by Robin Lamont
Over the next several years, she struggled to find a place for herself, to make sense of a world that treated animals so badly. She handed out leaflets and joined some protests, but never seemed to find a home until she met Gordon. Ten years her senior and an idealistic, yet strong-willed organizer, he had just started The Kinship and was looking for investigators. He became mentor, friend, lover for a time, and the only person she trusted completely.
From the edge of the bed in the hotel room, she told him, “Thanks, Gordon, I’m all right. But I’d like to understand what happened, and I’d sure like to find that video.”
After a long silence he said, “So would I.”
Chapter 4
Emmet pulled into his new parking space near the office entrance, one of the spaces reserved for floor supervisors. Still dark at five thirty in the morning, the lot behind him was filling rapidly as the day shift filed in. Someone had left their lights on and he could see a parade of dull-eyed, slack-faced workers passing through the beams. He walked through the same employee entrance he had used for seven years, but this time breezed past the line of men and women waiting to pick up their blue coveralls and equipment for the day. Eyes and throats were starting to burn, a reaction to the chlorine used to clean the gloves, boots, and knives. A few of the men nodded to Emmet. He knew a handful by name, most by sight, but there were always new faces.
Grabbing a yellow hard hat and a uniform, he went down the corridor to the men’s locker room. Metal doors clanged as the workers hung their coats and replaced their leather Wolverine lace-ups with thick-soled rubber boots. Emmet acknowledged the two men next to him. He liked Joe Lovato well enough, the youngest of the two and a new dad. But Tim Vernon was scary strange. Underneath his ever-present Bulls City Burger cap, he wore his long hair in a greasy braid that went to the middle of his back. He was rangy and skittish and often had the look of someone listening to a voice in his head that was not his own.
Lovato was all over Vernon’s case after what had happened yesterday. He pointed to the bandage on Vernon’s hand and asked, “They give you a rabies shot for that?”
“Nope. They jist gimme pills.” Vernon scowled back.
“I still say that’s one of the most hilarious things I ever seen. The look on your face,” laughed Lovato, remembering. At the end of the shift, Vernon had reached into the bottom of his locker and been bitten by a rat. They were all over the plant.
“Yer a twat, you know that?” spat back Vernon, not in the least bit amused. “Where you are, you’re probably gonna get infected with MRSA.”
Lovato backed off; he knew that Vernon was easily provoked and carried a hunting knife strapped to his thigh. But in a boisterous mood and not ready for the walk to the evisceration area, he tried to keep the conversation going with Emmet. “How’d you get that?” he asked him, indicating his scar.
“Fillin’ in for the sticker one day,” replied Emmet as pulled on his boots. “Big boar comes rolling down the chain kicking and hollering. I thought I stuck him pretty good, but when I turn around to do the next one, he kicks me from behind. Whapp! He smacks my knife arm, which shoots up and I slice my own head. There was more of my blood on the floor than his.”
“How many stitches?” This was an important figure for comparison purposes.
“Twenty-seven.”
Vernon, who had been brooding in front of his locker, broke in. “I can beat that.” He pulled up his shirt to reveal a jagged, red line along his back. “Forty-two,” he announced proudly. “Hog falls off the chain and starts running around the floor. We’re trying to kill the sonofabitch any way we can. I finally get the sucker down and whiles I’m zapping it, the shackle wheel jumps off the chain and rakes me good.”
“That’s nothing,” exclaimed Lovato. He pushed up the sleeve on his flannel shirt and showed off an ugly puckered scar that ran the length of his inner arm. “Almost had my arm tore off.”
Vernon frowned, fearing this kid would beat him in the scar department. “Hog did that?”
“Nah, installing a car seat for the baby.” Lovato let out a guffaw and Vernon, feeling duped somehow, snatched up his things and moved down the row.
With the men still filing in, Emmet decided he had time for a cup of coffee. He donned his hard hat and clattered up the grated catwalk that led to the offices on the second floor. There he ran into Patrick LaBrie, the chief on-site inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was waiting for a fresh batch to brew.
“Hey, Chapel, you look good in yellow. Probably matches your liver,” crowed LaBrie, who was wearing the red hard hat of a USDA inspector. The workers all wore white or gray helmets, operations managers yellow, and USDA personnel red – it made them easier to spot when they came onto the floor.
Emmet wasn’t in much of a mood to banter. He reached past LaBrie and pulled the glass coffee pot out of its mooring before it had finished dripping, letting the brown liquid flow onto the hot plate where it sizzled and sloshed down the sides. He poured himself half a cup and put it back.
“Good morning to you, too,” said LaBrie, affronted. It hadn’t occurred to him that Emmet might still be feeling raw after his friend’s death. But everything about LaBrie was dense, not just his social skills. He had thick lips, a wide nose, a massive head of hair. The lenses of his black-framed glasses were so thick, Emmet used to wonder how close he had to put his face when doing his job – inspecting the hogs’ heads, carcasses, and organs for signs of disease or contaminants.
Finally it dawned on LaBrie and he said, “Terrible thing about Frank.”
Emmet nodded. “Yeah.” The sound of the machinery cranking to life precluded further comment. Between the hammering of the compressors and shriek of the lines, it became impossible to hear each other speak. “Chain’s startin’,” said Emmet loudly.
“See you around,” yelled LaBrie back, slapping his red helmet onto his big head.
Emmet began outside and headed around to the back of the plant. A breeze from the west brought with it notice that the trucks were waiting – the rotten egg smell of sulfur mixed with the sharp tang of ammonia from the pig manure. The sounds of snorting, squealing hogs grew louder.
There was a new driver Emmet didn’t recognize helping to unload the last of the stragglers from a forty-footer. His face was red with frustration because some of the sows wouldn’t budge from the truck, most likely because they couldn’t walk. One had a huge abscess on her foot, another looked like it had a broken front leg and was barely able to drag herself a few feet. But they were in better shape than the one that was splayed on the truck bed near the cab – probably dead. The driver gripped a heavy plastic paddle in his elbow-length glove and smacked the sows repeatedly to get them moving. Frightened and confused, they staggered one way then another, crashing into each other and the walls of the truck, anywhere but down the ramp.
“Goddamn it!” screamed the man in pain after one of them ran into his knee. In his fury, he pulled a three-foot metal pipe from the wall of the truck and struck the offending animal on the back. Desperate to escape him, she scrambled down the ramp into the lairage pen with the others. Cursing, hollering and pummeling the pigs on any body part he could reach, the man finally got all the live ones out. Then he turned his attention to the dead pig and fastened a chain around her neck, preparing to drag her.
A skinny wise-ass nicknamed Crank, tagged for both his regular use of uppers and his quick temper, was watching along with his white co-worker on the lairage crew. They were enjoying the show. Every time one of the pigs escaped the trucker, they hooted and laughed, infuriating the man even further.
But Emmet was now a yellow hat. “C’mon! Let’s get to work,” he yelled.
Crank pushed back with a big grin on his face. “Shit, Chapel’s management now. A supah-visah! Hey, how’s the little girls’ room on the second floor? Nice ’n pretty?”
“You
’ll never find out, asshole,” said Emmet.
Crank thumped his chest and crowed, “I love the smell of pig shit in the morning!” He looked around to see if anyone appreciated his bravado, but many of the guys out here were Latino and if they understood, they didn’t show it. They kept their heads down and went about their business.
“Get over here, Crank,” yelled Emmet. He was inspecting the nearest pen, lot twenty-seven, packed tight with the sows just unloaded. They were in bad shape. Some were just skin and bones, the spines protruding from their backs like jagged saws with huge teeth; many had wounds that had abscessed, ears torn, and hacking coughs that suggested pneumonia. “Where’re these hogs from?”
The young man shrugged, then called out the question to the trucker. The answer came back and Emmet shook his head in frustration. “I thought we weren’t taking any more pigs from Heritage. They treat their animals like crap. Look at that.” He pointed to a sow that had collapsed by the railing and was being trampled by the others in the overcrowded pen. Truth was, Heritage Farm wasn’t even the worst of them, and Emmet had seen thousands of sick and crippled pigs come down the line. But now he felt more of a responsibility.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get it down the chute,” reassured Crank, stepping over to kick the downed sow, who had only the strength to grunt.
“It shouldn’t go down the goddamn chute until it’s been looked at. Could be infected,” exclaimed Emmet. “Where’s Cimino?”
Every slaughterhouse was required to have an on-site veterinarian from the USDA in addition to the meat inspectors, and it was the vet’s job to monitor the animals for signs of disease that might make them unsuitable for slaughter.
“He hasn’t gotten out here yet,” said Crank.
Emmet knew it was a waste of time, but he pulled out his handheld radio to page Lawrence Cimino. The vet should have already been out to look, but these days he took his time. To Emmet’s thinking, Cimino was a lazy, self-satisfied old fart who didn’t care about anything or anyone but himself. On the surface he came across as a kindly country doctor with tufts of gray hair on either side of his balding pate, but he was soulless at his core. The vet was sixty-three and retiring in less than a year; all he wanted was to finish out the job without incident and collect his pension.
When he didn’t get any response on the second try, Emmet pocketed his radio. The crew was already corralling hogs into the drive alley, the passageway from the pens to the single-file chute that led to the stun area. The wild-eyed pigs didn’t want to go. They balked at the dark tunnel and at the distressed squealing of the others around them. Several struggled to walk. This was a load of breeding sows who had been confined in metal crates their entire lives; their legs just weren’t strong enough to walk the hundred feet down the chute. Some of them outright refused – they could smell death up ahead. It took five men with paddles to move them forward.
“All right. Let’s go, let’s go!” shouted Emmet, turning away. The chain was up and running, more trucks were waiting to unload, and he was worried that the line had already gotten off to a slow start.
Chapter 5
Jude knocked on the door of Frank Marino’s house, a pre-fab ranch hardly bigger than a doublewide trailer. Black mold dotted the aluminum siding, but a power washer had been set up to attack the problem and the surrounding shrubs and flower beds looked carefully tended. Jude straightened her light winter jacket and smoothed back wisps of flyaway hair to look more presentable.
A tall woman with an overbite, wearing cherry-red lipstick and matching nail polish opened the door. Jude had seen her at the funeral.
“I’m sorry” said Jude. “I didn’t realize Mrs. Marino had company.” She turned to leave, but the woman stopped her.
“No, come on in,” she said cheerily and led Jude back to a small kitchen where Verna Marino and an older woman sat at a table covered with Corningware casseroles and tinfoil-covered cookies and pies. More condolence food was heaped on the counters.
Verna looked up when Jude entered and though they had never met or spoken, there seemed to be a glint of recognition in her eyes. Perhaps it was just kindness, thought Jude, so as not to make her feel like an interloper in front of the ladies who had obviously come by to pay their respects.
“Mrs. Marino, my name’s Jude Brannock,” she introduced herself.
Without skipping a beat, Verna introduced Oma Burney, the older woman, and Patty Warshauer, who had let Jude in. They were both from her church, she explained.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” said Jude. “I can come back another time.”
Rising from her chair, Oma Burney waved her off. “I have to go and take care of some things,” she said smoothly. There was a momentary hitch when it became apparent that Patty Warshauer was too curious about Jude to follow her lead, but Burney took care of that herself. “Come on, Patricia. I want to show you the fabric I got on sale.” Verna walked them both to the door, thanking them for their kindness and reminding them of their Bible study meeting later in the week.
When she returned, Verna stood in the doorway. One could tell that she struggled with her weight and there was a guardedness in the way she carried herself, perhaps a result of being married to a man whose fierce honesty so often created turbulence. “I saw you at the cemetery. You should have come to the house afterwards,” she said to Jude kindly. “Did you know Frank?”
“I spoke to him a few times on the phone,” said Jude.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“That would be nice, thank you.” Jude was grateful that Verna was trying to put her at ease. She wished she had the kind of people skills that she admired in others, but for her that kind of fluency came only around animals, who were far more predictable.
After Verna brought coffee in a cup and saucer, she settled across from Jude, who got right to the point. “I work for an organization called The Kinship,” she said. “Your husband contacted us about two weeks ago to report what he felt were ongoing abuses to the pigs at D&M Processing.”
Verna’s inviting smile remained in place, but her face seemed to have frozen into a more intractable expression.
“You’re aware of what he did at the plant?” asked Jude.
“Of course, I used to work there myself,” said Verna.
“What did you do?”
“I worked on the cut floor.”
“Doing what?”
“Trimming shoulders.” Verna mimed three swift cutting motions with her right hand, each one with her wrist at a different angle. “I did that for seven hours a day, six days a week, for five years.”
“Why did you leave?”
Verna rubbed her wrist. “I developed tendonitis and had to stop.”
Jude nodded in understanding.
“I can’t actually do much with my right hand anymore,” continued Verna. “Even gardening for a few minutes, it acts up.”
“And your husband was on the kill floor?” asked Jude, more comfortable now in her role as investigator.
“He worked different jobs. They rotate them around.”
“He told me that, among other things, animals at the plant are being beaten and kicked, sometimes dragged along the ground by their legs or necks. He filmed it.”
“He what?” Verna’s eyes darkened.
“You didn’t know?” asked Jude. “Yes, he contacted our organization and told us that he had a lot of footage. He was going to turn it over to us. That’s the reason I came to Bragg Falls. I was supposed to meet him.”
Verna paled, then looked away and rubbed her temples, perhaps, thought Jude, trying to erase the idea of her husband’s secretiveness.
“I guess he didn’t tell you.”
Verna shook her head adamantly. “No, he never said anything to me.”
Feeling as though she had stumbled into a marital secret, Jude wasn’t sure what t
o say except, “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“Frank got hurt on the job last year – his back,” said Verna. “He was in quite a bit of pain. The doctor prescribed something and it seemed to help, but I had no idea that he was taking so many.”
Jude took Verna’s honesty as an opening and asked, “He died of an overdose of painkillers? They can be deceptively powerful, I suppose.”
“I’m sure he knew that, but…” the new widow’s eyes filled with anguish, “he was under a lot of stress this last year, between his back and the death of his mother and us trying to make it on one paycheck. Oh Lord, I wish I’d gotten through to him that night.” As if Jude might blame her, she added defensively, “I tried to call him twice, but he didn’t pick up or maybe his phone had run out of battery again. He … didn’t complain very often, but I think his back was getting worse. And now you tell me about him filming. How in the world could he get a camera in there? If they found out, they would’ve fired him. I’m only pulling in worker’s comp and we got our daughter …” she trailed off.
Jude stayed silent as Verna stared out the kitchen window at an empty, swaying clothesline. Finally, she continued, “You know, pigs are not bad creatures, they’re playful and real smart. Before here, we were at one of the hog farms. The sows, you know … you try to drive one of ’em into a tiny crate, she’ll fight you. Make no mistake, they know what’s going on. If one of them escapes from its crate when you’re not around, she just might go down the whole row and unlatch the others, too. Oh yeah, they’ll do that. Maybe that makes them more compassionate than us.” Anger tightened the corners of her mouth. “In my church, our pastor says that God’s grace is everywhere. But I can tell you God’s grace is not in that slaughterhouse. Not there.”
