The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (11 page)

‘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 light! 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.

After he had gone, some fool cleaned up the yard with a fleet of trucks. No new ashpiles accumulated, no heaps of any sort replaced Ashpit Freddie's. The rubbish and ash tended by Freddie were eighteen years old, the same heaps at the end as at the beginning.

 

THE HAND THAT SIGNED THE PAPER High up in a tiny office in the very alps of the Termitary, a man drew a sheet of paper from a tray of start-up instructions on his desk, casually read through a list of typewritten words, casually lifted his company issue (intermediate supervisory grade) pen and wrote:

Delete Area D. Insert Zone 5.

A mile away and a month later Zone 5 golf club, chess club, picnic and children's outing, cricket and keg club, were all going, formed and instituted. The shifties formed their own clubs, they wouldn't have a bar of the Puroil social club. Zone 5 became a legend to its members inside three months; the starting place and point of reference for everything they did during their daily detention. On this they built their working dreams and constructed their plans ahead for trapping that elusive animal, pleasure.

 

JUST LIKE EQUALS With a man of such eminence as the Python, the Glass Canoe was quiet and meek. He knew the Python's reputation for smiling at you, licking you all over then swallowing you, but man to man and face to smiling face it seemed a different thing. If you treat a man as a sort of father, he'll soften and come your way, won't he? The Glass Canoe always did this when he got into trouble and it had always worked so far. It seemed to work with the psychiatrists. He felt better, talking with a real engineer, a man who'd been educated. Not like the shit you had to mix with on the plant.

‘I got my boy a model car outfit—he's very interested in anything mechanical.' You could never tell what good this sort of private chat might do you. Or your son. The Python might have some advice for his education. The skin of his brown, sleek face grew relaxed and shiny. Men of his education like you to look at ease, they clam up if you're edgy.

‘It's more than a toy,' said the Glass Canoe. A grotesque smugness was the nearest he got to a relaxed manner. An ingratiating hangman talking to members of the supporting cast.

‘They have clubs, they tell me,' deigned the Python.

‘We're in one! I'm the secretary and timekeeper of the Toy Minicar Club!' the Glass Canoe eagerly supplied.

‘I respect a man who gives time to local activities.'

‘Four days a week. There's so much work and so many new members I often find myself doing a bit here. In slack times, of course. I map out a few circuits, change them every night, adds variety to the racing.' He fished in a pocket. Out came a piece of grey paper covered with the loops and whorls of car racing circuits. ‘You get a bit of time on night shift to nut these things out.' He didn't see the men making tactful signs to button his mouth.

‘Jove, they're pocket Grand Prix!' enthused the Python. ‘Have you been able to interest some of the others in this?'

‘It's hard to get them going on something new.'

‘Well, keep up the good work.' He escaped. The Glass Canoe was on top of the world for five minutes and in that short time winded several prisoners with huge pats on the back and kidded Far Away Places about his venereal disease. What a decent lot the bosses were! They talked to you just like equals. They didn't have to.

 

IN AND OUT When there was a dispute at the cracker about the safety of the top firing platform of the vertical down-draught boilers, where men had to manhandle forty pound gas guns at shoulder height under pressure on a narrow platform with a hip-high railing suspended over nothing, the Glass Canoe saw his chance of improving his position. A clear stand against his fellow prisoners might make the management favour him when they handed out the next dustcoats.

First he agitated to have the Union represented on the Safety Council. The company splashed the Administration and visitors' area with free safety notices distributed by the State Government but would baulk at any more positive or costly action on the plants. The Union had withdrawn its members, who after all manned the plants, so the remaining members were office bodies who never went near an oil-splashed vertical steel ladder or a slippery grating a hundred feet up at three in the morning in pouring rain, and who didn't know what a manway was.

He succeeded in this and got himself elected operators' representative. The men working the plants had one representative, the rest were other trades, white collar men, drivers, storemen, clerks.

‘In the name of Christ, what are we?' pleaded the Glass Canoe passionately. The Wandering Jew made no objection to this intrusion of the Christian religion. He only attended the Safety meetings every three months.

‘Are we children, that we can't trust ourselves to look where we're going? Do we have to be hemmed in by barbed wire and railings everywhere we go? I can understand the attitude of operators who want this work done, but I can't sympathize with it. It's childish; and expensive.'

They were impressed by his concern for cutting cost. The thing went to a vote amongst office workers, draughtsmen and storemen and majority rule established that the top landing was safe.

The operators' Union got nasty and withdrew again from the Council. This freed the Glass Canoe from having to attend meetings. Most of the time they were not represented: majority rule came up with such ridiculous decisions that all they could do was resign in protest. There was no one outside Puroil to appeal to.