The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (48 page)

 

THE CONVERSION OF QUICK TIP Men were gathered round the time clocks waiting for their turn to go down and tend the machines. It was ten-thirty and a fine night.

Quick Tip stumbled in, precarious on his pigeon toes, elbows and knees moving in his broken-down boxer's gait; his face, battered smooth, alight with joy.

‘Oh boy!' he said. ‘What a night last night. Got home early Mum and me from the RSL round half-past ten. Both full and plenty of go. Oh boy! Like a second honeymoon.'

‘The Glass Canoe snuffed it,' said the Outside Fisherman. Why not tell him? This was more important than what Quick Tip and his missus did between scabby sheets.

‘Go on,' said Quick Tip. ‘You don't say. Anyway, I didn't know she had so much go in her. Or I wouldn't have been spending my time lifting the skirts of every bit of stuff I met up with. It makes me wonder if I been having it on my own, if she's got that much go. It was mouth, teeth, legs, bum, fingernails, the lot! All night. She slept in till midday and only got up for the midday movie. I even got her a cup of coffee, I was that amazed. It was all I could do to get in to work tonight.'

‘He fell off the cracker yesterday, on our day off.'

‘Yeah. Tough. And I put the hard word on her tonight again and she come across. She's a beauty! And here she's been under my nose all the time and me spending dough just to get a bit of variety. She's so tired now, she's not bothered about burglars like she usually is, but I forgot to feed the Alsatian, so we won't have anyone breaking in.'

‘They had to use a bucket to get him off the concrete.'

Others joined in, to bear down Quick Tip's story by weight of numbers and make him take notice of theirs.

‘A squeegee they used, to rake him up.'

‘And a wet mop.'

‘Red ink everywhere.'

‘Who pushed him?' asked Quick Tip, reluctantly.

‘Just fell, far as they know.'

Quick Tip went down to his plant, still trying to talk about his domestic joy, but they went with him in a cluster, burdening him with all the nasty details. He resented having to listen, but had to give in. They were quite prepared to repeat his story and make him a star, as he wanted, but not until after the fall of the Glass Canoe had been exhausted. They followed him, attacking him with details until he gave in and became a spreader of the story of the Glass Canoe.

Night pressed softly down over them, yielding to light, but always pushing softly against it. Let the light retreat one instant and night plugged the hole immediately.

 

PROCESS CONTROL While the prisoners were outside making their first appraisal of the plant right after shift-change to see what sort of mess they were left with, Bomber Command tacked up a new regulation on the wall.

‘In view of the fact that toilet facilities have been used by some operators in a time-wasting manner, it has been decided to institute a system of passes for those wishing to use the toilets. Cubicles will be kept locked and application must be made to the foreman on duty for permission to enter. It is hoped that it will not be necessary to keep records of the amount of time consumed by visits of this nature.'

The off-limits chit became famous quickly. Even the local rag mentioned it, but Puroil was too powerful an advertising patron to allow the metropolitan dailies even to hint at it.

The management had nothing now to fear from the Union and was not deflected by the isolated actions of those who, like the Humdinger, had to dramatize the whole thing. He put a loosening medicine in the tea, so there would be a rush for the permission-chits. Fortunately nothing bad happened on the plant while all the men were queuing with their chits. The Sumpsucker was duty foreman and was suspicious of the crowd of men who asked for passes, but he drank the tea and lost his suspicions. Halfway through the signing of the passes he shouted to the man inside to get out, and told the rest, ‘You'll all have to wait. It's my turn for a chit.' There was only one cubicle.

The Humdinger drank the tea, too: if some suffered, all had to suffer. He was one of three caught short, but because of his nature he revelled in the predicament. Next day, in the Rustle of Spring's bedroom, where the catalyst shovels were kept, each shovel was flat on the concrete and was decorated with a huge Henry the Third.

 

THE SMELL OF BLOOD Two days after the fall a brown and white mongrel dog same sniffing around and stood near the place where the Glass Canoe landed. He was a cheerful-looking dog, with prick ears, a good chest and a quick step. He was mostly white, the brown was distributed in patches over his face and in a saddle on his back; there was a nice crinkle to his tail. He just stood looking up and around.

It never occurred to any of the Glass Canoe's workmates that he had a dog at home. They knew about his wife's death and heard he had a son and his wife had a baby, but he'd never mentioned a dog. Animals often came in the refinery and hung about a few days. Sometimes they were fed a few scraps before the dogcatchers got them.

After a while he sat down. No one thought much about it until Far Away Places noticed the dog hadn't moved for a long time. He guessed it was waiting for the Glass Canoe and knew why it was sitting on that particular spot. He half-expected the dog would refuse to eat and was surprised when he hoed into some scraps of meat Far Away gathered from the rubbish tin. Yes, he would eat, but not move.

While Far Away was out there, Rustle of Spring suddenly popped up near him from behind a catalyst drum, and made urgent signs. He hesitated. The pretty boy made unmistakeable motions with both hands then and Far Away glared at him until he gave up and went away. Couldn't these foreigners do anything without money?

Three days later, someone tried with a bucket of detergent to scrub the smell of blood and the stain off the concrete. The dog didn't go away. They used kerosene, they tried acid. No good.

‘How can that mutt know where the splatter was?' asked the Humdinger plaintively. He was a bit wary of a dog that loved the Glass Canoe.

‘You wouldn't say it was a mutt if it wasn't the Glass Canoe's dog,' said Far Away Places.

It was the starting point of an unspoken change of attitude to the little dog; men started to act as if it had been purged by its master's death of guilt by association. A lunch was specially bought for the dog each shift. A full meat lunch. He ate three times a day, but didn't move from watching that spot. Rain or shine, night and day. Men started to pat him. Supervisors who asked for the dog to be removed were met with a certain opposition.

Dying, if it didn't make the man acceptable, at least rehabilitated his dog.

 

THE COMFORT OF ROUTINE Five days later, a shiny in the pay office was rushing about trying to find out why the Glass Canoe, number 1208, had not clocked off on the afternoon of Thursday of day shift. Had he worked overtime? If so, there was no endorsement on the time card. Time card? It wasn't even filled in and there was a week's pay to be made up. The Garfish knew, of course, and told Hanging Five in time to make up the severance pay.

Even so, the absence of the clocking imprint on the bundy card and of the daily figures on the time card set certain automatic machinery in motion and resulted in two memos being sent to operations office deploring these omissions. Two more days it took for the news of the Glass Canoe's death to penetrate this far. Weeks later, some of the Termitary workers heard of it. A joke, of course. Only fools lose their balance and fall from buildings. Non-staff people always exaggerate. What was anyone doing up there anyway?

No one called to pick up his car, which stood in the car park, diminishing. Gradually, men who needed spares were stripping it, just as worms were doing to its owner in his silk-lined maple container in another park. Both being stripped down to the chassis. One by his brother man who had been his competitor all his life, waiting to overthrow him; the other by the tiny internal competitor he carried about inside him, waiting just as remorselessly to reduce him.

 

SCARS Taffy the Welsh was back. Except for the scars of the grafts he looked much the same. He wasn't, though.

Look what they done to me! he said constantly in the secrecy of his own head. His was a peculiar mentality: his hospital fees, doctor's fees and wages for the period had been paid—what more did he want? Didn't he realize an accident is an accident? Why couldn't he consider nothing had happened? Wipe out and pass on. Forgive and forget. That was the proper way. Instead of this hell fire of revenge burning in his body.

What was it made a man cast handfuls of fine catalyst dust every day into the lube oil tank serving the turbo-expander machines? How could a foreign enterprise leave such a tank as this with an unsecured hatch? All he had to do was lift the hatch and throw in his powder. For all the company knew, everyone was doing it. Puroil shares weren't on the Australian market, there was no popular shareholding in the company; how could they leave out of account the hostility of the natives they exploited? Did they imagine giving them employment in
their
enterprise would buy them body and soul?

And when a man was disfigured on the job, how could they bear to let him come back amongst the machinery that had injured him? Did no one ever consider an industrial prisoner might be human enough to exact revenge? Look what they done to me! Taffy whimpered to his shaving mirror, and every time he washed his hands or had a pee he passed the wall mirror, saw his reflection and made silent vicious vows to the only god he knew.

 

SURELY NOT From their position high above the world of Puroil prisoners in the topmost one of many mysterious holding companies, the world board of seven directors sent two of their number out from Europe on similar but separate missions to put the boot in and to give special instructions to the Wandering Jew. New plants were to go up, more vacant acres sown with rich, money-yielding process plants. The overseas controllers had great faith in Australia's future and what it could do for them. It wasn't a shareholders' decision: shareholders had no say. While the group profit was maintained throughout the world, they didn't know or care about Clearwater. The growth and continuance of Puroil, not the maximizing of profits, was the aim of the managers and boards, the professionals. They got no profits, but they did get bigger empires the more the company grew under them. The story put out was that they were to give a verdict on whether to carry on at Clearwater or to abandon operations; and to answer the question: Why did the plant still have teething problems after three years?

None of the prisoners below the rank of branch manager was allowed to see the big boys, they were smuggled in and out at night for fear of too close contact with the lowest prisoners or the unpremeditated ferocity of an opportunist.

After they had sneaked out again, the local hierarchy let it be known through quiet chats with the sullen prisoners that Puroil Refining Termitary and Grinding Works would not be closing. And on this bright Saturday, Bomber Command was back at the cracker, full of joy, to spread the counter-rumour. Few noticed that he had lost his craze for Gotchas.

The Two Pot Screamer said, ‘I'm glad they've abandoned that stupid rumour. If Puroil left this refinery they'd only have to build another one elsewhere in New South. They can't ignore an expanding market. All the other companies are building refineries as fast as they get the money.'

Bomber Command said nothing to that, but went on. ‘And there's to be a big shutdown. A lot of new equipment going in, to make this place work. Even an electricity station just for us to make sure we don't suffer from every little electric storm. Just quietly, I'd take a look at the stand-down clause in the new agreement if I were you. With this new pool of operators, they can keep the ones they want and you-know-what with the rest.'

Stand-down clause? Surely good old Puroil wouldn't lightly use the power they had of starvation or plenty over the miserable prisoners. Surely not. Was this what the Good Shepherd meant when he said the honeymoon was over?

The news ran like poison through the veins of the company.

19
THE PARTY

A SECRET MUSIC The shutdown lasted for months. Strange rumours spread of a new order more fearful than anything they'd known. At the height of these rumours, the Great White Father decided a party was overdue.

‘Coming to the party?' That was all it took. He sent men out into the highways and byways of Puroil with these missionary words on their lips and they returned in the fullness of time, dragging in their wake the dregs of humanity to the feast.

It grew from nothing, and when the time drew near for it to start, it seemed to tower above everything; no one wanted to talk about anything else. It was a pillar of refuge on the horizon of industrial prisoners who had nothing more rewarding to look forward to than these periods of blank happiness, drunken hysteria and artificial camaraderie.

‘Look at us,' the Great White Father said. ‘It needs alcohol to get us together with affection and cordiality. Alcohol and the way we go on with women, they are the two great things that bind us together.' It was unusual to hear him speak with his mouth turned down at the corners. He went to the death hut where Herman was, and put an opened can by him.

He set the day for the start of the party as a Monday, since for the usual day-working bodies Monday was a work attendance day. A Saturday or Sunday might bring wanderers through the mangroves to stumble on keg and incapable drinkers; wanderers who could wrest keg, cans and women from their rightful owners and take them off to another part of the mangroves to enjoy them.

‘It should be pretty well over by Friday,' he remarked comfortably to the Volga Boatman, and rang the silver bell. All over the refinery certain men heard a music others didn't.

He was seen leading a goat along the Pacific Highway on the Sunday. The sighting was widely reported, but mystified everyone who heard it. One man even photographed it, but all who saw the print proved conclusively the photo was a fake.