Paddy gets his ass beat (Finucane Island pt. 2)

 To my and Jimbo's~ twenty two year old eyes, Paddy seemed an icon that had been at Finucane Island forever. We thought he was the mayor for life. He was an uneducated and unskilled old school Irish laborer, UNION MAN and gosh you heard about it. He and a crew of about six, including his equally alcoholic eighteen year old son, who had recently left Ireland to join dear old dad in our Pilbara desert mining camp, repaired the railroad bed that carried the iron ore from the mine in Mount Newman, 50 km inland, to our slurry producing and shipping depot on Finucane (at the time this was John Henry shovel and sledgehammer technology, but it was changing as this was a dying profession as machines and computers were taking over, but Paddy's team had been inefficiently grandfathered in, per the union contract).

 Every night, the drunker he got, he would blather on about the working man, the bloody union bosses, Ireland, the old days, sing patriotic Irish songs, etc. while his son looked on impassively and glassy-eyed . About every two weeks, someone would say something, and he would mule kick a few bar stools over and start roaring like an Irish lion. He would drop his hands to belt level and challenge some patron 25 years younger than himself to put up the dukes. I never saw him actually fight...everyone would run over and grab the two and Paddy would eventually curse and mutter/threaten something and stagger back to his trailer to pass out. Until he met Colin.

Colin, on the other hand, was probably a psychopath. Before Jimbo left Perth to join me in our new home as a union dishwasher, I had  time to spare, before it was time to go to the pub. One day I was killing time in the weight room, and was struck by this wild eyed, seriously tattooed, long haired John the Baptist, bench pressing easily twice his weight. He didn't even bother to put collars on the bar to secure the 45 pound plates, a dangerous move, as they clanked, clattered and slipped above his head, threatening him with serious injury or death, as he did rep after rep.

All of the island's eight single women were supposed to live in the food service trailer/dorms (*GRIN*). The most beautiful, statuesque and home grown Aussie woman in the whole camp was Deidre. At meal time, this dark haired beauty was something to behold. At the 6:00 PM single person's chow, the bus dropped 124 single men and *HER* from their work area, at the dining hall. She stuck out in her royal blue one piece work suit, serious leather lineman boots, face smeared with a smudge of iron ore in just the right place. Sad to say for Jimbo and me, Deidre lived in Colin's room on another part of the island, and hence was not part of the fun bunch back at the food service/wanker trailers (hilariously, we considered that was her loss).

It was well known on the island that Colin was not a man to trifle with. One was not allowed to look at Deidre, much less talk to her. Violate the law on this island and be prepared to face serious consequences. I learned this about my second night of dinner service, when *HER* was coming through the line and I chattily volunteered a in-depth description of  a curry that I had made. After a few moments, Colin got up from his table, walked over to the line, put his face 12 inches from mine and stared into my retinas, me in my disco inferno short shorts and all, then glared at her.... 'nuff said, point made, and Deidre and I never really spoke again.

Besides the nightly single man drunkenness and juvenile tomfoolery at the pub, someone was an activity planner, and we would have things like dart tournaments, sometimes a DJ,  Christmas Eve with a perverted Santa, dances where the almost all male crowd would bring scantily clad brooms as dates and so on and so forth. Colin and Deidre would occasionally come to these events as a couple. As she sat on a bar stool and Colin went to retrieve the darts, the daring/foolish among us made their move. For for all of us, this behind the lines intelligence gathering was at our own peril, because we knew the rules. Be that as it may, it was a chance to have a quick and secretive word with Diedre before Colin could return to their stools with the darts.

One night, whatever was said, Paddy  kicked over the barstools, roared like a lion, dropped his fists to belt level, as if to really expose his unprotected face, and called Colin out. Whew, what a mistake I thought. That bench pressing twice his weight psychopath, buried his eight inch fist with an uppercut into that unprotected fifty something year old Irish jaw that sent Paddy sprawling and splaying headfirst into the pinball machines. The sound of the blow that rocked the old king's' world, proclaimed as well a new ruler of that Indian Ocean island pub.

The next day at mess, Paddy was awfully quiet. Two black eyes, big swollen, purple, distorted Irish drinker's nose, maybe a little dried blood still in the nostrils. He sipped a wee bit of chicken broth and reflected on his new status.