The house was quiet, Loretta was watching her television shows, and the kids were wherever the hell it was they went on a Thursday. Paula would be gas-bagging on her phone to Jackie or Kathy or whoever was the latest BFF, and Tim would be stuck, slack-jawed, in front of the games console.
A quick look back at the various glows from underneath the bedroom doors that lined the hallway confirmed his suspicions.
He tossed the groceries away, checking the pantry and fridge for any sign of his hand. He looked in the freezer. He even checked the oven.
“Where's that hand?” he asked himself, looking over the bench and table.
He sneaked a peek into the bathroom sink and laundry, coming up with nothing.
“Loretta?” he called, looking into the lounge, “Loretta?”
“What, Hon?” she asked, looking up from her phone.
Its stark screen lit up her face with a white glow contrasting with ghastly shadows, as one might do with a torch when telling a scary story. She used to be beautiful, inside and out. She used to do her hair in the morning, and hug him when he came home in the evening.
They would talk about the preceding day together, make plans for the following and then kiss each other goodnight so that they could tuck themselves into bed.
Now the face looking back up at him was a stranger. A stranger with hollow eyes, wispy hair and a second chin from eating too many Tim-Tams. A stranger whose voice no longer held the love for him as it once had.
“What?”
“Where's my hand?”
“Wherever you left it,” she replied and looked back to her phone, “Did you get the milk and bread?”
“Huh? Yeah, I got the stupid milk and bread.”
“Don't get snarky. What type?”
“I don't know. Moo juice. Came from a cow. At least, I hope it did.”
“I meant the bread, Henry. What bread did you get?” she asked, flipping through a Facebook post.
“Pfft. Bread.”
She looked up, her eyes half-open, piercing. She wanted an answer, not sarcasm.
“I don't know. Bread. Had pumpkin seed or something.”
“Timothy can't eat pumpkin seeds.”
“Well, maybe it wasn't the pumpkin seed one.”
“Why did you buy the pumpkin seed bread? Bloody hell, what brand?”
“Helga's, I think. Is it important?”
“Geez, Henry! Do you have to screw everything up? Timothy doesn't eat pumpkin seeds! Was it on special?”
“I don't know. I didn't check.”
With a heavy breath, Loretta looked back at her phone, filling the air around her with icy annoyance.
Henry smacked his head, “Well. Hell. Whatever. It's bread. So, anyway, where's my hand?”
“Wherever you left it.”
“Where was that?”
“You put it somewhere,” she said with a dismissive wave.
“I didn't, remember? You picked it up and put it somewhere and I went to get the milk and bread.”
She didn't respond.
“Loretta?”
The phone got lowered in anger, “What, Henry?”
He insisted, “My hand?”
“I don't know, Henry. It was in the kitchen sink last time I saw it, OK?”
“Kitchen sink. Right. Thanks. Thanks a bunch.”
Back in the kitchen he looked closely at the metal sink. There was clearly no hand in there. There was, however, a distinct bloody trail that led from the sink, over the bench, down onto the floor and out the cat-flap.
“Bloody cat!” he cursed, opening the door and shooing it away from the pinkish-grey and red lump on the ground.
He picked up his hand, inspected the marks where the cat had evidently nibbled at it, and took it outside to the garage.
With a flick of the switch, there was the plinking sound of the fluorescent tubes starting, a couple of tantalising flashes and then the darkness within was lit by the steady white glow from above.
It was his sanctuary. No matter what happened in the world outside, his garage looked and smelled and felt exactly as a garage should. There was a mixture of turpentine, and kerosene, and wood shavings, and mouse droppings, and engine oil and a faint odour of stale beer.
It was disorderly. There were bits and pieces everywhere. Half finished projects were stored on the shelves; half-baked ideas that, in a better world, would have the care and attention and time and money and resources they deserved to be fully realised. More likely than not, Henry mused on more than one occasion, they would disappear with time. They would be forgotten. They would rot.
Anyone coming along would look at the various piles, scoop them up and turf them unceremoniously into the bin.
He had wondered, often, how many other garages out there had ideas tucked away on shelves that never saw the light of day? How many others had the same ideas that lived in his garage? How many garages would it take to solve the world's problems?
An infinite amount, he had concluded, since one garage couldn't even solve one man's problems. Maybe it was because the ideas were dispersed, and that they could never be realised if they were not drawn together into some sort of super-garage. Perhaps. But that was just another idea, another idea to live on the bottom shelf next to the half-empty paint cans and stiff paintbrushes.
He looked at his hand. It still looked like it belonged on his arm, even though it was greyish with daubs of blue and dried up a smidge. A bit of care and attention, a bit of healing over a few days and it should be right. But it would need to stay on his arm, that was given. No coming off again. The blood had to go through the veins, not get soaked up by a clump of napkins.
First he tried just holding the wrist to his stump, pushing and squeezing a little to get it to stay, but it fell off each time. Stupid cat. Probably nibbled too hard at the tendons or scratched at the cartilage. He peered closely, pulled a few sticky cat hairs from the veins, swore and brushed some bits of grit that had wormed their way into the flesh.
“Stupid, bloody cat,” he said out loud, “Should've got a dog.”
A bandage. That might work. But the only bandages he had were in the bathroom, and if he walked past Loretta she would nag him to do something or other and that would be the end of his night. And he really needed to get his hand back on.
“There must be something,” he muttered, searching through the cupboards and on the shelves for an idea, “Newspaper? Nah. Toilet paper? Mm, maybe if I used a whole bunch... Nah. Rags? I could tie them end to end. Give that a shot.”
He pulled out a bag of rags and got to working knotting the ends together. It was difficult going, tying two corners together with only one hand. His stump had no dexterity, and was barely able to pin down the material to make the knot tight. He tried putting one end of the rag into the bench vice, which helped some, but after ten minutes of pain and sweat, he gave up.
“Useless. Absolutely useless,” he grumbled, abandoning the project and resuming his search, “Ah. Glue.”
A half empty tube of Tarzan Grip was applied to the edges. He waited until it got tacky, then clamped his wrist to his arm. He sat down, holding it on, until the prescribed five minutes was up.
“Looks good. Hmm. That might just – aw, man!”
It flopped forward a little, dragging tendrils of red-stained glue. The tugging started the flow of blood again.
“Bloody thing! What else is there?”
It was at times like this that Henry wished the Hardware store was open. He loved going in there. It was like his garage, only orderly. Everything was fresh and promising. There was so much potential lined up in neat packages on all of the shelves.
The Hardware store was a primordial garage, a proto-garage even. Ideas buzzed around in a humid jungle of tools and materials. Projects beckoned to be undertaken. There were bits and pieces of just about everything that could be used to create or fix or improve just about anything!
Every visit he was sure to find something that struck his fancy, something that wanted him to take it home and play with it. But the problem was that there were so many possibilities there all vying for his attention that, although many projects were started, nothing ever got finished.
He just didn't have the resources. Or the money. Mostly, he didn't have the time. It was sad, and he felt terrible that he should start a project, promising it that it would get his unreserved attention, only to shelve it away when he had to stop and drive Timothy to football.
Or was it soccer? No, he'd given that up. Or it was tennis that he'd given up.
He shrugged to himself and carried on. He had a job to do.
In a little bit he came upon some gaffer tape.
“That ought to do it!” he laughed, brushing off some dust, pulling out the tab and dragging out a metre, “It'll get stuck on the hairs, damn it, but I can live with that for now. So long as the beggar stays on.”
Positioning the hand in the bench vice, he wound the clamp over it and practised aligning his arm. After a bit of an adjustment and another trial run, he was ready.
He positioned the wrist carefully on his stump and stuck a little bit down, then carefully wound the gaffer tape around until it came back upon the other side. He wound it again and again, overlapping a little up and a little down to make a decent repair.
He unclamped the hand and inspected his handiwork, “That might work. Yeah. Hmm, maybe not. Not quite.”
The hand was wobbling and flopping about a bit if he shook it, and he worried to think what could happen if it got a hard knock.
“Reinforcement,” he decided, “That's what it needs.”
Any sideways movement would knock it off again, he determined, giving it a little wiggle.
He gently tugged his wedding ring off his hand and popped it in his pocket, then peeled a wrap of tape off. He weaved it in between his fingers, double wrapped it around the thumb, then secured it tightly to the wrist with a flourish.
“Job done,” he said to himself, giving the hand a shake.
It refused to so much as wobble. Confident that it would hold for the night, and the day after, he sighed. It was time to leave his garage, now that he now longer had a valid reason to be in there. Inside beckoned, so he got up and went to turn the garage light off. The absence of the bright white light and fifty Hertz hum was the garage's way of saying goodnight.
He stepped out of the door into the backyard, ready to head back indoors. But he paused.
It was still outside. The breeze was barely blowing at all. The crickets were chirruping merrily. The moon, as he looked up, was looking down back at him. Was that a smile?
A memory of life as a young boy, standing on the grass on a night much like tonight, only so long ago, came swimming through his head. It wasn't so much of a memory as a smell. Or a feeling. Or a sense of wonder of it all. He didn't care to think too much about it, rather he was content to let it be whatever it was and concentrate on the bright disc ruling the sky.
The moon was the same moon he had looked at all those years before, and his eyes were the same eyes that had gazed upward in wonder. It was the wonder of what lay ahead, of all the possibilities, of all the amazing achievements and accolades and discoveries he would make.
The moon, shining brightly, had reflected down upon him an assurance that the world was a benevolent place, a wonderful place, a magical place. The moon could see everything, it could see all across the world, it could see through time, and what it saw was good.
Something black scuttled next to his foot. He bent down and caught it, a cricket, and held it up in his hand to inspect it. The white of the moon reflected off its shiny, black armour. Its antennae twitched nervously up and down as it pondered just where it had landed up.
Only a second ago it had been moving across a flat, hard surface. Now it was sitting on something soft and pink. It hadn't been eaten, that was evident and thoroughly welcome, but the surface upon which it was standing was anything but normal. It wasn't grass, it wasn't dirt. It wasn't clay or concrete or rock. And there was an enormous pair of eyes looking down upon it.
An unmistakeable, alien smile projected itself onto his face as Henry studied it, feeling the prickly sensation of its feet as it stomped about on his skin, the tickling of the antennae as they brushed his fingers. When he was a tacker he would pick up bugs and snails and all sorts and look at them closely, wondering what life was like as an insect.
Back then he could be an insect. He could crawl under his sheets where it was warm and dark and pretend he was in a hole in the ground. He could zoom around the backyard as a superhero, and ride his bike to the end of the suburb to scour the paddocks for discoveries.
Back then he could believe in his dreams, that they would be worth following.
He put the cricket, confused and disoriented, down on the grass, where it scurried away underneath the dark blades to get on with its chirruping.
“There you go, little feller,” he said, then stood back up to look at the moon again.
“Henry!” Loretta called from behind the flyscreen, “Henry, Love! Hey! What are standing there for? Come inside before you get eaten by mosquitoes! Stop your gawping and come back in!”
His memory was interrupted. His mouth dropped to a frown, then to a scowl. The moon had lied. It had lied all those years ago, and had lied to him ever since. It was lying to him now.
It made sense, of course, because there isn't any air on the moon, and without any air, how can anyone tell the truth?
He gripped his left wrist, patting the tape down hard on his wound, and trudged back inside.