Short Story - By Prescription Only

(Highly Commended - Stringybark Short Story Competition 2024)

Today’s work clothes lie folded away from everyone’s feet on the bench beside the chipped cast iron bath. Sweat and engine oil endure after countless runs through the industrial washer. The promotion from contractor to employee and the company taking over my clothes washing was like a marital aid after years of running two washing machines at home. Even they can’t cleanse the mine that seeps from my pores.

Breakfast is toast with apricot jam and coffee. One of the kids, I’d say Ben, has messed with the setting so the burnt side is hidden by butter. In the fridge, Jane has packed my lunch and smoko; last night’s leftovers with biscuits made from an online recipe the kids say are too sweet for their new tastebuds. They now tell me sugar gives us cancer. If that’s true, how did our ancestors live on nothing but tea, flour, and sugar, yet somehow found the strength to build this town while growing crops on gravel? Perhaps sheer bloody-mindedness cancels out disease.

The food containers are wedged into my crib bag against a thermos of black super sweet coffee. It’s the oldest most beaten-up thermos and still works a charm. A seventeenth birthday present from a girlfriend. A practical gift, but I still gave her a look until she let me touch her boobs in her mum’s car while both our parents drank rum and coke in the garage to Jimmy Barnes screaming Working Class Man. She complained my hands were rough. I said she was softer than silk even though I had no idea what silk felt like. Still don’t.

My breakfast mug goes in the dishwasher. I close the door to the front of the house as quietly as possible. Maybe it’s the caffeine causing the headaches late in the shift. Johnno says coffee throws out his circadian cycle. I say that’s rubbish because jumping from dayshift to nightshift every fortnight means none of us has a regular cycle. Anyway, Johnno takes more sleeping pills than the rest of us. The town doctors' hand out prescriptions like Halloween sweetie bags.

Out on the road, I can see my breath. It’s not yet cold enough for gloves. I push my left-hand thumb through a hole in the jacket pocket as I wait for my lift and enjoy last night’s blanket of pre-dawn air that rests over Lithgow. Yesterday’s rain has washed the world so clean I might be standing in timbered mountains instead of a suburban post-war sprawl. There’s a crumpled Smiths packet on the neighbour’s lawn that’s moved closer to the road since yesterday.

Dakka pulls up to the curb and says it’s my turn in the front. But it’s not Tuesday. In the back, Johnno and Sean have their heads against the doors. I say nothing and get in. Radio National jabbers for the forty-five minutes it takes to get to the pit, and as we reach the tall steel gates on their automatic rollers dawn breaks over the hills.

Six hours into our shift the mine’s alarm sounds. For a moment, it’s like that time I watched a kid at school walk through a glass door. All I could do was freeze as people rushed past me and walked him calmly to the school nurse. It happens again now.

We shut down the continuous miner and cram into the Driftrunner for the drive to the surface, our shoulders bumping as we rock in the seats while around us the transport’s engine roars in the rocky tunnel. We’re relaxed because no-one in our panel has been injured. Jacko shouts that the ventilation fans have probably tripped again. I nod because I don’t think anyone else hears him. Jane says it’s time I got a hearing aid. Let’s think about that when I turn fifty.

In the sunlight, we’re told an apprentice got smashed in the face from a hydraulic hose decoupling. Part of his safety glasses are embedded in his cheekbone and oily pinholes freckle his face and neck. Just three years older than my kid and already booked on a helicopter ride to Sydney where they’ll inject him with a chemical to scan for hydrocarbons in his bloodstream and muscles. We joke about how the girls will dig the scars, while not saying what we’re really thinking.

The boy’s lying on a stretcher, wrapped in a space blanket. Trying to keep head still. By the looks of it, he’s had the green whistle. Won’t know what’s going on.

Fatherly hands rest on his shoulders.

The Undermanager anxiously clutches a letter that says, Dear Doctor, Jake Mahoney has a high-pressure injection injury around his face and neck.

Every single person, underground miners and office staff alike, watches him go until we can’t hear the chopper anymore.

At dinner, I’m reminded the kitchen table is too small for the four of us. When the kids were little, it was handy to reach across and help with the challenges of cutlery. Now they’re in high school, our knees touch under the tablecloth and the plates are crammed.

‘What did you do at school today?’ I ask both the kids.

‘Nothing,’ says Georgie. She’s pushing the cauliflower and broccoli as far away from her meatloaf as possible.

I glance at Ben. ‘How about you, mate? What’d you get up to?’

‘Played soccer in the arvo with the boys. Had a double period of science in the morning.’

‘That’s good. You like science.’

‘We’re learning about climate change.’

‘Uh, huh?’

‘Mr Forster says we need to change everything to batteries before it’s too late.’

‘Right. Too late for what?’ I say, as neutrally as possible.

‘The point where we won’t be able to stop the world from burning up. Mining is ruining the world and we gotta stop otherwise the place will get too hot for everything to live.’

Ben spears a piece of broccoli onto his fork followed by meatloaf then a wipe of gravy over the top. It’s a pattern he’ll repeat for the entire meal. I give him a moment to finish his mouthful.

‘He’s given us an assignment to do on the greenhouse effect. Which sucks,’ he says.

Jane’s half-way through her dinner already and I see Georgie’s about to run out of meatloaf.

‘Have you thought more about what you want to do when you leave school?’ I ask.

Ben shakes his head as he stabs the next green flower.

‘Still keen on engineering? Good mechanical engineers will always be needed,’ I say.

‘Don’t think I’ll go to uni, dad. None of the lads wants to go to uni.’

I can feel Jane’s eyes on me. ‘Don’t waste that brain of yours,’ I say. Even knowing what his response will be, I go on, ‘You’d be a good mine manager, mate. You’ll have to start at the bottom like the rest of us and work your way up. But you’d do that real quick.’

‘Mr Forster says the mines are part of the problem.’

The 2002 disaster memorial plaque at our mine entrance appears in my mind. One day, four lives, three orphans.

‘I’ve never met Mr Forster,’ I mumble. ‘Let me guess. He’s from the city, so he knows all about the mines.’

The kids say they don’t have any homework tonight. This leaves the adults free until half-way through series four of Mad Men, I’m accused of snoring in my chair.

In our bed, Jane kisses me lightly and looks at my pillow and tells me to clean my ears better. I remind her you can’t get rid of all the dust. Down the hall, Ben is on his Xbox killing soldiers and shouting at his online mates to stop dying.

For the first time of the year, Jane’s wearing her flannel nightie. When I nestle behind her and put my arm over her tummy, she pushes back against me and sighs. Her hair smells of her, but I can’t say that, or she’ll move away. We’ll stay locked together until she’s asleep or I get too hot, whichever comes first. Probably me. I’ve always run hot.

With my eyes closed, the red dot of the alarm clock stays floating around like a devil’s flashlight flicking every time I move my eyeballs. It’s brighter than normal and keeps me awake while Jane’s breathing becomes slower and fainter.

I get too hot and roll onto my back. My arm is outside the blanket so it’s within reach of the alarm, and there I wait for the Stilnox to take me away.