I Am The Local Atheist

by Warwick Stubbs

  We placed the clean mats to the side, picked up the old mats, then replaced the old mats with the new mats, keeping them in a nice straight line that ran from the showers out to the benches. I put my hands on my hips admiring my handy work, somewhat proud of the perfect straight line I had produced. I could feel the smile I once knew returning, as though this job might not turn out so bad after all if I just keep up the positivity.

  The left side of Ed’s cheek scrunched up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I nodded down at the mats. “Perfect straight line.” I winked and nodded my head.

  His frustration seemed to present itself in slow motion. First the mouth opening, and then the hand to the forehead, the heel of the hand rubbing an eye, and finally the exasperation voiced. “What… a fuckin’… idiot! This – this – is what they send me? Sheee-it!” He slammed his hand against a set of lockers near him.

  That was it.

  This is hell. I have entered the abode of the dying where all damned souls are destined; where all heathens, atheists and faithless will vie and beg for forgiveness as though they hadn’t had a ‘fair’ chance while on Earth. My place, my people. I get it. I deserve to be here, just like the rest of them.

  I gripped the hand-bars of the trolley feeling the steely cold creep around my fingers and pushed and shoved the pile of dirty mats back to the sorting room, trying not to tip them all over the ground as I rounded the corners following Ed’s stiffly annoyed walk. We grabbed another load of clean mats waiting on a separate trolley and pushed those across a walkway to a lift that was like something born from the 1800s: a reeking monster trap of caged doors and oiled parts, creaking in all the joints and boards; the noise from the motor that kept this thing alive dared me to yell in competition.

  Ed slammed the door shut, pressed a button. Nothing happened. He pulled the lever sticking out from a rounded box on the floor. Nothing happened. More swearing, more anger, more frustration, until he started letting it out and hitting the leaver, kicking at it as his scraggly hair made him look like Neil Young going nuts with his vibrato bar. As his anger grew, his struggles with the lever increased and mad spitting began to accompany the steady flow of insults at the machine. It gave back little more than the occasional creak and spluttering of oil from its joints while the motor that continuously powered the thing grunted and rumbled monstrous moans that seem to clamber at my ears, threatening to smother me in their mocking tones.

  I was ready for flames to burst out from the edges of the lift attacking and feeding on every last drop of oil that stained the metal and wood surroundings and engulf us in their fury; a sarcastic laugh burning our bodies, the cables breaking, the ground beneath the floor falling away and sending us down into a tumbling spiral of endless hatred.

  Ed finally relaxed for a moment, took a deep breath and shoved one last time with both hands. The lever moved into place. He pressed the button a second time and the lift started moaning into an upwards direction.

  I held onto the trolley, casually looking over at him as he leaned against the caged wall, exhausted and furious. He shook his head. “Worst day ever.”

  The lift ground to a halt, shaking the floorboards beneath us. Ed opened the doors and I wheeled the trolley out following him through some plastic flaps.

  “This is the boning room. Same deal. Replace the old mats with the washed mats.”

  A hard but smooth floor passed under the trolley sloping inwards towards drains. Ed went ahead and guided me through shiny detachable hooks that dangled from chains. They crawled up to the ceiling like blood-starved serpents waiting for the day’s supply of slaughtered beasts to be hung and quartered and bled and gutted.

  The rest of the boning room stretched out for about 50 metres, clean and sparkly, water and foam sliding around beneath all the tables as the white overalled and black gumbooted clean up crew finished their hosing and wiping down of various shiny steel objects equipped with gritted teeth and slicing blades bolted to the edges of the tables; some hung from the roof waiting to have carcasses strung up on them, chopped and processed onwards throughout the rest of this floor.

  A man came storming out of one of the side offices ahead of us. His foot slipped on the wet floor and his arms went in the air, but he managed to steady himself. He took a step back to the room that he came out of and roared: “You don’t get to tell me how to do my job, y’ hear?” His shoulders tensed and his fists clenched like he was about to go back in and give whoever was in there more than just a piece of his mind.

  “Wait here.” Ed staunched his chest and made towards the room while I moved the trolley away from the dangling hooks and closer to where the first mat was to be picked up near where the side offices began.

  Ed nearly walked into the angry man as he walked past while the man in the office stepped into the doorway. The angry man practically shoved Ed out of his personal space causing Ed to slip on the wet floors and slide with arms flailing, looking like he might not make it back to standing. All those processing tables around him looked crackingly hard if they were to connect with his head as he fell.

  Ed managed to reach hands and arms out and grab one to balance himself on, all the while looking from one man to the next seeking some recognition for blame.

  They both ignored him.

  “Listen,” said the office man. “No one’s trying to tell you how to do your job. The protocol is designed for safety – you know that; we simply need more accountability for…”

  “Your accountability,” the angry man shoved a stiff finger at the air between them, “is asking for heads to roll. Damn it man, we don’t need more job losses! We need a plan to help these men do their jobs as safely as possible, not try to set an example by firing and looking for blame. For fucks sake.” With that final statement his hands were back in the air and boots splashing towards the dangling hooks that led through to the plastic flaps we had just passed through.

  Ed looked like he was about to try to console the office man in some kind of ‘manly fashion’ but was mostly ignored.

  The angry man passed by me giving off extreme scowls.

  The office man stepped forward and called out “Don’t ignore what’s required by law, otherwise it will be your head that rolls.”

  The angry man passed through the dangling hooks throwing one arm in the air with wild abandon and turning slightly so his voice could carry backwards. “Suck a dick!”

  The arm snagged a hook.

  The man was still moving forward. His feet slipped when he tried to pull back. His other hand reacted and reached out, grabbing a nearby chain to stop his fall.

  The serpent hissed.

  The chains locked.

  The hook dug deep.

  The angry man screamed a throat thrashing.

  Blood wilfully splattered.

  A gasp of horror from Ed. The office man ran, completely forgetting about the wet floors and easily slid into a fall, knocking the angry man around on the hook as the blood poured from the arm, occasionally splattering his face as he tried to lift himself but kept slipping and falling back onto the hook.

  The few clean-up crew who were still around began moving desperately to the scene to help. The office man had returned to his feet and was trying to lift the angry man off the hook. I made a move away from the trolley thinking I could help too, at least to steady the man until the others knew what to do.

  Ed was just standing there, almost as though he was deciding whether to help the person who had shoved him. He looked at me. “Fuck,” and grudgingly started moving to the scene not trying to fall like the office man. “You can’t do nothing here. Just finish doing the mats and I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes.”

  I looked on, somewhat stunned by events. White overalls smeared with fresh blood gripped the angry man’s body and lifted him, pulling the hook out of the gaping wound in his arm and attempting to carry him through the plastic flaps.

  “Has anybody called an ambulance?”


  “Get onto it – now!”

  “Get him to the infirmary!”

  “Where’s a bloody trolley?”

  I looked down at my trolley, and was about to dump all the mats but they had the angry man in the lift already and Ed was manning the lever with all his strength, getting the motor revving and the floor moving downwards and out of sight.

  It was eerily quiet all of a sudden. The dangling hooks clinked occasionally against each other, one bloody hook in the middle showing off its stains in swaying circles. The serpent chains whispered satisfactory pleasantries from above as they curled back into a post-meal slumber.

  The mats waited patiently for me to return to their needs.

  I turned my back on the scene behind me as some of the clean-up crew returned and started washing the angry man’s blood off the proud hooks and down the guzzling drains.

  It was difficult to maintain a perfect black line now.

  Part VI

  – How to care –

  Ed rounded the corner. “Don’t even fuckin’ look at me.” He sat in his seat and faced the wall, head in his hand. “Take a break.”

  “Where do I…”

  His head shot up. “For fuck’s sake! I’m too stressed for this! Can’t you see I nearly had a man die in my arms?”

  I clearly remember Ed not being the person holding the angry man in his arms. And I hardly thought that a hook in the forearm would do that much – maybe broken bones, some nerve damage – unless it had pierced a main artery. “Did it pierce a main artery?”

  He raised his head, mouth aghast. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re not a damned doctor y’ know? Just fuck off will ya? Go ask Jay in hardware where to go for smoko.” He shook his head in exasperation. “Bloody hell.”

  Bloody hell was right.

  Jay took me back out the stark concrete walls of the entrance, down the ramp, and into a small shop and tea area to the left that hung on the side of a processing plant.

  “Don’t worry about Ed. Guys like him are hard to deal with even at the best of times. He means well, but y’ know.” Jay’s eyebrows sank for a moment. “Actually, I’m not entirely sure he does mean well. Kinda stressed out, sure, but that’s no excuse for the way he acts.”

  “Perhaps he should take a holiday.” I stirred two teaspoons of sugar into my coffee.

  Jay laughed. “Trust me, that guy has been on several holidays. I think he just hasn’t learnt to deal with the environment he’s in. I mean, there’s an appropriate way to act and there’s an inappropriate way, and let’s face it, this place is stressful enough without Ed adding to that stress.”

  “Well, that guy did have his arm torn apart. I found that pretty freaky. I didn’t really know how to deal with that at all.”

  “I’ve seen guys with fingers chopped off, legs caught in machinery, eyes blinded by cleansing liquids (that was a terrible one).”

  The more this guy talked, the more I wanted to leave, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I was stuck here in this hell.

  “But it’s not about that. I mean those accidents happened, they happened once and we learnt to deal with it and make sure it didn’t happen again. What you saw was a pretty tough thing to deal with on your first day.”

  “Is that what the angry man was yelling about?”

  “What was he saying?”

  “Sounded like the other guy there wanted some sort of accountability but the guy who hurt himself didn’t want to see anyone lose their jobs. He just wanted the problems sorted out.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of stress in management about how to be accountable and how to make sure you are playing it safe so that potential injuries can be avoided. I mean, Ed’s got nothing to do with that, really, but he’s one of those guys who seems to take as lot of stuff onto his shoulders. He can’t be helped though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “That guy rubs everyone up the wrong way. He just won’t give an inch. It’s almost as though he’s acting out some kind of revenge on the world that was passed onto him when he was younger, or something. You can help some people, other’s just won’t listen.”

  Jay was right of course. You can always try, but in the end they have to commit to wanting to be helped. Time and again, I had seen that with growing youths, especially in their mid-teens, who just weren’t ready to commit to allowing themselves to be helped. So in the end, all you could do was just be there for them to talk to. Sometimes that was all you could do, other than making suggestions and hoping that they would take those suggestions on board.

  “Anyway I gotta get back. I don’t actually have my break until later. Just catch a few breaths here and don’t worry about the incident you saw earlier. Just remember to keep calm and be aware of your surroundings. Ya just doing the laundry shift anyway, so take it easy.” He winked and left the room saying goodbye to the shop lady.

  I turned to her and tried smiling.

  “Why the hell are you even in this place, a young guy like you? You seem smart. Did well at school?” She moved a tray of cups in front of her and started drying them as she spoke to me.

  “Yeah, yeah I did well.”

  “Didn’t think about University? Do some degrees or something?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess what I fell into after school was enough.”

  She looked at me confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It gave me the opportunity I was after, at the time. Provided me with enough money to…” I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to put it out there, but after a hefty pause, decided to anyway. “…escape my parents.”

  “Escape your parents?”

  “Yeah, you know how it is. Teenagers hate living with their parents. So I moved into a flat.”

  “Yeah, this is true. I moved out when I was sixteen. Sixteen!” She shook her head as she continued to wipe some dishes dry.

  I smiled. “Took me a bit longer, but yeah, I was out not long after leaving school and had begun earning money. And did I cherish that freedom!”

  “Shit mate, freedom was a rude awakening for me. I don’t even think I was earning enough money back then. Landed in with all the wrong people. Took me a while to get out of those messes, but eventually – eventually – I found my feet got some decent work, kicked some bad habits, and tried to make something of myself.” The tea-towel forlornly skirted the inside of a cup. “Look at me now.”

  “Are you still around those people that you used to be messed up in?”

  She paused for a moment and let a generous smile ease her face. “Nah. And I’m thankful for that. Gotta let stuff go sometimes and just move on. I moved on. Job to job, that’s just part of life.”

  “Yeah I guess so.”

  “Well, got a family now, so you do what you can to support them. Even if it means working a stinking job like this one. Hell, ask anyone here.” She waved a finger vaguely about. “Most of them have the same reasons.”

  I took a gulp of my coffee wondering if she was including Ed in the finger waving group.

  But Mum was the real subject of my thoughts as the shop lady talked about family. I really had no idea if she was ready to be helped. I don’t even know if I was ready to help her, but I guess I had to try. I had to. I couldn’t just continue on ignoring everything.

  Well, I could, but where would that lead me?

  I don’t know.

  Ed suddenly burst through the coffee room door. “What the fuck are you doing!? You were over your break ten fuckin minutes ago you skiving little shit!”

  “But I don’t even know what I’m supposed to get back to…”

  “Do I look like I fuckin care? Get your ass back into the laundry room and I’ll show you exactly where you’re supposed to be. God damn it! This is killing me. On a day like today. You sit there and make excuses for yourself.”

  I’m going to kill the cunt.

  For the first time in my life, my emotional response was of violence beyond just causing some physical
pain as an excuse for releasing anger – that response had always been rare and easily calmed, easily justified as an ‘unchecked thought’ – where’s the Bible so I can seek wisdom in this moment of weakness. But this, this was violence that wanted someone dead, and just because of that person’s inability to control themselves.

  I knew that thought, that feeling, was wrong, but this was Hell.

  And all sins are justifiable in Hell.

  * * *

  “Where’re we going?”

  Lucas pulled the collars of his coat up closer to his ears. “Just wanted to stop at someone’s place.”

  We were only two blocks from The Fraterniser, but had turned a corner and walked straight into a cold wind trying to force us back on our previous path. Being one who often did what the weather told me – especially when it told me to stay inside near the glowing bars of a heater – I pointed out how close we had been to our destination which had many a promise of warmth, but Lucas was already at the door of a rundown building punching in the key code number on the buzzer. “Hello?”

  “‘ello!” said a male voice.

  “It’s Lucas.”

  “Be down soon.”

  Lucas looked around at me. “Oh sorry, it’s Cal’s place.”

  It didn’t occur to me who he meant.

  An older guy opened the door. “Hey Lucas.” A short flight of stairs climbed up behind him.

  “Hey Dean. This is David.”

  “Hi David.”

  “Hi Dean.”

  “Cal’s not here. She should be back shortly,” he rubbed his neck feeling the wind trying to whip in through the doorway. “Or not. But feel free to come up and hang out if y’ want. Just putting a coffee on.” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Cool for coffee?”