No refuge (Heather)

A devastating bushfire has ravaged the Blue Mountains. You¹re well away from the fire and offer your home to anyone seeking refuge. A stranger takes you up on your offer. When she arrives she describes her experience in vivid detail.

There was the thump of boots on the front steps and I quickly looked up. An apparition appeared in the doorway, covered in dust and soot, with a tattered blackened jacket and pants that had probably been blue jeans in some better time. With singed grey hair and wild eyes, the stranger was unrecognisable.

Little Jeremy, sitting on the sofa nestled against his mother, who was nursing the baby, stiffened and leaned forward.

The apparition wasn’t unrecognisable to Jeremy. “Miz Johnson!” he shouted, electrified. He catapulted off the sofa and bolted to the door, wrapping his arms around the stranger’s knees. The new arrival dropped to one knee and held his face in her blackened hands. He twisted to look at her and poured out his story.

“Miz Johnson, Miz Johnson, our house burnded down and there was fire everywhere and my slippy dip melted and we RUNNED down the street and daddy’s off helping the firemans!” Overcome by his story, and his relief at seeing his old friend, he buried his face in her coat again.

It gave me a chance to pull myself together. It wasn’t a stranger at all, but was indeed Mrs Johnson from the house at the top of the street. I didn’t know her well but I’d chatted with her a couple of times, jogging by her place when she was in the garden. And I remembered that Jeremy’s family lived in the house next to hers.

I jumped up and grabbed her hand, letting go immediately when she winced. I said, “I’ll get you something for that. Are you okay? Do you have other burns?”

She looked at me with those wild, smudged eyes. “I’m okay. They said you’d offered your house as a refuge and someone dropped me off here.” She turned to Jeremy’s mother. “So you four are all right. You’ve lost your home too, but you’re all alive.” Jeremy’s mother nodded numbly. The look that passed between them told of the unspeakable thing they shared.

Jeremy pounded on Mrs Johnson’s knees again, demanding attention. “Where’s Pepper, Miz Johnson? Where’s PEPPER?” I remembered the little terrier who had greeted me when we had chatted on that far-distant day.

I forced Mrs Johnson into an armchair over her protests about getting it dirty. As I fussed about with cool water and burn ointment, she told Jeremy her story.

“I had hosed the house down for an hour and when the firestorm hit I ran inside with Pepper. I wrapped us both up in wet towels; we curled up in the shower stall and there was this deafening noise.” Jeremy nodded; he knew about wet towels and noise. “And then Pepper squirmed out of my grip and barked at me and danced away. I ran after him of course, through the flames and just as I got out of the bathroom the roof collapsed on that part of the house.”

“Pepper saveded you!”

“He did; he did.” She paused a moment. “He went straight out the front door, I thought we were heading into the heart of it, I lost him, I lost him, I threw myself into the little ditch at the side of the driveway and the fire roared everywhere around me and I heard the house go down and I heard the peppercorn tree explode. But I lost him…I haven’t seen him since, Jeremy. I don’t know what’s happened to Pepper.”

“Pepper,” Jeremy echoed, unable to find a sentence to attach to his feelings.

Folded within her ragged arms, he reached out to touch her face. They looked at each other, the old face and the young, both with eyes that had seen too much today. Jeremy tucked a thumb into his mouth and fell asleep in her arms.