Children Of The Dust

Non-Fiction
Location - Melbourne, Victoria
Written - September 2005
[This was my first published story. It was included in Not Long, the 2005 Monash University Anthology. I suppose I’ll always be fond of it for that reason.]


The dust gets into crevices you can’t even imagine. It covered everything, and changed everything that it touched. Within a week of accepting the job I developed a mysterious ailment in my lungs, which pained me as I hauled boxes around the warehouse. I suspected it was from the foam packing, which would disintegrate into a vapour of tiny fibres as you unpacked the deliveries. I had a paranoia about breathing in too much of the shit. I’d try my best to hold my breath or turn away, but the dust was so fine you couldn’t always see it. It made its mark on us all. We were a unique breed at that warehouse. Working for the money, working to be anywhere other than where we were. The children of the dust.

I’d begin the day with a gritty feeling on my skin. And when it came time to knock off I’d be slick with stinking grime, coated in dust and the glitter of Christmas decorations.

We dreaded the delivery trucks. Their back doors would slide open with a metallic grind, and it was time to haul those goddamned boxes as fast as we could. Just as it felt like we were getting on top of the workload there’d be a rolling series of deliveries, and the warehouse would groan under the volume of boxes. It was our job to load the deliveries onto palettes, slice the boxes open, price every item, then store them on the shelves that rose to the ceiling. But all you see after a while you don’t see the process, it is all just an endless storm of boxes and product. The illusion of progress was just a fool’s game concocted to give our lives some pale sense of meaning.

The labyrinth of boxes almost sent you mad. You’d feel a choking nausea from being surrounded by the perilously stacked piles without respite. The part of your mind that yearned for progress would dream of clearing the warehouse floor so that you could walk around without the fear of getting lost, you persevered for the vision of a clear field of concrete. And so, we worked. We’d develop our own crude tools when supplies were short – whatever it took to be rid of the boxes. I’d stroll around with my home-made knife, a Stanley knife blade with paper and tape wrapped around one end to create a handle. I called it ‘The Shiv,’ – belated prison-talk - and it became a warehouse icon. Jokes like that became important.

I remember spending two days pricing 6000 rolls of Santa Claus toilet paper. Eight dollars ninety-five a roll. I thought to myself, if I work for a solid week then I could buy 75 rolls of this, and wipe my ass with the spirit of Christmas. Or I’d muse on a fluorescent-coloured kitchen roll holder, made out of plastic, imported from some Italian designer. Priced at two hundred dollars. Our company sold products to people with so much money they have no idea what the fuck to do with it. I, on the other hand, had all the time in the world to think. The job only wanted my body, not my mind, so I thought of other things. As I’d sit working on a palette order up near the back of the warehouse I’d work through short-story ideas in my head, jotting down forbidden notes in between peeling off barcode stickers.

It became hard to think in our warehouse cauldron. The concrete and corrugated iron would amplify the waves of radiant heat, trap them in, and banish us from any refreshing breeze. Terrible shards of sunlight streamed in through the clear perspex panels in the roof - God help you if you were stuck working beneath one. By the afternoon the place would stagnate into a sweaty morass. The heat only ever seemed to rise. We’d watch the electronic thermometer by the office door with morbid fascination. I was told that the warehouse could be up to four or five degrees hotter than the outside air. Up on the top-level shelves it could be up to ten degrees hotter. We worked throughout summer, and when the thermometer read 45 degrees the heat became something ridiculous. You laughed or else the dust stole your mind away. Most stripped down to shorts and a t-shirt. I retained my long pants and my army shirt - I’d stagger home with my clothes limp from sweat. I have a neurosis about my skinny arms and legs but of course you don’t tell anyone that.

The heat was only broken by thunderstorms that made us manic with primitive fever. These storms would shake the warehouse walls, deafen us. The place became a hive of excitement as leaks in the fortress began to appear, drip dripping onto the precious merchandise. We moved like ants, scurrying to protect the integrity of the nest. Relocating the boxes that were under siege from flood-damage. When it rained, the dust would turn to mud.

For a long time I worked alone, it took me weeks to get to know anyone. Our tribal gathering was held on Friday afternoons – we’d drink beers on upturned crates as the dust of the week settled in the warehouse. On a Friday you’d yearn for that first beer to cross your dry, dusted lips as you’d pine for a distant lover. For a long time I kept to myself, but over 5’oclock beers I began to open up. I made my mark one Friday afternoon. I’d downed a few and was in the mood, but the fridge was empty except for a lone Tooheys Light. I cracked the top, remarked, ‘this beer tastes like shit, I’m going home.’ The others laughed. I think that’s when they decided I was alright.

The dust made its impression, but mostly I remember the men I worked with. Dave was at the helm, holding our ragtag bunch together. The boss. He was small, and wiry with economic tension. A balding, older soldier of the retail world, impeccably noble in his dedication to finance. There wasn’t much fault to be found in him. He’d ridden the ladder to where he wanted to be, he ran his life without a blemish of inefficiency - according the formula he had fashioned for himself. His clothes were always free of dust. He wasn’t the boss of the entire company, he just managed the warehouse. The heads of the company would come in every now and then. Three all-seeing witches who’d strut around screeching orders at us lowly plebs, failing to understand that all the money in the world won’t make you likeable. I found it best to stay out of their way. But Dave was important to us. I only realized how important when one time he wasn’t looking the best - he’d injured his foot over the weekend. And to see our boss, our flagship, limping around barefoot with a glaze in his eyes from all the painkillers he was on, shook our morale deeply. I grew to respect the man.

I could tell you a dozen ‘asshole boss’ stories, but you’ve all heard those before. When I think of Dave my most vivid memory is of his reaction to a workplace accident. I was working on an order when I heard a cataclysmic crash like the roof had collapsed. Everyone stopped, turned, and rushed to the scene. Ben had been up on one of the perilous industrial ladders - the most feared of all tasks - storing boxes up the top level of the warehouse shelves. A number of the loose shelves had given way and collapsed into each other. Some of these palettes contained twenty thousand dollars worth of merchandise. Dave rushed out of his office in long strides, and the first thing he asked was ‘is anybody hurt?’ He didn’t give a damn about the pulverized merchandise, he wanted to know if the poor bastard had survived. We found Ben with a cheeky smile on his face. Apparently he’d leapt clear before his world had imploded in a thick plume of dust.

I was never afraid of my boss, the only thing that frightened me was the dust. Ben feared neither, for he was a veteran. I instinctively avoided him at first. He had that hardened look of an ex-convict, he reminded me of the sort of bloke that would beat me up at high school. One moment the warehouse would echo with his rolling, cavernous belches, and then he’d sing along, loudly and soulfully, to songs on the radio. A brawny, tattooed bloke singing with warmth and sensitivity, but all in an ironic way, a playful way, that made me think he deserved a medal for workplace morale. He’d bring light. He use to sing, "that’s the sound of the men/ working on the chain," as we passed an endless parade of boxes to each other. I later learned he had a love for acting, and was involved in several theatre productions. I figure there’s a light in everyone, and just because you don’t see it don’t mean it ain’t there. I could never quite figure the man out. I suppose that’s what made him interesting.

Most of us there were just temporary, paying our way through university or saving to do something else. People who breathed the dust so that they could one day breathe fresh air once again. Like Cheltan, one of the first blokes I got to know well. He wore this eternally zonked expression and yet braved on with work at a pace that frightened me. Another weakling, like myself, and yet he seemed to compensate by performing every task at three times the usual speed. I talked to him about yoga and meditation, quietly, so Dave wouldn’t hear us and tell us to get back to work. His real passion was for mathematics. I’d spend our smoko breaks sitting on an upturned tin by the warehouse rollerdoor, leafing through a newspaper, sipping a coffee, or watching the pretty girls walk past. Cheltan would spend them sitting out in the sun with a notepad, scrawling down mathematical formulae. He showed me his notebook once, some of the formulae ran over ten pages, of an intricacy that I could never hope to comprehend.

Others were the exiles from the world, attempting to find camouflage in the dust - to hide from a life they were attempting to out-run. Steve had this air about him. A short, gnome-like man, a self-proclaimed Intellectual, who seemed to feel an overwhelming urge to prove himself more intelligent, more learned, more worldly than the rest of the world. He worked slowly and carefully and seemed completely out of place. He was from Canberra, where I was born. His computer business had gone broke, but he never told me the full story. Steve was proud, he said he’d been earning over eighty grand a year back then. It seemed wrong that he would be in this place with us. I remember him saying that he was going to ask the boss about the possibilities for career advancement, for moving up the managerial ladder in the company. I knew that we were all temporary. Disposable. I would have laughed at Steve’s suggestion had it not seemed so pregnant with inherent tragedy. I never heard the response he got from Dave, but I didn’t really need to. After his conversation with the boss Steve said nothing more on the matter, and I never heard him speak of ‘career advancement’ again.

Steve and I disagreed on almost everything. He used to frustrate me. At the time the Iraq war was on the wind, still but a growing rumour, and Steve used to say, ‘give war a chance,’ just to get a rise. And I’d always take the bait. He was Jewish, and we’d have endless debates on the politics of the Middle East. After work I’d think of counter-arguments to bring him the next day. He brought out that sort of reaction in me - sparking thought back into my mind. We became close and unlikely friends and I’d talk to him more than anyone. He was over fifty years old and had a bad back, he’d drop boxes and stub his toes and slow down our whole operation. This would inevitably incur the wrath of our co-workers. They called him ‘the kike’ when he wasn’t around. I remember a few of my co-workers asking why I was friends with him. I could never give them a clear response. But I think I liked him because despite his personality quirks, and despite the fact that he managed to systematically irritate almost every single worker in the place, I was always drawn to listen to him. He had that spark in his eyes, through the dust that gathered on his face.

The conversation kept us going. After months in the warehouse we’d descend into new levels of fatigue. I’d abuse the opportunity for toilet breaks just to catch my breath. I used to spend fifteen minutes at a time in the toilet, just sitting with my pants up, sending text messages or jotting down ideas for my writing. I even had a witty defence prepared in case the boss ever caught me. I was going to say, ‘well boss, I suppose I could just shit in my pants, but I thought it might be bad for workplace morale.’ He’d understand that kind of thing.

At the end of the day I would slump. So exhausted that I may as well have been on heroin. There seemed a certain irony that the further I moved toward a respectable life of nine-to-five work the closer I began to resemble a drugged-out transient. I’d slur my words with fatigue. Barely able to keep my eyes open; grumpy, anxious, useless for any practical purpose. When I returned home to my girlfriend at the time she’d be in a frisky mood, but I came to learn what the Hives are getting at when they sing, "too messed up to even mess around…."

My time at the warehouse ended around the same time as John. He was made of leather, he looked as though he belonged in the Outback. Out on a cattle station somewhere. He’d been working at the warehouse for twenty years. Twenty years. In theory it was his job to load and unload the trucks, and to ferry the goods between the warehouse and the stores in the company van. In practice he’d inevitably ask the casual workers, like myself, to do the dirty work. A few days before it happened, the silly bastard stalled the van down at the local service station, and walked back up to the warehouse to get us to help him push start the thing.

As a thankyou for helping out, the boss offered me the one job that we all relished. He asked me to join John on an out-of-warehouse experience. I climbed in the truck and was out on the road with the window down, breathing in great gusts of non-dusted air. We drove to Kooyong, the tennis club, where we cleaned the remnants of the company Christmas party which had been thrown there last night. John didn’t say much as we worked, and I was happy just to be out in the sunshine.

He was missing for the next few days. Mark went off looking for him. He returned to us, without John, looking as if the dust had found its way into his heart and was choking his soul. He said that John had committed suicide. He’d gassed himself inside his garage.

The radio was switched off, for the first time in the seven months I was there. A complete silence descended over the warehouse. We worked with our heads bowed. I could barely be bothered placing the tiny pricing stickers onto the crappy tin goods I held in my hands.

I’d spent his final day at work with him, out at Kooyong, and I hadn’t seen any signs or tried to cheer him up. I thought of him working around the warehouse, with that anxious and intense look in his eyes. The look of a man being chased by dusty ghosts down a midnight path, and who knows that the ghosts are gaining. He always smelled of stale sweat. He’d become frustrated to rage at the slightest thing, and we’d all just laugh it off as old highly-strung John. He just bottled it all up. All that swirling dust behind his eyes, fouling up his mind, with nowhere for it to go but deeper into his soul, poisoning him.

I wondered absurdly if he’d taken a shower before killing himself. If he’d soaped his skin and tried to scrub the dust from his eyes, if he’d gripped a scourer with white-knuckled fingers in one last attempt to shift the dust from his leathered wrinkles. But I knew from experience that the dust didn’t wash off easily. Even when you’d cough it’d be the colour of the warehouse dust.

I guess there’s nothing like doing what you really don’t want to be doing with your life to figure out what you do. As long as you get out before the dust settles in. I never told the boss that I’d applied for university. One day I was pottering around with boxes and stickers and all that guff, when on my lunch break I saw my name in the newspaper – first round university offers. I accepted the offer the next day. Old Steve looked crestfallen when I said I was leaving. When I left everyone lined up to shake my hand and wish me well. I remember all of those blokes. I think when you’re working in that sort of environment you forge a unique kind of brotherhood. I haven’t seen a single one of them since, though I still think of them.

Before I turned to go I put a few of the pricing stickers in my pocket. I wanted to remember. There’s a strange feeling comes over me whenever I stumble across them again – black lines of barcode still covered in my dusty fingerprints.