The Hands

by Stephen Orr

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Make ’em in clay?’

  Trevor didn’t reply. He used a pencil to lift his son’s fingertips, leaving the fingers curled like a claw. Then he said, ‘No,’ and pushed them down.

  Harry studied his father’s face. ‘You should measure the fingers and thumb.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  They sat together thinking separate thoughts. Trevor: how the little bits of fat in each finger bulged; Harry: how his father was slow and careful, content to wrestle with small things.

  ‘You wanna be careful with that whip,’ Trevor said, without looking up.

  Harry just looked at him.

  ‘When I was your age it came back at me.’ He showed him the scar, just below his left eye.

  ‘You keep telling me,’ Harry said, moving his hand.

  ‘Still!’ Trevor growled, returning to his pine hand. ‘Look, half-an-inch from my eye. Cos I was showing off.’

  ‘I’m not showing off … I’m careful.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I could do this at the Show.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I might.’

  Trevor smiled. ‘You’ll make a good stockman one day.’

  Harry waited for more, his hand lifting and dropping.

  ‘One day?’

  ‘You’re still young. Patience.’

  Harry wasn’t happy. ‘Old enough to help with the muster.’

  ‘Yes, but … school … that’s what’s most important now, eh?’

  ‘But you reckon it’s a waste of time.’

  ‘When did I say that?’

  ‘Every time you walk past, you say to Mum, what’s he need to do that for?’

  ‘That’s not because I don’t think education’s important … it’s just because … it doesn’t seem relevant.’

  ‘To us?’

  ‘No, to ….’ He stopped to think. ‘Education allows you to do whatever you want with your life.’

  ‘Like being a good farmer?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘But that’s what you want me to do?’

  Trevor placed the hand on the bench. He wiped his own hands on the singlet. ‘That’d be nice. It’s not the sort of job I can put an ad in the paper for. But …’ and he turned his face to him, ‘if you or Aiden wanted to do something else.’

  Harry wasn’t sure about this. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘For instance, if you wanted to be an airline pilot …’

  ‘But I don’t want to be an airline pilot.’

  ‘You’re only young.’ He ruffled his son’s hair, and indicated his hand. ‘You can have that back now.’

  ‘Harry!’ Fay called from the house.

  ‘Go on,’ Trevor said.

  Harry left the shed and met his aunt halfway across the compound. The sun was above their heads and there was almost no shadow. He could see her threadbare dressing gown; her slippers, open around the sides and on the toes; her legs, covered with fine hair and scabbed patches of what he assumed was old age.

  ‘Here you go,’ she said, handing him a small basket.

  He went into the chook yard, with its nine Rhode Island hens, and into the laying shed. As he collected eggs from each of the straw-lined boxes, Fay said, ‘You shouldn’t need reminding.’

  ‘I was just about to do ’em,’ he replied, but she said it again, like she always did: ‘You shouldn’t need reminding.’

  After he’d collected the eggs she made him weed the vegetables while she picked tomatoes. Then, he filled a watering can and wet the straw he’d spread around the base of the cucumbers, peas and beans. Kept studying his aunt, butterflied on her knees, her dressing gown open past the white fleshy meat of her thighs. If he looked he could see more. He wanted to say, Could you adjust yourself, please, but knew he couldn’t. So he just studied her bony fingers as she picked spent leaves. ‘Aunty Fay?’

  She kept working, her face set hard.

  ‘Can I ask something … about Uncle Chris?’

  Meanwhile, Trevor closed the door of his shed and called, ‘How many eggs?’

  Fay slowly lifted her head and replied, ‘Eleven, although they’re a lot smaller now.’ She waited. ‘Why do you think that is?’

  Trevor walked past them. ‘They’re getting lazy.’ He looked at his son. ‘Give ’em a good drink.’ Turning and walking towards the house.

  ‘About Uncle Chris?’ Harry repeated.

  Fay looked at him.

  ‘Will he always live here with us?’

  She shifted onto her knees, picking peas and throwing them into the bucket.

  ‘Me and Aiden, we’ll always look after him.’

  ‘I can look after him.’

  He returned to the tank, refilled and came back to the garden.

  ‘Just cos it’s done one way, doesn’t mean it always was,’ she told him, as he started watering.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like washing your clothes.’

  He waited.

  ‘Once, what we’d do,’ she explained, searching for pods, ‘was put all the clothes in a drum, like that one.’ She pointed to the drum of chicken feed. ‘We’d fill it with soap and water, and rocks, and drive around with it on the back of the ute for a few days.’

  Harry had heard the story before, but couldn’t see what it had to do with Chris.

  ‘Got ’em beautifully clean,’ she said. ‘Then we’d tip all the dirty water on the vegetables.’ She held a pea pod, remembering, perhaps, how peas used to be bigger and greener in the days of improvised washing machines.

  Harry kept looking at her, waiting for her to explain, to make the connection.

  ‘Nowadays we just use that thumping big machine.’

  Harry thought and thought, making his brain work harder, attempting to solder a solution. ‘So we could look after him?’ he asked.

  But she just said, ‘I was always interested in Egypt.’

  He was out of water, again.

  ‘They used to have a black pharaoh. You knew that?’ She looked at him. ‘From Sudan. There are pyramids all across Sudan … but they never mention that.’

  Then there was a waltz—tinny, thundering across the compound. And with it, a voice, crooning:

  Once more I hold you to my heart,

  As thru’ the waltz we sway …

  ‘Christ,’ Fay mumbled, standing, dropping her bucket, peas and beans spilling across the soil. The sound of the sliding door and Chris, done up in Murray’s suit, embracing a phantom partner as he waltzed into the compound.

  ‘Chris!’ she called.

  Chris turned in graceful circles, tight in, then larger orbits, his arms raised at exactly the right angle. Fay was soon across the compound, pulling on his arm, trying to bring him back to the world of washing machines. He turned and almost slapped her across the face and she staggered back. She looked at him, accusingly. And then the boy-man was singing:

  When you and I were seventeen,

  And life and love were new …

  Harry could see his grandfather standing at the door to his sleep-out, smiling, then retreating a few steps back inside.

  The waltz stopped but Chris kept dancing, caught up in the music in his head. Trevor emerged from the house wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. He smiled but stopped when he saw Fay standing alone. ‘Chris!’ he called.

  Chris stopped moving, closed his eyes, lifted his head and took a deep breath, savouring his last few moments. He opened his eyes and walked towards the house. As he went inside Trevor stopped him. ‘You shouldn’t do this.’

  Chris was breathing deeply, tasting the air.

  ‘Do you hear me?’

  ‘He’s alright,’ Fay managed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Look how all this business upsets your mum.’

  ‘Trevor.’

  ‘No,’ he called to her. ‘Look.’ Turning his cousin around to face his mother.

  Chris moved, but closed his eyes.
/>   ‘Look!’ Trevor shouted.

  ‘Trevor,’ Carelyn warned, from the door.

  ‘It’s all over,’ Fay said, walking back towards the garden.

  Harry looked from one person to the other, worried that his question, somehow, might have triggered all this. He noticed the sleep-out but Murray had gone inside and shut the door.

  ‘Go,’ Trevor said to Chris, and he went inside.

  Harry watched his aunt kneel and gather the vegetables. Heard her mumble, ‘If they’d just let him go,’ and noticed she was struggling for breath, as though she was avoiding crying. He picked up the basket of eggs and said, ‘I’ll take these in,’ and Fay replied, ‘Make sure you put the can away first.’

  Trevor returned to his steamy bathroom followed by his wife. He slipped off his towel, turned on the shower and stepped back in. ‘Someone will have to start thinking about him,’ he said.

  Carelyn leaned on the doorway. ‘I’ve tried.’

  ‘We’ll need to try again.’

  She studied the parts of her husband she could see: his hairless chest with its sagging, pink-nippled tits; his stomach, bulging from his otherwise slender frame. ‘You’re getting fat,’ she said.

  ‘Getting?’

  ‘Fatter.’

  ‘Every fucking problem,’ he muttered, soaping his legs.

  She waited for the inevitable.

  ‘Whatever needs solving; everyone else just stands back.’

  ‘I do what I can.’

  ‘Fay can’t leave it all to us.’ He waited until the thoughts multiplied. ‘If it’s not Dad it’s …’ Put his head back and let the warm water soak his face.

  Carelyn could see his legs were sticks, screwed onto the bottom of his body. His arms, too, like a doll’s, hanging loose, unremarkable. He didn’t look like he could jump a bull, but she knew he could. It was all in the hands, he’d often explain. The will. The bloody mindedness. His little triangle, a full afro, like someone had run a line-trimmer around the fuzz; his little button cock, retreating into a forest of disuse.

  He looked out through the steamy glass. As if he wanted to say, So, what is it? As if he was afraid, even now, of her seeing too much. Of the physical man and not the father-fixer-peacemaker he’d become. Even his wife, he guessed, had lost interest in the body-minus-its-clothing: moleskin man, castrating a hundred beasts an hour, welding pipes, controlling children.

  He turned off the shower and stepped out and she’d gone. Dried himself and put on the fan and lay naked on his bed, airing the cracks and crevices, the dampness of his scrotum, the undried water in the creases of his fingers.

  Then she returned with a slice of beef on a fork. She held it to his mouth. ‘Taste this.’

  And he did. ‘Nice.’

  She sat beside him. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I bet Dad gave him that suit.’

  ‘No,’ she replied, placing her hand on his leg. ‘He’s had it in his wardrobe for years.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Chris?’

  He sighed, aware of her eyes on his skin. ‘Could you give me a hand with that spreadsheet tonight?’ He could see his stomach, and leg, and the hand that wouldn’t move. ‘I can’t get it to add up. If I could just do it on paper.’

  She ran her hand up his leg and side, and retreated. ‘Wait for Aiden,’ she suggested, hovering between two worlds.

  Then he thought, Now, now’s my moment, but for some reason, couldn’t move. Maybe, he thought, he had to deal with this issue too. He had to hold her down and tear at her clothes. Instead, he sat up. ‘Right, what’s next?’

  5

  The next morning it started to blow. A north-westerly at first, smelling of dry grass, and Murray telling them they were in for a blasting. ‘You should put the ute in the shed,’ he told his son.

  As they sat drinking tea the wind picked up, gusting, gently sandpapering their windows and bluestone walls. Trevor could hear the bottle tree; he went to the laundry door to look. A few plastic bottles skidded across the compound before tumbling down the hill onto the flatlands. Two or three beer bottles dropped and smashed and a few shattered on their strings, hanging like broken limbs. Trevor saw that it blew flat and fast. ‘Harry!’ he called.

  Harry came out. They ran across the compound into the chook yard and chased the hens into their house. Trevor fastened the latch and tried to secure a plastic tarp over the windows.

  ‘Washing,’ he said to his son, and Harry walked, leaning into the wind, towards the line. As he went he shielded his eyes and spat sand from his lips. He wasn’t tall enough to un-peg the clothes so he pulled on them and pegs went flying. He looked down the road and saw his father chasing Yanga, cornering her and carrying her in.

  They stepped into the laundry, shaking sand from their hair and clothes, and Harry asked, ‘Do you reckon it will be a bad one?’

  Trevor shrugged, using his foot to keep the dog away from the door. ‘Probably.’

  They went back into the living room and Chris watching a war movie. Trevor just looked at him, then at Fay, and settled for the smallest shake of his head.

  ‘Someone sealed the doors?’ he asked.

  Carelyn emerged from the hallway carrying a couple of wet towels. ‘All done.’

  Murray, still out on the porch, finished his cigarette and came in. Sat on the lounge and looked at the movie. ‘This isn’t gonna help,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Carelyn asked, sealing the kitchen window with a wet tea towel.

  ‘Young steers.’ He didn’t say any more, didn’t need to. He was out there with them, standing in the blue-bush, his eyes closed and his legs tense against the gale. He could feel the sand in his ears and on his skin. I’ll just stand here until it blows over, he was thinking. Two days, three, whatever it takes.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Fay moaned, as she lay back in her chair. ‘I gotta get to the shops before they close.’ She sat up, leaned forward and rocked back and forth.

  ‘What is it, Fay?’ Carelyn asked, looking at Trevor and Harry.

  ‘The shops.’

  ‘What shops?’ Trevor asked.

  But she didn’t seem to know.

  ‘I can see now,’ she said, ‘he’s starting to put things away.’

  ‘Who is?’ Carelyn said.

  But again, she didn’t seem to know.

  ‘There’s no bloody shop,’ Murray explained. ‘She’s off with the fairies again.’

  Carelyn wasn’t so sure. She came over and felt her forehead. ‘She’s hot,’ she said. ‘Harry, get the thermometer.’

  Harry came back and they took her temperature. A few minutes later Carelyn said, ‘Nearly thirty-eight.’

  ‘And she’s dreaming,’ Murray said. ‘Is it Sauers, the baker?’ he asked her, but she just continued rocking.

  ‘Are you feeling sick, Fay?’ Carelyn said.

  ‘No, there’s nothin’ wrong with me.’

  They put her to bed. Chris didn’t notice she was gone, or even know there was a problem. He was busy digging a tunnel under the wires. He knew, from his dozens of viewings, that he’d come up short. At one point, he looked out the window and noticed the sandstorm. ‘Wow, that’s bad,’ he managed, looking at Trevor.

  Who, by now, had consulted the satellite image. He’d seen the front moving east, darkening everything in its path; Bundeena descending into days of blight; day turning to night, and the generator taking over from the solar panels (themselves sandblasted clean); moods darkening, supplies of DVDs taken out of the cupboard and most of all, like Murray, he’d seen his stock sheltering beside the skeletons of gidgee trees, waiting.

  By evening the storm was shaking the eaves, coming in and under the house and up through the gaps in the floorboards. Trevor stood looking out of the front window and saw sheets of iron blowing across the flats. Waited, consulting his watch. Saw the hazy, dot-dash yellow lights of the Indian Pacific. Watched it moving, consumed and spat out by the storm until it was gone, in the dust.

  They went to bed a
nd fell asleep to the accompaniment of rattling iron. ‘I should go look,’ Trevor said to Carelyn, as they settled into bed.

  ‘Leave it,’ she replied. ‘We’ll pick it all up tomorrow.’

  And still, the sound of The Great Escape from the lounge room.

  During the night they were woken by Fay. ‘Mr Whitmore,’ she was saying. ‘I’m over here.’

  Trevor and Carelyn went in to her. In the next bed, Chris was still asleep. Carelyn took her temperature, looked at Trevor and said, ‘She’s still hot.’ Then gently shook her. ‘Fay, have you got any pain?’

  Fay just looked at her. ‘Gee, I need a pee.’ They helped her to the toilet. She sat and waited but nothing came. Carelyn stood beside her. ‘Can you go?’

  ‘Soon,’ Fay said.

  She didn’t go, and they helped her back to bed.

  ‘You alright now?’ Trevor asked, bringing in a glass of water.

  ‘Fine. Go on, everyone back to bed.’

  Then Murray was behind them, hovering in the dark. ‘She still going?’

  ‘She’s got a temperature.’ Carelyn glared at him.

  ‘She’s just confused. She’s getting old … aren’t you, Fay?’

  They all crawled back to bed, to fading thoughts and visions that chased them through the storm. Murray watched as sand blew in under his sleep-out door. Lying in bed, Trevor asked his wife, ‘Should we give her something?’

  ‘Let’s wait and see how she is in the morning.’

  The next day it just kept blowing. The wind dropped then returned, dragging the morning and early afternoon towards a premature dusk. Trevor could see from the satellite that the storm was nearly over, but it didn’t feel that way. He returned to his front window and watched the landscape ebb and flow towards and away from the railway line. Went out and saw the bottle tree was nearly bare. Sand had banked against nearly every wall and door. He made it out to feed the chooks but returned and told his son, ‘Your veggies are all gone.’

  ‘The lot?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Well, you can see the top of the tomatoes.’

  It continued blowing during the afternoon. Sand had climbed halfway up the outside of the windows. The laundry door had blown off its bottom hinge and a four-metre length of gutter hung loose from the sleep-out. Fay started off better but by mid-afternoon she was hot again. This time Murray helped her back to bed, saying, ‘You just gotta sweat it out.’