The Ink Bridge (21 page)

The buzzer went at ten and they all crammed into the lunchroom. It was like someone had shaken the planet and the people of the world had fallen into Hope Candle Works. Men with skin like a moonless night, a woman with eyes as soft and narrow as buttonholes. Containers of noodles and carefully wrapped bread spilled onto the tables and chatter dodged and swung and gathered in tangled piles of accented English. Splinter pulled Hec to a table where a young guy was sitting alone. Splinter growled, ‘Geddup.'

The guy looked up at him.

‘Gawn! Skedaddle!' His face was millimetres from the young guy's. ‘Move yer sorry black arse.' There was still no movement. Everyone was watching, not breathing.

‘Ged
. . .
up!'

The guy held Splinter's gaze, but stayed seated. Like he didn't care, or he had a death wish. Splinter grabbed the back of his chair and rocked it back. The young guy grabbed for the table with his hand, but was too far past the tipping point. He slammed hard against the wall and fell onto the floor. For a moment he lay there, staring at Splinter whose eyes were crazy with pit bull aggression. Then in one quick movement the boy leapt to his feet and faced Splinter, head cocked slightly to one side.

Splinter snarled at him, lips bared, showing his troubled gums. He said slowly, ‘This
. . .
is
. . . my . . .
chair.' Splinter put his hand on the table. ‘My table.' He swept his hand around the room and glared at everyone with furious eyes. ‘This is
my
country.' Licked his palms. ‘MOINE!' he growled. No one challenged him. Beside him, Hec stood like a stringless puppet.

An older man stepped between Splinter and the young guy. He was crusty, worn, his face a puzzle of unconnected pieces.

‘Meestarr Spleentarr. This boy crazymad. He my niece, thees one, I his ankle. Bat he too crazymad.' He did a little dance, waggling his head from side to side. Then he grabbed the boy by the shoulder and walked him to the other side of the room, spitting words in his ear.

Splinter clawed Hec's shirt. ‘Siddown for godsake, makin a bloody testicle of yersel,' he said. Hec registered the other men looking at him and Splinter, now the Loop of Two.

Hec sat beside him. Splinter's lips were torn into a nasty sneer as he said, ‘He's the worst of the worst. Gawn in the head. Won't say boo to a goose. He's dumb or sumpin. Sandwich short of a picnic. Bloody weeeeird.' He circled his temple with his fingers and then licked his palms quickly. ‘You godda show them who the bloody boss is. They godda learn. They's like dogs in that respect. And that one is the dregs. He's the dog's dog. Even his own kind don't want him. The old dickhead that stepped in; he's the only one who even pretends to know him. Did you hear him – He's my
niece.
I'm his bloody
ankle
. A monkey's ankle! Ha! What a dipshit.'

Hec nibbled one of the sandwiches his dad had made: egg and lettuce, crusts sheared, butter right to the edges. Splinter struggled over Australia's Largest Crossword. Hec caught a glimpse of the simple clues and the words Splinter had crowbarred into the spaces. Some of them were too long, but he just added an extra box or two. When they were too short, he blacked out a space. There they sat like rotten teeth.

Try this one, Splinter
, he wanted to shout.
Fear or hatred
of foreigners
,
ten letters. Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . Give
up? Xenophobia.

At the other tables people were laughing and sharing food, but Hec sat silent with Splinter and just wished it was all over.

When the bell went Splinter said, ‘Smoko's never long enough. Reckon they speed up the clock for smoko and lunch, wind it down for work.'

Hec looked up and saw Hope at the door.

‘We was just gettin back to it, Mr Hope. Hec here was just sayin how fifteen minutes is not really long enough to have a bite to eat and drink a cuppa.'

‘Hec, I'd like you to work with Sami up until lunch.'

‘But—' started Splinter.

‘You've finished unloading, Splinter. I want Hec to get an idea of the whole operation.'

Splinter pocketed his
People
magazine and took his scowling brow out the door.

Sami's hands were quick as they threaded in the wicks from a bank of spools under the machine. His fingers were the colour of wattle bark with shell-pink nails a surprise at the tips. He bent down and fed a wick through the hole in one of the metal cylinders, pulling it up and tying it off before starting again. It was a long, boring job, but he was concentrating hard. There were two hundred and forty wicks and two hundred and forty cylinders. Hec had time to count. There was little else to do. How could anyone do this day after day with the burnt oil smell of wax stripping the hairs from their nose?

Finally, the job was finished and Sami stood up and smiled. He walked over to a huge vat of melted wax and drained some into a bucket. This part of the job looked like it needed speed, as much as the threading needed patience. He strode back to the machine and quickly ran the bucket of sloppy wax into a chute. It glided around the wicks, filling the metal tubes from the top.

‘Now we arr doing eet again,' said Sami and moved to another machine. After a bank of three machines had been threaded and poured he returned to the first one. He turned an old wheel on the side and the mould dropped to reveal slim white candles. Sami ran a knife carefully under the bottoms of the candles, separating the wicks. As he went, he grabbed them in bundles and slipped them into boxes.

Sami worked hard without talking. Most of the time Hec was looking at the back of his head while he threaded wicks or packed the candles into boxes. His hair was tight and short, a field of burnt stubble with furrows of pink scars parting it from crown to brow. How and where had he got such scars? It looked like someone had attacked him with a fork.

The work could have been done by machines. Should have been done by machines. It amazed Hec that humans would be allowed to do jobs that were so mind-numbingly tedious. He fought off fatigue, blinked away boredom and tried to keep his mind focussed on the job. Not that there was anything to do except watch Sami's slow, precise movements as he built candles from wax and cotton. The candle factory's motto was ‘Light is Hope'. What light was Sami's job shining into his life?

They worked constantly, building a rhythm that was only interrupted by the bell. Then they washed their hands and crowded into the lunchroom.

Splinter was already there. He waved Hec over, pulled out a seat and patted it. But Hec dodged his stare and grabbed a seat beside Sami, his heart hammering a bass beat in his chest. He unwrapped another sandwich and took a bite, feeling the crunch of eggshell in the sudden dryness of his mouth.

The man on Hec's right was African, like Sami. And like Sami, he had scars. A thick one the side of a lemon wedge across his cheek, a spray of circular ones on his forearm.

‘Waas the matta. You look like you naiver seen a blaak maan.'

Hec looked away. Of course, he had. Near the commission flats in Carlton. Sometimes on the tram.

‘You well be shy boy, you in the minoreetee heeyaar.'

Sami looked up from the bowl of Froot Loops he was pouring. ‘Mabor, geev the boy a break.'

Hector looked at Sami and smiled in appreciation.

‘Eets okay. Mabor is jus grumpee because he haav to work wid Spleentaar.'

A small man at the end of the table said, ‘And Splinnar, he grumpy wiv world.'

‘You gawt that right, Tran,' said Mabor, shaking his head.

‘You wan some Froot Loop?' asked Sami, shaking the box.

Hec held up his sandwich.

The woman sitting opposite said, ‘Sami is crazy for Froot Loop. He looooooove Froot Loop.'

‘And why naat, Sheilaa. What is naat to love about Froot Loop. You have froot and milk and loops in one bowl. Eet is the best. We naiver have these in Sudan. Only millet porridge and bullets.'

‘And look whaat these bullet do to your teeth.' Mabor opened his mouth to show a bottom row of missing teeth.

‘He is lying to you, you know,' said Sami. ‘They knock teeth out with a fishing spear when he was becoming a maan. Lucky I too young. Then the waar and we both leave. Now the girls think he is ugly with his scaar and his no teeth.'

‘Poor Mabor. He is cute to me,' said Sheila.

‘I am cute,' admitted Mabor.

‘She is just feeling sorree for you, Mabor.' Sami smiled a Froot Loop smile.

‘I feel sorry for
him
,' said Sheila pointing her chin at the young guy that had stood up to Splinter at smoko.

Sami shrugged and said to Hec, ‘He naiver taalks. I think he has seen too much. Many of us seen too much. I am walking from Sudan to Kenya – two yaars. Then four yaars in a camp – vairy baad. My family was killed in the waar. See these scaar.' He showed Hec his forearms. ‘And these.' His scalp crossed with a nest of thin pink lines. ‘Sometimes we see too much and we caan never get baack what we once waas. Maybe that is his story. He is a refugee like me, but he come baack door. Means that he is only waiting. Mabe he don't even haave Tee Pee Vee. We got full visa Pee Pee Vee. Permanent protection.'

‘Teepeevee is short visa,' added Sheila. ‘Temporary Protection. Means they can be sent home any time. It is very hard.'

The bell rang again, like school, signalling to the animals to move to the next, greener, pasture. Only there was no green pasture here – just the same dirty weeds over and over again until death by boredom, or the end of the day. There was no way Hec could last.

He spent the next few hours working with Sami and when the bell rang again he was first out the door. It was chucking it down outside, so he bolted to the station, just making the city-bound train. The blood rushed into him as he left the factory behind. School didn't seem so bad compared to work.

The suburbs were sucked of colour; rain angling onto terracotta tiles. Clouds cushioned the sky. Cats sat under eaves licking their paws. Hec blasted through in his bubble with music throbbing deep inside his head. His thoughts were pulled apart by REM's
Night Swimming
– Mum's gold track. Sometimes in the dark, she used to stand on the back porch, swaying to the music, the moon full-bellied over the tin roofs and peppermint gums. Sometimes she would sing. And sometimes she would cry.

From the barricade of the couch, Hec watched the pulp hour on TV. Somewhere in outback Woopwoop the residents were
up in arms
. Half the town wanted the refugees out, half wanted them to stay. The manager at the cotton mill wanted to keep his workers. ‘They work hard, they don't drink, they turn up on time. They're good blokes.' The locals at the pub slurred their names over beers. The camera scanned the country – broken trees, a true-blue sky, yellow stubble drying to brown in the fields.

‘They're diff'rent, that's all.'
Mother of three.

‘They deserve a go, like the rest of us. Not many of us are from here anyway. Most of us arrived by boat; just depends how far back you wanna go.'
Farmer on a tractor.

‘You just don't know what they're hiding behind those burqas. I heard they use them for terrorist attacks back home.'
Old lady clutching her dog.

Then the good, honest face of the presenter, one you can trust – broad, a bit fat from beer and potatoes. ‘Hmm, a tough issue for tough times. We'll keep you in touch with that one.

‘Next up: benefit cheats – are your tax dollars giving them a free ride? Find out after the break.'

Hec switched off and unwrapped himself from the couch. He opened the double doors and stood on the back porch. The rain had eased, but the sky was still a terrible grey. When dark stole the rooftops he would go inside with the memory of his mum lodged between his ribs. But for now he would just stand and sip the wet air.

Dad's car in the driveway tore him from the moment. His keys rattled in the front door and Hec heard him shuffle through the kitchen and toss them in a bowl. And then he was there, just a cut-out with a briefcase, framed by the doorway. ‘You want some lights on?' He flicked the switch.