The Hands

by Stephen Orr

  This was the template, and it sufficed, mostly. Gaby stayed for a week and gave them all expensive gifts. Murray knew what she was up to (again) but this time didn’t care.

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘He won’t be far,’ Murray called from his sleep-out.

  The grass had died over the first few weeks of summer. The cattle had slowed, revealing more bone, rib, hip, spending more time sniffing for something green. And now, he’d found two dead animals: a young steer and a cow, their hides collapsed onto a scaffold of bone, flies in their eyes and ears.

  ‘Prob’ly kickin’ a ball somewhere,’ Murray said, tuning his ukulele, singing:

  Oh! wilt thou think of me, Eileen,

  When I am far away …

  ‘Not again,’ Trevor said.

  ‘Your great-grandfather used to sing this one.’

  ‘And you remember it?’

  ‘I remember everything.’

  He listened for the sound of a football, a boot, a bounce, a dribble. ‘Harry!’

  ‘Shut up, will yer.’

  The scuffed Sherrin football, dug up from the bottom of Harry’s wardrobe every December in time for the School of the Air staff versus students football match in Port Augusta. This year it was just him, standing on the outer as the other dads formed a chorus of good blokes, laughing at each other’s jokes, slapping each other’s arms, encouraging each other’s boys. All of whom were fighting for the ball, pushing and shoving men twice their size as Harry dragged his leg across the turf, called for the ball (which no one ever kicked to him), tried for a mark (but fumbled) and finally attempted a left foot kick for goal (the ball veering off in the wrong direction, dribbling, stopping, as the chorus fell silent).

  He screwed up his leg in an accident, he’d wanted to tell them, but realised it wouldn’t make any difference. Instead, he’d shouted, ‘Nice try, Harry.’

  Harry had looked at him and shrugged, as if to say, Save your sympathy for someone else. On the way home he’d said, ‘I just gotta practice my kicking.’

  ‘That’s it. You could train your left leg, couldn’t you?’

  Upon the stormy sea, Eileen,

  Each sad and dreary day?

  ‘Dad!’

  Murray stopped. ‘I can never get this chord.’

  Trevor sat up, squinted, his head jutting forward. He stood, walked across the yard and down steps that led to the low part of his property. Five minutes’ walk to the Wilkie plots. ‘There you are,’ he said to his son, sitting with his back against a tree.

  Harry just looked at him.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you for ages.’ He opened the rusted gate and went in. ‘What you doin’?’

  ‘Just sittin’.’

  He sat beside him. ‘I’ve had to listen to Pop all morning.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have shown him that site.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have.’

  Music Hall Song Albums: Complete Lyrics, Guitar and Ukulele chords, with biographies of all the great singers.

  ‘He’s workin’ his way through every one of Albert Chevalier’s songs,’ he said.

  ‘Some of them are okay. Some of them are funny.’

  ‘Some. I blame that doctor …’

  ‘Remember?’ Harry asked, ‘Tell me, darling, that you love me …’ As he remembered Murray, sitting in front of the computer, playing for the Year Five and Six assembly. The applause. The other kids asking for more. ‘Why you sittin’ out here?’ Trevor asked.

  No response.

  He knew it was a stupid question. ‘Get out of the mad house, eh?’

  Harry looked at him. ‘It’s not a mad house.’ He couldn’t say why he’d come. He’d brought his sudoku book but hadn’t done any.

  ‘Strange,’ Trevor said. ‘All this space, and it’s hard to find a quiet spot.’ He looked across the desert. Longed for it. To walk, to keep walking, in a long, straight line; until his feet or body gave out. ‘You missed this morning’s lesson.’

  ‘Aiden wasn’t there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s just maths.’

  ‘You like maths.’

  Harry rested his head against the trunk of the tree. ‘It’s the same stuff as last year. Fractions. Lowest common denominator … blah, blah.’ He watched a small mob of roos pass in front of them.

  ‘We should go hunting,’ he said.

  ‘We should do fractions.’

  Trevor looked at the urn. He noticed someone had shifted it from its spot under the tree. ‘What are we gonna do with the ashes?’ he asked.

  Harry shrugged.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  It was nearly lunch. Trevor’s stomach gurgled. It was getting hot, on its way to forty-two, but this didn’t bother Harry-in-the-shade, a baseball cap low over his face. ‘It’s up to Aiden, too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps … but I’m sure, if you decided …’

  ‘Do you think she’d like it here?’

  ‘I do. It’s cool. She’d get the breeze.’

  Harry stood, brushed his pants, took a few steps and picked up the urn. He walked through the gate, out to where the grass started. Trevor followed him. He saw that he had decided, that he was determined. He saw how he tried to unscrew the lid, but couldn’t. ‘You lift it off,’ Trevor said.

  He did this. Stopped, waited and looked back at his dad. Then he lifted the urn and sprinkled the ashes and watched them fall. Although he wanted them to scatter, to blow across every inch of desert, there was no wind. He replaced the lid. ‘I didn’t want her in there, with the others,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She wasn’t like them.’ He walked back. ‘It’s funny how people go … forever.’

  They walked back to the house. Trevor put his arm around his shoulder. Soon they could hear Murray.

  Tell me, darling …

  They laughed. As they climbed the steps, Harry asked, ‘What should we do with this?’ He held up the urn.

  Trevor thought for a moment.

  …that you love me …

  ‘Should we keep it for Pop?’

  Trevor stood in front of the fridge. The door was crowded: one of Harry’s assignments (87%—he knew he could do better, if only Aiden would spend more time with him); a cheque: $1200. Payable to Trevor Wilkie. From the account of Lifton-Padfield Salvage P/L. And a note: ‘I’ve calculated this for two days work. Hope all improves. Regards, T.’

  T for Turner.

  He’d been surprised when it arrived. Not so much for the money, but the salvaging of faith. Turner, he guessed, was only a put-on arsehole: someone who acted tough because he thought that’s what was expected of him.

  The door was heavy with junk: a plaster dinosaur Harry had made; his laminated certificates from the past three years (a few with the paint not quite cleaned off the edges); Carelyn, with her arms around her boys, attempting a crooked smile.

  He heard a noise: metal on concrete. Walking outside, he saw Aiden on the ground in the shed, playing with his trail bike. ‘You just had a shower,’ he said, as he walked over.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Why didn’t you do this first?’

  ‘I didn’t think.’

  He could see grease stains on his son’s new jeans. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘The chain slipped.’

  He’d completely stripped the bike: chain, brake pads and nuts. The back wheel sat on the ground and he used a rag to clean the spokes, to wipe grease-soaked sand from the frame and engine. ‘I was talking to Tom’s dad,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘He has his own garage. He said there’s a job for me … if I want.’

  Trevor wasn’t at all surprised. ‘What, an apprenticeship?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was what he wanted, but didn’t want, for his son: a future away from the farm. A new beginning; a new life. It was happening too quickly, but not fast enough. ‘And you’re interested?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You
either are or you aren’t.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘And where would you stay?’

  ‘They got a spare room.’

  Where he’d already been staying. The room left behind by an older sister who’d moved to town to study medicine. A pink room with shag carpet and a white tallboy full of girls’ clothes.

  ‘So, why didn’t he take on Tom?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘He wasn’t interested.’

  ‘I would’ve thought—’

  ‘Dad, they don’t get along.’

  ‘Right.’

  Trevor stopped to think. Was it generic? Fathers and sons? ‘So, you’d stay there, pay board?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Aiden looked at him as if he were stupid. He couldn’t understand how he couldn’t grasp something so simple.

  Trevor was trying to see the big picture. He knew what the boys got up to. Knew Tom had a ute with spotlights and air-horns and, he guessed, spent his nights trawling the streets of Port Augusta. But he knew the father was cautious and didn’t, wouldn’t, take any shit. ‘Tom, he’s sensible?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No burn-outs … speeding?’

  ‘I’m not gonna end up wrapped around a tree, Dad.’

  ‘I know how boys that age—’

  ‘No, just cos you see …’ He looked at him. He wanted to say it, but couldn’t. The kangaroo. There was no kangaroo, was there, Dad? But we can choose to believe, can’t we? You can say it, and we can agree with you.

  ‘No whoopee weed?’ Trevor asked.

  Aiden put down his rag. ‘Dad.’

  ‘No little pink pills?’

  Eyes. Glaring. ‘You haven’t even met him. Ten minutes, you’d see what I mean. I don’t hang around with fuckheads.’

  ‘Idiots.’

  He continued working. Trevor was in two minds. He waited, opened the door to the EH and sat down. ‘Still … I’ve got a farm to run.’

  ‘Well, George, Tom’s dad, said I could do it part-time, so I could be here for the muster, and whatever needs doing.’

  ‘Right.’ He waited. ‘Might work.’

  ‘It’d work. You don’t need me all the time.’

  Trevor was arguing with himself. Testing the water, throwing in sodium and watching it glow, splutter and explode. ‘Pop will hit the roof.’

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘After all these years, you’d be the first to opt out.’

  ‘I’m not opting out. I’m just trying something different. It’s not like I’m goin’ to Adelaide, and not coming back.’

  ‘Well, you can tell the old bugger.’

  ‘He’s your dad.’

  ‘Your grandfather.’

  Aiden slipped the wheel back in place. Adjusted it, secured it with a couple of nuts and started tightening them. ‘Can I remind you of something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said I shouldn’t feel obliged to stay on … if there was something I wanted to do.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. You know you did.’ He smiled.

  ‘Well … I might’ve said something along those lines.’

  ‘That’s exactly what you said.’

  Trevor was starting to like the sound of it. Aiden and George obviously got along, and had a sensible relationship, and George had made a sensible proposition. He, this old mechanic, searching for someone to fill the gap his son had left, had obviously seen that Aiden was a sensible boy. ‘And what about Harry?’ he asked.

  ‘Well …’ He started feeding the chain onto the cogs. ‘He can look after himself.’

  ‘Can you imagine him here, without you?’

  ‘He’d be ecstatic.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t. You know that.’

  ‘Well, he’d have to get used to it.’

  He’d seen it. In the last six months, especially. How Harry watched his older brother, waiting to hear what to say, how to think, how to be smart, and sarcastic, and sensible. How he’d always stay behind him when they rode off on their bikes; how he’d occasionally overtake him, but then drop back. ‘No, he’d be okay,’ he said. ‘Then, when he starts at Mercy, you’d be close, to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Hold on. I never said I was gonna do it. I just said he’d asked. It’s like you’ve already decided.’

  ‘No … it’s up to you, son.’

  It was Chris’s fault, of course. Always was.

  You’re the one left the doors open, Murray had told him.

  For four months, since the muster crew had left. Sand blowing in. Bird shit. Kangaroos. Rabbit droppings.

  So he’d been sent to the crew quarters. Murray had followed and stood giving orders, telling him to run the long hose from the house, wash the floor, scrub it with a broom and hose it out again. Then he’d gone back to the house for lunch.

  Chris stood in his gumboots, working. He could feel gluey water between his toes. Looking out of the window, up towards the house, he saw Harry practising his whip in the compound. ‘Harry,’ he called.

  Harry looked to see who it was. ‘What yer doin’?’

  ‘Cleanin’ up.’

  Chris had had Murray up to his eyeballs. Telling him to move when he was halfway through a meal; saying things like, You’re puttin’ on the pounds, old boy; throwing his videos and DVDs in the bin (I warned yer, if I found them on the floor); grunting at him as if he were a dog (Go on … get off …) He hoped the old man would die, and soon. He imagined looking at the dead body, minutes after the heart attack; the ambulance coming and the men in green overalls rolling him onto a stretcher; sitting on a hard bench at the funeral, staring out of the window, mouthing the words of hymns, planning his new Murray-free life. He wondered if he might feel sad for a while, but then thought, no.

  He stopped to catch his breath. ‘I hate you,’ he said. Then he repeated it, louder. ‘I hate you … I hate you.’

  ‘Who?’ Murray asked, appearing in the doorway.

  He just stared at him.

  ‘You hate me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who?’

  He continued working. Picked up the hose and squirted the floor, careful to avoid Murray’s feet.

  No, he thought. I can’t wait till he dies. It could be another ten years. Twenty, perhaps? Maybe I could help bring it on?

  Murray sat on a chair in the corner. As he watched him work he took out his tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Lit it, placing the pouch, papers and matches on a ledge.

  Chris was looking at him. What do you want? Why are you just sitting there? Do you enjoy watching other people work?

  ‘It was you,’ Murray said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you remember, after the muster, I said to you, gather all the rubbish, sweep the place out and close the doors. Remember? Close the doors.’

  Chris could still hear Harry’s whip. He turned to Murray, hose in hand, finger on trigger. ‘I remember cleaning it,’ he said. He kept working. Murray continued smoking, occasionally saying, ‘You missed a bit’ or ‘Make sure you get it all.’

  Chris was fermenting, slowly summoning the courage. The skin on his feet had softened. He could smell himself.

  ‘Do you remember that first year?’ Murray asked. ‘When was it? 1969?’

  ‘Seventy.’

  ‘You wanted to help out on the muster.’

  Murray was smiling, but he guessed there was something else behind it.

  ‘So we took you. And there’s your mother saying, Oh, watch out for him! You don’t remember, I suppose?’

  Why, he wanted to ask, are you telling me this?

  ‘So we got you doin’ the tail tags. And everything’s alright until … remember?’

  He could remember, but only because he’d been reminded so many times. Of how he’d sat on a calf and tried to ride it, but how the animal had thrown him against a metal panel. How he’d been kicked in the head and knocked unconscious. How Murray had come into the yards, picked him up and carried him out, laying him under a tree, sayin
g, ‘This is what I thought would happen.’

  ‘Remember?’ Murray asked, inhaling.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the next day when I wouldn’t let you come back with us, you had a tantrum.’

  Chris could tell he was enjoying it.

  ‘Mummy, make him let me.’

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘Uncle Murray’s mean to me!’

  ‘You are!’

  Murray sat forward. ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Why do you keep telling me that?’

  ‘Cos it’s funny. I can still remember you, in the outfit your mum had bought yer, lying there in the dirt.’

  ‘Why do you hate me?’

  ‘And all the fellas were laughing. Remember?’

  ‘Why?’

  Murray stopped to think. The boy seemed to have grown unusual claws. ‘Cos I gotta get you movin’,’ he said.

  ‘I always help.’

  ‘I haven’t got time to hate you.’ Then he tried again. ‘You’re just lucky it didn’t kick you in the temple.’

  Chris was staring at him. ‘It’s cos you never wanted us here.’

  Murray spat tobacco from his lip. ‘I’ve always done my best by yous … Forty years. Maybe you should be a bit grateful?’

  Silence.

  ‘What woulda happened if I’d turned yers away? Where would you have gone? What would she have done with you?’

  Nothing.

  ‘You’d have ended up in a home. No way she could’ve brought you up alone. She would’ve given you to the nuns.’

  ‘She wouldn’t!’

  ‘If that’s what you think.’ Murray finished his cigarette, threw the stub down and stepped on it. ‘Why do you hate me?’ He stood. ‘Think about what you’re sayin’. Forty years …’ And walked out without looking back.

  Chris couldn’t stand it. He clenched his fists and stamped his feet. Mentioning his mother, and the nuns, was too much. He’d done it before. Once, he’d said to him, I saw a letter your mum’s written to the Sisters of Mercy. And do you know what she’s asked?

  No.

  If they’d look after you.

  It’s a lie.

  I saw it on her dresser. I persuaded her not to send it. I said, Come on, Fay, blood’s thicker than water. You two can stay here as long as you want.

  Rubbish.

  It’s true. I’d show you the letter but I made her burn it and promise never to mention it again.