Read Online The Hands by Stephen Orr - Free Book Online Page B

covering his hands. How Morris and Murray had shouted at him, called him stupid boy and simple fool before wrapping his face in someone’s shirt, driving him back to the house and, in the middle of a muster, when they could least afford to, driving him all the way to Port Augusta hospital.
    â€˜I’ve showed you my scar, haven’t I?’ Chris asked, lifting his chin and showing him the faint line.
    â€˜I didn’t know it was from that. I bet they were pissed off.’
    Chris looked up. ‘Murray, mostly,’ he said, remembering sitting beside his shit-smeared, over-ripe uncle as they drove. He could still see his red eyes, clenched jaw and bit lip. And Fay, sitting in the front, looking back at them. ‘Hold on, Christopher, it’s only a few minutes.’ The corrugations threw the car in the air; the suspension gave up trying. Chris muffled his groans so Murray might stop staring at him.
    â€˜What’s worse,’ Chris continued, ‘was when they took me to Adelaide, he had to come too.’
    â€˜In the middle of a muster?’
    â€˜He was so angry.’ Chris guessed that Murray had never really forgiven him—for the broken jaw, and a hundred other things. He still saw it in his eyes: the look he had when an animal needed to be culled.
    â€˜He’s never liked me.’
    â€˜He does.’
    â€˜He never talks to me nice, and no matter how many times I’ve tried …’
    â€˜It’s just him,’ Harry said. ‘Old men are all grumpy.’
    Harry guessed there was probably something in what Chris was saying. He knew the look, the tone, the distance. ‘You’ve just gotta ignore him,’ he said. ‘You shoulda learnt that by now.’
    They took the brooms and went back up, past the old drop toilet, and stopped at the bottle tree. They replaced the fallen bottles and jars and Harry went to his dad’s shed to fetch his whip.
    Then he spent an hour trying to teach his cousin (for the hundredth time) how to crack the whip so he’d break a bottle.

7
    The land was crusted, drying before it was used, or presented as some sort of offering to the humans and small animals who attempted to live on it. Trevor drove, his hands held tightly ten-to-two on the steering wheel. He tried to imagine this land as a map: its blue-line-major-roads, black-hatch-highways, small-dot-towns and red-spot-cities; tried to imagine how it had been scrawled upon, bi- and dissected, measured and claimed in the name of civilisation.
    Carelyn was sitting beside him, staring across the highway.
    â€˜Where do you want to stop?’ he asked, but she told him to keep driving towards Port Augusta.
    Harry was sitting in the back listening to headphones, singing and saying, ‘ Mein Vater hat ein grosses Auto .’
    Trevor looked at him in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Eh?’ Although he knew what it meant, knew each of the dozen or so phrases he kept repeating when he was bored.
    Harry met his eyes and took off his headphones.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜ Mein Vater  …?’
    â€˜ Mein Vater hat ein grosses Auto .’
    â€˜My father has a big car?’
    â€˜ Ja .’
    â€˜Is that all you know?’
    â€˜ Ich habe keine Schwester, aber, ich habe einen älteren Bruder .’
    Trevor studied the long, grey strip in front of them. He followed it half-way to the horizon before it was consumed by haze. By then it was blood red, pulsing and shifting across the desert. He could tell it was alive, held in place by nothing more than a million distance markers. There was saltbush and bluebush and dead shrubs that looked the same as the living ones; a rest-stop with a single bin, but nothing else, as if this too was some forgotten skeleton.
    He reached over and turned up the radio. ‘ There were smaller numbers of vealer steers with most selling to feeder activity .’
    Carelyn looked at him. ‘Christ, do we gotta listen to