Kidneys

Hemi pedaled along the river bank, through the lifting early morning mist, to the warm-damp sprawl of bricks and steel that swallowed man and beast in a maw of noise, water and blood. He could still feel the screams and yells of the men along the wet, grease blackened chain heıd walked down looking for a job. Today he'd start.

The donko was a cave of silence broken by the burr of voices from behind locker doors as men pulled on issue clothing, ready to climb up the gantry into the machine. The hot, musty, damp stale meat smell mixed with the tangy coarseness of sweat as men stropped their knives into razor sharpness ready for the morning's work.

Hemi felt the coarse wool of his works singlet and the grease-gray Monday morning cardboard of his trousers hard against him. He grabbed at the pocked plastic knife sheath on his belt, felt the sandpaper comfort of the handle and grinned. Around him men began to drift up the gantry, past the thick white doors of the freezers, across the sawdust covered cooling board, the grading tunnel into the cavern of the chain, to spread out along the killing board.

Hemi followed as the slow relentless groan of the killing board echoed over the clatter of boots, the rattling grates and the ever present hiss of the grindstones spitting sparks against the smeared white walls. The gutters and trimmers made their final adjustments to their knives as bodies, still kicking, dropped, blood pouring from their throats, onto the main chain ready for the morning hooter and the machine to lurch into life.

The hoses on the washing tables began to dance, blood warm water cutting the air, beating rhythm on the stainless steel body washing tray. The cogs began their cycle dragging hooks along the chain towards the cooling floor.

Hemi was lost. A hand clamped on his shoulder, "Hey! Got nothing to do?"

"Yeah." Hemi started, "Whatıll I have to do?"

The white lab coat blinked. "New arenıt you? Nah, thought so O.K. I need a stringer on Number 3 think you can handle it?" The tide of questions washed over the whines, rumbles and screams of the chain and gave him no chance to answer as the Lab coat looped a belt around his waist and hung a reel of string from his stomach. "Shove it on. Watch this." The forelegs of the blood drained hoggets banged against the reel as Lab-coat pulled a circlet of string from it with one hand, casting it around the bloody tip of neck, over the forelegs and drawing the base of the triangle back into the legs and onto the neck. "Easy eh? Keep it up and youıll be OK by me."

Carcasses dropped onto the rail, rattling on hooks, final twitches of dying nerves playing up and down their sides, slipped past him onto the cooling floor. Down the chain the brisket-puncher, blood to his shoulders, his fist red in the mist, grabbed a lamb as it crashed from the killing board, seized the flap of skin over the stomach and began punching down the body, pulling the skin down to hang over the neck and forelegs as the next lamb dropped into the machine. All down the line the men dripping blood, water, fat and sweat danced in the rituals of the chain.

A carcass bounced in front of Hemi. His hands reached down, pulled the loop of string from the reel, looping it out, over the neck, the legs, the neck again. The rhythm of the chain beat itself up his legs, through his gut and into his body moulding him into the machine.

From the cooling floor came the shouts of the boys on the rails..."PRIME".... DEVCO.... O.F.... The carcasses sped along the rails to be sorted into the cooling floor sidings.... PRIME DEVCO....OVER FUCKED PRIME ! Through the shouts a tenor, high above the rumbling groans of the chains began, "The first noel the angels did say...." Hemi couldnıt see where the song had begun. Other men took up the tune, harmony worked into and through the rattles and groans. The body washing tables beat hoses against metal shields as the hymn wove its way through the chains, each chain singing different lines, verses, changing rhythms and harmonies as they sang.

From the centre of the cavern, from the midst of the singing came a thrusting, struggling scrum of men, the shape twisting in their midst could have been a blood mad sheep, running crazy through the works, until it screamed.

The scrum parted and through the haze and distance Hemi could see a man. His arms clamped in chain mailed hands. His trouser legs gripped by the brisket punchers.

The scrum moved, a dance step, sideways toward the pelt shute.

The men swung the struggling body back, up, down. The men holding his arms let go.

The scream reached up, echoing off the roof girders, off the dull glass of the roof, ricocheting back and forth across the chains. No-one moved. The chains crawled.

The trousers, beltless, tugged over the swinging, struggling hips. The men imprisoning the manıs boots in his blood spattered leggings. Around the walls of twitching bodies leaned the butchers. Their eyes fixed on the body hanging to its chest in the shute. The screams echoed in the three storey drop. No one spoke.

The trousers slipped. A band of light skin showing clean against the waist band. A thrusting drive of men, red badged, hard hatted, pushed through the carcasses, past the watching men to grasp the body, seizing singlet, jacket, waist band, dragging it from the hands of the brisket punchers.

The screaming stopped.

"Bloody Dutch man - got it comin to him alright!" the washer beside Hemi spat.

"Eh?"
"Bloody dutchie had it comin' for f'en ages - All'as ridin' those guys didnıt ort to be here. F'en little hitler - Donıt know why they hired Œim... nothin' but f'en bloody trouble since he came..."

Hemi nodded. He went back to his stringing.

"Silent night, all is calm..."

Smoko. The donko was silent, a silence punctuated by the slap of cards, the scrape of matches and the clatter of enamel mugs. Hemi sat with the grease smell drifting off his arms, through his hands and into his lunch. He could see the little flecks of fat, glistening white in the hairs along the back of his hands. The newspaper spread over the table in front of the white clad worker opposite gave him an upside down view of events. TRUTH could reveal the secrets of the "MIGRANT'S LOVE NEST." and on page 3 all of DIANA 43 26 35 was to be shown with TEACHER'S PET SCORES. He let his eyes drift over the smudgy newsprint.

"Finished?"

"What?" Hemi lifted his head.

"I asked if youıd finished readin' MY paper?"

"I'm not reading your paper! I'm just watching the pictures!"

"Watchin' the pervin' pictures or not you're readinı MY f'en paper!" the eyes narrowed, "I don't like people readin' my paper when I'm readin' it. Get your god-damned f'en eyes off MY paper!" Pustules of bread drove across the table onto the grey black of "LUSCIOUS LESLIE 38 23 37 TITILLATING TYPISTE OF TAWA."

"Take your paper. Iım not worried. Iım not reading your paper!"

Hemi leaned back as his accuser stretched across the table to grab at his singlet. "What the?" Hemi fell backward, knocking over the bench, to look up at the snarling teeth.

"Bloody little students. Smart arsed little shits. Come in here and think you own the f'en place. Donıt you?" A blood smeared arm swung down, levering the man across the table. The man dropped beside Hemi, standing over him. Hemi stayed where he was.

The man leant down. His fist swung at Hemi's head. The blow cracked across the room. Hemiıs head rocked. Arms grabbed at the man.

"Christ! It's the f'en Dutch man!"

"Again?"

"Thought they'd put him down the road?"

"Bloody hell! Whereıs the bloody delegate? Someone get the Union guy he can deal with this!"

"Come on! Come on!" From the tables bustled one of the men. His stomach hooped itself up and over his mutton bag belted trousers, his singlet fighting to hold the mass into the works issue clothing. "Right! What gives eh boy?"
"Bloody smart arsed kid readinı my paper he was while I was. Donıt like him I told him." The dutchman spat.

"O.K. O.K! . What do you have to say?"

Hemi dabbed at the trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. "Nothing really. I was sitting at the lunch table, eating my lunch. I watched the pages of his paper on the table. He leaps up and goes mad at me. That's all."

Puku glared at the circle of curious men. "Right, you all heard? Didnıt ya? Were you really readin' this guy's paper or not?"
"No! No, I just glanced at the pictures as he turned the pages. Wasnıt reading anything."

A harsh sigh. A cloud of stale smoke drifted from the men. Puku leaned back. ³Youıve had your chips mate. Letıs get it over with eh?² The group broke, moving towards the doors. Hemi stood. The group ignored him as, knives rattling, they bustled the Dutchman through the doors.

A dog barked. From the board an animal bellowed, screamed. Someone abused the dog into quiet.

The clank of the pot room pipes boomed across the ceiling. Something large was sucked into the rendering pots.

Silence settled, with the smell of the pots, over the donko. The men returned. Hands of euchre argued their way to an end . "Hey!" Hemi looked up, "You, whatıs yah name? Newie!"

"Yes?"

"Wanna game? Play euchre? Sit down and play!" The fat sticky cards were shuffled, cut and dealt. "Hearts is." "Pass" "Right! Get hem."

The hooter screamed. The men drifted to the gantry, up the steps into the cool dusk of the cooling floor, through to the warm mist of the chain. One of the men clapped Hemi on the back and boomed. "You like kidneys new boy?"

"Yeah. Love them."

"Good. Iıve Dutchie's. He won't miss them now. Keep ya nose clean."

Through the afternoon beat of the chain, the swish of the hoses, the steady stand, bend, string the carcasses came and went fat, warm, steaming; nerves twitching into the lights and darks of the machine until the hooter screamed and the last body flopped onto the cooling floor rails.

Toweling soap from his eyes and hair Hemi groped his way to his locker. He tugged the bent metal door open, grabbing at his clothes, to bury his fingers in the warm, mutton cloth wrapped, pulp tossed in to the back of the shelf. He snatched his hand back, a thin coat of blood covering his fingers.

Echoes drifted from the carpark: "Rock of ages cleft for me - let me hide myself in thee." The men drifting from the donko wove the final hymn through the thud of the works machine. "Let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed be of sin the double cure." Hemi twisted the reddening package in his hands. "Cleanse me of its guilt and power."

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