Molten Zinc
By Jamie Guiney
Charlie waits in a line of reeking men those few minutes before five o’clock. Isn’t supposed to. But everyone does it.
Blare of the hooter then. Each hand sliding a card through the grey machine.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
He leaves the factory gloom. Squinting against evening light. Wanders for home.
Finds himself turning left instead of right at Ardboe Street, down into the park, a place he rarely frequents.
His body guides him of its own accord, like it paid more attention to the doctor than his own mind, heeded the advice, that to sleep through the night a person needs to be tired, go out for walks, exercise, get plenty of fresh air; not that it matters he has a physically demanding job and gets plenty of exercise already. But it’s something more than that…
‘It’s like…’ he opens a hand, as though words might float down like feathers and gather into his palm, ‘it’s like…my world has changed. And everythin’ has turned to black and white.’
The doctor nods. Reaches for his pad with a striped-shirted arm and speaks as he scribbles. ‘Here’s some tablets that will help with the mood, and to sleep.’ He tears it off. Hands it over.
Charlie mooches perimeters of football pitches, along tarmac paths that morph into loose gravel tracks, snaking through dark-leafed bushes and pale trees, to the far side of the park where a grey squirrel sits upon a tree stump, paws up, like singing into an imaginary microphone, startling at Charlie’s boots upon the gravel, before zipping away up a tree and disappearing into the foliage.
Charlie catches the frayed rope, dangling from a thick branch.
Stares then. Wonders about it.
Feels so incredibly tired he could lie down and sleep.
Children’s laughter trickles from the playground further along, dissipates among the grass and leaf-buds. Sheep baaa through the fence behind him, calling after lambs as the last of the pearly spring sky turns for dusk.
Charlie continues around the lake, rows of daffodils like starlights. Sees a crowd of people, a line of them down into the water. Someone bursts up through the surface then. Gasping. Dripping. Smiling. As he keeps walking, next in line wades forward, crosses both arms at the chest, preacher manoeuvres to drop them under.
He passes the playpark, tennis courts, out through the gates and back towards Ardboe Street.
In the shower that evening, he tries to better articulate what he told the doctor and comes up with: layers. Everyone lives in one. Most in the vivid, colourful, kaleidoscopic wander of normality. Yet, he drifts in black and white, colour sucked out to make rainbows elsewhere.
He massages shampoo through his hair, thinks about that rope in the park. Maybe once a swing?
Perhaps some kids built it, and then one day, after a summer of fun, it snapped and they moved onto something else?
Normally he wouldn’t dwell on things this deeply, but it niggles him, this rope.
As suds fall in slaps, he decides to avoid the park then, part of him wanting another look at that rope, but mostly feeling dread about the whole thing.
He turns off the water. Steps out. Grabs a towel.
The tablets already help him sleep better, that’s for sure, but come with nightmares that sometimes wrench him awake and damp with perspiration.
How is he supposed to decide between little rest or rest that is disturbed?
He pulls on pyjamas.
How is he supposed to navigate, to behave, in a layer that isn’t his own, where his mind feels like a clock unable to keep accurate time?
The following Monday, in the unrelenting heat of the factory, he manoeuvres three farm gates with the crane, dangling them above the silvery pool of molten zinc.
Stares at the thick metal chain above.
Imagines a person hanging from it.
‘Did anyone ever hang themselves in the park?’ he says to Weeker at tea-break.
‘What park?’
‘The park.’ he signals with a thumb, through the staffroom wall, over a spread of fields, then through a housing estate and past the school.
‘Somebody’s hung themselves in every park in the country!’ Weeker lathers red sauce across his sausage roll. Bites half of it in one go.
Charlie slurps his tea. Steenson the supervisor pauses by their table. Small features crunched into the middle of his face like a rat. Everyone calls him - that bollocks Steenson - forever galdering over the roar of furnaces, working here so long the fires have seeped in, heating his temper to steady volcanic. Most days, he’s like Adolf Hitler orating at the Nuremberg rally.
‘Maybe ye’ll do us all a favour, Charlie. Buy yerself a good length of rope and head down to the park.’
Weeker laughs. Steenson sniggers.
Charlie sits wide-eyed. Sets down his mug. Before he can assemble the correct words, Steenson is gone. Back out on the factory floor.
In his old layer, Charlie would have laughed it off, thought no more about it. ‘Ye think that’s funny, Weeker? Jokin’ about someone’s life like that?’
‘Lighten up. It’s only a bit of craic!’ Weeker scoffs the rest of his sausage roll.
‘Aye, it’s alright to have a joke when it’s not on Steenson. Like that time his hair mysteriously changed from grey to brown overnight and the wee apprentice made a wisecrack about it and Steenson kneed him in the balls in front of everyone? Aye, only a joke, my arse.’
Weeker leaves the table.
Ivan the womaniser sits. ‘What’s happenin’, Charlie?’
‘Say Ivan, do ye know if anyone ever hung themselves in the park?’
Ivan adjusts his glasses. Shakes his head. ‘Aye, sure there was a young fella last year. Bloody awful. When they found him, his feet were an inch from the ground, like the branch gave all the bend it had.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Can’t remember his name. Sorry state of affairs. I mean, nineteen years of age.’ Ivan sips his tea. ‘Did ye have a run-in with Steenson? I saw him over here laughin’.’
‘He gets away with everythin’, just cause he’s a supervisor.’
‘I know, Charlie, but sure what can ye do?’
Charlie stares out the window. A clutch of snowdrops trying to hide in the grass. Then something surges inside and he is out at the big furnace, the zinc-silver pool, hoist in his hands, signalling across the shopfloor. ‘Steenson! Steenson!’
‘What!’
‘This hoist is too old. It’s done.’
‘What are ye talkin’ about – there’s not a thing wrong with it.’
‘Look.’ Charlie slings the hoist around his shoulders, wriggles, makes a show of it being too loose. Chain rattling above.
‘Yer fulla shit. It’s grand.’
‘I’m tellin’ ye! We need a new hoist!’
Out of nothing but pure incensed spite, Steenson puts the hoist on himself, pulls it tight around his shoulders without securing either of the main clips. Charlie has already slipped a cable-tie in through Steenson’s belt-loop and secured it at one side of the hoist.
‘What are ye at!’ Steenson shouts. Squirming. His ratface boiling red.
He grapples the cable-tie, Charlie already at the back of him, securing another, then grabbing the dangling controller, pressing a button.
Steenson rises into the hot air. Shouting and bawling. Legs kicking.
Weeker dashes over. Eyes wide behind safety glasses. ‘What’re ye doin’, Charlie?’
‘Teachin’ him a long-overdue lesson.’
The hoist swings out over the pool of molten zinc, Steenson ready to be galvanized, made new.
‘Right, that’s enough.’ Weeker seizes the controller.
‘I’ll friggin’ kill ye!’ Steenson’s voice so high it could shatter glass. ‘Yer bloody fired! Weeker! Weeker! Get me down!’
‘No, Steenson,’ Charlie points a finger, ‘I quit.’
As Weeker begins to operate the controller, Steenson shunts a little to the right. Shouts down. ‘Quit away, Charlie! I’ll get more work out of a bloody mannequin!’
In that moment, the look on Steenson’s smug ratface, Charlie lunges for the steel pillar to his right, flips open the cover. Slams the emergency release button.
The hoist above detaches from its coupling, falling with Steenson for the zinc below.
Eyes widened, panicked.
Left hand flailing for nothing that will help.
Observers startle back, to avoid hot splash.
As his body glops into the zinc pool, a silver arm briefly breaks the surface, then disappears.
‘What did ye do? What did ye do?’ Every facet of Weeker’s face alive with shock. ‘God, somebody hit the alarm.’
The siren blares. Flashing red lights spin into action all over the building.
Charlie runs around the side of the tank. Climbs onto its edge.
Stares into the molten zinc, a beautiful sight, waiting for Steenson to emerge silver and new.
How he’d like to be the same.
Galvanized.
Reborn.
Then a feeling of being deep inside his own head. Shouts of the other workers faint. Factory siren a whisper. Hand seizing his collar as he leaps for the hot silver.
The hooter blares.
Tea-break over.
Charlie blinks.
Stops staring out the window. Downs the rest of his warm tea.
People leave the staffroom, return to work.
He rinses the mug. Ready for late-afternoon break.
Approaches the swing-doors, glancing the small window, Steenson by the big furnace checking his watch.
Charlie pushes through, into the noise of the factory.
Wonders if he’ll ever get out of this layer.
Jamie Guiney is a literary fiction writer from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. His short story collection 'The Wooden Hill' (published by Epoque Press) was shortlisted under Best Short Story Collection, in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. Jamie's short stories have been published internationally and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He has also been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, long-listed for Irish Short Story of the Year in the 2021 An Post Book Awards, and short-listed for the Best in Rural Writing Contest 2023.
His debut novel - The Lightning - is publishing in 2026 with Bluemoose Books.