I Am The Local Atheist (20 page)

“
Huh?”

“
Go wild and all. Let go. Be irresponsible. The Amish get to do
it – why can’t I? Right?”

“
In other words, you just want to go through adolescence
again?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Not every sect of the Amish community views rumspringa as
‘running around’. For some, if not all, it is just the act of going
through adolescence – whether or not that’s a chaotic period or a
relatively calm period.”

It used to
really piss me off when other people knew more about religion than
I did. “Are you Amish?”

“
Nah, just looked it up once. I don’t give a shit about
anything religious man. That shit holds you back. I can do whatever
I want and only have to answer to myself. Free will is mine for the
taking.”

They let me
off at ten o’clock because it was my first night, but from the next
day onwards I was working up till one o’clock in the morning before
the night shift took over. By then I was a complete wreck staring
at the tumbling clothes inside the dryers as my shoulder muscles
ached from having to haul and drag so much laundry in and out of
the same kind of trolleys that I had been using at the rental
company. I was only thankful because there were long enough gaps
between loads that I could rest and stare out the small square
windows into a night that was so black that it felt like I was
inside a ship traversing the unconquerable depths of space. The
lights shone bright inside this room where I had some control over
the rattling cages, the trolleys and the laundry, but out there in
the blackness of space lurked unknowable dangers, exciting
conquests and imaginative creatures unafflicted with human
emotions.

I sighed and
turned back to the life I was living, waiting in dry hope for
change to turn up.

The clock on the wall gave me little indication of finishing
soon: time seemed to drag on and on in this scummy room as I
wandered back and forth between the window and dryers, occasionally
skulking about looking for anything of worth secretly hidden in
hard to find compartments – that no one would miss,
if
it were to suddenly
disappear – but finding little more than detergent
containers.

I wish I had
brought ear plugs with me. The huge industrial dryers shook and
rattled with such a commotion of noise that I wondered if what I
really needed was a shock-absorbing suit to stop my body from being
pummelled by the air waves that the dryers generated.

The job lasted
about two weeks and I was glad to be rid of it; glad to be gone
from the big black rubber mats that we were asked to treat just
like the rest of the laundry as we battled valiantly to get them in
and out of the dryers, fold them and redeposit them in the trolleys
ready to be taken away and returned to the retail stores, the
hospitals, the businesses; glad to be away from the hole they
called a ‘tea room’ with its unwashed cups and used teaspoons
sitting on the bench next to the cheap coffee; the dry air, the
concrete floors and the mind numbing noise; glad to be away from a
shift that left me wide awake when I got home and not hitting the
bed until at least four o’clock in the morning, waking at one
o’clock in the afternoon with only four hours left in my day before
heading back out and starting the whole stupid shift all over
again. Possibly the only thing I would miss was the spare change
that was found in the dryers after putting a load of overalls
through. My best find in one night was a total of twenty six
dollars and five lighters – a very good score, considering that the
lighters were a high trading commodity amongst smokers, and twenty
six dollars was enough to make any struggling student salivate at
the mouth (Martin was extremely jealous. “Fuck you David! Fuck
you!” I smiled mischievously as I tossed the coins in front of
him).

But I was back at the Laundry Rentals for only one day before
being asked to do the early morning laundry shift out at the other
Freezing Works Plant.
Great
, I thought.
From one shitty place to another
. But
this one was far worse.

The morning
air was stained with blood. As soon as I walked through the gates,
I felt the smell of death grab at me like thousands of desperate
souls trying to escape purgatory. I thought I might be sick, but I
walked on ignoring the cries that I thought I was hearing, if only
in my head.

It was six o’clock in the morning. I walked through darkness
lit by windows from a four storied building and a single lamp in a
grass area where a lone tree stood and a chirping bird sang into
the cool breeze. That was what surprised me the most about that job
– every morning I arrived, that same bird would still be
chirping.
Herald death
within
.

As I walked
through the automatic sliding doors to the main building I heard a
voice over a speaker welcome the workers to the plant and spout
some kind of safety regulations. It carried on for a while talking
about the weather a bit and the expected high. I didn’t pay much
attention to it – just another automated voice pretending to be
human.

The stark concrete walls led me further and further down a
corridor of lifeless faces transferring from the overnight shift
into their morning lives: stares of boredom, stares of sacrifice,
stares of facing death eye to eye like they were doing the bidding
of a great overseer and couldn’t be released from his eternal grip;
a medical bay containing a man screaming in pain as he held his
wrist out to the doctor while it was strapped: “
Just give me some fuckin’ pain relief
!
” A changing area where men
struggled to take their bloody overalls off, change into their
non-work clothes, slam their lockers shut as some kind of rebellion
against being contained in such a horrifying stench-ridden place
that dragged them back every night to relive every moment of
torture and damnation upon their psyches. I turned a corner and was
confronted by the picture of a man holding up one finger and a
thumb while the other missing appendages splashed blood about him.
He was laughing a happy warning:
Remember
to wear safety gear at ALL times!
It made
me chuckle.

“
My name is Ed!”

I had walked
into the sorting room and the bitterly twisted face of Ed stared at
me from behind his desk. Strands of hair failed to cover all of his
head, but looked like they were making a second attempt on his neck
instead.

“
And I don’t give a fuck if you don’t like me! Y’ here to work
– got that?”

I nodded
positively. “Got it.”

“
We get little shits like you in here thinking they got
something on us, but y’ don’t – y’ hear me?”

“
I hear ya.”

“
Fuckin hell, if I have to put up with shit from… listen. I
ain’t putting up with shit from you – got it? If y’ can’t do what
y’ told, y’ back where y’ came from and that little lady of a boss
can deal with ya.”

“
Got it.” Unfortunately, Ed was stuck with me. Perhaps he
hadn’t been told that. And that little lady of a boss would have
his head on a guillotine if he even dared to send me
back.

He leaned into
his chair and looked me up and down.

But then
again, maybe he was just trying to assert some authority.

A woman walked
through his office door and yelled at the top of her voice “Ed you
lazy cunt! When the fuck are our lockers getting fuckin’ fixed!
That shit was supposed to be done last week for fuck’s sake!”

Ed suddenly
stood upright, looking half nervous. He looked at me standing there
casually observing his reactions, and then decided to take the
offensive.

“
As you can see I’m fuckin busy right now! Got this little shit
that laundry has sent over for me to deal with. Can’t fuckin do
everything you know.” He threw his hands up accusingly. “Maybe you
should get a damn screwdriver and fix them yourself.”

She snarled
back at him. “Bet your own fuckin’ lockers behind you are just fine
though, right?”

One of the
doors to the locker behind Ed was open. A crowbar sat inside along
with some of Ed’s personal gear. A brand new lock reflected light
straight back at us.

“
You fuckin’ piece of shit, Ed!”

He smiled
through yellow teeth and licked his lips, considerably pleased at
the result of the exchange as she walked out pulling her middle
finger up at him and disappearing around the corner.

Ed looked at
me with, what was now more like, a lustful grin, and said “fuckin’
slut.”

I had to hold
back the vomit, push it back down deeper into the recesses of my
being where I could keep emotion tucked away and out of sight for
fear of my weakest spots being exposed and used against me.

“
Do you have a glass of water?” I asked.

He looked
confused. “What? Get over to that locker in the corner and put one
of those overalls on. We start straight away.”

The first job
I was given was sorting white overalls stained with the left over
splatter of blood. They fell down onto a table from chutes that I
presumed could only be changing rooms above. I had to sort through
them, check their tags and place them in the correct cages ready to
be trucked off to the same laundry that I had been at previous to
this. After I got most of that wrong and corrected through numerous
abusive comments and furious swearing at my incompetence, we took a
trolley outside into the cool dark air lit by lamps and a couple of
spotlights that cast disturbing shadows everywhere. The path went
around the back of the building and into a locker room.

I wrapped my
knuckles on one of the buckled doors expecting it to be locked
shut. It swung open. “Are these the lockers the woman was talking
about?”

“
No. And don’t put your nose where it doesn’t belong. None of
your business.” He stepped in my way and I shuffled to the side.
One of his hands began rifling though the contents of the locker,
picking up a wallet, overturning some papers, shaking a box of
cigarettes, opening the box of cigarettes, taking three for himself
and placing them in one of his pockets. “Don’t even think about
it.” He took the mass of keys from his other pocket, flicked
through several until he found one and locked the door with a solid
slamming in the process.

We placed the
clean mats to the side, picked up the old mats, then replaced the
old mats with the new mats, keeping them in a nice straight line
that ran from the showers out to the benches. I put my hands on my
hips admiring my handy work, somewhat proud of the perfect straight
line I had produced. I could feel the smile I once knew returning,
as though this job might not turn out so bad after all if I just
keep up the positivity.

The left side
of Ed’s cheek scrunched up. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I nodded down
at the mats. “Perfect straight line.” I winked and nodded my
head.

His frustration seemed to present itself in slow motion. First
the mouth opening, and then the hand to the forehead, the heel of
the hand rubbing an eye, and finally the exasperation voiced.
“What… a fuckin’… idiot! This –
this
–
is what they send me? Sheee-it!” He
slammed his hand against a set of lockers near him.

That was
it.

This is hell. I have entered the abode of the dying where all
damned souls are destined; where all heathens, atheists and
faithless will vie and beg for forgiveness as though they hadn’t
had a ‘fair’ chance while on Earth.
My
place, my people
.
I get it. I deserve to be here, just like the rest of
them.

I gripped the
hand-bars of the trolley feeling the steely cold creep around my
fingers and pushed and shoved the pile of dirty mats back to the
sorting room, trying not to tip them all over the ground as I
rounded the corners following Ed’s stiffly annoyed walk. We grabbed
another load of clean mats waiting on a separate trolley and pushed
those across a walkway to a lift that was like something born from
the 1800s: a reeking monster trap of caged doors and oiled parts,
creaking in all the joints and boards; the noise from the motor
that kept this thing alive dared me to yell in competition.

Ed slammed the
door shut, pressed a button. Nothing happened. He pulled the lever
sticking out from a rounded box on the floor. Nothing happened.
More swearing, more anger, more frustration, until he started
letting it out and hitting the leaver, kicking at it as his
scraggly hair made him look like Neil Young going nuts with his
vibrato bar. As his anger grew, his struggles with the lever
increased and mad spitting began to accompany the steady flow of
insults at the machine. It gave back little more than the
occasional creak and spluttering of oil from its joints while the
motor that continuously powered the thing grunted and rumbled
monstrous moans that seem to clamber at my ears, threatening to
smother me in their mocking tones.

I was ready
for flames to burst out from the edges of the lift attacking and
feeding on every last drop of oil that stained the metal and wood
surroundings and engulf us in their fury; a sarcastic laugh burning
our bodies, the cables breaking, the ground beneath the floor
falling away and sending us down into a tumbling spiral of endless
hatred.

Ed finally
relaxed for a moment, took a deep breath and shoved one last time
with both hands. The lever moved into place. He pressed the button
a second time and the lift started moaning into an upwards
direction.