As Far as You Can Go by Lesley Glaister

feels sure there must be closer things in
other
directions. The way this lot show off about distance. As if there’s something clever or macho about being miles from anywhere. She looks at Fred’s bare feet on the floor. Stubby feet with childishly neat toes. He must be mad to go barefooted with all the … things about. Her eyes get stuck for a minute, fascinated by the loveliness of the feet, leather-soled and somehow innocent.
    Graham comes in, blinking with surprise to be faced with so many people. ‘Graham, Fred, Fred, Graham,’ Larry says.
    ‘Hi.’ Graham holds out his hand.
    Without getting up Fred extends his and Cassie sees with a pang that he has no thumb on his right hand, sees Graham noticing and flinching in the instant before he grasps the hand.
    ‘Fred’s our next-door neighbour,’ Cassie says. ‘Only 100 kilometres away!’
    ‘Beer anyone?’ Larry says. He pulls a pack of beers out of the fridge.
    ‘Meat,’ Fred says, nudging the plastic bag, dark and wet inside. A smear of blood has leaked on to the table. ‘Roo. Roadkill – but fresh.’
    ‘Beer, Cassandra?’ says Larry. She shakes her head, eyeing the meat, hoping she isn’t going to be expected to deal with it.
    ‘I’ll light the barbie in a tick,’ Fred says.
    Obviously quite at home.
    Graham takes a beer. Fred grasps one to his chest with his thumbless hand, nicks the top off with the other. ‘How’s Mara doing?’ he asks.
    ‘As always.’ Larry pours his beer into a glass.
    ‘So, what’s your line of work?’ Fred swivels round to Graham, swigs from the beaded bottle, belches. ‘Sorry, love, better out than in.’ He winks at Cassie.
    ‘Graham paints,’ Cassie says.
    Graham wipes froth off his top lip. ‘Sometimes.’
    Cassie goes to put the kettle on. She wants tea even if no one else does.
    ‘Fred,’ she says, ‘do you have family? Children?’
    The air seems to condense. Larry winces and looks down.
    ‘No,’ Fred says. And there is a long and awkward silence in which the three men audibly swallow their beer and the water in the kettle fidgets towards a boil.
    ‘What do you do out here?’ Graham asks.
    ‘I mind me business,’ Fred says.
    Graham flushes, bends down to stroke the dog.
    ‘No offence, mate.’
    ‘None taken,’ Graham says, stiffly.
    ‘’Spect you’re wondering what happened to my thumb?’ Fred says, catching Cassie looking at him.
    ‘
No!
’ she says, ‘I hadn’t even –’
    ‘Remarkable lack of curiosity,’ Larry says.
    ‘No,’ her face goes hot, ‘of course I’m interested.’
    Fred laughs again, the startling sound.
‘Course
you are, love. See.’ Fred holds out his two hands, the right one is almost rectangular without the wing of thumb. ‘When I was a nipper, ’bout twelve, I was off with me dad in the bush, having a rare old time. And there was this snake, see – well, I didn’t see – not till it was too late. Brown Snake, deadly. Well, just come out of the water – having a swim – and this little brown bugger – before I knew it –’ He clutches the place where his thumb was.‘There was me dad with his knife, grabbed hold of me and hacked it off.’
    Cassie squirms in her seat. ‘Cut off your thumb?’
    ‘It was either that or watch me cop it then and there. Once that bugger’s venom gets in your bloodstream you’re a goner, no two ways about it. Then he dug a hole and buried it.’
    ‘The thumb or the snake?’ Cassie grasps her own precious thumbs against her chest.
    Fred laughs. ‘Me thumb! Didn’t take a very big hole.’
    ‘I could
never
do that,’ Cassie says. ‘Could you, Gray?’
    ‘It was that or curtains,’ Fred says.
    ‘One never really knows
what
one would do if one was pushed to the very limits,’ Larry says. He smiles at Cassie. ‘Does one?’
    ‘Well, no.’ She looks down at her knees. If only she could think of something witty. ‘Excuse me a minute.’ She goes outside and down the veranda steps, a blast of laughter following,