The Hands

by Stephen Orr

  1 free movie about you

  1000 free fetch food

  one free dishwasher unpacking

  7 free hugs (1234567 free)

  7 free back massages

  He sat down and flicked the squares of card between his fingers.

  unlimited breakfast in beds

  free make my bed for 3 days (only)

  Another card was more matter-of-fact: a big cursive greeting.

  Dear Mum, I hope you have a wonderful day. I’ll keep Harry busy so you can watch Pretty Woman. Thanks for all the things you do and putting up with us, lots of love from your son, Aiden XXX

  There was no glitter, no colour, no drawings. It was like one of his father’s receipts: simple, to the point; itemising what was owed by who to whom.

  He looked out of the window. The sun was up. He didn’t want to be beaten to the spoils of another day, especially at sixty dollars an hour. So he placed the coupons back in the envelope, returned the cards to the drawer and grabbed his backpack. He went out through the laundry, quietly closing the door, looking at Yanga in her basket and saying, ‘No barking … got it?’

  Harry was awake. He sneezed three times and rubbed his eyes. Then he sniffed and said, ‘Shit.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Aiden said, turning towards the wall.

  ‘I can’t help it.’ He sneezed again.

  Aiden attempted to cover his head with a pillow. ‘Go out.’

  ‘It’ll stop.’ He snorted. ‘I think it’s hayfever.’

  ‘Go out!’

  ‘It’ll stop!’ He tried to make it stop. His nose was tingling and he could feel another sneeze coming. It arrived; two, three, and a full-faced, snot-tailed fourth.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Aiden said.

  ‘That must have been Dad going.’

  ‘So what? Go back to sleep.’

  Harry got out of bed, walked down the hall to the toilet, pulled a few metres of paper from the roll and returned. He waited until the trickle started and blew his nose. ‘How many days will he be gone?’

  ‘Three.’

  I hope he’s okay, he thought. He imagined the crane and the long lengths of steel suspended in the air; the wheels of the tractor; and his father, without a hard hat, failing to predict or see the thing that might kill him. He blew his nose again. The paper shredded and there were fragments clinging to his nose.

  ‘Stop sniffing,’ Aiden said.

  ‘He’ll be okay, won’t he?’

  ‘You’ve got shit all over your face.’ He turned back to the wall.

  Harry wiped his nose and the paper crumbled onto the sheets. He lay back against his bedhead. ‘Mum used to always tell me off, remember?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I remember once, it was so bad she gave me a tea towel and said, That should last a few hours.’ He remembered trying to do his lesson as Carelyn wiped his forehead with a wet flannel, as he dragged his tea towel across his red-raw nostrils, as she said, ‘Just blow it all out, I’m sick of hearing you,’ and he replied, ‘It just keeps coming.’ He remembered Mrs Amery saying, ‘Perhaps we should try again tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s Mother’s Day,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  Silence, as they both tried to think how the gap might be plugged, for today at least.

  ‘Now I don’t feel so good,’ he said, giving up on the paper and wiping his nose on his bed sheets.

  Aiden looked up at him. ‘There’s no point going back over everything.’

  He knew he was right. It just made you feel worse. But she was still there, sitting on the bed, talking about hayfever. ‘Aiden, remember when I did all those coupons?’ He kept wiping his nose on the sheet. ‘I remember I had to keep unpacking the dishwasher.’

  ‘You did it once.’

  ‘More than that, and remember, the back massage?’ As he remembered spreading cushions and laying his mum face-down on the lounge-room floor. He could still smell the menthol on his hands.

  ‘You lasted a week,’ Aiden said, giving up on sleep, laying back and staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A thousand free fetch foods.’

  He guessed he was right. It was only a few days before he’d decided he’d been over-generous: 1000? So one day when Carelyn was out hanging washing on the line he’d gathered all his coupons from around the house, put them back in the envelope and buried the card in the bottom of the tallboy drawer. ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He couldn’t say it. Still, he knew now. It was a selfish thing to do. Carelyn had never mentioned the coupons again. Perhaps, he thought, she’d forgotten. Or perhaps she knew what he’d done and let it go. Forgiving him; blessing him with her silence. ‘I don’t feel so good,’ he repeated.

  ‘Well, there’s not much you can do.’

  ‘Why did Dad have to go … today?’

  ‘He had no choice.’

  He wasn’t happy with this. ‘Why would they work on Mother’s Day?’

  ‘It’s just another day.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  Seven free hugs. He remembered giving her all of these, crossing them off the card, offering more. That was easy. The thought of this redeemed coupon made him happy for a moment.

  ‘We can’t just forget her,’ he said.

  ‘I never said that. I just said …’ Now he wasn’t sure himself.

  ‘I hid the coupons.’

  ‘Well, that’s the sort of thing nine-year-old shit-heads do. Don’t feel bad.’

  But he did. He felt his forehead: cool. His nose was clear and the tingling had stopped. He wiped the last few drops of mucus from his hands. ‘I’m not sneezing,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  Silence.

  ‘Maybe we should cook breakfast anyway.’

  Aiden looked at him. ‘For who?’

  ‘Aunty Fay. She’s a mum. I don’t think Chris is gonna do anything.’

  Aiden smiled at him. ‘That’s it, Shit-for-brains. Useful ideas.’

  Trevor drove west for three hours. Highway, with lunch at a rest-stop; dead wombat; a Rotary map that had been removed, or had never existed. After another hour he turned left at a pair of tractor tyres, consulted a mud-map and drove east.

  This was the back of a forgotten beyond, good for nothing (Murray would say) except walkabouts and atom bombs. But Trevor liked it. At least the roads were hard; smooth and sun-baked, leading from somewhere to nowhere. The vegetation, hanging on around soaks and creeks, was mean and hardy: sandalwood and plenty of mulga, even a scattering of Mitchell grass across the low country.

  He arrived at the base camp just after 1 pm. It had been set up beside an overgrown pile of old tracks. There was a maintenance shed full of bird shit, lumps of iron and a spaghetti of old signals and wires. A water tank beside a length of track that hadn’t been ripped up. Nearby, a flat-top truck and on this, a transportable building with a set of steps leading up from an area all campfire and esky, swags and a tent-kitchen. He parked and got out.

  ‘Hello?’

  He walked over to the steps, climbed up and looked inside the transportable. ‘Hello?’ It contained an office and a collection of camp stretchers. He stood on a landing and studied the camp.

  ‘Hello.’ A short man emerging from behind a distant pepper tree, hitching his pants and smiling. ‘You Trevor?’ Approaching him, carrying a roll of toilet paper. They shook hands. ‘James Turner. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘I’s expecting you this morning.’

  Trevor was taken back. ‘Ross said I’d be starting tomorrow.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘No, mate.’ As though it wasn’t up for discussion. ‘Today. Sunday.’

  ‘Well, I can get straight to it.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’

  They went into the transportable and sat on either side of a desk. ‘We’ll fill in the paperwork tonight,’ Turner said. ‘You’re not plannin’ on havin’ an a
ccident today, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He sat staring at Trevor. ‘Ross said you run Shorthorn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Beef prices are shit, eh?’

  ‘Very shit.’

  ‘That why you’re here?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Okay.’ He seemed happy with this. ‘This track out here, it’s a fifty-kilometre spur. We’ve done about ten clicks but the rain’s set us back. That’s where you come into it.’

  Trevor was happy to listen. He’d never had a job interview and he didn’t want one now. He’d offered his back, hands and brain, and as far as he was concerned they’d already shaken on it. And anyway, he was in no mood to feign enthusiasm. He was tired and didn’t care about spur lines.

  ‘Us few blokes often work together, we’re a team,’ Turner said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So, you’re the … extra muscle?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘The rail’s all fifty and sixty pounds a yard. Most of it’s headed up to Queensland for the sugar rail. Fishplates, bolts, the rest—straight into a skip. We’ve got twelve-tonne excavators, a four-wheel drive, rubber-tyre dozer, three semi-trailers, couple of utes and this thing to live in … or yer swag, if you’d like.’

  ‘In the car.’

  ‘Good. I thought we’d start you on one of the excavators. You happy with that?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He wondered why Trevor asked so few questions. ‘One’s fitted with a hydraulic rock breaker. We use it to shear off the fishplate bolts.’

  Trevor moved in his seat. ‘Sounds easy enough.’

  ‘We’re workin’ a couple of clicks up the track. I’ll drive yer. You wanna get changed?’

  Trevor looked down at his boots, shiny with an hour of Chris’s spit and polish. ‘I’m ready to go.’

  Back at Bundeena, afternoon tea was Harry’s scones—flat, crumbling, chalky in the mouth. Sitting on the porch, waiting for the Indian Pacific, Fay was happy. She was holding a card—her son’s. He’d spelt the words correctly (with a little help from Harry) and coloured the paper so hard he’d made holes. He was sitting beside her, looking where she looked, breathing when she breathed, eating when she ate. ‘I did the sifting,’ he said, as scone crumbled down his chin.

  ‘Perfect,’ she replied, placing her hand over his. ‘This is the best Mother’s Day ever.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’ She tried to recall a time when he’d even remembered, ignoring her in favour of Carelyn, apparently the only mother at Bundeena.

  She waited for the train but it wouldn’t come. It was overdue. ‘Maybe there’s been some sort of delay,’ she said.

  One year, she remembered, Chris followed the boys into their mum’s room. He stood waiting for praise for the breakfast he hadn’t cooked. Carelyn said, ‘What about your mum, Chris?’ He’d looked at her, unsure what she meant.

  ‘Shouldn’t you make her some breakfast?’

  ‘Mum?’ He’d stopped to think.

  ‘Yes. What about a soft-boiled egg?’

  Harry came out with a cup of tea and placed it beside her. ‘Uncle Chris said they’re your favourite.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he said he’s gonna do all the dishes tonight, to save you.’

  Fay looked at her son. ‘He can help me.’

  ‘No, by himself,’ Harry demanded, looking at Chris.

  ‘By myself,’ Chris said.

  And she patted his hand again.

  Harry sat down and waited. He watched how she drank from the china cup (the only one she’d use) and dried her bottom lip with her handkerchief. He studied each of her yellow teeth and noticed how she kept moving her jaw in a slight circular motion.

  ‘The train’s late,’ she said, looking at him.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘The old days, the Tea and Sugar, that’d never be late.’ And she was back on the gravel, climbing the steps to the post office, going inside the small, hot room; taking a stub and filling it out; giving it to the girl behind the counter.

  ‘That all today, Fay?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Chris had filled out his own slip and handed it to the teller. ‘Two hundred pounds please.’

  She smiled at mother and son. ‘It’s dollars now.’

  ‘Two hundred pounds, please.’

  Shelves, with a dozen different forms that could be filled in; rubber stamps on a carousel; ink, in jars, on pads; wood veneer; posters of SA GOV Reg 3C PT 5; the smell of clean lino; flies (despite the wire); and a little fan, caged in the corner, with its precise grey blades slicing the air.

  ‘What grade are you in?’ the girl asked Chris.

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Fay said. ‘He got to grade four, but we discontinued.’

  Back on the porch, Fay studied the writing on the card. ‘They were always on time,’ she said.

  Harry didn’t understand the connection between his aunt, the card and the train. ‘The Tea and Sugar?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you have to be there, waiting?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She put the card down. ‘And if you weren’t, there’d be a trip to Port Augusta.’

  Chris could see his mum had given up on the scones. ‘It’s Mother’s Day,’ he told her.

  ‘I know,’ she replied, holding his hand.

  That afternoon and into the grey of the evening Trevor worked ahead of the gang, using his adapted excavator with its rock-breaker to shear off bolts and remove the fishplates holding the sleepers in place. One, two, dozens, hundreds, as the sun collapsed onto the horizon. Again and again, the same movement of his hands, the same shifting in his seat, the same thoughts of home: Aiden arguing with Murray, Murray descending into one of his moods.

  The interior of his cab was full of dirt and chip packets. There was a tape-deck: Dire Straits on a loop. By 5 pm he knew which song was coming next, where the tape had been chewed, each guitar solo and lyric. Turner would arrive and knock on the cab window and ask, ‘You gettin’ the knack?’ and he’d think, Six hundred metres of cracked bolts. Does it look like I’m gettin’ the knack? But he’d say, ‘No problems, once you get the rhythm.’

  ‘Good … when you get going you should be able to work a bit faster.’

  ‘Really?’ As he looked at what he’d done and wondered how that could be the case.

  There was a late tea of cold chicken, strong coffee and thick slices of stale bread coated with jam. Then, a talk around a fire of old sleepers, the chill settling on their faces. Someone asked him, ‘What would you rather? This, or mucking around with cows?’

  ‘This is a lot simpler.’

  ‘But not as much fun?’

  They talked among themselves: a story about a monkey and an ape; Mick Reynolds gone back to Alice; and Turner, fiddling with papers and a calculator. ‘We’re not gettin’ enough sticks on the trucks,’ he said.

  ‘How’s that?’ someone asked.

  ‘There should be a hundred and eleven rails on each trailer. I calculate, a hundred and four or five.’

  There was a pause as everyone waited for a solution.

  ‘We’ll have to work on that.’ He looked at Trevor. ‘How about you have a go tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll show you how it’s done. If we miss five per load that’s an extra trip every day.’

  Turner stuck to his figures, but the others turned to politics. They formed a chorus of half-remembered song, unreliable memories and stories about their families. Trevor didn’t feel part of this arrangement. He walked away from the fire and tried to call home but there was no coverage.

  The next day he was on an excavator equipped with a hydraulic forestry claw. Another man, a young Irishman named Romona, put a chain around each of the loose sticks and he lifted them onto the tray. After he’d lowered them Romona released the chains. He worked slowly, constantly aw
are of the young man’s head, the rails swinging in the light breeze.

  Mostly it was just boredom, again. No variation on the theme of up, down, left, return, move, handbrake. By 11 am he’d ejected the tape. He’d thought of each member of his family and what they’d be doing.

  He felt anxious: his body sweating, his heart racing. He didn’t know why he felt this way. Things would be okay for a few days without him. There’d be arguments and muttered insults. Harry would tell him when he got home and he’d have to spend a few days sorting it all out. But they’d survive.

  At 1 pm Turner arrived in his ute, watched them working for a few minutes and counted the number of rails on the truck. Trevor noticed how he moved his lips as he counted; how he lost track and started again. How, when he’d finished, he scribbled something on his sheet.

  Turner called to him to stop working. He gathered this team of two and stared at them and shook his head. ‘Ninety-three sticks.’

  Trevor shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘You could get another five or six on.’ He waited. ‘Ten sticks short. That’s another truck.’ Then he approached the end of the tray so he could see how they’d been stacking them. ‘See, gaps, here and here … you haven’t been careful enough.’

  Trevor didn’t respond. Turner was an unlikable person. Trying too hard to understand why they were seven sticks short and how the fuel had been used up so quickly.

  ‘Here, see, the way I showed you this morning. With all the flats up close.’

  Trevor nodded, mostly defeated. He tried to remember the last time anyone had talked to him like this. Murray, all the time, but that was different. The deputy principal at Mercy? For refusing to pick up other people’s rubbish. He could remember saying, ‘Fair enough if it was mine.’

  ‘Walking past other people’s rubbish is just as bad as if you’d dropped it yourself.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Although he remembered standing up to the Brother then he didn’t feel the same way now. ‘We’ve been working as fast as we can.’

  ‘Precision beats speed, mate.’

  Mate? What did he mean by that? Mate?

  ‘We can work on that too,’ he managed.

  ‘Good. Even if you could get five or six more.’

  He looked at him and thought, Could you get 111? Has anyone got that many? In the same way he’d said to the principal, when he’d been dragged in to see him, ‘It was an old sandwich.’