I Am The Local Atheist (21 page)

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.”