No Worries

love.

1

The factory rattled with milk crates joggling along a windy conveyor belt. I was nervous — scared. My overalls were too long and baggy. My shoes were like those that deep-sea divers used to clunk around in fifty years ago. I was King Dork of the Aliens. Far ahead I could see the men, waiting and watching. Three of them. The graveyard shift.

How did I ever get sucked into this? Going to work when other kids my age were bludging. It sucked.

My nose was running. Hay fever. I dug into my pockets. No hankie or tissues. Terrific. I wanted to go back home. Let Mum yell all she liked. Had to be better than this. I even thought about going back to school … school? No. Keep going, Bri.

They gathered around, all in brown overalls like me. Only theirs fitted.

‘I’m Bob. You must be Brian Talbot.’

The oldest. Maybe sixty. A smoke in his mouth. Thin streaks of oily grey hair.

‘Yeah. Brian — most people call me Bri.’

‘Good to meet you, Bri. Norm’s the name.’

Short. Late thirties. His overalls pinched tight around his belly.

‘How ya doin’, pally? Eric.’

Eric jiggled up and down on his heels. Same age as Norm. He had a smart-alec smirk on his face. Must have thought I looked pretty funny.

They each shook my hand.

Bob slouched against a wall. ‘How old would you be, Bri?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Seventeen, eh.’ He grinned at Eric and Norm. ‘How would you blokes like to be seventeen again? Do a bit of damage, wouldn’t yer?’

They laughed knowingly. I didn’t get the joke. What was so funny about my age? I was living it and it wasn’t great. Too old to get away with excuses about being only a kid. Too young to be anything but a kid. I couldn’t wait to be older. Not as old as them, though. My twenties would be good. Then I’d know things. Have things. I’d be really alive then.

Bob left us and walked into a tiny glassed office. He sat on a stool, a large worksheet on a desk in front of him, took a pencil from behind his ear and began jotting down figures.

‘He’s the leading hand,’ Norm told me. ‘Does all the books — keeps track of everything the vendors order.’

He answered my next question before I could ask it.

‘We call them vendors — not milkos or milkmen — vendors.’

‘And in case you didn’t know, we’re the dockhands,’ added Eric, ‘the shitkickers who do the hard yakka. Makin’ up the orders. Gettin’ the stuff out of the trailers and the cool room. Servin’ it to the vendors.’ He nudged Norm. ‘Well, you’ll be doin’ most if it, bein’ the new boy. Isn’t that right, Normie?’

Norm nodded seriously. ‘That’s right. All the new blokes do the work. That’s union rules.’

Bob called out from the office. ‘They givin’ you a hard time, Bri? Don’t believe a word they say. Couldn’t lie straight in bed, either of them.’ He tapped the pencil against his watch. ‘We’re running late, you blokes. Let’s get to work.’

‘Vendors’ll be in at twelve,’ Norm told me. An hour away. ‘We have to unload that trailer.’ He gestured behind him at a white semi, its back doors open wide. Inside were stacks of milk, row after row. ‘It all goes into the cool room. Ekka’ll show you what to do. Won’t ya, Ek?’

Eric wandered towards the cool room, calling back, ‘Kick up the arse, that’s all I’ll show him.’ He paused at the door. ‘You takin’ the first break, Normie?’

‘Unless you want it.’

‘Nah. Rack orf.’

He disappeared into the room.

Norm filled in the gaps for me. ‘We each get an hour and a half sleep down the tunnel,’ he began.

‘There’s a tunnel?’

‘You’ll see it later. I’m first up. Then Ek. Then you. Old Supers always goes last.’

I had to ask … ‘Supers?’

‘That’s Bob. We call him Supers — short for Superstud.’

‘Right. Okay.’

‘He’s the only one here who isn’t sex mad. Never even talks about it. So that’s why we call him Superstud. You with me, Bri?’

‘Um … sort of.’

‘Amazing bloke, Supers. Doesn’t sleep all night. Never seen him eat anything either. Or drink. Loves his smokes, though. He’s been puttin’ away thirty or forty a night for years, worse than a chimney. We’ll all get cancer from his smoke and he’ll still be puffin’ away at our funerals. Any-ways … I’ll catch up to you later on. Don’t worry about Ekka, he’s all right. We’re all pretty friendly around here.’

This was so different from school. No put-down lectures. Norm talked to me like I was an equal. He gave me a wink. ‘You’ll be right. Do yer work. Nothin’ to worry about.’

As Norm left for his break, Eric wandered out with a flavoured milk. He pulled it open, took a slurp, and seemed not to notice as it dribbled down his chin.

‘Let’s get into it, pally. Grab a trolley. You know how to use a trolley, don’tcha?’

‘Um … I s’pose.’

I had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Bloody kids. Gunna be a long night.’

2

Eric was right. I kept stuffing up. There was a lot of counting in the job, and I wasn’t good at it. I had to count cartons of milk: twenty-four 600 millilitre cartons to the crate, five crates to the stack, sixteen one-litre cartons per crate — counting on and on all night. And I couldn’t find things in the cold room though they were right in front of me. I was too busy being cold. To make things even worse, I dropped a stack. One hundred and twenty cartons crashed and split open. A river of milk — an ocean of rotten milk.

Eric clapped and cheered. ‘Knock over another one while you’re at it. You’re a one-man bloody disaster area.’

I felt like going home right then, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

I got to work with a mop, hating every second.

Most vendors were okay about the delays. To them it was a minor irritation. But a couple aimed filthy looks my way. One vendor was really spewing. His van came flying in and screeched to a stop, then he was out and straight into it.

‘Cusack,’ said Eric. ‘Mongrel if ever there was one.’

‘Where’s my milk? I get the same order every night. It’s not too hard for you, is it? Does any bastard work here? Come on!’

It floated past Bob like it wasn’t happening.

Eric grinned as though this was the entertainment for the night.

Cusack looked straight at me. I turned away, desperately searching for something to do.

The next blast went to Eric.

‘I’m still bloody waiting!’

Eric smiled. ‘Good for you, buddy.’ Then quietly to me, ‘Don’t hurry. Slow it right down. He can hang around even longer now.’

Cusack waited less than a minute before barging into the cool room to serve himself. Eric followed. I stood outside near the doorway.

‘All right, matey,’ said Eric, ‘piss orf outta here.’

Cusack spoke through gritted teeth, punctuating his words by jabbing a finger towards Eric’s chest. ‘I want my order. I come in at the same time every night. It should have been sitting on the dock waiting for me. If you blokes can’t get your act together, then I’ll fucking do it for you.’

He took stock from the shelves and shoved it into a hand-basket.

Eric ripped open another carton of flavoured milk.

‘Unless you piss orf outta here now,’ he swallowed a mouthful, ‘you don’t get no order, tonight or any other night. You get black-listed.’

‘Bullshit I do!’

Another casual sip of milk.

‘You think I’m kiddin’, do yer? I’m the union delegate here, buddy. I’ll close you down sure as eggs. Now if you wanna stay in business, piss orf.’ He pointed to the door. ‘And no more of your language, pally. You save that up for when ya go home to yer missus. It’s not on around here.’

Cusack squeezed his fist tightly so that the knuckles stuck out. Eric stayed calm, almost daring him to take a poke.

‘Prick!’

Cusack flung a sour cream onto the concrete. It splattered from one side of the room to the other. He stalked out, cursing to himself all the way.

Eric squatted on a crate and slowly finished his milk. He grinned broadly as I walked in. ‘Jeez, I love doin’ that,’ he said. ‘It’s fuckin’ beautiful.’

Standing beside his truck, Cusack yelled, ‘How much bloody longer?’

Eric ignored him and strolled to the office. ‘Hey, Superstud, stick another sour cream on Cusack’s order, will ya … better make it a couple.’ Turning to the waiting vendors he added, ‘You lot better go read a book. Got a spill in the coolroom. Too dangerous to work in there till it’s cleaned up. Be a good half-hour yet.’

Cusack was red in the face and swearing again. The others were warming up, too. Eric couldn’t have been happier.

‘I’m off for me break,’ he said, handing me a hose. ‘You make sure you clean that floor up real slow. Make the buggers sweat.’

It was me who sweated. Sweated from working harder than I’d ever done before. I hurried to clean up, hurried to serve the orders. But the faster I went, the more mistakes I made and the longer it took. I was sweating bullets.

Bob never looked my way, fascinated by his bookwork, like he had some rare and precious manuscript in front of him. Norm eventually sauntered back from the tunnel, coat over his shoulder, his long brown hair sticking up at odd angles. He yawned as he looked at the queue of vendors and the battlefield of discarded crates that had to be picked up and stacked.

‘You be all right for a while longer, Bri?’

Without waiting for my answer, he sleep-walked into the office and put the jug on for a cup of tea.

‘Where’s my milk?’

‘You made my order up yet?’

‘Come on, son. Get cracking.’

I wanted to scream, but I didn’t have the energy. School was looking better all the time.

An hour and a half later and it was my turn for a break. My turn in the tunnel.

I followed Norm’s directions and found Eric dead to the world on a large piece of cardboard.

‘Wake up, Eric … Eric.’

‘Piss orf.’

I shook him lightly, then harder.

‘Eric!’

‘Strewth, is that the time already? I only shut me eyes a second ago.’

He hauled himself up, leaving me the cardboard for a bed.

‘Watch out for the rats’ were his parting words.

‘Rats? You’re kidding me.’

‘Am I?’

‘Honestly? There really are rats?’

He nodded without turning around.

It was early April, warm to hot in the daytime yet chilly enough at night for me to have my coat zipped up tight. But the tunnel was sickly hot, and noisy with generators thumping away like a robotic orchestra. I was almost too tired to stand up, but there was no way I could sleep. It wasn’t just the rats, the noise, the heat, the tunnel, the cardboard on the concrete floor. It was the whole deal. Different from any world I’d known. Forget about sleep — I didn’t even dare to close my eyes.

I sat with my back against the wall, ready to swat marauding rats with the cardboard, and half expecting the generators to explode at any second. So this was what I’d gone to school for all those years — to be a rat-catcher. Make that apprentice rat-catcher. Good one, Bri.

I took out the pocket dictionary that I always carried with me. It was one of the birthday presents I got when I was about eight. At first I used it exclusively to look up swear words — some well-thumbed pages there. Now I just liked learning new words. I had these vague, secret dreams of being a writer one day. I’d written a few stories that I thought weren’t too bad. My English teacher, Mister Smith — Dean the Demon Smith — never believed they were my own work: ‘You wrote that? Sure you did, Talbot.’

I wasn’t good at much else so I understood where he was coming from. But it didn’t matter what he thought. For me writing was just one of those longshots you hung on to, the same way people buy lottery tickets every week. My dictionary kept the dream ticking over, and while I read it the time scurried past more quickly, on little ratty feet.

‘Rise and shine, pally. Up ya get.’

It was 3.30 am and the next rush of vendors was about to start.

3

7 am. Mum was there to pick me up.

‘So, come on, tell me what happened? What did you do all night? Did you like it?’

‘I’m tired.’

‘Tell me something, can’t you?’

‘It was boring. The pits. I don’t want to go back.’

‘What was wrong with it?’

I only knew one way to make her back off.

‘I worked my guts out! I was running all night!’

The words were spat out, angry as I could make them.

‘Good!’ Mum said, spitting back. ‘Welcome to the real world.’

Like so many other times, I wished I could press Rewind and start again. I didn’t want to fight with Mum. I’m sure she didn’t want it either. But like so many other times, it couldn’t be undone.

Mum started up the car. I closed my eyes.

I had an operation once. They stick a needle into you before they start cutting. You have to count backwards from a hundred. You get to about ninety-eight then you conk out. That morning sleep hit me like anaesthetic. I didn’t think it was