Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Hanging on the side step of Peter's yellow forklift, going without rest between huge steel plate and pipe, three hours had already passed watching how the site turned.

I had not taken the controls myself, but I thought I knew roughly how the site turned.

When a call came on the radio Peter went to where that goods was, checked the product code of the items the zone workers loaded, loaded that on the truck, and when a truck came in again stacked materials to the code, and if a problem came he contacted Rosie, that sort of way.

Peter too, going on with the work, taught the method one by one, and there was nothing greatly hard.

Seeing that, Peter makes a fairly satisfied smile too.

Nine in the morning. A sharp siren sounded short across the whole site.

"Jeong-su! Let's rest a bit now. Smoko time!"

Peter shouted, parking the forklift in a corner.

"But what's smoko?"

"Smoke time! Aussie slang workers use."

"Aha."

I laughed and followed Peter.

An outdoor rest area set in a corner of the yard.

There, white workers of big build I had glimpsed outside the office at dawn were sprawled on plastic chairs, smoking or biting meat pies.

"Hey, guys! Say hello. Jeong-su, the new hire who came today."

When Peter introduced me good-naturedly, a man sitting in the middle of the crowd drinking coffee from a thermos nodded and opened his mouth.

"Good to meet you. I'm Foreman Gary. From what I heard from Rosie, you came from driving heavy equipment in the army? If a problem comes, come find me, and let's do well from here."

At a glance that person was the oya of the site.

Just from the postures the workers sat in, you could see the crowd formed around that person.

Because in the wild, the more important the person, the more the habit of naturally surrounding and protecting them.

As expected, a construction site and here are all the same.

"Please look after me, Foreman Gary."

I offered a Korean-style greeting, agreeable, and received an Australian handshake again.

I should leave as good an impression as I could.

Then, a big white man who had been chewing a hot dog in a corner of the crowd sat crooked and suddenly picked a fight.

"What's please look after me? Hey, Asian. Sucking honey beside Peter for three hours, only watching, feels like you came on a picnic?"

He mixed exaggerated gestures on purpose and shot at me slow, in a very blatant and insulting accent.

'Is this bastard a fool?'

The thought that rose looking at him in that moment.

Not a joke, this one was certainly a thoughtless idiot or a fool.

The company situation would want to borrow even a cat's paw, and he ignores that and picks a fight?

What if I run?

In a word, a guy who does not know the company situation, or does not have it in mind.

I turned my head fast.

Anyway even if a problem comes here, the company cannot cut me.

The problem is they will not cut that bastard who caused the accident either.

At best they will only move shifts so we do not bump.

Then what I can do is stack a cause.

A cause to finish that bastard legally.

Perhaps the thing I needed most.

Thinking that far, I looked at him.

At that he got excited and ran his mouth.

"Coming all the way to Australia to steal our jobs, at least your sense should be fast!"

As expected, a fool.

No need to think twice.

"Do you even know what a forklift lever is? If you drop even one lump of iron on my foot, then I'll smash that flat nose of yours."

A typical repertoire of a racist bogan.

Blatant hostility that hooked in at the first meeting, just as we were about to introduce ourselves.

In that moment the air of the rest area froze cold.

Even Peter, flustered, tried to stop him, "Hey, Carl! From the first meeting the words are too much!", and Foreman Gary too furrowed his brow hard.

The funny thing is that among them there is no one giving me a look.

Everyone was only twisting their faces looking at the big white worker.

Did they think I would bow my head and let it pass because I am Asian?

From the experience of living through everything on a rough labor board, a fight of spirit like this must never be let pass.

On the day you avoid it saying you do not want to fight, a weak image is made, and later when a problem comes the arrow can fly at me.

Because I am the weak one.

I walked up to the big worker and scanned him up and down as if interesting.

Then, a very bright and pure smile full at the mouth, I burst an exclamation in fluent English.

"Well! Wow! I really see one for the first time!"

At my out-of-nowhere cheer, the big worker chewing the hot dog made a blank face.

"Wh, what?"

I sparkled my eyes like a tourist who had found a rare animal and came right up to his nose.

"A racist, I mean! Australia was famous in the past for the White Australia policy?"

White Australia, the same as South Africa's apartheid, was no different from the whites' shame.

The guide book said White Australia was abolished in the 1970s.

It meant this generation grew up seeing racial discrimination directly.

I went on, shameless, pretending to know nothing.

"I thought if I came to Australia there would be a tremendous number of stupid racists. But after I came to Australia everyone was too kind to me. So I nearly got a bit disappointed······ wow, finally met one on a work site! I see one for the first time today!"

Bringing up White Australia was also words for the other workers.

In fact, when I said White Australia policy, a few workers made a stung face.

I pretended not to know, even clapped, and added in a very moved voice.

"Wow······. Really amazing. I didn't know watching television or movies, and seeing it in person, they look this blatantly ignorant? If the brain is full of muscle instead of wrinkles, does the face originally change like that?"

Tea-bagging that hits the bone outright, with the face of an innocent foreigner who knows nothing.

"Puuup!"

The first to burst was Foreman Gary, who had been drinking coffee.

When the brown coffee he sprayed scattered flashy on the table, the other workers who had been watching beside him in the end could not hold it and clutched their bellies and burst.

"Puahahaha! He said you look ignorant! My god, Carl! You got read properly!"

The name of that build seems to be Carl.

"Holy shit! That new hire, the guts from the first meeting are no joke! Is he really a lunatic? Hahaha!"

Even Peter standing behind me burst out laughing as if he would lose his breath, and the face of Carl, who on the spot from the first meeting had taken rare-animal treatment and an ignorant-bastard certification outright, flushed crimson as if it would burst.

"You, you fucking little monkey bastard, really trying to die······!"

The height seems similar······ with that belly, can he even hit me?

I slowly put strength in the body and prepared.

Carl, swept in extreme humiliation, panted and shot up, but I did not even blink.

Rather I opened my eyes round and shrugged toward Foreman Gary.

"Foreman Gary. That friend's angry form is textbook too. If I ask later to take a commemorative photo together, will he try to hit me?"

"Kahaha! Stop, Jeong-su! Keep that up and he'll really foam and collapse. Carl! You stop too. Cause an accident here and I won't leave you."

As expected, a capable foreman.

Laughing until he wipes tears, but he did not forget to warn Carl.

He tried to make all this situation one natural happening and smooth the incident.

Carl, unable to beat his anger, panted, and still could not raise a fist in front of the seniors.

So he has a minimum of a head.

In the end he only roughly kicked an innocent plastic chair with his foot, left the curse "fuck!", and left the spot thudding.

After he disappeared from sight, Peter, still leaking tears, tapped my shoulder hard.

"Wow, you're really no ordinary guts? Saying that to Carl's face from the first meeting? Earlier I was startled thinking you'd really take one!"

"Why? I didn't even say anything wrong. And the build is big, but looking at the form of clenching a fist, it was nothing. I learned boxing in the army. Shik! Shik!"

Taking a shadow-boxing stance and throwing a fist, the white workers on the site all raised thumbs and cheered.

Not a clumsy, easy backpacker from the East, but a first impression made as a guy with backbone who never yields even to Australia's rough turf.

In that sense I really should thank Carl.

If he had thrown a fist here there would have been a better result, but even without it the effect seems enough.

Goodwill frosted in the other people's eyes.

I took the cold can of cola Peter handed me and opened the lid cool.

The cola drunk meeting the Australian morning wind that cooled the sweat was fairly sweet and cold.

* * *

The second siren announcing the end of the sweet fifteen-minute smoko rang across the site.

The workers scattered to their spots, and I went into the work proper.

"If there's work you don't know, ask by radio anytime."

"Thanks, Peter."

"Haha. No. Looking at you, your sense is fast, so I think you'll do well. Work hard."

"Right. You drive careful too."

Peter brought me in front of my dedicated machine and left.

I approached the blue 6-ton forklift.

Before getting in the seat, I opened the engine bay like a habit, pulled the engine-oil gauge, and checked viscosity and amount.

I looked at the level of the coolant reserve tank, and scanned fast with the eyes the wear of the tires and whether the fork's hydraulic hose leaked.

A 2.5-ton, you can check roughly and there is no big problem, but a 6-ton, one slip and the life flies.

"Good, the condition is excellent."

Smiling satisfied, I got in the seat and started, and the heavy diesel engine woke growling, as if waking from sleep.

I pressed the clutch, put it in gear, and drove the forklift toward zone B, where huge steel plate and H-beam were piled like a mountain.

Once the work proper began, the logistics yard of Wetherill Park changed into a battlefield, literally.

Huge trailer trucks pushed in the gate without rest, and radio and shouts tangled everywhere in the yard.

I matched breath with the two local workers assigned to zone B and moved the goods.

When they lifted materials with a small crane and set them on the ground, according to type I put wooden chocks, or put timber between the products.

"All right, up! Slow!"

I pulled the hydraulic lever to the worker's hand signal.

This is the section beginners find hardest.

Small goods do not matter, but catching the center of weight of a lump of iron of several tons with a large area is harder than you think.

The school's calculation problems came out to do this.

Beginners fail to catch the load's center of weight, and the forklift's rear wheels lift, or the cargo tilts and clunks, all the time.

Besides that, a large steel plate blocks the driver's view.

Without an assistant's guide it was hard even to drive.

If an accident happened, it was not me who got hurt, but other workers around who might lose their lives, so it was work you always had to be careful of.

I carefully operated the forklift and took a stable posture.

In the gaps I checked the weight of the cargo and the state of the forklift and worked the accelerator.

And without an inch of shake I lifted the heavy steel frame and stacked it clean, matched to the angle, in the designated yard.

"Nice! Perfect!"

The worker giving hand signals below raised a thumb.

But my work did not end at simply carrying loads.

"Wait, stop. Check the product code of what we just set down again."

Holding the paper invoice clipped on the clipboard, I stuck my head out the forklift window.

The worker read loud the code scrawled in paint marker on the steel frame face.

"Alpha-bravo-seven-niner!"

"On my documents it's alpha-bravo-seven-eight? The code doesn't match."

I pressed the radio on my shoulder at once.

"Rosie, copy? Jeong-su here. Unloading the trailer that just came in, and the documents and the actual code are different. Please check the invoice number."

The moment I let the button go, static and Rosie's voice flowed from the radio at once.

(Static— Jeong-su, copy. Let me check the bloody mermaaa... $%^&@!)

"······Huh?"

I looked down at the radio blank, flustered.

What did she just say?

Talking English through a phone is already a thing that draws cold sweat, and a fast, thick Aussie accent pouring through a radio packed with every machine noise and static was hell, nothing else.

Words crushed into words, and an alien tongue that could not be understood at all came to the ear.

Suddenly cold sweat ran down my back.

While I was frozen like a mute who had eaten honey, Rosie's voice burst urgent once more over the radio.

(Oh, shit! Fucking supplier bastards! @#$%$^%&!!! Anyway, Jeong-su! Tell that truck driver to bounce to the office right now!)

Only a few thick curses stuck in the middle, and the word office, barely stuck in the ear.

"······Ca... copy that."

I wiped the cold sweat, barely answered, and waved a hand toward the truck driver standing bewildered.

"Hey, mate! They say come to the office! The documents got tangled!"

The hellish listening test of the radio made the spine cold, but still, whether I had not made a mistake, at the exact handling the truck driver and the site workers showed smiles.

From an untrusted strange worker, I was changing fast into a colleague who could be trusted.

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