Des, a boilermaker, tapped Antonello on the arm. ‘Wouldn’t go up there if I was you — it’s a fucking circus. They reckon they can’t get rid of the buckles caused by those heavy blocks you guys heaved up there, so they’re going to take the bolts out. Bob’s real fucking pissed, but they’re the bloody bosses.’
Des belonged to a group of Australiani who kept their distance from the dagos and wogs. He’d never spoken to Antonello before.
‘Bob said they did it on the other side,’ Antonello said.
‘Yeah. So they say, mate,’ Des replied. ‘I reckon it’s time to look for another job. Those engineers are losing it.’
Antonello watched Des until he disappeared into the portable where they clocked on and off. He scanned the site. It was busy. As well as the normal clutter of materials — steel rods, sacks of concrete, boxes of bolts, spools of wire rope and metal chain, enormous pipes and poles — there were several workers manoeuvring cranes and forklifts around the site and its many obstacles.
Antonello thought back to the first time he strolled along the river with his brothers. They’d only been in Australia a few days. No running motors, no horns, and no shouting. No stench of burning diesel. No bridge. He remembered watching the fishermen — young men and boys, mainly, but a couple of older blokes too — casting their lines into the water and then wedging the rod into a pipe hammered into the ground so their hands were free for a cigarette and a beer. The water was a murky brown — so unlike the rivers in Sicily — but the fish swam in it and none of the fishermen’s buckets were empty. They’d felt hopeful for their lives in Australia.
Over the years, Antonello and his brothers had spent many hours fishing along the river. The Yarra, one old fisherman had told Antonello, was called the Birrarung, once, long ago, when his ancestors had the run of the place. He’d taught them how to catch eels. ‘You Italians are the only white people I’ve met that understand they’re good eatin’,’ he said. The brothers took the eels home to their mother, who cooked them in a soupy stew the family loved.
Most of the fishermen resented the bridge and the way their river, their favourite fishing spot, the one their grandfathers and great-grandfathers had fished during the tough times when there was little else to eat, the one they had discovered as kids with their mates, the one where they had taught their sons to fish — the sons who’d come back from Vietnam without an arm, without a best friend, who were themselves only when they were fishing — was being destroyed. ‘Who needs a fucking bridge anyway? We don’t want those rich bastards coming over to the west,’ was the general sentiment.
‘You can’t stand in the way of progress,’ Bob had said when Antonello asked what he thought, even though Bob too enjoyed fishing.
When Antonello checked his watch, it was 11.45. Sam and Slav should’ve been heading down. He looked up at the men on the span. Bob was surrounded by his crew, including Ted, a new rigger who was saving for a surfing trip to Bali and had volunteered to replace Antonello on the morning shift. Bob was pacing. He seemed agitated.
Des had been worried about the bolts, but surely, Antonello thought, they wouldn’t take the bolts out unless it was safe. Not unless all the engineers and foremen agreed. He knew that Bob would not agree. ‘Shortcuts are never a good idea’: Bob’s golden rule. It was annoying sometimes — Antonello and the other riggers in Bob’s crews, especially the younger ones, often tried to sway Bob, but he wouldn’t be swayed. Once, after a long disagreement, Bob lined up the crew and, like an army sergeant, marched along, pointing at them and yelling, ‘My responsibility isn’t just to get the job done. It’s to your families, to make sure you fucking morons get home in one piece at the end of every day.’ They grumbled. One of the blokes called Bob ‘an old nanna’, but they followed his instructions to the letter.
It had been a tough couple of months on the job. Cantilevering the box-girders, a half-span at a time, manoeuvring them into position on the piers, supporting it with trusses and cables, was a slow and delicate process. The spans had given the crews trouble on the east side, and after the last box was lifted into place, buckles had appeared in the steel, leaving the whole east side unstable. ‘They shoulda fucking lowered the span back down, but no, no, they put in some braces and had a go at strengthening it while it was still up in the fucking air,’ Bob reported when he came back from the east side.
It had been mid-morning, and Antonello and the others were sitting in the crowded lunchroom, waiting for the rain to ease.
‘But of course, later the spans didn’t join up as they should’ve.’ Bob used his hands to show a gap between the two sides of the roadway. ‘Never seen buckles like that, like fucking tumours suddenly popping out… So what did they do? What ya reckon? They took out some bolts. They took the fucking bolts out. Can you believe it?’ Bob glared at the men. No one responded, and he continued. ‘First I thought, what fucking idiot came up with that idea? I was worried the whole thing was going to come down. I was ready to fucking run for my life. But it worked, it fucking worked,’ he said, grinding his cigarette butt into the ashtray. ‘They took thirty bolts out, like pulling teeth — like pulling Frankenstein’s teeth out with tweezers — but it fucking worked, and no more buckles.’
‘My son, Freddy, when he was a nipper, tied a string around his tooth and tied the string around the door handle. That worked. Might suggest it to the engineers,’ said Johnno, one of the older riggers. The men laughed, and Bob shook his head. ‘It was me old man’s idea — he had dementia, kept telling the kids stories about the old days,’ Johnno added.
‘Bet the tooth came out alright,’ said Sam with a grin. ‘Sounds like your old man, even with dementia, got more know-how than most of those engineers.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me. And the tooth fairy gave Freddy his penny, no question asked.’
‘A penny! Strewth, no way a kid would settle for a penny these days,’ one of the other blokes said.
‘Yep,’ Johnno responded, ‘even the Tooth Fairy has put her prices up.’
The laughter swept through the lunchroom like a cool breeze at the end of a hot spell, and the conversation moved on. Johnno began his usual rant against the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign, which was being supported by the unions, including his fucking union. And no one was thinking about the soldiers who were conscripted and were taking the brunt of the blame. Bob, like many of the other blokes, was actively involved. Antonello watched him move away to avoid an argument with Johnno.
When it came time to lift the last spans onto piers 10 and 11 on the west side, they’d been extra careful, pulling each box as close to the concrete pier as possible, inch by inch, like children might pull a go-cart up a steep hill. Once it reached the top, it was lowered onto rolling beams and slotted into position. But the two half-boxes weren’t the same height. It was a repeat of the problems on the east side. The engineers ordered huge concrete blocks. The riggers hoisted ten of them, each one weighing 8 tons, up to the top and spread them across the higher span to force it down. It hadn’t worked: the spans buckled.
Bob wouldn’t want them to take the bolts out, not unless it was safe. But up there the engineers were the bosses.
On the span, several men were working frantically; he couldn’t see what they were doing, but he could sense the urgency of it. And the despair — whatever they were trying wasn’t working. Something was wrong, very wrong. As Antonello whispered a short prayer, Please God, keep them safe, and made the sign of the cross over his chest, there were a series of loud eerie pinging and popping sounds, like shots from a rifle, and the men on the span scattered.