man that he was. I liked the look of him, the way he talked, though I had to do most of it at first. Anyway, he came back the next day, drank his beer, read a tattered book. Hardly country, I remember thinking then; wouldn’t know which end of a spade to dig with.’

       ‘And?’

       ‘And I was wrong on both counts. He stayed. So did I. He built his world around a family, paddock, fruit trees and sheep. Later on joined Rotary, started building things for other people . Always a book going though, like reading soothed some lingering sore inside him.’

      ‘And now?’ his mum continued, ‘Your aunt and uncle, us and no one else from the river to the main road.’

      A familiar sick feeling rose up in his belly. As an encore, you moron, why not try shooting a plane out of the sky. ‘Yeah. No good, Mum.’ Memory-torture rode his brain again. One step too many while fishing and he’d been chest-deep in the river. Got out shivering and made a fire despite the total fire ban. No more than plate size, but big enough to mostly dry him out. Afterwards, he’d tossed handfuls of dirt on it. Just a few blackened branch ends left against the rocks, their middles burnt out, the tiniest wisp of smoke.

      ‘It could be worse, Mum,’ he said to fill the quiet. ‘We could be homeless.’

       Smell of eucalypts and distant hops. Outlines of blue gums, fences, livestock and distant houses (all gone now) as he rode his gear-heavy bike from the river towards the main road.

      Thing was, the wind had picked up. Strong enough to re-ignite sparks from a tiny fire?

      That was the question he couldn’t stop asking himself. The answer: probably. With that wind at his back, getting over Paddy’s Hill had never been easier.

      ‘You’re right, Nick. We could be … You hungry?’ she asked.

      ‘Not really.’ When they still had a house, that question would come through his crack-open bedroom doorway, the opening she insisted on so the room stayed fresh, like his bedroom would turn into a sewage works if – shock, horror, ‘Don’t know how that happened,’ – his door had actually spent a minute or two closed. No closed-door nag time since the fire though: no nag time at all. He could wear different­-coloured socks, walk around in crotch-less underdaks with wax oozing out of his ears, snot out of his nose, and she’d just smile and look at him as though he’d stepped out of a Myer catalogue.

      It was like she’d taken a knock to the head since the fire. Like now, she stared a lot, often at the most ordinary things: the kitchen sink, baking trays, fly-over birds that disappeared or the trees across the road.

      He gave her another look: her elbows propped on her knees, chin in her hands, wavy salt-and-pepper hair running down her back. ‘You’re wrinkling well,’ John would say, stirring her. So well, she was still a target for strange men’s eyes. He’d noticed a few eyeing her off in New Norfolk recently and the few times they’d gone into Hobart together. Imagine, a bloke’s own mother getting that sort of attention, especially while the bloke’s walking along beside her. Unbelievable.

      The screen door at the back slammed. 7HO radio went on: News on the hour. He listened, just nodding when his mum started on about whatever. Something on the radio about an opposition censure motion in State Parliament, a renewed proposal for a Mount Wellington chairlift, then – ‘Fire Service authorities investigating the Derwent Valley fire are focusing their investigation on the Meadowbank Campground area …’

      His fishing spot wasn’t quite there, but still …

      Someone messed with the volume.

      ‘Jenny,’ Uncle Pete called out.

      ‘I’m in the laundry.’

      Seconds later came Aunt Jenny’s kookaburra laugh.

      The radio volume went back up: something about government subsidies for drought-stricken farmers, followed by the traffic report, sport and ‘twenty-two degrees in the city’, then more of Hobart’s Top 40. Hard for him to care now which new group had made the cut.

      His mum leaned closer, picking something off the back of his t-shirt. She rubbed the back of her hand over his arm then across his cheek. ‘Your burns have healed well.’

      ‘My burns aren’t the concern.’

      She patted his hand. He took it back. ‘I lost them, Mum: Ella, Sook, Moonshine. Me: the one supposedly there to look after them.’ The repeat button again, like watching Harvey Norman ads on TV.

      ‘I still remember your grandpop’s mad terrier, Shooter, sniffing through our veggie patch once and latching onto the tail of a tiger snake and shaking it violently back and forth. Your grandpop running over with a spade and screaming, “Drop it, drop it, ya little mongrel!” Of course when Shooter did, the snake reared up and was about to sink its fangs when your grandpop took the spade to it. It all happened so fast. From dog sniff to decapitation in a matter of seconds. Later your grandpop said to me, “Fear can either paralyse you, Alice, or help you to move faster.”