The Hands by Stephen Orr Page A

Sheep Equivalents. He could only start paying his mortgage and school fees when they stood on the scales at the abattoir.
    After lunch, six hours of driving, thirteen bores, he headed home. On and on, as one of Carelyn’s talking books read itself out and he retreated into his own thoughts, again. Late in the afternoon he started drifting off and the ute wandered into soft sand and bogged itself. He gunned the accelerator but realised he was just digging himself in. ‘Fuck.’ He got out, removed the tailgate and slid it under one of the back wheels. Getting back in, he started the engine and slowly inched out of the sand. The clutch shuddered and he stalled; his ute rolled back, settling, deeper, as if the land was alive, and hungry.
    He got out. ‘You bitch!’ Kicked the tyre, and felt his toes crushing in his steel-capped boots. ‘Christ!’ he growled, leaning on the cab, noticing the sun settling on the western horizon.
    It was after 11 pm when he came through the back door. Murray was the only one still up. ‘How are you?’ he asked.
    He didn’t see the point of answering. ‘How’s Fay?’
    â€˜She’s cooled down … and she’s stopped rambling.’ He looked his son over. ‘Problems?’
    â€˜An hour to dig myself out of sand. Then I had to refill three times.’
    â€˜The whole drum?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well, go get showered. I’ll make you some eggs and bacon.’ He pulled himself up out of his seat.
    Trevor was too tired to talk, argue, think. Murray watched as he shuffled across the room. Watched his shoulders, slumped, and his head, looking at the ground; saw how he dragged his feet and how his hands and fingers hung heavy and lifeless. ‘You okay?’ he called.
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜You’re getting too old to do that by yourself.’
    â€˜Who else is there?’

6
    Aiden lived in a converted storeroom on the second floor of Mercy’s halls-of-residence. It looked out across a memorial garden, surrounded by dead lawn, lined by black-spotted roses that shed their little bit of perfume in the early evening, taking him back to Bundeena, and Fay, fiddling in her garden. It was a small room with a divan and no-nonsense mattress, cupboard, wardrobe and desk. There was an old aluminium lamp with a ring of little stars cut out of the shade. He often studied each of the five-pointed constellations and wondered how they’d been punched so clean.
    He was sitting at his desk, reading a slab of words on his laptop; words he’d put there; words that made less sense the more he looked at them. As the volume increases the surface area increases too. But at some point the volume gets bigger quicker  …
    He studied these last few words: gets bigger quicker . Or should it be, he thought, gets bigger faster, at a faster rate, quicker rate, increases more, grows much faster? Do I, really, care?
    He looked at the ring of stars and counted them. Nineteen. Shouldn’t they have added up to an even number? The volume increases at a faster rate than the surface area . That’s it, he said to himself, re-reading the sentence.
    His eyes drifted out to the roses. Brother Symes was sitting on a bench, reading. He noticed his gold crucifix, and his Jesus hands and face and voice, blessing them like he really cared. And if it wasn’t God’s songs for his people and prayers and A-fuckin’-bide with me it was the perfect surface area-to-volume ratio. If the discolouration can be calculated carefully …
    He stared at his laptop and the little camera watching him, still. Smiled. Good morning, Mrs Lawrence, he said, as he returned to the living room at Bundeena.
    What are we working on this morning? Mrs Lawrence, his old School of the Air teacher, asked.
    A practical report.
    Go on.
    He started reading but she interrupted by saying: Third person, past tense.
    He shrugged. The thing is, I