Fingerprints - Kevan Smith

The view moves and sways.

Trying to capture a feel, a view, a mood.

Nothing coming, just staring.

Staring at his fingers.  The gnarled scars of decades.  Cuts, scrapes, scares; all time imprints.

That blade cut just above the thumb, leaving a white scar, a semicircle in the demi-layer.

The rain and wind beat at his face, darkness all around. Torch under the chin trying to see the broken wire.

Production was down.  $1000s per minute, slipping away.  Every minute counts.  Every minute of non-production means loss of profit, loss of manpower, loss of esteem for the workers, the production team, the bosses, the bonuses for every man and woman involved.   The pressure was on!

The wires are stripped, cut and taped.

Blood is mixed with the twisted electrical joint.  His body cowers over so not to get the electrics wet.  Blood smears along the taped joint.  Lid replaced on the T Box.  Screws oozed through wet lips as each is puckered out of the corner of his mouth and placed into each of the lid corners and twisted lightly.   Screwed tightly down by the flat bladed driver, held there in place, from his lips like a pirate’s cutlass.  Grease impregnated Denzo tape wrapped around the whole metal box and smoothed down each of the four waterpipe conduit to prevent rain creeping in.

The Production Formal leans over his shoulder and screams in his ear to be heard above the torrential rain.

“How’s it going?  Gett’n close?  Finished yet?  Were losing money mate.  This is going to kill us!”

“Yeah yeah, stand there and chat with me.  Let’s have a smoke and chat some more.  Got any cards?  We can do a coupla hands of 500 ifya like”

“Fuck mate… its my arse”

“Yep, and the more you chat, the more I have to explain to you, the more you’ll get worked up, the more I have to rub your back and burp you.” 

“It’s ok mate, we’re getting there.  Won’t be long now.  But, can you turn off the rain a bit?  Kinda dangerous around electrics.”

“Ok, fuck’n hurry will ya.  I know, I know you are.  The Leading Hand is having a pup up there.  He’s going bananas.”

“Luka is Always having a pup….I bet he bothers the crap outa wifey”

He tucked the torch under his chin and continued checking the boxes, quickly opening them up.  Each box unwrapped, joints checked and tightened, the BP connectors rewrapped in plastic tape, lids replaced and Denzo’ed as he moved onto next box.  His face is radiated from the red coke, fired and glowing.  Even though 50 metres away, it almost burnt his skin.  The red rocks glowed crankingly, impatiently waited to be rammed through the extractor and spew into the waiting car.  Waited for sparks to burst and splatter in a firework of explosive anger.

The second scar is darker than the hand and known as a liver spot.  He has no idea if it has anything to do with his liver but it resembles the hand of an ancient from his past.  Grandfather telling tales of painting outback schools on the western plains of the New South.  There weren’t such things as sun cream or lotions.  The best was to keep your sleeves down and brimmed hat pulled over the ears to keep the dry westerly from blowing it across a paddock.  Those times gave the school painter the privilege of mixing his own paints with oils and powder and lead so it would stick for twenty years or more.  Another layer of beige, another generation of outback worker, another time, long past.

He only had five stories.  He sat and waited for a little boy to slow down long enough to tell yet one more time of the five tales of his life.  Tales of another time, another long-gone past, another life that slipped past, through wars and depression and partners sadly gone.  And, if the little boy was too excited to slow down his hand would cramp and he’d suddenly moan loudly, jerk and fingers spasm.

The boy patted the hand, stroked the paper skin and dark veins.  Saying softly, “is that better grandpa?  Does that help?” 

Stroking softly would elicit one of the five stories and his eyes would glaze, head raise, drifting back to the then, back to when, what, only a few quick years, he was the same vigorous age as the little boy stroking.   His withered fingers would relax and soften, the veins lessen as his voice drifted back, back seventy years, telling the tale of a different life, a different time, a younger fresher Australia.

The hand is now a younger but older hand, a past hand, a hand with the finger prints of ages.