deep south 2013
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dsj fiction
Meat Loaders
The meat loaders were built in 1963.
The construction of the giant machines revolutionized meat export.
Back then Great Britain couldn't get enough New Zealand lamb and mutton.
These days the meat loaders didn't get used much and when they weren't in use all five of them were pushed to the end of the wharf and left pointing toward the sky.
Whenever he saw them they reminded him of dinosaurs. Tall grey and clumsy–with gaping jaws.
Even now when wisps of low cloud brushed past the open mouths of the machines he half expected to see them come to life, snapping the way a dog sometimes snaps at an annoying fly.
On days like today he wished they really would.
When the fishing off the wharf was good and he could buy a mince pie and a bottle of drink from the wharfies canteen, he would watch the rail cars bring in the frozen meat from the freezing works just up the road. The meat loaders would come to life and each of them would bow down over the ship. They would spit out their huge conveyer-belt tongues and lower the meat into the holds.
The carcasses were then stacked in freezer holds by wharfies wearing boots and gloves lined with real wool. His father still had a pair of those boots somewhere. They were hard to come by these days. In winter when his father wore them out they brought about talk of the good old days when things like boots and gloves could be traded for oysters and fish.
The laden ships took their cargo back to Iran, the Soviet Union before she changed her name, and of course, Mother England–before she joined the EEC. Every week a different ship flying a different flag arrived. Most of the time the ship's crew spoke a language he couldn't understand.
When his uncle worked on the wharf, and when the Soviet boats were in port, his father sometimes took him on board. The inside of the ships smelled of cigarettes and rust. While his dad drank vodka with the Russians until he couldn't walk, he stole magazines with pictures of naked women and showed them to his mates at school the next day.
As more overseas ports upgraded to containers the ships that once visited regularly stopped coming back.
Nowadays the meat loaders were only used when mutton or lamb needed to be shipped to some place that was, as his father said, 'behind the times.'
"Just as well we've got these to keep the money coming in, eh son?" His father said.
James clenched his teeth. He'd heard it a million times already. Now he hated hearing it.
But it was true. Their quota had done more than keep their head above water over the years. The freezing works had long ago closed. The wharfies, once numbering over four-hundred and fifty had been whittled down to a couple of dozen. The thirty or so oyster boats that operated in the seventies now barely made double figures.
In the late nineties his father had picked up a share of another quota and now in the off-season they did crayfish. The family made better than good money. They had a big house, two cars, a fifty-inch flat-screen television to watch the rugby, and plenty in the bank.
The three pubs and the RSA still did okay considering the population was barely above two thousand. But there were no flash American cars parked outside the pubs these days. The money to buy them was long gone and so were the Americans who had brought the money with them.
"Where's the goddamn diner in this town–I need some friggin coffee?" Back then Happy Days was on the television every night at 6pm and that's how he knew what the tall guy with the hat and the cowboy boots wanted to know.
He told the stranger there was a tearoom along the street. The oil rig worker spat something into the gutter before saying, "Thanks kid," and patting him on the head.
"Where's the goddamn diner in this town–I need some friggin coffee?" He repeated to himself until he was sure he'd got it right. His mother gave him a clip around the back of the head when he walked into the house and said what the American had asked him.
"Not financially viable to continue drilling," was what they were told. There was definitely oil down there–and gas. But the deep and hostile Southern Ocean made mining cost-prohibitive.
The Americans went home, and the giant oil rigs and the all the work and money went with them.
"Gold, son! Gold is what these are," his father said as he did a quick skip and fired a couple of punches at a sack of oysters as it swung past him.
"Eight million of these little bastards this year," his father told him–again.
"You're like a bloody stuck record," James snapped as he dragged another sack across the deck.
"Oh yeah. Looks like someone's got a serious case of shit-on-liver."
"Whatever," James said.
"Good dose of castor oil will sort you out son." James rolled his eyes. His dad pushed down on the lever and the old winch kicked into gear, whining as its over-used cogs lifted the dripping sack up off the deck.
The sack crunched down onto on the back of the waiting truck. His father relit the roll-your-own cigarette that hung permanently from the corner of his mouth as he waited for the driver to unhook.
"Can't get enough of them up in Auckland." His father said out the corner of his mouth, his head cocked sideways as he relit the stub. James must've heard that at least two million times.
"Full of poncy stuck-up idiots that place. I'll tell you that for nothing," his father said. James watched as a cloud of blue smoke sat momentarily suspended around his father's head before being whisked away by a sudden gust of wind.
He'd been listening to the same things over and over for years but the truth was he didn't know if Auckland was full of poncy idiots or not because he'd never been there. Dunedin once. Queenstown on a rugby trip with the lads a couple of times and Christchurch airport on the way to the Gold Coast, where he met a foreign girl at a nightclub.
She seemed impressed when he told her he was a fisherman. She told him stories about the food in Spain and the hashish in Morocco. Her mouth tasted like cigarettes. He could've added Wellington to the list too but the wedding had to be called off.
Paulie Ryan got washed overboard by a freak wave on his way back down from the West Coast. Paulie's brother Bruce said by the time they realised he'd gone over there was no sign of him. "He went straight down like a stone," Bruce said.
The whole town knew the process and James had pictured it happening, over and over. Into the freezing water, gumboots filling up, clothes soaking up as much of the ocean as possible. Thirty seconds maximum–then down. Nowhere near enough time to turn a thirty tonne boat around in heaving seas.
Paulie's fiance's family came down from Wellington for the funeral. They were ordinary people and didn't appear to be stuck-up at all. James reasoned if there were more people like Sandra and her family in Wellington there was every chance just as many similar people lived up in Auckland.
Arseholes don't always live in the big cities, he wanted to tell his father, but the grief he'd get in return wasn't worth it. Instead he hooked up another sack to the winch and gave his father the okay.
As his father pushed down on the lever, he nodded for James to look behind him. James turned and looked over his shoulder and saw the smoke from aluminium smelter chimney had begun to drop down and mix with the ocean.
They had about twenty minutes before the weather closed in.
They always ate a dozen or so oysters each on the way back into port and sometimes the empty shells didn't make it overboard. James watched two sparrows land on the transom of the boat. One of the birds fluttered its wings, opening and closing its mouth as if speaking silently. The adult sparrow hopped over to the shucking bench, picked a scrap of oyster out of a shell and returned to the silently chirping youngster. After feeding the chick the morsel of chalky-grey flesh, the adult hopped back over to the shucking bench to retrieve some more food. The fluttering chick opened and closed its mouth until it was fed.
A seagull landed on the end of the chain-link dredge and the sparrows left.
James dragged another sack toward the winch.
"Jesus Christ, they get bigger every year," his father said as he nodded out into the harbour.
James looked over his shoulder again. She was at least twenty-stories high and as long as two rugby fields. The something-or-other Maru was her name. He couldn't pronounce the first word.
It never ceased to amaze him how quickly and how silently such a massive machine could creep into port. Look around one minute and there was nothing but seagulls and the Tiwai wharf. Look around five minutes later and twenty thousand tons of steel was gliding past.
"I reckon they eat the bloody stuff over there." His father said, just like he did every time a chip-liner or a log boat pulled into port. "They've got beautiful forests and they buy all their timber from us stupid buggers." The two harbour tugs, Hauroko and Monowai eased the massive ship toward her berth. She had already dumped her ballast well outside the port and was sitting high in the water. One tug was at her bow, guiding her along and another was at her rear pulling full-steam to slow her down. She disappeared around behind the meat loaders where the berth for logs and woodchips was.
"They're not stupid, those little slanty-eyed buggers, I'll tell you that for nothing," his father said.
"Can't you just shut up for five minutes?" he said to his father.
"You'd do well do get yourself a root, mate," his father replied.
James jagged the winch hook into the sack and stood back. His father pushed the lever forward and the old electric motor whined, reeling in the greasy wire cable, lifting another seventy-five dozen oysters onto the back of the truck.
He stared up at his father. His father held his gaze.
"She ain't coming back you know. She's made her decision," his father said.
James was the first to look away.
He wished he had the balls to stand up to his old man and have a proper argument–chest-to-chest with finger pointing. He would tell the old bastard the reasons she did leave and he wouldn't splutter. Tears wouldn't run from his eyes and he wouldn't forget what he wanted to say.
Instead, they worked in silence until the south easterly picked up just like smelter chimney said it would.
A few moments later his father began to whistle–as he often did when things were awkward between the two of them. A familiar tune. Something about swinging on a star.
James kept his head down so his father couldn't see the tears welling up in his eyes. The lump in his throat made it difficult to swallow and the burning in his stomach made him want to run to the side of the boat and vomit.
A hot shower. That's what got him through. Not the beer, not the oysters, not the promise of the fishing boat or the quota that came with it, just a hot shower and the hotter the better. A month or so ago, at his mother's insistence, his father installed a gas-operated water-heater so now he didn't have to worry about draining the hot water cylinder and getting told off. The shower hid his tears at home. The rain and sea-spray hid his tears at work. Sometimes he'd stand up at the bow of the boat and let the ocean hit him fair and square on the face. That way his red-eyes wouldn't give him away. Each wallop of salt spray stung like open-handed slap to the face. He bawled his eyes out and let the snot run freely.
Soon it was pouring down. The cold rain stung his face. He dragged another sack toward the winch and hooked it up.
"Jesus! Feels like it's come all the way from the Pole," his father said as he pushed on the lever, coughed like he was about to bring up a lung and spat a huge gob into the water.
"You comin' down the pub tonight?"
James didn't answer. He was trying to work out who or what decided who got to be famous or handsome? Or both? And who out of everyone got to be rich and happy?
The pub.
Darts night. Six pints just to get your eye in. It was rare that his father would come home empty-handed. A meat pack, a trophy of some sort, a black-eye, a story. One night he came home with a set of keys. Old Timmy Cooper got pissed and put his house on a game of snooker. Timmy got his keys back a few days later.
"D'll be there ya know," his father said.
James dragged another sack across the deck as the winch whined away above him.
Delina Finnerty. They'd known each other since primary school. She'd left her husband six months ago–or was it the other way around?
Like most of the others who couldn't find work, her husband left town. Now he was in Texas building grain silos with a few of the other local boys. Rumour had it they were making good money as well.
D was still here so he supposed if anyone did any leaving it was her husband.
"Why the hell anyone'd want to go and live over there is something I'll never understand," his mother said to him when he showed her the postcard with a picture of Las Vegas at night on the front.
"Everything's always bigger in America, love," his father said as he looked at the card.
One of the lads had written, "Vegas is awesome–wish you were here bro," on the back. Apparently they had flown up there from Texas for the weekend.
His father had patted his shoulder a couple of times on his way through to the living room.
"You'll be right mate," he muttered.
His father swung the winch around and dropped the sack of oysters on the deck of the truck. They hit the timber boards with a crunch.
His father was right–she wasn't coming back.
She'd reminded him of that fact in a letter he'd got a few weeks back. She told him about the places she'd visited and he knew she meant it when she told him she wished he were there with her to see them. She apologized for not being able to stay with him–back there, in that town.
"Higgo told me they're decommissioning the meat loaders," his father said as he put his hands on his hips and leaned backwards, something he often did to relieve the tension in his lower back. James looked over at them. The rain made them look further away than what they really were. Tall and grey. Mouths open. And now soon to be extinct.
If Higgo said they were decommissioning the meat loaders then they were. Higgo knew everything. He just did.
"Meat's going out of Port Chalmers or Lyttleton from now on. No more meat out of Bluff," his father said.
His father pulled the winch lever with his right hand and took out his tobacco pouch with his left.
"At least we've got these little bastards son."
James stood back and watched the dripping sack lift up off the deck.
He watched his father whistle, roll a cigarette, stop whistling, put the cigarette in his mouth, then light it.
James had told many that his father was the only person in the world who could roll a cigarette in the pouring rain and then successfully smoke it.
Half a dozen sacks to go–hose the deck off. Fill up with diesel for the morning and then home for a shower.
Maybe he would go to the pub tonight if D was going to be there.
Dallas Gopi spent a lot of time growing up in Bluff, fishing off the wharf and watching the ships and fishing boats come and go. After an extended stint of travelling abroad, he graduated from Otago University with a degree in English. He went on to complete a Master of Creative Writing at AUT, Auckland. Most recently he completed a Master of Screenwriting at Auckland University. Dallas lives on Waiheke Island with his wife Rochelle, and their daughter, Lola.
