by Robin Lamont
…. He and a couple of the guys were at their regular table knocking off a pitcher of beer when he spotted Frank walk in and take the only empty stool at the bar. The place was always crowded on a Friday night; just about everybody congregated at the Lazy Cat after their shifts at D&M Processing. No one could remember what the D stood for, but the M was for Marshfield. As for the “processing” – that was an industry euphemism for slaughterhouse. Emmet held up his hand and waited to see if Frank would signal, a wave or eye contact, but nothing. As soon as the stool next to him opened up, Emmet swallowed his irritation and made the first move.
“Hey,” said Emmet, sidling onto the vacated bar stool.
Frank’s shoulders were hunched, making his stocky frame look even more rounded, and he stared straight ahead with a glower on his face that normally spelled trouble.
Emmet caught the bartender’s eye, pointed to Frank’s drink and held up a finger.
The gesture seemed to do the trick because Frank finally turned to Emmet. “How’s Caroline doing?” he asked.
“Still fixated on premonitions and whatever. If she was younger I’d put her over my knee and spank the bejesus out of her.”
“It’ll pass.”
“Better hope so. This shrink wants to put her on some kind of anti-depressant and insurance don’t cover it on account of it’s psychological. Costing me a fortune. You want to come sit at the table with us?”
“I’m not staying,” said Frank. “I got an appointment.”
“Appointment? Who with?”
Frank sized up his friend for a moment before shrugging. “Some day I’ll tell you about it.” Then he stared above the bar to a TV screen where the Panthers were playing. “Be nice if they could put together a season over five hundred.”
Emmet knew he was trying to keep the conversation non-confrontational – anything to avoid addressing Emmet’s promotion. “Ah, come on, Frank. Why can’t you be happy for me?” he asked, unwilling to let it go. “I’ve been in line for this job for over a year. If they’d have offered it to you, you would’ve taken it.”
“In the next life,” scoffed his friend.
“It’s my chance to get out.”
“To get out?” Frank turned to him with his face set. “This doesn’t get you out. It digs you in deeper. You have no freakin’ idea who you’re dealing with. Besides, you’re not yellow hat material.”
“The fuck I’m not.”
“You’re not, and I’ll tell you why. Because you’re not a leader, Emmet, you’re a follower. You go with the path of least resistance. You always have.”
“That’s bullshit. And anyway, it’s better than whining about every damn thing that happens at D&M,” Emmet replied hotly. “If your wife wasn’t friends with Patty Warshauer, you’d a’gotten fired a dozen times over. You’re trying to buck the system, which changes nothing. And you don’t have the balls to quit. Keep filing complaints with the USDA and you’ll be cleaning worm-infested pig intestines for the rest of your goddamn life.”
Frank’s answering smile was filled with such self-reproach that for a moment, Emmet wished he could take his words back. But then Frank twisted the knife a little deeper. “Maybe so. But I’ll say it again, you’re not yellow hat material. As floor supervisor, you’re gonna have to suck up to Warshauer and LaBrie and the rest of the USDA shits protecting their own asses. You’re gonna have to write up your friends and keep the line moving so corporate can squeeze us for the extra buck. And frankly, you won’t be able to cut it.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“’Cause in your heart you know it ain’t right.”
Emmet slammed down his beer and got up. “Screw you,” were his parting words.
“I’ve been screwed my whole life,” responded Frank. “Why should tonight be any different?” He drained the last of his drink and counted out a few bills on the bar before slipping off the stool and disappearing.
…. Emmet’s thoughts returned to the present and all at once, he felt sick from the cloying scent of condolence flowers mounded on top of the coffin. He stepped back to take hold of Verna’s hand, but Frank’s wife stared past him at the rectangular hole in the earth, her grief hardening in a place he could not touch. Alice huddled near the girls who had their teenage arms locked around one another. Emmet looked around for his son, but Will had long since been commandeered by the antics of an older boy.
Emmet whispered harshly for Will to rejoin the family and took a knee to lecture him about proper behavior at a funeral. Going through the motions of fatherly discipline was his only distraction from the guilt. Frank had been his closest friend, and he’d carry their last bitter words forever.
Alice came over, fatigue and anxiety etched on her face. “Don’t be hard on him, Emmet. It was a long service.” She took Will by the hand. “Come on, honey. We’re going to the house now.”
“Our house?” he asked.
“No, Uncle Frank’s house. Emmet, we’re going with Verna and the girls.”
“I’ll be along in a minute.”
He went back to the open grave and stood next to Howard Bisbee, who had his head bowed. Bisbee was a big man, awkward in his ill-fitting suit, and was one of the only black quality assurance technicians at D&M.
“Last week he had to put out rat poison underneath the building,” said Bisbee, without lifting his head. “I made a joke about it and he called me a prick.”
“He called everyone a prick – at some point,” said Emmet.
“I can’t tell you why, exactly, but it kinda hurt my feelings.”
“He didn’t think you were a prick, Howard. He liked you.”
“He could be a real difficult sonofabitch, but I liked him, too.” Bisbee turned to go.
Emmet waited until everyone else had gone and stood by the freshly turned earth. It was the least he could do. At one point he looked up into the cloud-streaked sky and caught sight of a girl … a woman on top of a small hill in the cemetery, sitting with her arms clasped around her knees on the cold ground. He had seen her mid-way through the service and hadn’t paid much mind, assuming she was a visitor to one of the graves on the hill. But she was still there, looking down at Frank’s casket. Her long hair, more amber than red, blended with the early fall colors of the trees.
Feeling as though he had to outlast her, Emmet closed his eyes and said the Lord’s Prayer quietly, as much for himself as for his friend. When he looked up again, she was gone.
* * *
Leave the man in peace, thought Jude. She dusted off her backside and headed down the far side of the slope with his image etched in her mind. A lonely figure standing by the gravesite, he must be a relative or close friend. He seemed protective of Frank’s wife, who was fairly easy to pick out – a stoic, sturdy woman in a black veil.
The girls had drawn her attention as well. Jude guessed that one of them, the heavier of the two, was Frank’s daughter, looking like her mother as she did. The other girl was slim and long-legged and she offered comfort with a best friend’s tender hugs rather than the fierce, grief-stricken clasp of a sibling. It was clear to Jude that their friendship went beyond liking the same music and the same celebrities. They needed each other.
Jude had parked her old but trusty Subaru station wagon near the cemetery’s entrance. As she opened the car door, she saw Finn draped across the front seats. He raised his head and thumped his tail in guilty admission. “Back,” she commanded, jerking her thumb in the direction of the cargo area. With practiced surrender, her dog managed to squeeze his large frame between the seats and move into the back. “How many times do I have to tell you, no front seat until you’ve passed your driving test,” Jude scolded softly as she scratched him behind the ears. Finn leaned his head contentedly into her hand.
She pulled out onto the main street that ran through Bragg Falls. It was a rural, working town with a few
local farms scratching at the edges. Until the 1950’s it survived as a wholesale supplier of Christmas trees, and when the abundant land was turned into a state park, the town would’ve gone under if Marshfield hadn’t brought in the meat packing plant. Most of the recreational action centered around the shopping mall over on Route 192, where there was a Walmart, a movie theater and a bowling alley. But here on Main Street, there were just local businesses and a handful of empty store fronts that had “for rent” signs in the windows. Jude drove slowly through the town center, looking from side to side as she passed the Post Office, a liquor store, and a red brick hardware store that sold feed and agricultural products. Next to it was the diner where she was to have met Frank Marino. Her last communication with him had been on Thursday night; she had planned to spend a couple of days here, taking his statement and going over the footage, maybe talking to other workers … but now? The immediate future wasn’t clear, though she knew one thing – she couldn’t go back empty handed, not again.
A quarter of a mile further, over the railroad tracks, she spotted the Bragg Falls Motor Inn and navigated into the gravel parking lot. The motel was a row of low-roofed connected rooms, referred to on the neon sign as “guest suites.” Each had an identical blue door and differed only by its proximity to the soda machine planted midway down the row. Jude found the office in the owner’s house at the end of the row. Beyond a makeshift counter in the entryway was a living room where the owner sat on a sofa watching television. Catching sight of the new customer, the woman hoisted her two-hundred-pound frame and shambled to the counter. The trip cost her some labored breathing, but she welcomed her guest with a big smile.
“How can I help ya, honey?” she asked, taking stock of the tall, slender woman in front of her. Jude had pale, almost translucent skin and dark hazel eyes. Her face was heart-shaped with high cheekbones and an angular chin. Some might have said she had a Jane Eyre-like plainness, but if the light caught her in a certain way, the same people would have said she was quite beautiful.
“Do you take dogs?” inquired Jude.
The manager’s smile dimmed, but briefly; she only had two guests at present, so she slid a sign-in sheet over toward Jude. “I guess it’s okay.”
Jude began to fill in the register. Name – Jude Brannock. Address – 110 Sanctuary Road, Washington, D.C. It wasn’t her home address – she never gave that – but the offices of The Kinship, a non-profit that conducted investigations into animal cruelty. Sanctuary Road was named for a Jesuit parish long since gone, but Jude always thought it was right that the organization should land there.
The manager handed her a key. “What brings you to the Falls, honey?” she asked.
“A little work,” said Jude.
“How long you gon’ be with us?”
“Probably just the night.”
“Well, enjoy your stay now.”
Jude took Finn around back to stretch his legs and relieve himself. She hoped the owner wasn’t looking out her back window or she might have regretted her decision. He was a large dog, weighing in at about ninety-five pounds, all muscle and brown and black fur, a mixed breed of strong, steady dogs. His size could be intimidating, but only, Jude thought, to those who overlooked the doleful, patient look in his eyes. Of course, if he felt threatened, that look quickly changed.
Jude unloaded the wagon and let Finn explore the room. She knew it was more than curiosity; he needed to know where the exits were before he could settle down. To Jude, motel rooms all looked the same, this one furnished with a bed, a side table, desk, and an open kitchenette with a mini refrigerator. From the smell of the place, the no smoking policy was not strictly enforced, but it wasn’t the worst she had stayed in. She put out a bowl of water for Finn and settled in cross-legged on the bed to phone in.
CJ picked up. “What’s happening, girl?”
“I’m here in Bragg Falls. Where’s Gordon?” she asked, referring to their boss, Gordon Silverman.
“He’s at a conference in New York. You meet your contact?” CJ Malone manned the phones in the office and conducted almost all the intelligence gathering that couldn’t be done in the field. A childhood spine injury had put him in a wheelchair for life, but with his computer skills he had the world at his fingertips.
“CJ, he’s dead.”
“Say what?”
“He’s dead.” Jude could hardly believe it herself. “I was supposed to meet him in town this morning, but he never showed. I found his address in the phone book, and when I got there, there was a whole caravan of cars heading out. A neighbor told me that they were going to his funeral.”
“Holy shit. What happened?”
“The neighbor said it was a drug overdose. I don’t know any details yet.” She pushed a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and tried to massage the anxious crease that had settled on her brow. “CJ, this is a real blow for us. Frank Marino had nearly three hours of video footage, date-stamped over a six-week period. He had workers constantly using electric prods, beating the hogs – a ton of Humane Slaughter Act violations.”
“Wow, we could use slaughterhouse footage.”
“Not only that, when I spoke with him last, he told me he had just gotten something on tape that could be extremely valuable to us. He didn’t go into detail; all he said was that he had recorded a conversation between the plant manager, a guy name Bob Warshauer, and Ned Bannerman.”
“Bannerman’s the regional VP. What were they saying?”
“He told me that it implicated Seldon Marshfield himself and that it was potential dynamite. I didn’t press him because I thought I’d talk to him when I got here. But now, Marino’s dead and I don’t have the tape. Even if I did, it doesn’t have the same value – there’s no one to authenticate it. We’ve been down this road. Marshfield will say it’s fabricated, it wasn’t taken at their facility, or you know the spiel …‘This is an isolated incident by workers who are not following our safe and humane procedures. We have zero tolerance’ … blah, blah, blah. I feel terrible about this. I got the feeling that Marino was a real fighter and he obviously risked everything to–”
“Hang on a second,” interrupted CJ. “I’ve got Gordon on the other line.”
Jude plucked at a frayed edge on the bed’s comforter, trying to digest the disappointment. Was this going to be yet another embarrassment? Her last investigation into a doping scheme by trainers and vets in the horse-racing business was a bust after her informant reneged. He’d provided pages of information about horses being shot up with steroids, more than a dozen of them succumbing to heart attacks. But at the last minute he wouldn’t sign off on any of it, claiming that Jude – the over-zealous animal activist – had arm-twisted him into saying things that weren’t true. Word around the animal welfare community was that someone had paid off the informant, but it was accompanied by an undercurrent of buzz that she hadn’t vetted the guy properly to begin with. For Jude, whose work meant everything to her, that hurt.
CJ got back on the line and told her to hang up, that Gordon would call her back. While she waited, she unpacked her duffel and set up her laptop, reading glasses and Marshfield files in a neat pile on the desk.
The phone rang. “Where is it?” was Gordon’s first question.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he tell anybody else about the video?”
“I asked him to keep it under wraps until I got here, and when I spoke with him Thursday he was still employed, so management couldn’t have known about it.”
“How are you doing?” asked Gordon. He was all business when it came to animal protection, but thought of his staff as family. Gordon had been her lifeline to a stable adulthood – although she wondered sometimes how stable anything was in this type of work. Until she met him, she’d been floundering. No surprise given her scattered childhood, bounced from one foster home to another. Some of them were bad, and by the time
she was in middle school Jude was adept at running away, believing she was safer on her own even if it meant living on the street.
The night that would draw her to Gordon and his work uncovering and exposing animal abuse was burned into her psyche. She was fourteen and occasionally hung out at a truck stop off the Turnpike. When things were slow, a late-shift waitress named Eve used to give Jude leftovers and let her sleep for a few hours in her car. This night, Jude was curled up under Eve’s winter coat when she was awakened by strange noises. Slowly surfacing into consciousness, she tried to figure out what the sounds were … grunting, shuffling, an occasional high-pitched squeal. She’d never heard anything like it before. She sat up and rubbed the condensation from the car window to peer outside. But there was nothing to see, just another big truck that had pulled up about ten feet away. The sounds were coming from inside.
She got out of the car and made her way tentatively to the eighteen-wheeler. There was a man in the cab with his head tilted back and his mouth open, snoring. Jude walked silently past him to the rear load, where steel walls punctuated with open vents rose up above her and the grunts and cries became more distinct. Smells, too, manure and urine. She reached up and put her fingers in one of the lower vents and pulled herself up on tiptoes. Putting her face close to the opening, she peeked in. A pair of dark, frantic eyes met hers and she fell back in alarm. What the hell was that? When she’d caught her breath, Jude reached up again to get a better look. Under the misty light cast by the street lamps, she could see them. Pigs! Hundreds of them – or at least that’s what it looked like – crammed in so tight they could barely move, bumping against one other, trying to gain breathing room, some of them squealing in pain as they were stepped on or shoved against the side of the truck. It looked like something in a horror movie. What were so many pigs doing in there? She stared and stared, finally understanding that this was the last horrible night of these poor creatures lives. Shaken, she lowered herself and padded back to Eve’s car. Sleep never came again, not with the sounds of the distressed pigs continuing until the first light of dawn. Jude was still keeping vigil when the truck roared to life and headed off to a place she could not have ever imagined.
