“What’s the STDP?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the playful joeys.
“Save the Tasmanian Devil Program,” I explained. “We give them any information we can. They do some great work.”
“Where’s the mother?” Lawson asked.
“She’d be sleeping, probably. With one eye open on this lot, I’d say. They’re nocturnal mostly, but will bask in the sun.” I watched the joeys play. “Cute, huh?”
“Oh, Jack, they’re remarkable.”
It was silly how his words could cause my heart to skip a beat. But his love for and understanding of what I did made me happier than I could explain.
He put his hand on my arm as he took a small step and leaned so he could get a better look. Thunder rolled overhead, and I looked up at the sky. “Come on. It’s time we weren’t here.”
We climbed up the embankment of the gully, and I headed left, back toward the way we’d come. I only got a few steps with Rosemary when I realised Lawson wasn’t with me. I turned to find him stopped, staring in the other direction.
“Lawson, we gotta get going.”
Without looking at me, he put his hand up. “Wait one sec…”
I barely heard him over the rumble of the sky. “Lawson―”
But he was already walking in the wrong direction, over to the far edge of the clearing. He stopped and looked up. “What direction is this?”
“Uh, north, I think. Why?”
He was inspecting something near the trees. “Jack! Jack, come quick!”
I ran over to him. He was now crouching down, lifting the bottom of a shrub off the ground.
A Bursaria shrub.
He was looking at ants…
Oh, holy shit.
Then he put his hands down and leaned real low to look up under the leaves of the shrub.
Ants quickly crawled over his hands. “Lawson, the ants…”
“They don’t bite,” he said absently, not even looking. Then he lifted the bottom branches of the shrub and gently poked a pen into the roots of the plant. And as if right on cue, a little copper coloured butterfly flittered out and landed right near his hand. Then another, then another.
Lawson fell back in shock, scrambling to stay off his arse, and put his hand to his mouth, his eyes wide. He glanced at me. “Jack.”
I nodded.
One butterfly took flight again, skipping across the air before landing back in the shrub. Lawson took his phone out and his hands were shaking so badly he could barely scroll to his camera. He took some photos, then had the presence of mind to switch his phone to video mode. He filmed it, this tiny little creature, as it stretched its wings and skittered to a different leaf.
Thunder cracked through the sky just above our heads, scaring the crap out of both of us. Rosemary whined. “Shit that was close. Lawson, we have to go. Now. We can come back tomorrow, first thing. I promise.”
He nodded, took a dozen photos of the ground, the shrub, the clearing, then another quick succession of shots of the butterfly, just as the rain began to fall.
“Lawson, now. Or that road will be impassable.”
He spun around and got to his feet. The rain had begun to flatten his hair and made his shirt cling to his chest, but his grin was huge. “I found it.”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him along with me. “Come on.”
Together, along with Rosemary, we ran back to the Defender. I jumped into the driver’s side and Lawson jumped into the back with Rosemary. I threw the Defender into reverse, and looking over my shoulder, I reversed the whole way out down the trail to the gate.
Lawson had harnessed Rosemary in, then jumped out to pull the gate shut. When he got into the front passenger’s seat, he was still grinning. Actually, he was buzzing. He stomped his feet and did some crazy laughing dance in his seat. Laughing with him, or at him, I shifted the gears into first and started down the trail. “Seatbelt,” I said gently, as he obviously hadn’t remembered.
He clicked his belt in. “Jack, I found it!”
“Lawson, it was incredible. And it’s so small. I wasn’t expecting it to be so small.”
“I know!” he said, nodding excitedly. He was still bouncing in his seat. “Oh my God, I need to call the professor.” He pulled his phone out and did a quick scroll of the photos again. His hands were shaking. The energy he was giving off was incredible. Even Rosemary was standing on the backseat smiling at Lawson. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself before he dialled the professor. He hit Call, put the phone to his ear, looked at me, and grinned. “Professor Tillman? This is Lawson Gale.” I couldn’t hear exactly what the professor said, but Lawson then added, “You’ll never guess what I found today.”
There was a second of silence, then I could hear the professor’s muffled voice, and Lawson laughed. His excitement was so contagious, even I was smiling despite the torrential rain and shitty dirt road.
“I’ll send you some photos, to the email you gave me. You can confirm, but I’m confident it’s it. Looks like the Eltham Copper but has five small dots on the hindwing with tapered black edges.”
He saw all that detail?
Lawson laughed. “Yes! Yes! I know! It’s so remarkable. We’re just returning to town now. The weather has turned bad, so once I get to my laptop, I’ll forward you what I have… Yes, we’re heading back up in the morning, weather permitting, of course.”
They spoke briefly before disconnecting the call. He looked at Rosemary, then at me, his grin still firmly in place. “I found it.”
I laughed. “So you keep saying.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Can I ask something?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What do butterflies do when it rains?”
He laughed. “They hide. Under leaves, bark, logs, large rocks, anything they can find. That’s what they were doing when I interrupted them: trying to get out of the coming rain.”
As we came down the mountain, the Defender slipped on the dirt road a few times, and I sighed with relief when we reached the tarmac. Lawson seemed oblivious, because he looked at me and smiled. “Can we please go past my place so I can grab my laptop and a change of clothes?”
“You don’t want to just stay there?” Then I added, “With me. I mean I’ll come to your place with you.”
“I’d rather not. Mrs Bloom is nosey, and I love the privacy your place provides.” He waggled an eyebrow at me. “I have plans for tonight, remember?”
“Should we get some wine? I think celebrations are in order, don’t you?”
His grin hadn’t waned one bit. “I think wine and celebrations are definitely in order.”
*
After Lawson had raced into the B&B, he came back out with a laptop bag and jumped into the Defender, out of breath and rain running down his face. He looked at the clothes sticking out the side of his bag, then smiled at me. “I multitasked.”