The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (35 page)

I thought the secateurs would act like the thing they castrate the sheep with, not breaking the skin but cutting the cord inside the scrotum. How is a lay person to know secateurs would cut off the whole scrotum? Stones and all. There was still a bit hanging. I would have to go and prove how much nerve I've got by finishing the job in front of the doc.

If I told these sort of people that work here, at least I'd get a laugh when I tell them I can't ever be hurt by a knee in the groin. I might do that, just for the laugh, they know I like a bit of a joke sometimes.

On that cruiser, the first few days, I was so sick after they gave me that dish of spaghetti I had it coming out my nose. That was probably where I learned to appreciate a good joke; after that it was my specialty to feed the new kids spaghetti. And when they got me in the diving suit and left me with the thing shut and screwed down tight and I nearly suffocated while they went off and had lunch, that probably set the style for my own pet practical jokes. I've been lucky so far, no one knows I've got claustrophobia from that diving suit thing, if they did they'd probably get me in the plant lift and switch off the current when she was between floors.

Poor old Far Away Places slipped on the top landing today, he was lucky I was there, I saved his life for sure. I just managed to grab him, the poor silly old no-hoper had tears in his eyes with fright trying to thank me. He was more upset at being saved than he was when I had a go at him in front of the crew down in the control room. I just had to abuse him, I was so relieved at being able to save someone's life, I've always wanted to feel I saved someone from dying. I don't think he would have jumped.

I felt so pleased with Far Away that I started to tell him about my operation, but a funny thing happened. He started to get all frightened and screaming and yelled out: ‘Don't tell me about it!' That's something I might ask Doctor Rosenblum when I go in to have a chat next week, it's no use trying to get any sense out of old Far Away; poor devils like that have no idea why they do anything. It isn't as if I had an urge to confess everything; maybe he thought that was it. I didn't. Just wanted to tell someone, that's natural enough. I can't see what harm it would have done him to listen. It isn't as if I was psycho and would have cut his throat just because I'd told him a secret. I'm not like that, I never have been and never will be. I ought to know exactly what I'm like.

I'm glad we'll be out for twenty-four hours, it'll give me time to study up next week's lesson in the correspondence management course. It's our fantastic unity that beats the company every time.

 

A MARATHON When the Kraut left for a rival company building refineries in Queensland and found his pro rata long-service leave was not calculated at the rate that would have applied if he had been taking the leave he swore for four hours till the office staff went home. Swore in German, but repeated himself a lot.

He couldn't get it into his head that there was justice in the principle involved. His service period had gone ten months into that year, so he received ten-twelfths of the base holiday pay he would have got when the twelve months period was up, except that if he had taken his annual holidays he would have received his shift penalty rates—the same pay as if he had been at work—but because it was at the end of his service with the company he didn't receive the benefit of penalty rates.

It seemed to the Kraut that he had worked shift for ten months without the benefit of it in his holiday pay, but his attitude was out of order. The company's policy was exactly as he had been paid, so where was his grouch?

He accosted his Union delegate. ‘If I was on my leave, I get this shift money. Why not for the ten months of this year? What does it matter I'm leaving? I worked the shifts!' And his mouth working, too, after the words had stopped.

‘They told you what their policy is: you don't get it. Besides, you're going up there to be a foreman, aren't you?'

 

THE VALUE OF EDUCATION One of the items of value in great demand by the money-hungry prisoners was lead; not the most portable, certainly, but when the cyclone wire of the main fence was unclipped, the wire pushed aside, and the lead thrown to the ground, the operation was over. The odd car that stopped early in the morning to lift its bonnet was hardly noticed. Security was at the main gate then. If a man were to leave the car door open as he tinkered with the car, it was simple to drop the lead in through the door on to the floor of the car and drive off. Just a few small parcels, not much value, say a hundredweight, but when it's done seven days of afternoon shift and seven nights of night shift, the money mounts up.

Nothing like this was possible on day shift: small objects were noticeable then. Day shift was the time for whole pumps or compressors, ladders, lengths of pipe. Narrow pipe inside wider.

Poor old Bourke Street Freddie was very fond of lead and copper. He was in the sinker business during working hours. The company was under the impression he was employed in the mechanical workshop in the remains of the blacksmith's shop, but this was incorrect. He collected lead and sold sinkers made from the roofs of the older buildings. Even fishermen who had bought some last week were suckers for sinkers.

Bourke Street was illiterate and could be told anything, but he was only once tricked over lead. Loafing round on day shift, men like the Humdinger taught him to play noughts and crosses in a special way. They taught him to win by making a line of noughts or of crosses with a bend in it. After losing four out of five games against him, the Humdinger would get up and say with a straight face, ‘He's too good for me. One of you lot better take him on.' Bourke Street, who was never taught modesty as he was never taught to read and write, would lord it terribly over everyone because of his superiority in this fascinating game. The Humdinger had even better sport when after a string of losses and with a boss approaching, he would accuse Bourke Street Freddie of cheating. He would get up like a prophet of old and roar deafeningly at his workmates. He could never be made to understand that the business of Puroil, in the eyes of men like the Good Shepherd and the Wandering Jew, took precedence over any personal interests or attainments of the prisoners.

In his nearly empty mind there was another fact floating about, bouncing off odd corners of the few other unrelated facts in his head: it was the notion of equality. ‘You're just as good as him,' the Humdinger or the Glass Canoe would whisper to him as the Wandering Jew or the Python came into sight—usually by the back door, hoping to catch men idle.

And Bourke Street would disgrace himself, talking a babble of empty words with no rhyme or reason to the executives, who took themselves seriously. When he saw something had gone wrong he would offer them sinkers, taking them in handfuls from his pocket and extending them under the noses of these men who had the power of employment or separation over him.

When others decided to move in on his sinker business, he was up against men of superior education and was lost. The men who had been through school right up to the age of fourteen years put it over him easily. Those few who had gone right through high school were even more proficient at making a fool of him. Cunning, selfishness and dishonesty were not hindered from coming into flower by education.

He was seen one Sunday on the roof of an old building behind the workshop, carefully removing the lead flashing put there in the good old days of peace and plenty of lead, by two characters from the refining end, who sneaked round under the building on the side towards which Bourke Street Freddie was rolling the lead, waiting for it to fall into their arms. And it did. The poor wretch took his time getting down, walked round to claim his prize, but no lead. For months, every day, his rounds of the refinery included a sorrowful look at the place his lead should have been.

He came to a miserable end. His body was found in a stormwater drain in Waterloo, a blackened Sydney slum, several weeks after he was killed for his holiday pay. This pay was given out in small brown envelopes and Bourke Street Freddie was always proud when he had a few extra dollars, always holding it up for people to see. Some kids who found the body let their secret slip to a teacher at school. They'd mentioned it at home, but their parents were not the sort who took notice of kids or approached police.

They made that teacher's life hell ever after: they'd enjoyed having a corpse of their own to play with after school. Usually they only had dogs' bodies and cats'.

 

GOVERNED BY STRING Rain. The air was warm and drops of liquid descending in heavenly reflux to earth fell on everything that happened to be in their way.

Some of the younger operators and visiting student technologists found puzzling the sudden speeding-up of the steam turbines supplying feedwater to the boilers.

The operators, who had been in a state of darkness concerning this, commenced finding others to blame. The Samurai came in. He listened to their agile attempts to pin some absent person with the blame for the speeding machines, and to the attempts of the student scientists to find the explanation in the unskilled workers' handling of the plant. The Good Shepherd walked through, listened, then looked for the Samurai and beckoned him over. The Samurai regarded him gravely, didn't move. The Good Shepherd remembered it was he who was after help and went over to the Samurai.

‘Is there anything to worry about in this turbine business?'

‘Nothing more than usual in a dump that cuts its maintenance staff to cut costs instead of getting all the maintenance it needs so plants can work at maximum through-put all the time.'

The Good Shepherd knew this very well, but wasn't going to say the company was wrong.

‘Why are the turbines speeding? There seems no reason for it.'

‘See out there?'

‘The rain?'

‘You know what happens when it rains?'

‘I can't think of anything that would make this sort of difference to the plant. Except power dips, but they trip the electric machines, not steam turbines.'

‘The rain stretches the string holding the turbine governors. They speed up.' He looked away and rubbed his right shoulder lightly. It was tender.

The Good Shepherd thanked him. How was it those people milling about blaming each other didn't know? Did they spend all their time inside, or go about outside with their eyes shut? How was it Engineering could have such protection from above that stupidities like this could remain unremedied? String holding the governors, solenoid trips wired up, blocks of wood holding in key compressors by blocking mechanical trips, drop-shut gas valves jammed open with bits of wire, buckets and tins placed under oil drops on plants operating at high temperatures, contract labour brought in to do quick and slapdash maintenance jobs on equipment they'd never seen before just to keep the labour establishment figures down to the maximum prescribed from elsewhere. Cutting costs.

12
THE GREAT SOCIETY

NO BENDING A great society is a society in which men of business think greatly of their functions.

‘It shouldn't be too difficult to get their guts,' remarked the Python. ‘Dismissals, overtime, manning scale, the new wage agreement, there's plenty to beat 'em over the head with now. They'll probably help us by thinking up a few ridiculous grievances we can use against them, too. It's like a game the kids play—yes, like No Bending! You yell out No Bending! while you poke 'em in the gut to make 'em bend, and if they bend they're out.' The Python was careful to say this sort of thing to a man like the Good Shepherd, who would never repeat what he heard. His goodness, his honesty, thus had their market value: they kept him docile and obedient and ensured Puroil its money's worth. A splendid arrangement. In this way the religion of the Gentle Jesus has its value in industry.

 

NO COMMENT Puroil had brought in men from local engineering firms to extend an eight-inch line from one side of a three-foot vessel round to its other side as a return line to carry a gasoline caustic-soda mixture from one bundle of mixing elements to another. Why did it leave one side, project itself twenty-five yards away and curve round a concrete pillar before returning to the other side?

‘Why is this?' asked the Good Shepherd.

‘It's on the plans,' said the men from the igloo. The igloo was the construction office, a wartime nissen hut of corrugated iron which looked like lasting long enough to be used in World War Three.

Was there an operational reason? Support for the vessel? No one knew. Years later, men were still pointing it out to new men as evidence of the crazy operation of which all were sneakily, slavishly part.

‘It allowed for an extra 150 feet of stainless steel pipe on the plans, mate, so we had to put the 150 feet somewhere. We couldn't just forget it and credit 'em with it,' said a clerk of works to the Samurai on the next shutdown a week later.

 

A NAIL FROM THE CRUCIFIXION The dismissal threats produced a counter threat. Let's have a stoppage. When the stoppage ultimatum was given to the management, the reaction was usual. Stand them down, don't wait for a stoppage. That's how it always started, then the advocates of this policy, like the Python, allowed themselves to be talked into negotiating. This time, though, when the Python brought out the hard line, no one persuaded him to drop it. Even the Whispering Baritone, misinterpreting the fury of the Wandering Jew at the men's threat, kept his tongue still in his twitching cheeks. His tic was bad.

‘I want you to tell them that anyone concerned in a stoppage at this refinery will be stood down,' the Python said to the Good Shepherd. There had never been stand-downs before.

At the meeting with the men, the Brown Snake stayed coiled in his chair while the Good Shepherd passed on the executive decision to the delegates who called it a threat and went away and called out their men immediately.