Cokes

He was alone, he had never been afraid, yet she wondered now. She thought of him in those waves, in the dark, in the cold. He had always been so big, filled spaces. Even he couldn’t do that here, and she wanted so much to be able to see him, let him know she was here.

She looked at the men in their uniforms, the sleeves taut over their big arms, their hair cropped short.

Some of them looked so young, they looked just like him, when she was his little girl.

She missed him on those night shifts, missed the smell of him when he leaned down to her as he tucked her in. In the morning she would see his shadow fill the glass of the front door, hear the key and he would bump through with bags full of the gear he had worn through the night. Her mum would be late for work and they would be together there at the door talking hurriedly before she rushed away to the car he had left running. Sometimes he would just want to sit on the deck and eat eggs while she drew or coloured in.

But sometimes, he would have the huge tunic and trousers that he wore in the fires, the helmet and the boots. And he would help her dress in them, cinching the over pants right up with a long belt, pulling the suspenders until they couldn’t get any tighter. The boots would come half way up her legs and she would hug the helmet to her it was so heavy.

Then he would sneak away and hide, and soon she would hear him calling ‘help, help!’ He would always be under one of the beds, hers, his, the big spare one. Sometimes by the time she found him he was actually asleep. When she thought of it now she realised how tired he must have been after those shifts. She would shake him and he would moan and cough.

And she would drag him to safety, out the front door to the lawn. It would take ages and she would be exhausted, even though he did most of the work pushing himself backwards along the floor. Whenever she paused and looked down to him his eyes would be closed, his breathing slow.

When they finished he would pull the big tunic off her and throw it to the grass and they would sit down heavily on the front steps so she could kick off the boots. He would go inside and get them a coke each and they would sit in the sun and talk nonsense about the job, how it had gone.

He would put his huge arm around her and say something like, “That’s all I do hon. You’re ten years old and you can do it already. There’s nothing you need to be afraid of, you can do anything.” And he would hug her into him so that so much strength and warmth and love filled her, so that she never wanted anything more.

She turned slowly back to look towards the coffin, wondered who could ever make her feel so powerful again.