The Hands

by Stephen Orr

Then she said, ‘The boys might have a hard year or two, but they’ll come good.’

  He glared at her. How the fuck do you know? ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Especially Harry, but he’s as tough as nails, eh?’

  This time he decided not to respond. Tough as nails? How did she know, from the two minutes she’d been with him? How could she know about what made him cry and run away to hide in the shed?

  ‘Still, Aiden seems to be a good big brother.’

  He watched a few old men smoking out front and he wanted to go join them. But no, he’d given his word to Trevor. ‘I’ll wait here with her, if you like. You see to Harry.’ There was no way he was going to watch a doctor sew up skin. He could handle bleeding scrotums and the smell of burning flesh, but as for anything human …

  ‘That music’s annoying, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Something to listen to.’

  ‘Is this his first accident, with the whip?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her, thinking, That’s the sort of shit that happens when you live in the real world. Studied the four or five bangles around her wrist. ‘It’s useful to know how to use a stock-whip.’

  Yes, she thought. You silly old prick.

  She even smells like a pharmacy, he thought. Clean, menthol, with a spray from the testers at the front of the shop. Like she was off on a big night. Cats. Or some play with its head up its arse.

  ‘I bet he was screaming,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Harry, when he did it.’

  ‘No, there’s no point screaming. You just gotta fix the problem. He just came in and told me.’ Then he reminded himself he didn’t want to talk to her.

  ‘Very brave of him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s had a rough trot.’

  ‘What?’

  She sat back. ‘I mean … with the accident.’

  ‘Of course he’s had a bloody rough trot.’

  Nothing annoyed him more than people who stated the obvious. Conversation makers. Idiots with too much time on their hands.

  ‘Has he sprung back?’ she asked.

  Sprung back? ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In himself?’

  Fuck.

  ‘I mean, is he happy?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? Ask him.’

  He studied the carpet: the stains. He wondered where they’d come from. ‘So, you knockin’ about with Trevor?’ he asked.

  She didn’t know what to say. ‘Knockin’ about?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I am.’

  Great, an almost simple answer, he thought.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she said.

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m entitled to know. If I wait for Trevor to tell me anything …’

  ‘I think he’s perked up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Since he’s had someone to … talk to.’

  He almost laughed. ‘He does plenty of talkin’ to us.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He smoothed his trousers, sat up and pushed out his lower back. ‘Well, he’s a big boy, he can choose.’

  ‘He’s got his own dilemmas.’

  ‘Dilemmas?’

  Then they were there: the three boys.

  ‘What you been sayin’ about me?’ Trevor asked his father.

  ‘Five stitches,’ Harry glowed, showing them the gauze across his face.

  ‘Very nice,’ Murray replied, standing up, running his hand across his grandson’s forehead. ‘You’ll have a nice scar there. Women go for a scar.’

  Gaby watched the old man. She could already feel him pulling his son, and boys, away from her. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, and Harry looked at her, unsure. ‘Not much.’

  Aiden was studying her too. ‘This isn’t unusual,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  Murray took his grandson’s shoulders and steered him towards the door. ‘Come on, it’s a long trip.’ He turned his back on the woman.

  Trevor looked at Gaby. ‘Thanks for staying. He wasn’t too painful?’

  ‘Well …’

  Although it was dark, Aiden could see the outlines of sheds and ruined cottages. ‘Lot of them had trouble with calving last year,’ he said to his dad.

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘A few.’ Trevor could remember sitting in the ute, watching the cows with Murray’s binoculars.

  Harry had fallen asleep. He’d taken off his boots and laid himself across the back. Nuzzled his head into the gap between the door and the seat. Mumbled a few words (‘I did it like I always did …’) before drifting off.

  ‘You shouldn’t let Pop drive,’ Aiden said to his father.

  ‘I didn’t have much choice.’

  He cracked his knuckles before thinking better of it. ‘Hopefully I’ll pass first time,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll be okay. They go easy on the farmers’ sons.’ Trevor remembered his own driving test, once around the block, stopping at the deli so the man could buy some smokes. He checked his rear-vision mirror. Murray was still there, hanging on like grim death, one of the ute’s headlights permanently stuck on high beam. He’d close on him and drop back, half a kilometre or more. Trevor would slow, Murray would catch up. Trevor would say, ‘Can’t you stick to one bloody speed?’

  ‘Got all your assignments finished?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  But Aiden was caught up with a difficult birth. There was nothing better than walking up to the animal, holding it, helping it.

  ‘Why not?’ Trevor repeated.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He looked at his son, who lifted his head and said, ‘Gaby wears some … interesting clothes.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Harry moved about, seeking a comfortable spot for his head. ‘How much longer?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Aiden said. He stopped to think. ‘I don’t reckon Pop liked her much.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You can tell.’

  Trevor had to agree. ‘He doesn’t like anyone.’

  That may be true, Aiden thought, but he’s gonna make your life difficult.

  ‘So, what do you need to finish?’ Trevor continued.

  ‘Biology … English … everything.’

  ‘Why haven’t you asked?’

  ‘Cos I don’t want to go back. I failed the Biology trial exam.’

  ‘Jesus … see, you didn’t ask for help.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it.’

  A long pause. Harry, too, was disappointed. He knew his brother was smart.

  ‘You’re wasting your money,’ Aiden said.

  Silence.

  ‘I’d be more use at home.’

  Trevor guessed that was it; that he could keep arguing, and pushing, for no reason. ‘That’s disappointing.’

  ‘It’s just how it is.’

  ‘I keep thinking it’s because of the accident.’ He saw the blinded kangaroo in his headlights.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that.’

  It is, Harry was thinking. It is.

  ‘If you remember, I was asking to leave a long time before that.’

  ‘I wanted you to finish school. Mum wanted you to.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want me to be … miserable.’

  Harry had to stop himself from speaking. Don’t be stupid, he wanted to say to his brother. And don’t think that I need your help, cos I don’t.

  ‘What about English?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘Fifty-four, fifty-six, I can’t remember.’

  ‘We could work on that.’

  ‘No. You said. One term. I tried.’

  They continued, Murray closing
and drifting, the conversation flagging, Harry falling asleep.

  15

  A few days before Aiden was due to return to school, father and son sat (with barely a word passing between them) in the front of the ute. Trevor was listening to an old tape he’d found under his seat. He was surprised it still played. Years of heat and dust had failed to dull Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The music appealed to him: notes as footsteps trailing across the landscape. It was no-nonsense music. Farmers’ music. Winding itself around his ears and brain like a too-tight fence snapping and unravelling.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked his son.

  ‘Not yet,’ Aiden replied, searching the hummocks for cattle.

  They’d driven an hour from home. Stopped in the middle of the track to watch a large herd approach from the west. Then Trevor had pulled in behind shrubs, killed the engine, and waited. The cattle had come close but stopped short, lifting their heads and watching them.

  Trevor studied the tape turning inside the player. Never surging or slowing as fingers worked like tappets in a cylinder, a motorhead of motion that somehow pleased him. The little door to the slot had fallen off and Harry had spent years shoving chip packets and pencils inside the mechanism.

  ‘That one there’s about to drop,’ Aiden said, pointing.

  Trevor studied the cow. ‘Yeah …’ He looked at the sky, full of low, rolling cloud. ‘She’d better get on with it.’

  It was cold. Winter had arrived. The morning chill persisted all day. Murray would lead Chris to the shed to fetch wood; return, drop bark and dirt everywhere; make his boy-scout construction and light it; move his chair closer and cover his legs with a rug; complain that he could feel his gout coming on. As Trevor said, ‘It’s not the cold brings it on.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Red wine, tomatoes.’

  ‘When do I drink red wine?’

  Trevor knew his father won every argument by default. There was nothing he didn’t know. Once, he’d asked him, ‘Where do you get all this information?’

  ‘Books, and common sense.’

  ‘What books?’

  But he’d just tapped his head.

  Back in the ute, Aiden had covered his legs with his coat to keep warm. ‘Should we move on?’ he asked.

  Trevor was watching the cow. ‘She’s started.’

  ‘How many are pregnant?’

  ‘Seven, eight … that one on the edge perhaps.’

  Although the desert was gale-swept, Trevor had rolled his window down. He could feel the chill on his face and neck. The clouds had taken the light. It was a grey-sludge day. But he liked this; it kept things neater, simpler, easier to comprehend. The trees and the cow piss in the cab with him. The oestrus and the damp bark, the smell of approaching rain.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ Aiden said.

  ‘Yeah, perhaps.’

  If this many cows were pregnant then it might be a good year: yards full of calves waiting for a tag; to grow old, gain weight and make money for them.

  ‘There’s not enough feed,’ Trevor said.

  ‘It’s gonna rain all winter.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  They waited. Aiden wanted to survey the other herds but Trevor needed to see this animal born. It would be a sign: life had interruptions but kept going, moving across the baked earth. The tempo persisted. Each small component fell in line. Nothing was greater or less than the thing that came before it. It just was.

  He checked the cow. She was moaning, starting to push. A few other animals were standing close, watching, nuzzling her. ‘She’s off,’ he said, sitting forward.

  ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘No, wait.’

  The rain started to pepper the windscreen. There were little explosions of dust then trails of mud running down the glass. Trevor half-raised his window but he loved feeling the drops on his face and arms. He breathed the wet wood, and grass. It was the first smell he’d ever known (apart from the powdered scent of his mother) and it was the thing that made most sense to him.

  The cow was bellowing, pushing harder, but there was no sign of a calf. ‘Don’t tell me … first of the season,’ he said.

  ‘Give her a minute.’

  The drops became a shower, exploding across the windscreen, leaking into the cab through the taped-up crack.

  ‘Maybe we should head home,’ Aiden said.

  But Trevor wouldn’t be drawn. He watched the struggling cow. Could see how hard she was working, and how impossible it had become. The torrent had consumed them: ute, cow and farm. Horizon diminished to hummock, hummock to road, road to cow.

  ‘Come on,’ Aiden said. He opened his door and walked into the rain. Trevor watched him for a moment then followed. He closed his door, but Aiden’s was still open, and the Bach came tumbling out of the cab. As they approached the cow the rest of the herd drifted away. Aiden went around behind her and noticed how far she’d dilated. Trevor came up behind him. ‘Go get your coat,’ he said, above the howl, drawing his head into his body and wiping rain from his eyes.

  ‘I can do it,’ Aiden said.

  ‘Go on then.’

  He took off his windcheater. Within a few moments his T-shirt was soaked.

  ‘Feel around,’ Trevor said, leaning towards him.

  Aiden slipped his hands into the pink and chocolate-brown opening and felt around. Trevor studied his determination; saw him close and open his eyes, lick rain from his lips and shake it from his hair. Stop to think. And then glide his hands in further, feeling. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

  ‘Breech.’

  He waited, willing him to take charge, to show how the problem could be fixed. ‘If you’re gonna move it you need to watch the neck.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And the cord.’

  ‘I know.’ He just looked at the cow, standing on her little bit of grass, helpless in the driving rain.

  Trevor saw his son’s shoulders. He noticed how they moved together like strands of rough rope as he took hold of the calf’s body and tried to move it. How he put his head back as he tried to imagine what was going on inside the uterus. How he bent and tensed the trunk of his body. But mostly, how he made this job the only job in the world; how he fell into a sort of trance.

  ‘Fantastic,’ Aiden said, smiling, as he guided the head through the birth canal, as the small brown eyes and velvet face appeared. ‘Yes,’ he said, reclaiming his hands and arms. ‘It’s coming.’

  Trevor held his son’s strong arm and squeezed it.

  They took a few steps back. The calf’s legs, tail and body appeared and slipped into the grass with a glmph. Aiden was still smiling, consumed by the moment, watching the small animal’s every movement. Trevor wasn’t looking at the calf. He was studying his son’s square jaw (which had hardened, from the soft jaw of the past); his stony face, wet with little ponytails of hair; his bright eyes; the water on his eyebrows and the blood on his cheeks.

  Aiden turned to him. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘Good work.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, indicating how the calf was moving and how the cow was already licking it clean.

  ‘A nice strong one,’ Trevor replied.

  Now the chill had set in. Aiden was shivering. He picked a few clumps of grass, wiped the worst of the mucus from his hands and arms and they returned to the car. When they got in the Bach was still playing. He couldn’t stand the distraction and ejected the tape. They wiped their faces and hair with their shirts. Trevor started the engine and turned on the heater.

  ‘It’s not so hard,’ Aiden said. ‘You just gotta feel what’s what. And when I pushed it,’ and he shook more water from his hair, ‘it just turned.’

  Trevor smiled at him. ‘She just needed a bit of help.’

  Aiden looked over and saw the calf trying to stand up.

  They headed home on the hard part of the road. Aiden blasted himself with heat. As a joke, Trevor said, ‘See, if you went back to school you could b
ecome a vet.’

  Silence. Bach. Hot air. The rain, still, hammering down on their ute.

  You had to bring it up, didn’t you, Aiden thought.

  ‘No, I can see it now,’ Trevor said.

  Aiden looked at him.

  His hand was only guiding the wheel, letting it slip between his fingers. ‘You warm?’

  ‘See what?’ Aiden asked.

  He looked at him. ‘If I let yer, you gotta pull your weight, okay?’

  Aiden closed his eyes. He lifted his head and for the first time in a long time, felt happy. Since he’d stood beside his mum helping her peel potatoes. He looked back at his dad and met his eyes. ‘I can deal with Harry,’ he said.

  Trevor almost laughed. ‘I can deal with him.’

  It rained all night. Just after two, Murray abandoned his sleep-out and moved inside. The rain had been coming through his tin roof, onto his rug, soaking its way towards his feet. The wind had worked its way through his louvered window, chilling his face. Yanga slept beside the couch, farting her way through another night, waking up, going into the boys’ room, pissing on the carpet, returning, snoring.

  The following morning the rain eased, allowing gutters to drain and the top few millimetres of soil to air-dry. There was time for Chris to feed the chooks and gather the wet shoes from outside the laundry, and for Murray to reclaim the porch for a smoke. The bottle tree was silent. Some of the bottles had filled and broken their strings, smashing onto the ground.

  Trevor walked around the house, expecting the worst. It wasn’t a wet-weather building. It had adapted to the sun but knew nothing about water. He noticed more of the mortar washed out from between the bricks and stonework. In some places there was nothing under the foundations of the house.

  He went in, sliding the door closed. Harry was still in his pyjamas, sitting on a stool that Fay kept putting in the shed and Murray kept bringing inside. Aiden was standing beside him, a pair of surgical scissors in his hand, tweezers, dressing and Betadine on the bench.

  ‘I want Dad to do it,’ Harry said.

  Trevor sat down on the couch. ‘Aiden is much steadier than me.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ He glared at his brother.

  ‘Trust me,’ Aiden said.

  ‘What about Aunty Fay?’

  Aiden imitated the tremor in her hand. ‘It’s either this or I’ll have to drive you all the way to town.’