Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [20]
As the incoming edged up the plan, the cutting-teams threw grapplers and swung themselves up the cloudy gel. Though they mustn’t drop any gel while the beast was moving, they could make all their preparatory slits. This they did with ropes and weights, pulling the ropes through the gel just the way a merchant cuts wax-cheese with a wire. The shroud began to look fringed about the head and shoulders. The nimble rope-clippers darted in and out; chanters’ voices rang on the stinking air from high on the beast’s torso.
The message came through on the talkie: the tugs were done. The beast was beached, all head to foot of it. Jupi walked up the plan and signalled the bell-man. The bell clanged, the teams cheered, the ground teams scuttled away from the body. Great strips of the gel began tumbling from above. They splashed in the shallows and bounced and jounced and sometimes leaped into curls across the other strips. Hookmen straightened them flat on the ground, making a wide platform on which the beast’s parts could be deposited.
Another smell took over from the burnt-shroud odour. I had smelt it before as I helped Jumi, as I cleaned and cooked and span. She would lift her head, happy because the work—Jupi’s and Dochi’s work—was going on, and if one of the other mothers was there she would say, Smell that? It always reminds me of the smell of Dochi when he was born. Like inside-of-body, but clean, clean. New.
Smell of clean, warm womb, the other might say.
Yes, and hot, too! Hot from me and hot from him.
When I was born to her, I must have smelt not so good, not so enchanting, for it was always Dochi she mentioned. Maybe it was only the first-born who brought out the clean smell with him. I did not want the details of in what way I had smelt bad—or perhaps, how she had not noticed my smell from being in such horror at my leg. So I never asked.
Anyway, there would be other smells soon against this one: oil and fuel, sweat and scorched rope, hot metal, sawn bone, sea and mud and stirred-up putrefaction.
‘Amarlis?’
The way I sprang to face Mavourn showed that I’d been waiting not moments but years to hear my name, to be called to usefulness.
‘I’m putting you on a thigh-team,’ he said. ‘It’s got a good man, Mister Chopes, heading it. Are you happy with that?’
‘Very happy, sir!’
‘There is Mister Chopes with the kerchief on his head. I’ve told him you’re on your way.’
‘And I am!’
I swung myself across the watery plan, watching Mister Chopes count heads, scan the hopping hopefuls, pick out a good clean man and give him a job-ticket, shoo away a sneaky-looking boy. The team’s chanter stood with his drum and beaters, wrapped in his white cloth and his dignity. He too was a contractor; he had no need to fuss.
Mister Chopes counted again, then sent them off for their hooks and spades, and turned and saw me. ‘You Amarlis?’
‘I am, sir, Mister Chopes!’
‘You ready to look sharp?’
‘Sharp as a shark-tooth, sir!’
‘Mavourn says you’ll be good, but you’re new, right?’
‘That’s right, sir. This is my first day ever.’
‘I’ll give you plenty of advice, then. You won’t sulk at that, boy? You’ll take that in good spirit?’
‘I’ll be grateful for all you can give me.’
‘Then we’ll do fine. Main thing, no one gets hurt. All those boys have mothers. All those men have wives and children waiting on them, right? Your job’s to make sure they come home on their own legs, right? Not flat and busted by beast-bits. This here is Trawbrij; he’s our chanter.’
‘How do you do, Trawbrij?’ I shook hands with him.
‘Twenty years on the plans,’ said Mister Chopes. ‘He’ll tell you anything more you need to know. Now, let’s get down the thigh.’ Because all the team was tooled-up and running back to us.
Some of the hopefuls, lingering nearby in case Mister Chopes changed his mind, cast jealous