My brother Nunzio always filled two water bottles. One he slung over his shoulder, the other he carried in his hand. I asked him once why two. He said the second was for the one who hadn't brought his own. There's always someone who hasn't brought his own, he said.

He worked as a day-hire forest hand. In winter he pruned, in summer he manned the lookouts. From June on he wasn't home before midnight. The hill above Caltanissetta was burning in patches, one day here, one day there, and he'd drive up with the jeep and the hose and the two water bottles.

The story of the two bottles goes back a long way. The first year he worked, an old man who was with him on the lookouts fainted from the heat around two o'clock, and he had nothing to drink, and Nunzio had finished his own water. From then on he carried two. He filled them at the fountain in the square, the one with the lion's face and the water that tastes of stone, and he filled them to the brim, so that if you poured off a finger's worth it would look at you wrong. These are things a man does and doesn't say. He didn't say them. He did them.

My mother put his food in a bag. Bread and cheese, two tomatoes, salt in a twist of paper. He'd leave the bag half full. He said that in that heat the stomach closed up. He ate the tomatoes and nothing else. A tomato is water, he said, a tomato keeps you going.

That day the wind turned after three. It turned from the south, the one that carries sand, the one that dries your mouth before the smoke even reaches you. The flames came down toward the Calì houses, down at the fork, where the barn is and the two tethered dogs.

Over the radio they said to come down. They said everyone down, the line is lost, get onto the road, wait for the Canadairs. Nunzio was up above with Peppe and a boy from Gela who was in his first year.

And here comes the part that was told to me by the ones who were there, because I was at home, I watched the fire from the kitchen window the way everyone down in the town watched it, sitting, with the television off and the window open and the smell coming in and sticking to your hair and to the tablecloth and to the bread on the table.

Nunzio came down with Peppe as far as the road. They were out. They were safe. The boy from Gela wasn't. The boy had stayed up above, behind the bend, with the hose empty and the smoke that had covered the road.

Peppe says Nunzio stopped on the road. He looked down toward the Canadairs that still weren't there. He looked up toward the bend. He had the two bottles. He gave one to Peppe. The other he kept. And he said one thing only, he said I'm going to get him, and he went back up.

He could have not gone back up. I have to say this because it's the truth. He was on the road, he was out, the radio had said down, and no one would have said anything to him if he'd stayed on the road like the others. No one. He could have filled his mouth with tomato and waited for the Canadairs and been here tonight eating with us.

He went back up. He found the boy behind the bend, on the ground, coughing. He pulled him up. He put the bottle to his mouth, the one he kept for the one who hadn't brought his own. The boy drank. The boy is alive, he's at Sant'Elia, he breathes with the machine but he breathes.

Nunzio pushed him forward onto the road. Then the wind turned again, and the flame took the bend in one stroke, and Nunzio was on the wrong side of the bend.

They found him in the evening. He still had the strap over his shoulder. His own bottle was empty. The other, the boy's, the boy had clutched to his chest and hadn't let go, and when they opened his fingers there were still two fingers of water inside.

They held the funeral on Thursday. Half the province was there. The mayor was there with his sash, the forestry men were there in their good uniforms, the boy from Gela wasn't, the boy from Gela was still hooked to the machine at Sant'Elia.

The mother of the boy from Gela came to our house on Friday. We didn't know her. She brought a tray of sesame biscuits, which is what you bring, and she sat down in the kitchen and didn't know where to put her hands. She said one thing only. She said her son breathes because of my brother. Then she said nothing more. My mother held her hand on the table and the two of them stayed silent, one facing the other, with the biscuits between them that no one touched.

My mother didn't cry in church. She cried at home, afterward, when she found that day's lunch bag still in the fridge, the bread, the cheese, the two tomatoes. She'd forgotten it. No, that's not right. She hadn't forgotten it. He always left his lunch. A tomato is water, he said. A tomato keeps you going.

Now when I go up to the hill, and I do go up, I go to see where he stopped, I fill two bottles. One I sling over my shoulder. The other I carry in my hand.

One for me. And one for the one who hasn't brought his own.