Arm - writing exercise 1 march

My right arm has a scar, lying one inch above the elbow, a puckered
abomination the size of a middle-ranking coin. The scar has been there
for fifteen years. I was working in a foundry, we were casting huge
connections for oil tanker pipes.

The foundry was Wagnerian in its simulation of a fiery black pit. There
was a dominant smell of burnt sand and the cloying tang of metal, as if
metal had become a vapour. Which we breathed in doubly as we panted our
way through the routines of casting. The coffee-brown sand used in
casting was everywhere, and the lights strung along the high ceiling
seemed to spread a light that stopped about five feet above our heads.
The night shift foundry crew were sullen and warped men, taken out of
days, placed in this cavern of extremes, unable to talk above the din
of fires and metal scraping on metal. A cacaphony of uncomfortables,
against which we padded about the foundry floor in our layers of
fireproof overalls. So thick they were, that we felt armoured. The
headphones we wore made the ears itch, and in that seclusion from the
roar and scream of casting, it was easy to forget just how hellish this
place could be.

My principal job in the foundry was as a fettler, extracting the
newly-cast metal from the sand in which they had been formed,
transporting them to the sandblasting pit where I would remove the
burrs and fettles from the surface. The job paid well, and I wasn't
asked if I had done it before. This job had one function for me, and
one alone, to fund my next trip to Japan and the eclectic delights of
Tokyo in the company of Ji Yun.

At times during the night, when the barrel furnace had a belly full of
incandescent molten alloy, the shift foreman would sound a necessarily
piercing siren to call us to the ' front line '. This was the foundry's
heart. Where the moulds and the pouring bucket would converge in the
process of casting. The long-timers occupied the best positions, as
furnace overseers and button pushers. Us motley vagrants would be
utilised in the most dangerous or dull tasks.

The barrel furnace stood some twenty foot high on its stand, rotated
until its top hole was accessible by the long tool used to puncture the
crusty surface of the melt. This was a beautiful moment, as the five
metre pole was forced through the crust, it would break into
incandescent fervour, rivulets of white hot metal impacting on the
ground like casual fireworks. The heat would dry your lips in an
instant, like sharing a table in a pub with a minor sun. The pouring
bucket, held on a long curving bar by two men, would be placed under
the barrel as it started to pour the metal out.

Once it had collected enough metal, the pouring bucket was carried
steadily to the mould boxes waiting on the casting line. The casting
line was a railway track that was travelled along by the heavy
sand-filled moulds on their little trolleys. The pourers would pour
into the mould boxes with speed and precision, competing with the
metal's hardening and the danger of mould box blow-outs, where the
metal would erupt back out in reaction to a bubble of air. Once filled
with molten metal the mould boxes would be pushed down the track to the
next men on the line, who would push it down the line, and so
forth.

My job was on the bend in the railway line, to guide these heavy boxes
of molten metal and sand into the sidetracks. By the time these boxes
reached me on the bend, they were flying. One Friday night, when
everybody was impatient for the shift to end, a box came down that had
a rogue element to its speed, the crude wheels must have bit a gobbet
of sand on the tracks.

It flew towards me, three hundred pounds of sand, molten metal and box,
and I froze. As it bucked from the tracks it stood up on its front
wheels, I just imagined losing my face, that's all I could think of. I
instinctively put up my two heavily-mittened hands and held my
breath.

The box fell to the floor and I was able to jump back from the obscene
mulch of sand and cooling globs of metal that spread out on the floor.
I had escaped. Nobody had noticed this derailment and the next box was
coming down the line. Avoiding the mess on the floor I guided that box
into the holding area, and the box after it etc until the pouring had
ended.

That's when I noticed the itching in the crook of my right elbow.
Whilst in conversation with Geordie, another fettler, he noticed me
scratching my arm and took off my mitten. The smoke that followed the
mitten's removal was me smoke. Flesh smoke. Hurriedly stripping off the
hefty overalls, Geordie dug his fingers into my arm and pulled a pebble
of alloy, still red hot, from my skin.