The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  The Samurai tried to catch up with the Great White Father, and did succeed, but all he would say was: ‘That’s where your Gallipoli is, in there.’ And a long, bony finger prodded his chest, then was gone, busy with locker key and bootlaces.

  ‘What do you mean, an indefinite sentence?’ He felt foolish as he persisted, but this seemed to be a man worth talking to. The rest talked interminably of second-hand cars and overtime.

  ‘Indefinite? You don’t know when you’ll get the bullet, do you?’ And turned away to sniff his boots, then to scratch his right ankle. When he had his boots on, he went to wipe some dried mud on to a pile of rags in the corner, but stopped himself in time. The Glass Canoe didn’t, and was busy rubbing his feet on the rags before the Great White Father tapped his shoulder.

  ‘Humdinger,’ he said. The Glass Canoe looked down. The rags stirred and stretched, yawned and looked up.

  ‘Is that what you think of your fellow workers?’

  ‘Christ, I’m sorry, mate,’ said the Glass Canoe and everyone gaped. Perhaps he was getting sick again.

  On the job, events moved slowly. On the drawing board in the Admin block though, for eight hours a day, the pace was frantic until four, when the white-shirted multitude suddenly went home. Their effort might have been more wisely spread over the twenty-four hours to take advantage of the quiet of the dark hours, but white-collar men don’t yet do shifts.

  The tall man had another word for him when he was dressed for work. ‘No one enters those blue gates only to make gasoline, bitumen or ethylene from crude. Oil and excreta, that’s what they fractionate here. Us and oil. With foremen, controllers, suction heads, superintendents, managers and all the rest, there’s maybe forty grades. Forty grades of shit. That’s all any of us are. White shirts, brown shirts, overalls, boiler suits, the lot. Shit. The place is a correction centre. The purpose of giving you a job is to keep you off the streets. It’s still a penal colony. All the thousands of companies are penal sub-contractors to the Government.’

  Puroil’s land included a stretch of what had once been parkland. Residents’ petitions, questions in Parliament, real estate developers’ organized, agonized pleas, no amount of democratic pressure was able to beat a foreign oil company. A few words were altered on a piece of paper somewhere, the parkland was declared industrial land and Puroil had a foothold in New South Wales. The total of 350 acres included, on the river side, some of the swampiest land this side of Botany Bay, but mangroves were cleared, swamp flats partitioned and drained and filled until only a few dozen acres on the river bank were left in their natural state. Another hundred acres of mangroves still stood on the other side of Eel River, just down from the gasoline depot of a pretended rival of Puroil: Puroil supplied them from a nice fat silver pipeline that nuzzled into the slime of the river bed and came up again out of the ground handy to their shiny white tanks.

  Puroil supplied the depot of another company too, with a line that ran half a mile under cleared clay. Wagons of rival companies that ran out of their own brand, simply called in and gulped down a load of Puroil, went out and sold it as their own. Even Puroil sent out grey unmarked wagons—they had brother companies with different names. The rival companies fixed the price between themselves in the first place, the Government approved their figure then made a big deal of getting them to reduce half a cent a gallon when crude went down a cent. Then they all advertised like mad and called it competition.

  At Puroil, the largest vessels of the new cracking plant were in position and complicated mazes of pipelines were being lagged with glass wool and aluminium sheet. Turbines, pumps, compressors, heaters, coolers, columns were assembled from many parts of the world, there were even a few girders and pipelines from Australia. Puroil never gave out the usual unctuous bumph about the refinery belonging to the Australian people; it was very clear that whatever faceless people owned it were a long way off. They were clever faceless people. At that distance they were able to persuade Australians to pass an Act of Parliament subsidizing their search for more oil. Even with retained profits and the help of liberal depreciation provisions they didn’t feel able to bear the full cost themselves. They even persuaded Australia that Puroil’s increased wealth was good for Australia. The way they put it was that it was Australia’s wealth.

  The plant was a new design, the first of its kind; there was a power recovery system hooked in to the catalyst reaction and regeneration cycle. Integrated, vulnerable, but designed to save half a million dollars a year on fuel bills. This one complex of twelve plant units cost forty million dollars. Even so it was an economy plant, as it said in the operators’ manual. The overseas owners weren’t willing to provide enough standby equipment. On two thirds of design feed-rate the cost would be recovered in two years, after which the profit was enormous. And in seven days of twenty-four-hour running, the wages of the sixty men operating it would be paid for one year out of profit on gasoline alone, aside from sales of steam to neighbouring industries, top gas for the ethylene compressors, gas and slurry oils to the gasworks, low pressure gas for bottling, cycle oils and furnace oil to the many little oil processing factories that sprang up round the refinery. The normal cracker, they were told, ran continuously for eighteen months to two years before shutting down for inspection and repairs.

  WONDERS OF THE WORLD While the Samurai and the rest of the troops were down in the control room waiting the last half hour for the bus that would take them up to the blue gates a thousand yards away, other bipeds had come out of the structures. One of these was Far Away Places.

  Far Away Places had been standing on a metal grating two hundred feet up, looking west into the light mist lifting from the distant Blue Mountains. His night had been quiet and solitary, with no nightmare awakening, on several bags inside one of the top walkways in the reactor vessel. Until the plant started there would be no regular work for men like him, and in the absence of intelligent operator training courses, he and the rest had nothing to do but learn the plant, which meant study flow schemes and walk over the structures. On night shift, it meant melt into the darkness and keep out of sight. There had been a course, but the instructors had only been able to talk about cracking plants they knew in other countries, and this one was different. Neither instructors nor men had ever seen a power recovery system.

  As he looked down at the squat control room with its flat roof already scarred by well-aimed bolts and metal droppings from the welders, Blue Hills and little Gunga Din came out to empty rubbish from small tins into large tins. He saw how like rats they were, darting about outside for a space, then ducking back to shelter. The air was gauzy with gas.

  ‘Look at it,’ he said aloud. ‘Air. Running with crap. Call that air. We breathe that shit in.’

  If only a man could get away. A small farm somewhere. A man could produce all he needed to eat, you’d never need go near places like this, never be herded on to an assembly line or a process and never have to muck in with people you hated. Other people. Keep to yourself. A few sheep, fruit trees, bit of a garden. Christ, it was a glorious dream! It was freedom.

  Freedom? It was isolation and that was better. Feel of the wind on your face, the sun warming you, the grass growing the same as it had for millions of years. Mending the fences. Enough food for you and the dogs. A dream. A man wakes up one day, realizes the world was made for other people and knows he’s going to be at the arse end all his life. Nothing here for a man to live on. A pay packet stops you from dying, it doesn’t teach you to live.

  Far Away Places, from his perch on the lift-top landing, spat. Meditatively he fingered his private parts under the loose khaki overalls—he wore no underwear—and watched the little white gob of liquid as a few drops broke off and moved away from the main mass. Like a big bomb and little bombs. A piece of paper will float away, down and up in the warm draughts round the columns and, when the plant is running, above the coolers with their waste heat shimmering and rippling, but spit goes straight down, like bombs. He fin
gered, in his pocket, an old trumpet mouthpiece. He amused himself by playing strangled tunes on it way up on the structures, alone.

  On the rail near him a large battered moth rested, its wings frayed.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ he said to it. ‘Knocked about. The wind pushes you around, doesn’t it? Yet you’re supposed to be at home flying in the air.’ He picked it up and dropped it over the side. It fell straight down. He followed its fall till he lost sight of it. Did its wings open? If they didn’t, he’d killed the poor thing. But it had wings, why didn’t it fly?

  ‘You stupid bloody moth!’ he called after it, guilty. ‘If I had wings I’d take off, tired or not.’ But would he? Perhaps the thing opened its wings and saved itself a few feet from the concrete. Anyway it was only a moth. His guilt remained. The moth had a life and would never have another.

  Far below another of the rats, or of the three thousand million wonders of the world, scuttled out into the propane laden air with the slops bucket and from a spot five yards short tipped its contents in the direction of a drain. Far Away Places felt unaccountably that the earth should tip a little in response to this sudden violence. The Glass Canoe was back inside about the time the slops landed. Far Away looked away from the humans across the altering air to the tall gas flares, north to Sydney, east to the sea, west to the Blue Mountain range, south to the eroding headlands defying the Pacific. All round him the tiny houses seemed to bow down, performing the kowtow to tall industrial plants. He came reluctantly downstairs.

  At ground level, under the concrete skirt of the largest vessel, the Rustle of Spring was stirring under his heavy tarpaulin. He was young and Italian and worked for a construction contractor. Camping on the job saved him money; he could send more home to Italy after he paid his debt to the company that brought him out.

  Far Away Places trod on him as he stepped exploringly under the fat regenerator. Rustle of Spring sat up with a jerk, not awake. When he saw it was an overalled prisoner, he lay back, thinking sadly of Italy in another ocean. Far Away left him there, covered in thick dust. Rustle of Spring was too young yet to start coughing.

  Far Away was late getting down. With any luck he could creep in unobserved. The rest of the boys had ways of not understanding anyone who always went off alone. Even Blue Hills spent some nights with the rest of the crew.

  LIFE BY ORDEAL ‘Look what the cat shat on the mat!’ roared the Glass Canoe, hooked a finger in his overalls and flied his every button from neck to crutch. The rest of the men laughed, but not too loud. They had felt that big brown finger in their own overalls. Or in other places when they were bending incautiously. The Glass Canoe had a great sense of humour.

  My silence will always protect me, thought Far Away. But the Glass Canoe had the bit between his teeth. ‘What’ve you been doing all night, Far Away?’ And to the others, grinning his brown sleek smile, ‘I think we ought to take a look at the old love muscle. Whadd’ya say?’

  They said nothing. Their own long since gone High School and National Service initiations rose up before their eyes as the big man fished for the muscle he spoke of.

  If you say nothing and do nothing and feel nothing, no one can hurt you, said Far Away to himself. Perhaps. The Glass Canoe brought it out. It was quite small from fear. Mercifully his tormentor did not crush what was crushable. Years before, when he was conscripted into the service of an overseas crown and dumped into Asia to help fight somebody else’s undeclared war, Far Away had had a ritual sex experience—miscalled harmless initiation—in which unresolved perverts like the Glass Canoe had extracted from his body, by cunning application of oil, fingers and feathery grass, that which he was shyly reserving for his first woman. Now here was the Glass Canoe about to make him play the same game. With all his concentration he tried to resist the Glass Canoe’s insidiously gentle treatment, but he failed. His member had a life of its own to live and once erect had no conscience.

  Not one of the audience was game to butt in. The Samurai was outside, the Great White Father visiting some of his old mates in another plant. Stillsons was gone to see the Enforcer; only the Sumpsucker was on hand to speak up for Far Away.

  The Enforcer was partly human: he wanted no Stillsons rubbering up behind him in his office at 0615 hours to report job activities that didn’t exist. He knew there was nothing to do, so did those above. But reports had to be written in case someone from Head Office got nosy. He had written his fictitious reports already. He got rid of the visitor with two coarse words. ‘Piss off!’

  ‘Chee!’ Sumpsucker said harmlessly, as he got beside the Glass Canoe and saw what he was doing.

  ‘Chee…’ The Sumpsucker was a senior man, expecting his dust-coat any day.

  ‘What d’you want?’ bullied the Glass Canoe, working steadily. His hands smiled up at him with approval and love.

  ‘Some day someone’ll hang one on you,’ Sumpsucker said mildly. ‘You can’t do what you like to people.’

  ‘He won’t hit me. Will you, Far Away? Or I’ll wear his guts for garters.’

  Say nothing, said Far Away over and over to himself. His own heftiest punch wouldn’t have dented the Glass Canoe’s skin, but if he ever tried to throw that punch it would be the end of him.

  THE ADVANTAGE OF FLEXIBILITY He found a thing to do. Many of the prisoners had been so corrected in their way of life that they looked for work in their time off. Far Away Places had found something to kill time and bring in a few dollars. He helped his brother-in-law in his big black shiny meat-wagon. When there was a death round about, Half-Cup was called and if Far Away was handy, both went to pick up the body. While the Glass Canoe was doing his worst, Far Away re-lived his first pickup.

  There was no father in the family. The mother died sitting up in bed and the kids, seventeen and younger, didn’t know enough to lay her out. She had half-stiffened in a sitting position. Here was the point Far Away went over in his mind so many times and which helped him now.

  Half-Cup shooed the family out of the room, shut the door, turned up the radio on the bedside table, walked up to the corpse and BLAM! His fist took her fair in the breast bone and she flattened out on the bed. Now she would fit under their sheet on the stretcher and in the coffin later without the mortician having to cut anything to make her more flexible.

  ORDEAL RESUMED Far Away Places concentrated so hard on this trivial incident that the Glass Canoe had to work very hard to bring on the end result he wanted. Not only that, but Far Away’s face contracted in a dreadful grimace of disgust and fear at the thought of such violence being used on the corpse of somebody’s mother. He didn’t reflect that the majority of lady corpses would be somebody’s mother and nothing out of the ordinary. This expression of disgust had taken complete possession of his features at the moment that the Glass Canoe’s efforts bore fruit.

  ‘Looka that!’ yelled the Glass Canoe delightedly as Far Away’s body shuddered in natural spasms. ‘Ground glass and razor blades!’ Ever afterwards this casual, inaccurate reference to Far Away’s grimace was to label him as a case of urethritis. Far Away grimaced; the Glass Canoe said he was in pain: the others did not reject the connection so easily made for them. They swallowed it whole. They had no particular love for anyone that they should look for reasons in his favour. It was easier to take someone’s word. ‘Make sure you don’t go pissing in there with us,’ he added with relish.

  ‘What about the floor?’ asked the Sumpsucker.

  ‘I’ll mop it up,’ said Far Away Places, replacing everything. ‘It’s all right. I’ll clean it up.’ His face was part white, part pink; his mates couldn’t say if he was angry or ashamed and since no one gave them an opinion to swallow they were without one.

  I’ll just act as if it’s something that might happen any day, thought Far Away Places. I can see the funny side of it though. He mopped the floor, his mates watched vacantly. Stillsons returned, the Sumpsucker followed him into his office.

  ‘Hey Sumpy!’ chipped the Glass Canoe. ‘You’re alw
ays chockablock with sex and dirty photos. How come you’ve never dropped it out for us? Come to think of it I’ve never seen you have a pee. Or take your clothes off to have a shower with the boys. Is it true you get a horn every time you take it out, so you can’t pee, only by accident?’

  The Sumpsucker’s head retracted into his carapace of sweat-stiffened shirt—his body, too, remembered the lash of the past—his hands clasped themselves over his bald forehead to push his head further into his clothes.

  ‘You’ll get yours.’

  ‘Not from you.’

  ‘Some day.’ The Sumpsucker feared heights and freely admitted he was a coward, but he was the only one there to talk back to the Glass Canoe.

  ‘What you following Stillsons for? You after a dustcoat?’ The position of foreman was an eminence few would reach but most hoped for. A permanent carrot before them. The Glass Canoe himself had a dustcoat in his sights. The waiting men snickered, but even the Glass Canoe despised their support. He grinned broadly at their group as if at one man.

  Far Away went in the locker room to change. Dutch Treat was sealing his precious carton and stowing it in the false bottom of his gladstone bag.

  ‘Did you make contact?’

  ‘Not yet, no. What frequency do you think He’d use?’

  ‘He’s God, isn’t He? All frequencies at once. Tune it anyhow you like—you’ll get Him. But why don’t you try it up on top of the plant? You won’t get much reception down here. You can see the sky from up there.’

  SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS Out in the dawn the Samurai came across a square of light-gauge welded guardwire left over by a construction contractor. Without thinking very much about it, he brought it inside, bent down both ends and had a toastrack. There was a small battered electric stove in the amenities room, the rack fitting neatly over the hot coil. Gunga Din was filling the urn so the next shift could have their cup of tea first thing.