The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  He didn’t see the accident. The pair in the paddock stood face to face in a tiny clearing where the ground was firm. Two Pot straightened up just as the Sandpiper lifted her knee. It caught him. The pain took his voice away. He cut off her apology—none of the women wanted to incapacitate the sources of their cash—and surprised her by going ahead with the business in hand.

  ‘I’ve never seen a man do that before. Not when he was hurt.’

  ‘And not when he’s paying, I’ll bet. Can you keep something to yourself? If you wouldn’t mind, next time, just give me the knee there or a smack with your hand. When I’m not expecting it.’

  ‘If you like it.’

  ‘Like it! Christ, I’ve never felt anything like it. Makes me feel I’m suffering a bit in return for the pleasure. Sort of paying for it. Properly. Not just with money.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said the Sandpiper sensibly.

  THROUGH A SNOTTY RAG The Sumpsucker clasped his hands behind his head in his normal attitude of thought. The Great White Father was a gentle man, guided by moral scruples. He had a respect for the wholeness of others. The Sumpsucker changed his hands, still clasped, to a position on his forehead from which the hair had tactfully receded. His head retreated downwards into his chest cavity. Usually only the oldest operators pulled their heads in like this, being closer to the convict past and the days of a thousand lashes.

  ‘You on probation yet?’

  ‘No. Never be a foreman while my arse-hole points to the ground.’ Every prospective foreman said it.

  ‘Your boys will help you with the heights.’ Sump was terrified of heights. He couldn’t climb a stepladder.

  ‘I’m a coward. A cowardly custard,’ he said happily.

  ‘The whole population is,’ soothed the Great White Father.

  ‘Except the Samurai and you,’ amended the Sump. You only need a uniform to be a field-marshal, he thought, looking into the Great White Father’s sea-blue eyes and equating courage with the bearing of arms.

  ‘I’ll do my trick for you,’ said the Father, rising on his toes and falling flat like a tall plank. Sump gasped.

  ‘That’ll put you in hospital some day,’ he said unhappily. ‘Proves you’re not a coward.’

  ‘It proves nothing. I do it because I’m just as much a moron as any prisoner. We’re the same anywhere. Prisoners of our own moronic mental patterns. Body mechanics who leave gauze pads in stomachs, electrical operators who blow fuses in power stations, medical students braining each other with cadaver legs in dissection rooms, prime ministers who terminate the careers of competent successors. Morons.’

  ‘You could be prime minister yourself if you weren’t in the grip of the grog.’

  ‘Get thee behind me, Sumpy,’ intoned the Great White Father. ‘Don’t tempt me with the splendours of power or the riches of public office. I see no riches. I see no splendours.’ He put an empty can to his eye for a telescope. I see no ships, only hardships. As for the grog, I’d drink it through a snotty rag or a baby’s nappy.’

  A howl floated in from outside.

  ‘Was that Adam and Eve discovering a maggot in the apple?’ declaimed the Great White Father.

  ‘More like a cat howling,’ enviously. The Sumpsucker didn’t like to think anyone else could rouse the Sandpiper to frenzy or make her howl in the bushes.

  ‘Then bring it in,’ said the Great White Father grandly, ‘nail it by the ears to the table and let it howl inside. I’d rather live in a swamp amongst friends and howling animals, than pay rent and instalments in a suburban shed.’ He stretched. The beer made him sleepy.

  ‘Being cowardly runs in the family,’ the Sumpsucker returned to his permanent subject. ‘My brother got tricked into a paratrooper unit. They keep having to push him.’ He was happy when he could make the Great White Father laugh.

  ‘Perhaps they shouldn’t have put an experimental plant so far from civilization,’ the Father ruminated. ‘The start-up’s six months late already.’

  ‘The cracker?’ Sump was amazed. ‘I didn’t know you ever bothered about Puroil!’

  The Great White Father turned away to open two cans and pushed one across the table.

  WIND IN THE WILLOWS ‘Thanks,’ said a gummy voice. It was Sea Shells. Sumpsucker was gone. Sandpiper must have come back. Two Pot was still pulling himself together in the mangroves.

  ‘Hullo, Shells,’ the Great White Father welcomed him, but had no further chance to speak. Sea Shells was a constant sound in the ears. He suffered from razorback gums, his teeth had been out for too long before his dentures were fitted and the gums had thinned so his plate couldn’t get suction. He still lisped, his top set dropped continually, clattering down noisily inside his mouth. Often food stuck the two dentures together, they might be both up or both down, depending on the way they bounced, revealing large spaces, steppes, ranges and prairies of tongue, palate and gum.

  ‘Having trouble with the new stepfather, you see Mum got a divorce shortly after I showed the stepfather into the house while Mum was taking a shower, he’s a cop—the stepfather not the old man—he brings home watches and bracelets and dollar bills every week, he’s a better provider than dear old Dad and he gives Mum more sex, not that she’d take it from Dad she was always knocking him back, but she still says Dad never showed her any affection I guess she likes a change, anyway the old bed creaks night and day now, Dad’s applied to come back and live as a boarder because he’s used to the place and Mum’s cooking he must be nuts, it’s a sickening thing to discover your father’s nuts, so now he hits the grog, he’s a case of alcoholic remorse every day round two in the morning, the only time he was sober for a week was once on pay day he called in at the Corroboree Hotel and had his pay snatched, he tried to run after the bloke that took it but was tripped before he got to the door by a bloke standing there reading the paper, accidental, of course.’

  He paused for breath. His top teeth had dropped, his appearance was ferocious for a second or two, a vast Jenolan cavity became visible above the hump of his fallen plastic palate.

  ‘How did you get off the plant today?’ asked the Great White Father firmly. Sea Shells sucked his top teeth back to a more convenient position.

  ‘Went to get some keys cut, the keys to the tool store the stationery locker and the main warehouse, you know everyone in the place has keys to all the things that are supposed to be secret, security, why Slug has the biggest collection he has a key to everything, no one gets into strife unless something goes wrong and you get caught, remember the Fallen Idol? How he rose and rose then fell and fell raising the company flag one minute, ass-holed the next? Well they wanted him out of the way and they finally got him over keys, not many know that, I may be deaf from the turbines but I hear things I’m not supposed to hear, it’s all in here’—tapping his head above his ears—‘and it’ll stay in here until I can get even with this rotten company, you know they wouldn’t get me compo for going deaf around their stinking turbines and compressors and I had to pay all the doctors’ expenses myself, there’s lots of blokes in Puroil going deaf but they know from my experience they won’t get compo so they shut up about it, if they find you’re deaf they get an excuse to hoist you, I wouldn’t spit on Puroil land, talking about spit did you hear the joke about the full spittoon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Great White Father, ‘I heard it.’ Sea Shells didn’t mind.

  ‘There was this bet in the pub. Ten dollars to swallow the contents—’

  ‘Never mind,’ said his listener. ‘I heard it.’

  ‘—but it was so difficult to swallow, not because he was a piker—’

  ‘Shut up! It’s filthy!’

  ‘—One lump!’ He laughed loudly so he couldn’t be interrupted. ‘That’s why it took so long, one lump!’ And in the same breath, ‘You know what the secret is to beat this company? How we always have the wood on them? It’s the fantastic unity amongst the men that has this company on its knees!’

  The Great White Father s
wallowed hard.

  ‘They know about the heads going down on night shift, the management knows all about it, the Union knows but no one ever says anything about it, but you know what I think? The amazing thing, the fact that really amazes me is that there isn’t more crime against the company, not that there’s so much but that there’s so little, take that compressor with the pump and the stand and the mobile generator and the pump went last weekend, the whole thing could have disappeared, that’s if there was a real criminal element here but there isn’t, somebody had a use for them that’s all, they even took them out the main gate that’s how good the security is, just hook them on behind your truck or even your car and the guards don’t know you didn’t come in with it, you’ve got to be cheeky with this company and you can get what you want, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, they’ll treat you viciously if you look as if you’ll take it, the one that doesn’t complain always gets the crap, you take a sick pay query up to the Brown Snake and get treated like dirt but if you start to fight back and look as if you mean it he’ll back down and end up giving you your money and he does this to everyone that stands up to him not only lodge members—’

  The Great White Father tuned out. Later he took his eyes from his hearer to open two cans and passed one across to—the Two Pot Screamer. Sea Shells was inside with the Sandpiper, she wouldn’t go out playing ape with him, she couldn’t stop his patter. The Sumpsucker was just behind the Screamer, he didn’t need twenty minutes to pull himself together. As soon as his pants were on and the job done, he had it under control.

  ‘It’s all right for you, Sump,’ said the Screamer, while the Father opened a third can.

  ‘Why better for me?’

  ‘You got her when she wasn’t so fresh,’ complained the Two Pot Screamer, guarding his new warm painful secret.

  ‘You’re too old,’ jeered the Sumpsucker. ‘Age tells.’

  ‘Besides, I heard Sea Shells performing. I wasn’t going to come back into a blast from him.’

  ‘Never mind Sea Shells. She’ll stop his yap.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said the Great White Father.

  SANDPAPER Forget all your other troubles—wear tight shoes, her father said before she went out into the world to earn her living. Now, she sat on the edge of the hut bed and in the few seconds left to her before Sea Shells was ready, she drew on her face a red mouth, with the lips unfortunately slopping over on to her face.

  After working an hour or two she felt gummed up in her throat passages from kissing men with differently constituted saliva. Perhaps one had a cold. Strange how swapping spits thickened up your own.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she said and turned away to do out her nose and throat into her wash-basin (by courtesy of Puroil welding shop change-rooms) with a mixture of salt and bicarbonate dissolved in water. It was one of Dad’s hints, he used to do this in the bathroom each morning and she was so used to the sound it never disturbed her. Sea Shells didn’t like it, it turned him up.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ uneasily.

  She hawked and spat like a man. ‘Just swapping spits with you men does this. Gums me up.’

  ‘Do you have to talk about it?’

  ‘Not talking won’t make it go away.’ She would rather have been out in the paddocks.

  ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ she asked, but her heart wasn’t in it. ‘You’re very quiet. For you.’

  ‘Why don’t you put your grass skirt on?’ Usually he talked from go to whoa: what was the matter? She had to do something to get his full attention. She wiped her face carefully on some scraps of paper tissue and let them flutter to the floor. He watched, fascinated. Covered with germs and here she was spotting them on the floor.

  She stretched her arms behind her head, clasping her strong hands; the muscles over her shoulders pulling her breasts up. Nothing dampens a man’s spirits so much as sagging breasts. The strong black hairs—three days shaved—under her arms slanted out of her pores like arrows. Around the base of each hair was gathered a thick white crust of powder cemented by deodorant.

  She should have gone to the lav, too, but it wasn’t so easy for a female. All she had was an old pot, to be tipped down a hole in the floor boards. Like on a train or in a plane.

  She swung her legs up on the bed.

  ‘Remember that time in the winter?’ It flattered a man if you remembered a particular time with him.

  ‘When?’ He tried to recover some of his spirit by pretending he needed prompting.

  ‘When we were out in the storm. You know. We were both a bit full and it was like a love affair before the honeymoon.’

  He remembered. The furious wind, the needles of rain driving into their flesh, stinging their skin. They had been bare, standing up in the sticky clay.

  ‘Making one shadow,’ he said, letting her know he remembered. Of course there was no shadow. If he held out too long she would curse him and still take his money and tell nasty stories about him.

  ‘When the lightning flashed.’

  She was pleased. Orphans in the storm.

  ‘I was new here then and you called me Sandpaper, not Sandpiper.’ She tried a small laugh. Thank goodness he responded. She didn’t know the boys had told him that name in reference to the texture of a certain stretch of her anatomy. He felt a bit above her now. He had something in reserve, an edge, he could afford to be generous. He stroked the broad, thick-toed foot she extended toward him on the bed. She had shaved her legs and the tops of her feet and toes where the hairs grew, but some had escaped the razor and this struck him as faintly pathetic. He felt better now, the nose sounds were forgotten. He kissed her knees.

  She thought back years ago to the little joke her father had made with her older sister, the chance remark that had set her on the game. They had been watching tennis on the television. Deuce was called. Her sister and father had their heads together, talking. Suddenly he had said, ‘After deuce comes advantage.’ She corrected him. ‘After juice!’ They laughed till match point. Trying to find out what this meant from the boys in the church fellowship got her an introduction to a girl who persuaded her to leave home and live with her in her flat.

  Since then she had been entertained by the smells of over three thousand men, from the unsupported to the jockstrapped, from the perfectly clean and fresh to the two-singlet brigade. Like the Sumpsucker.

  The girl had let her go; some of the younger boys complained they’d seen her weeing in the bath. She got to know the Great White Father. Once when she lost her little bag out on the mud flats, he had gone out and found it and made a speech when he got back to the shed.

  ‘Think! If this had not been found, a thousand years from now archaeologists might have unearthed the remains of our rude civilization, to find what? To find the poor little feminine things we have here: mirror, pins, hanky, lippy, contraceptive pills, calendar with X’s in red, cigarettes, a few coins. It’s all so inexpressibly sad.’ He stopped just short of making her cry.

  Sea Shells was finished. She passed him a fresh piece of paper tissue and didn’t forget to smile at him. Now she was a moral to be able to go.

  LIGHT-SENSITIVE Night. And Knuckles was in the bed hut trying to persuade the Old Lamplighter to turn off the light. He was sensitive, and the boys knew it. They peered through old nail holes in the corrugated iron sides of the hut to watch him, and made plenty of noise. He would have been on his feet swinging his fists if she didn’t have him in such a grip. The lady had entertained them all many times, she felt no inclination to be embarrassed. It was all as natural as breathing to her; perhaps that was why her own husband took no pleasure in her. When the youngest went to school she announced that she had a job and might have to be out any time day or night. He worked at Puroil, too, in the warehouse. He came down once a week—that was all he needed—after dark and looked in at the nail holes. A watcher from the corrugated iron balcony, masturbating as he watched.

  Knuckles ended up arguing loudly with her, shouting, ‘Damn the li
ght! I don’t like the light!’ She wasn’t bothering to soothe him. He couldn’t get away.

  ‘Shut up, little boy! You have to do it in the dark, don’t you? Like a thief!’ But something was happening. Suddenly Knuckles arched his back and got out of control like one of the old steam trains that puffed and panted up a long hill, then got to the top and raced down the other side, piston flying and hot breath whistling. Mechanically, she tried to help—they expected it—but in regaining her grip she swung her arm and scraped his eye with a fingernail. The whole thing was ruined. Still, it was money in advance. While he was cursing, she looked sideways to see if the dollar bills were still there.

  Her husband never went there to watch with the other regulars. He liked to feel alone.

  4

  START-UP

  OPEN HOUSE To find how Puroil was going, opposition companies sent a man once a month to park his car in the employees’ car park, walk through the gates like the rest—there was no employee recognition system—carrying a dilly bag with his foreman’s disguise and change in one of the unused huts. With a white safety helmet and a biscuit coloured dustcoat, this man wandered everywhere with notebook and pen, looking at new construction, listening to men talk, examining pumping logs and product transfer sheets and generally getting the drift of things.

  He would go away smiling, for the drift continued.

  18 YEARS OF ASH One of the things he found was that job-creativeness was well rewarded. Men with imagination could put pen to paper and rough in the outlines of a new job any time.

  For eighteen years Ashpit Freddie, a sort of clerk, collected details of various heaps of rubbish and ash, wrote reports and supervised them in a far corner of the company’s land, tended them with a long-handled rake, kept them in order so they were a joy to him to behold, and occasionally moved them a little farther on. Sometimes he would amalgamate two or three, make the ground in between shipshape, and even requisition a helper or a new rake. He dressed neatly in a pair of overalls that were a credit to him, and made trouble for no one. At his presentation nice, wise things were said about the dignity of labour and the beauty of a labourer going to his retirement.