The Hands Read Free

so …’
    â€˜You seem better.’ He realised this was probably not what she wanted to hear. ‘Maybe I can help you with some gardening this arvo,’ he continued, but her shoulders and head had dropped. ‘Didn’t you want some weeds sprayed?’
    After a while she said, ‘Yes, they need doing.’
    He noticed his son’s seat was empty. ‘Harry!’
    He waited.
    â€˜Harry!’ He looked at Carelyn.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she replied, slicing the last of the boiled eggs.
    â€˜Harry!’
    â€˜He’s probably in his room with his headphones on,’ Murray said, stuffing his mouth with bread.
    He stood, walked from the room, down the semi-papered hallway and looked into his son’s room.
    Empty.
    Then he went out through the sliding doors to the front of the house with its view from the hill, down the slope of old bloodwoods. ‘Harry!’ he called, but there was no response.
    He stood on the wide porch which, although at the front of the house, was really the back, away from the chaos of the compound. Broken tiles. A bull-nosed verandah that leaked, although they knew where to sit to stay dry. There were several old chairs—wicker, tube-steel, a fluffy stool from Carelyn’s ABBA days—and an old tranny, although there was no signal for it to pick up.
    This is where they’d come on hot evenings to escape the house, to watch distant freight trains or the Indian Pacific, scurrying between oceans. They’d watch them come into view and, an hour later, disappear. They’d follow their every painful inch, as if it was the first time they’d ever seen a train.
    â€˜Harry!’
    Nothing.
    He’d warned him so many times: stay within calling distance of the house . He could remember a night when Harry was three or four, when it was pelting down (the first time in years), the fork-lightning picking up the glint of the railway tracks, strobing the cattle-eye desert. And there he was, standing in this same spot, calling out, ‘Harry, where are yer?’
    Searching the sheds, the roads, the tracks, down among the bloodwoods, out onto the flats, their rain-soaked outdoor lounge room; Chris cowering under a rug; Fay, still in her nightie, poking about in long grass with a broom.
    Until Harry emerged from Murray’s sleep-out, from under the canvas stretcher the old man slept on, saying (words like), ‘I knew you wouldn’t find me.’ Smiling, laughing, wondering why his dad was covered in curry-coloured mud.
    â€˜Dad.’ Harry was at the door.
    â€˜Christ,’ Trevor said, turning. ‘Where were you?’
    â€˜I left my iPod in the ute.’ He was gone, back to the table, the thick slabs of cold ham and beef and pickled onions.
    Trevor followed him in. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜It’s probably those headphones, makin’ you deaf.’
    â€˜Dad, it’s not.’
    They both sat down.
    Fay’s chin was nearly on her chest. ‘ Give us this day our daily bread .’
    They all looked at her, then at each other.
    â€˜What, you wanna say grace?’ Murray asked his sister.
    Fay took a deep breath and looked up. ‘No, of course not.’
    â€˜You wanna say the Lord’s Prayer?’
    â€˜No, I don’t.’
    â€˜You were sayin’ it.’
    She shook her head. ‘No, go on, get on with yer lunch. You want more tea? Anyone want more tea?’
    They ate silently: nothing but the roar of Spitfires and Messerschmitts.
    Half an hour later, Harry stood in the machinery shed wearing gloves, gumboots and overalls. Trevor looked him over and said, ‘Fifty mils.’ The hazel-eyed boy carefully measured fifty millilitres of herbicide into a cylinder and tipped it into a spray-pack. Then used a bigger cylinder to fill this with water. Took a stick, stirred the mixture and screwed the lid on tight. Primed the tank and