The Ink Bridge (20 page)

Hec walked without catching anyone's eyes, glancing up to get bearings – Café Lahore, Victoria Bitter, Tattoo City, African and Australian Grocery Store, Club X Adult Megamart, Najafi Carpets, Balkh Bakery, African Braids and Beauty, Greenleaf Hydroponics. Each corner clustered with languages, people swapping fistfuls of DVDs, lowered cars rumbling by.

Past a wasteground of shattered glass and fists of broken concrete, the laneway fed into a courtyard in front of the factory. A guy sat on a low step, arms on his knees, head slumped. Three kids, the youngest only just old enough to walk, smashed bottles with stones nearby.

The building was red brick, knackered with soot and the jumpy lyrics of tags. No
Brayden loves Kayla
here, no
4
eva.
Just hard-arse ghetto tags imported from rap video clips. It was the only factory in an area of mean houses, derelict shops with papered windows and migration agents' offices. The sign above the front door was in big boxy letters: ‘Hope Candle Works est. 1966'. And below it in tricky curled writing: ‘
Light is Hope
'
.

Hec watched the workers arrive in torn tracksuits and velour twin-sets, clutching plastic bags and cans of drink. At 7.29 a.m. Hec took a deep breath and walked towards his brilliant new life.

Inside the door, past the time clock and a wall of neatly pocketed cards, the air was greasy with wax. Machinery shouted. Radios were blaring on different stations. The piercing sound of high flute knocked against Farnesy and Barnesy. Ragged squares of insulation foil hung like skin from the roof. Hec focussed on the door marked ‘Office' – twenty long steps ahead.

‘Watch where you're goin, dick'ead.' The man wore scuffed boots and a hairnet; he had dabs of shaving cream on the lobes of his ears. As he trundled a trolley-load of candles into the gloom, Hec heard him mutter, ‘Another half-baked lamb to the slaughter.'

Hec made it to the office door and knocked.

‘Come in.'

It was a small office, tiny, as if it had been added as an afterthought. The main island of the desk was surrounded by atolls of paperwork. Hec saw a lot of red reminder notices.

The man at the desk looked up from his computer, rubbed his eyes and offered Hec his hand. It was covered in soft, pink scar tissue and felt smooth and slightly cool.

‘Merrick Hope,' he said. ‘You must be Hector. Your dad told me a lot about you.'

Hec stared hard at his new boots.

‘He mentioned you didn't talk a lot. Well this place might suit you fine. There are some here who don't speak too much either. Oh yeah, I remember your dad also said to call you Hec. Well, Hec, welcome to Hope Candle Works. Want a cup of java?'

Java?
Hec shook his head.

‘Well then I guess we'll jump straight into it. No big induction processes, we'll just toss you straight onto the floor and let you work with the guys. I'll set you up with one of our more experienced operators first. Come on out.'

Back in the factory Hec knew that all eyes were on him. He felt the noise pushing at his stomach, his chest tightened, his toes curled until their knuckles pained under the steel caps.

‘Mr Hope?' It was the guy with the shaving-cream ears.

‘Splinter?' said Merrick Hope.

‘You gotta get these bloody reffos to pick up their act. I'm telling ya, they'll be the end of this place. All your old man worked for up the shitter. For what? Reckon these idiots'll give a backward glance?'

‘Splinter, what exactly is the problem?' said Merrick.

‘I'm tellin ya, Mr Hope, it's them. They's the problem. They don't wanna work hard. Always some bloody thing, prayer time or bloody “not-eaty-time” or “my-father-is-so-sicky-time”. I tell ya, I'm the one who's bloody sick of it. They shit me to bloody tears. It's gonna be them or me one day, Mr Hope.'

‘Splinter, this is Hec. Hec, this is Splinter.'

Hec nodded at him with what he hoped was just the right mix of cool and polite.

Splinter shook his head and said, ‘Yeah, we met. And another thing this cheap-arse slack wax.' He toed the bag on his trolley:
Palm Wax Product of Indonesia
. ‘It's no bloody good. Dangerous, usin crap like this. I'm tellin you we'll all be blown to Kingdom Come if we keep on with it.'

Merrick's mobile rang and he answered. Splinter and Hec were left standing with nothing to say. Where Splinter's hands poked from the sleeves of his coat there were faded blue tatts. He was not tall and not short but, as Hec's mum used to say, ‘it would take two of him to make a shadow.' As Hec watched, he did something so bizarre that Hec was sure he had imagined it. He licked the palms of his hands, one-two, quickly, and shoved them in his pockets, then turned to go.

‘Splinter!' called Merrick after him. He held his hand over the phone. ‘I'm a bit busy, mate. Could you show Hec around; introduce him to the crew? Cheers.' He went back to his call, giving Hec a small wave and a smile.

‘Busy. Doesn't know the bloody meanin of the word. Wouldn't know busy if it ran up his arse and made a nest. Never been busy a day in his life.' Splinter moaned his way to a room beside the office. ‘First things first,' he said as he opened the door. ‘Get ourselves a nice cup of Inner-national Roast.' He set up two mugs, spooned coffee and three sugars in both and topped them with water from an urn. He pulled a seat from under a nearby table, drew his magazine from his pocket and sat down.

‘No point in introducin you to any of them out there cause half of them don't even
speaka de lingo
. Dumb as dogshit they are – shitkickers ev'ry one. That bloody Merrick Hope is the problem. Picks em up like strays.
No writee
,
no readee
,
please givee me number one job
. Bloody disgrace. They just come here to get rich and bring more and more of em over. Once they've drained the joint dry they's off like a rat up a bloody drainpipe back to Chingchongchoochooland or wherever the hell it is they come from. Government don't even have the guts to stop them. If I was Prime Minister I'd put them all back in their leaky bloody boats and push them back to where they damn well came from. It's gettin to where you can't even walk down the street without every second person bein from somewhere else. Can't get any decent food. Can't get understood. We went to war against half these buggers and now they's over here messin up the place, turnin it like their own countries. It's gettin to the point where I'm shamed to say I'm an Aussie. I don't even know what that means anymore.' Splinter stopped to take a sip of his coffee. His ears and nose were shot with tiny, exploded veins – a wiring diagram for a time bomb. Hec pointed his lips at his cup and felt the sugar lusting after his teeth.

‘Another thing,' Splinter continued, ‘They don't have no respect for life. It's cheap where they come from, you see. They deal the drugs, kill our kids with their heroin and their estaksy. They juss don't give a monkey's.' He pulled his seat closer. ‘Most of them are criminals. Ninety-nine point nine nine pressent. The other pressent is just plain ignorant and stupid. Been proved scientifically that they's juss not as smart as us. Saw a thing on TV about it, I shit you not. Filled one of our skulls with dried peas and then tried to fit them in theirs. Half the brain capacity, see. Another thing is them diseases. Not natural ones like colds and mumps and such, weird Asian ones that we can't deal with.'

‘So let's establish the rules here an now, matey. It's
us
and
them
. You are with me and we are against
them
. No middle ground here.'

Hec didn't know what he was supposed to do. Splinter seemed dangerous. And if he aligned himself with him then he would be against all the others. It seemed like an impossible game to win. Maybe he could just play it like he did at school and exist outside the Loop. The Loop was the problem, being in it, being out of it. If you ignored the Loop it didn't make it go away, but it mattered less. Hec always thought that those inside the Loop were just as trapped as those outside it. But what was the Loop here? Did it lie with Splinter or with the misfit nuff-nuffs on the factory floor? Could a man like Splinter form a Loop? Could a Loop just be one person? Splinter was trying to buddy-up with Hec because he was Anglo – a
skip
.

‘Spose we should strike a blow. Don't want Mr Hope givin away our jobs to some queue-jumpin jungle-bunny, do we?'

They can have it,
thought Hec. But he followed Splinter back into the factory.

‘You can help me unload,' he said, licking the palms of his hands quickly, like a cat cleaning its paws.

The container truck pulled up to the loading bay – its rear doors level with the concrete ramp. A guy swung down from the door and lit a cigarette. He nodded at Splinter.

‘Wax and plenny of it,' he said, smoke draining from his nose.

Splinter grabbed a low trolley. ‘This here is a pallet jack. And you is the monkey that's gunna operate it. Pump here and it goes up, pull this and it goes down. Even a halfwit like you should manage that much.'

He thrust the handle at Hec. He clipped the seal off the container doors and pocketed it. Then he swung open the container. Hec could feel the vacuum release.

He knew these containers were airtight. He'd watched footage of a solo yachtie who had hit one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It had been floating just below the surface. Mum had whispered,
Like an iceberg,
as if it was a secret. But she was wrong. Icebergs were one third above water. At least you could see them coming.

The air was stale, damp, and smelled like plastic bags. There were pallets of wax inside.
Product of Indonesia
– two side by side – three rows deep leading into the gullet of the container. Splinter pushed a large dead cockroach with his foot. ‘Get spiders sometime. They spray em dead, but you godda wonder.' He wondered for a moment, then licked his palms.

‘Anyways, lookin at it's not gunna get it out, is it?'

The truckie leaned on the door. ‘Sign this will ya, mate. I'm dyin for a slash. Where's the pisser round here?'

Splinter signed his papers and pointed out the toilet. ‘Come on, Knackers!' he screamed at Hec. ‘We haven't got all bloody day. And you slower'n a wet weekend.'

Hec wheeled the trolley and tried to roll it under the first pallet. It jammed.

‘Give it some wally! You young blokes've got friggin water instead of blood. Put your back into it.' Splinter's voice echoed inside the truck.

Hec pulled back and tried again, this time harder. It clunked under the pallet and he pumped the handle until it lifted off the ground. As he rolled it back, it jammed against the other pallet.

‘Do they teach you nuffin at school!' Splinter screamed.

Yes – irregular verbs, surds, post-modernism.

‘Straight, idiot. Keep it straight.'

Hec tried to roll it back to have another go, but it was jammed solid. As he pulled it again, the corner pierced the shrink-wrap on another pallet and wax began to leak.

The truckie peered in. ‘Looks like you got yourselves a bleeder.'

‘I ain't got nuffin. Nuffin to do with me,' said Splinter. Licking the blame from his hands.

Hec placed his hand over the wound. The wax was cool. There was a river of it on the floor of the truck.

‘Here, try this.' The truckie handed Hec a tape gun. ‘Wait a sec, what is that?' Below Hec's fingers the corner of a plastic bag nosed-out among the yellow beads.

Splinter's mangy head rode into view. ‘Whas goin awn? What is that? No don't take yer hand away, ya droppie. I'll get Mr Hope.'

‘And I'd better smoke this outside. Don't want us all goin up in flames, do we.' The truckie jumped back into the loading bay.

Hec was left trying to stop the flood of palm wax.

Eventually, Merrick stepped into the back of the truck.

‘Let me at it, Hec,' he said.

As Hec removed his hand, Merrick quickly tweaked the plastic bag out and taped the hole with the tape gun.

‘It's the drugs,' said Splinter. ‘I knew it. Bloody chongers are tryin to kill us all.'

‘Don't be so dramatic, Splinter,' said Merrick, flicking the bag of white powder with his fingers. ‘It's just a sample. A new wax additive. No drugs. No conspiracy. Unload the rest and try not to break any more bags.' Merrick slipped the packet into his pocket.

Splinter followed him out of the truck. ‘I arsked'im to be careful, Mr Hope. Showed'im. But they know it all
. . .
'

The truckie took the trolley jack. ‘Edge it out like this,' he said, swaying the handle from side to side, easing it from its slot. ‘Not much room to play with. Not really your fault, mate.'

Splinter exploded back in. ‘Course it's his fault. He's a bloody retard. Give it here.' Splinter took the truck out into the wide space of the loading bay and parked it near a rack. He pulled the trolley clear and pushed it towards Hec. ‘Next pallet, ya peanut!'