Hands were accountable, and they were nothing but trouble. Each weekday afternoon Anna wrapped Hugo’s fingers in hers and led him out of the primary-school yard, past the high school, around the oval and along the footpath to Heinrich’s Garage, opposite the Four Square Store. Look right, look left, look right again, Grandpa Tolley watching as they crossed the road toward him. He’d glance at the clock behind the cash register: on a good day he might be rid of them by four o’clock. Don’t touch anything. But cement had leaked from a bag holed at the seam in the storeroom and the blue-grey powder felt as soft as talc under the children’s palms. Dazed, they patted it, marking time until someone came into town to pick them up. Their mother, their father, or Mrs Mac. They wanted it to be their father, for he spent his long days hooked to the Stock & Station steering wheel and they rarely saw him. He’d pull up outside, bound into the shop and toss them to the ceiling, where buckets and watering cans swayed on hooks and wires. Then into the car, one gesturing hand on the wheel rim again, the other flicking up and down the homebound gears. They were not tough hands. How could they be, when all they did was steer from shearing shed to sale yards to field day, and scribble numbers on dockets and receipts? Not tough, but there came a time when he itched to squeeze them around Uncle Kitch’s neck for driving them out of Isonville. Anna trembled, watching, waiting for it to happen. Her father’s hands grew tough on the six-forty acres. He bought a sun-dulled International header and dragged it through wheat and barley crops at the wheel of an old Massey Ferguson. Watch where you put your hands. He was scrupulous about maintenance: those machines had to last. He’d wind up the header and lean into it with a dented oilcan until the blades whispered and the whirring cogs sang from belt to belt. One day Anna was so lost to wheat-stubble scratches on her bare legs that she failed to notice that he’d switched off and delivered silence to their corner of the world—until she saw blood drops balling like spilt mercury in the dust around her ankles and toes. Sweetheart, dig in Daddy’s pocket for his handkerchief, will you, please? Anna looked up, arrested by his elbow. Blood beat the seconds, one drop after another, forming at the bony point, growing fat, quivering, falling. Hurry, sweetheart, please. Anna had never seen such hollows in his face before, such white, scooped, pain-etched angles. He didn’t know it but his finger stump had glued itself to his diesely cotton shoulder and all Anna could think about was germs. Hurry, darling, please, there’s a good girl. He stumbled, half crouched, to the little Austin, and slowly they drove back to the house, Anna shifting the gears for him. Oh, he said, hugging himself, oh, his face terribly white. When Lockie told Anna that she had nice hands she said: Nice? What’s that mean, nice? Shapely, then, Lockie said, getting comfortable in his ute. You have shapely hands. Anna sighed, disorder flooding her belly, then tucked her jaw under his chin, where she could breathe him in, an essence of him aroused on the dance floor. The cooling engine ticked and snapped. Her left hand rested across her stomach and together she and Lockie watched her right, which was cupped on the leg of his jeans. He took her hand in both of his, stroking it, rolling the wrist, watching as the tendons and bones shaped themselves in the moonlight. Half crooked like that, Anna’s ring finger was almost more beautiful than she could bear. She was filled with love for her hands. Lockie tensed: Your old man. They watched her father cross the moon-shadowed yard, Kip trotting at his heels, and disappear into the barn. A kennel chain tinkled. I’d better go in. One last kiss, Lockie said. At bath time Anna’s son liked to slap the water, winding himself into an ecstatic release. Appalled, fascinated, he watched Anna take his fingers and munch on them. She said what everyone says: Michael, I could eat you up! Rebecca liked to ride high upon Sam’s shoulders and endlessly track his jawline, bewitched by the whisper-scrape beneath her soft palms. There was nothing so commonplace as the sunken road after seasons of rain, heat and heavy trucks had scored and chopped and powdered it, but there was a day in April when Anna practically sailed over the corrugations, headlights on against the dust, feeling light-hearted, exhilarated, still wet. The drought-hollow sheep grazing upon the banks might not have existed. The boiling dust of the wheat truck ahead of her meant nothing at all. Mummy! Michael shouted, and it froze her blood. She glanced around for a second, a mere second. Oh, it’s only a moth, sweetheart, it won’t bite. A stupefied moth investigating the creases of Rebecca’s sleeping wrist. Just brush it off her. Can’t, Michael said, recoiling. You do it. It is only recently that Anna has understood that she has inherited Tolley hands. She does not find them shapely at all—Lockie had simply been flattering her, all those years ago. The fingers are too short and are beginning to thicken, with little pouchy fatnesses developing between the joints, just as she remembers Grandfather Tolley’s hands and her father’s hands. Odd hands for such tall, shapely men. Hugo is the lucky one. He has the hands of the Isons, long and slender, with a shapely delta of tendons winking between knuckles and watch face. Anna can’t bear to see the nicotine stains on such lovely hands. These days she cannot type for long. Her fingers fudge the keys, her forearms burn, her shoulders lock. If they knew, the locals would call it a judgement, not Repetition Strain Injury. They want the names of their forefathers to shine in the Pandowie sky, not skulk with landgrabbers and thieves—not in this, the lead up to the district’s 150th Jubilee. How could you write such nonsense? Sam wants to know. Their daughter also has Tolley hands, but Rebecca insists that she is not disadvantaged, claiming it’s a myth that musicians benefit from long fingers. Her little hands quiver on the strings. Anna will melt a little, with a heartsore longing, to see her granddaughter’s perfect tiny fingers clasp her forefinger and draw that hoary digit into her toothless mouth. There—a wet, powerful tug. Anna will not be toothless herself, for both the Isons and the Tolleys had good teeth in their heads.