Juchster looked up again and said, “That’s a pretty slack effort, Smith!   When are you going to get up off your backside and start looking round for work?”

“I am looking round for work!”

“Look, I know that you’re due for the old age lark in a little under seven years’ time, but even so, you should at least pretend to want work in the meantime.”

“But there are no jobs around anymore!” protested Jack.

Juchster pointed toward the newspaper upon the bed, and said, “If you ever bothered to open that up to anything besides the funnies, you would find column after column of jobs just begging for someone to go out after them!”

“And every one of them demanding years of experience, a university degree, or somebody under the age of twenty-one,” pointed out Jack.   “After forty years as a turner and fitter, that’s the only thing I’ve got any experience at.   I left school at seventeen, so I sure as hell don’t have any degrees.   And as you can see for yourself, I’m just a little past twenty-one!”

“Listen, I’m not interested in listening to your excuses,” said Juchster.   He wrote upon the white form for a couple of minutes, then said, “Look, I know that you think that this is just a job to me and that if you feed me a load of bullshit, I’ll pretend to swallow it rather than go to the trouble of putting in a negative report, then having to follow up on it.   And I know that there are a lot of slack bastards around who would take the easy way out like that, but I’m hot like them!   I take my job seriously!   I take pride in doing a very difficult and important job!

“I take pride in helping to protect this country from the burden of parasites like you, Smith!   So don’t think that you can pull the wool over my eyes by telling me that there are no jobs around, when I can see for myself that there are all the jobs you could ever want, right here in the Sun!”

To emphasise his point, Juchster placed his clipboard upon the bed, picked up the newspaper, and began leafing through the back pages, looking for the situations vacant section.   After a couple of minutes he looked accusingly toward Jack.

“My wife took out the jobs section so I couldn’t go out job hunting while I’m still ill,” explained Jack.

“The extent to which some people will go to avoid looking for work,” said Juchster, putting down the newspaper.   He picked up the clipboard again and said, “Honestly, Smith, I can never understand you bludgers?   This is a great country, Smith!   You can become anything you want to be in Australia, if you are just prepared to work hard enough for it!”

“Christ!” said Jack.   “I’ve already told you that whenever a job does come up I haven’t got the qualifications necessary to have any chance of getting it.   What am I supposed to do, lie so that I can get a job I’m not qualified to do?”

“Hey, now you’re starting to get with it a bit.   We don’t give a damn how you get a job, just so long as you get off the dole!” said Juchster.   “If you have to lie to get work, we’ll back you to the hilt, no worries about that.”

“Oh great, so now I’m supposed to go into some place and say that I’ve got a degree in advanced whatever, but I’ve misplaced it and I’ve forgotten the name and address of the institute where I got it.”

“Hey that might just about work,” said Juchster, “if you say you got your degree twenty or thirty years ago, and act like you don’t exactly have the greatest memory in the world.   But don’t lay it on too strong.   If they think you’re a bit thick they won’t hire you.”

“Or perhaps I could say I’ve had years of experience at the job,” suggested Jack, “then name some imaginary firm as my past employer.   If they bother to check it out, and find the company doesn’t exist, I can always say that they must have closed down recently.”

“Right, right,” said Juchster, land if you named an imaginary employer in some godforsaken foreign backwoods, like Siberia, or Queensland, they couldn’t even check up on it and they’d have to take your word for it.”

“Fine, if you want me to go to gaol!” said Jack.   “But even when I find work to go for, there are always at least a couple of hundred others going for the same job.   Many of them little more than a third of my age.”

“Well, I can see that might be a bit of a problem,” conceded Juchster.   He thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers and said, “Hey, listen, you look pretty well preserved for your age, so we’ll back you up if you want to claim that you’re only fifty, or even forty-five for that matter.   Just say that you have already given us a copy of your birth certificate then tell them to ring us for verification of your age.”

*      *      *

Chris opened the bedroom door, poked his head in through the doorway and asked, “Have you finished with the Sun, dad?”

“Yes, you can take it,” said Jack, trying to sit up upon the bed.   He lay back with a groan and waved one hand in the direction of the newspaper at the end of the bed.

Chris walked across to pick up the newspaper from the end of the bed, and then turned to walk back toward the door.

“What’s the rush?” called out Juchster.   “I’d like a few words with you, just a few questions about what you have been doing recently to find work.”

Juchster took a second white form from the clipboard, and clipped it on top of the first form.

Chris walked back to the bed and said, “At the moment there are no jobs going … Unless you’ve got a degree.”

“Oh, no!” said Juchster.   “Like bludger, like son, eh?   I’ll just bet that you two have carefully worked this line out between you.   I suppose now you’re going to tell me that whenever you do go out after a job the other applicants all have stacks more education than you do?”

“Not all of them,” said Chris.   “But enough so that I don’t have a chance of getting any job I go out after.”

“Well, if it’s that big a problem, why the hell don’t you go back to school?” demanded Juchster.

“I would,” said Chris, “but I’ve only got fourth form education, and you can’t get the adult education grant to do less than HSC.   However, I did three subjects of Leaving at night school last year, and I’m doing another three this year.”

“And doing your homework during the day I bet, instead of looking around for work!” accused Juchster.   “Hell, I’ve heard of that trick before!”

“Look you asked me what I’m doing about getting enough education to get a job,” pointed out Chris.

“Granted.   We want you to get the education you need to get a job, or at least to get off the dole, but we don’t want you to get it in our time.   Your days Monday to Friday, and Saturday morning are strictly for job hunting!”

Juchster paused for a few moments to write on the white form, then said, “Look, I don’t give a bugger what you’re doing with your time, other than to find out why you aren’t spending it looking around for work!”

“But I am trying to get work!” insisted Chris, trying his best not to shout at Juchster.   “The only way I’ll ever get a job is by increasing my education, so that I can compete with the other job applicants.”

“Nice try,” said Juchster, deciding that it was time to lay down his trump card.   “Nice bloody try, but don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes.   I’m not completely stupid you know!   Don’t you think I know you had a job?”

“Well, sure … ” muttered Chris, thinking, ‘Why the hell do I feel so bloody guilty, when I’m in the right?’

“You landed a nice cushy job, lots of money, no hard work, and you threw it over after eight lousy months!”

“The bloody job was obnoxious!” shouted Chris.

“Oh hell a job’s a job’s a job, surely,” said Juchster, making Chris groan at the cliché.   And you expect me to believe that you’re really trying to get work?   You expect me to believe that you are doing night school for any reason except as an excuse to get out of job hunting, by pretending that your homework, done during the daytime, of course, will ensure that one day in the dim distant future you will land yourself a job.   Hell, after Leaving and HSC, you’ll probably go on to get your Bachelor’s degree, then your Master’s, then a Ph.D., then the old age pension.”

“Look,” said Chris, sitting upon the end of the bed, so that Jack had to move his feet, then moan at the effort, “when I first started work there I was driven half mad by the sound of the bottle top pressing machines, then they moved me to another section where the acid fumes had me coughing up half of my lungs.”

“Like father, like son in more ways than one it seems,” said Juchster.   “I’ve got to hand it to you, you sure tell a mean fairy story.   Keep it up; you’ll soon put the Brothers Grimm out of business.   Have you ever thought of trying to make a living writing short stories?   Guy de Maupassant had nothing on you two.”   He snapped his fingers, “Hey!   Maybe you could team up and be the world’s first father and son short story writing team.   You’ve both been given a very special talent for creating fiction, it would be a shame to waste it!”

“Look smart-arse bloody remarks aren’t going to get us anywhere!” said Jack, coming to Chris’s aid.

“Just watch the bloody lip!” shouted Juchster.   “Just remember that I’m running this show, not you!”

“Show?” asked Chris.   “Don’t you mean circus?   What did you say you’re name was again?   Barnum?   Or Bailey?”

“Or perhaps one of the Ringlings?” suggested Jack.

“Good,” said Juchster, “at last we’ve got it out in the open.   The fact that you are not doing anything at all to get yourself work.   If you were, you wouldn’t be wasting my time with banalities.   So now I’m going to have to put in a negative report about you!   About both of you!”

“So what?” asked Jack.   “Weren’t you going to anyway?   Before you even came into this house?   Before you even left your office this morning?”

“Clearly it would be a complete waste of time to remain here any longer,” said Juchster.   “It is pretty obvious that neither one of you is doing anything at all to find work.”

“We’re doing everything we bloody well can!” shouted Jack.   He tried to sit up to shout at Juchster, but was struck by shooting pains in his back, so he slumped back onto the bed.

Juchster took the two forms from the front of the clipboard, placed them inside the clipboard, returned his pen to the breast pocket of his coat, then said, “You really don’t seem to understand the situation do you, Smith?”

“Oh yes I understand the situation all right,” said Jack.   “It might be for the first time in my life, but I certainly understand the situation this country is in when dickheads like you can go around victimising people who are down on their luck, while I’m stuck on the dole, without even the sniff of a job, after forty years of honest work!”

“Well, don’t worry, Smith,” said Juchster, “the way you’re going, you won’t be stuck on the dole much longer!”

“When smart-arses like you can bludge in a nice cushy job,” continued Jack, “while a bright lad like Chris here is rotting away on the dole.   Oh yes, I understand the situation at last!”

“I think it’s time I left,” said Juchster.

“Yes,” agreed Chris, “you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

“No, Chris, you’re wrong,” corrected Jack, “that bastard was never welcome in this house!”

Juchster strode out into the corridor, almost knocking over Norma, as she stepped into the bedroom.

“He sure left in a hurry,” said Norma.

“But not quick enough for my liking,” said Jack.

Norma stood by the doorway, watching Chris reading through the newspaper for a few moments, then she took a few more steps into the room and said, “Pauline rang a while ago to say that Kevin has landed himself a job.”

“Good on him,” said Jack.   “What at?”

“Only as a Storeman and Packer for Coles.   Still, they’re pretty rock solid, so it should see him through to retirement in sixteen or seventeen years’ time.”   She paused for a few seconds, glancing down at her feet as though looking for inspiration.   Finally she said, “And I rang Debbie Williams to tell her that I’d take the job in her laundry.”

Jack gazed at Norma for a few seconds, sighed loudly, then said, “Fair enough, I suppose.”

Chris looked up from the Sun and stared at Jack for a moment, then looked across at Norma.

Norma turned toward Chris to see if he had heard the same thing that she had.   Seeing that Chris was as stunned as she was, Norma asked, “What brought on this sudden change of heart?”

“That bastard who just lefts,” explained Jack.   “He made me realise that I was wrong to want to force you to live your life by my standards.”

“Then you don’t mind me taking a job while you’re still out of work?” asked Norma.

“I’d still prefer it if you didn’t,” admitted Jack, then he hurried to add, “but you do whatever you think is best.   I won’t interfere with whatever you decide.”

Norma walked across to lie beside Jack upon the bed, so that she could hug him and Chris said, “Perhaps I’d better leave the room … Quickly!”

“That bastard made me realise that I don’t owe this country anything, if they can’t even treat me like a human being after I’ve worked my guts out for forty years,” said Jack, stroking Norma’s long, auburn hair.   “So from now on in, I’ll just see out my time on the dole till I can get the old age pension and if any jobs come along, I’ll leave them to blokes like Chris who really need them and who are still young enough to be able to make a career for themselves.   After all I can’t be any bigger a bludger off the taxpayer than that bastard who just left: taking people’s hard earnt money to go around terrorising folks who are a bit down on their luck.”

“But what if the bastard gets you thrown off the dole?” asked Chris.

“There’s no real danger of that happening.   All the bastard can do is put in his negative report, and then it’s up to the powers-that-be down at the CES to make the final decision.   They’d never throw me off the dole; the public would never stand for it after I went to Mike Willesee or the Truth.   After all, I’m a forty-year-man!”

“He could still get me thrown off,” pointed out Chris.

“No worries, son, you’ll be able to get the education grant from the start of 1979, and if the mongrels throw you off before then we’ll look after you.   Norma and I can afford to support you rent-free for a few months, till you go back to day school, if need be,” said Jack.   “Particularly how that she’ll be bringing in some money from her job.”

“That’s right, Chris,” agreed Norma, “you know you can count on us not to let you starve.”

“But won’t dad lose the dole anyway, if you’re working?” Chris asked Norma.

“Only if we tell them,” answered Norma.

“They’ll find out,” insisted Chris.

“No, they won’t,” insisted Norma.   “I haven’t had a job in sixteen years, or put in a tax return in that long, so how could they ever find out?”

THE END