I pick up the phone, and he is telling me there’s a fire brigade meeting on this afternoon, and I should go. The suggestion is so off-track with what I have just experienced and the stuff going through my head that I nearly hang up. I say, ‘I’ll think about it,’ and he says if I don’t come he’ll come over to stay with me again. I put the phone down, thinking I do not want to go to a fire brigade meeting. Fire brigade meetings are really just an excuse for a yarn and a few beers, even though some official stuff does get done. The meetings are a bit of a joke, because the people who go have generations of experience dealing with bushfires and grassfires. If there’s anything farmers do well in a group, it is fight fires. But at some stage the government decided they needed to be involved in rural fire-fighting. Farmers couldn’t be trusted to put fires out on their own. There needed to be regulations, rules, and training. So now there are inductions, procedures, courses, bright uniforms, bureaucratic levels of importance, and red fire engines. The fire brigade meetings I’ve been to (under Fire Captain Marko) have been opportunities for everyone to show how little attention they have been paying to government rules, and the delight they have in that fact.

But if I go, at least a meeting will stop me sitting here, thinking about everything. And it will get Marko off my back. This is no small thing. He is used to me saying, ‘No.’ I take a beer out of the fridge, examine it, and then put it back. Perhaps a meeting would be a good thing.

When I arrive at the fire shed there are six utes there already, which suggests a good roll-up. I have not been to a public meeting of any sort since the accident. Come to think of it, I haven’t been anywhere except on my recent excursions to the races, Elaine’s, Dave Martin’s, and the pub. I can see Marko, Ian, Jake Cole, Freddie Doolan, Cliff Peters, Bob Handy, and a couple of others. I know the parents, children, wives, brothers, and sisters of every one of them. Freddie has just become a grandfather, so I know four generations of his family. These are my people, but I am not of them. They greet me warmly. They talk about the weather, and sport, and crops, so no one has to go near a topic that might accidentally bring up a comment about James, or sons, or young men, or death. Despite this, Cliff grabs my shoulder, gives it a bit of a shake, and says how good it is to see me. He is a large, solidly built man with a breaking smile and round, shiny cheeks. I reckon soon a doctor or a wife will put him on a diet, and he will become serious and suddenly older like the reduced often are. For now, he sees life as a great joke, one that he can easily laugh his way through. I would be jealous of this if I could imagine myself in someone else’s shoes.