by Robin Lamont
Jude had been branded. An animal activist was in town.
***
She was unlocking her car when she heard someone calling, “Miss!” Jude turned to see a young man trotting across the parking lot to catch up with her. Light brown complexioned, in his late twenties, he had a feathery goatee on his chin and shoulder-length black hair tied back in a pony tail.
“Miss,” he said. “I heard you talking about Mr. Marino inside.” He had a slight Latino accent, but his English carried the fluency of someone who had spent a few years in the states. “Frank was a friend.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jude. “You were close?”
“Not like family, but he was my boss. I wanted to come to his funeral, but I couldn’t get off.”
Jude introduced herself and in turn, he offered his name as Juan. She didn’t think that was his real name, but didn’t press it. He probably had reasons to protect himself.
“We heard about his suicide,” he said.
“Yes, very sad,” said Jude, and after being so soundly rebuffed in the diner, grasped at any information. “I guess he was unhappy at D&M.”
“Ain’t no one happy there.”
“I heard he was particularly upset about how the plant is run.”
“Well, he was always trying to take care of us, you know?”
“How did he do that?”
“Stood up to management.”
“About what?” Jude wanted to know.
The young man looked around uneasily, wondering if anyone could see them together. “A lot of stuff,” he said hurriedly. “Bad conditions for the workers and … the animals.”
Jude leaned in. “What about the animals?”
He glanced over his shoulder again. The man in the camouflage cap was loitering by the diner’s entrance, watching them. “Listen, I can’t talk anymore.” He began to walk around the corner to the back of the diner.
Pocketing her car keys, Jude kept step beside him. “Juan, I want to learn about what’s happening at D&M. It’s not good for the workers there or the pigs. Could I just ask you a couple of questions?”
“No, no.” He kept going.
“Please. All confidential, I’ll keep your name out of it, I promise.”
Leery about what it was, Juan picked up his pace to shake her off. But Jude sensed a possible ally.
“People are getting hurt at the plant,” she pursued. “And the animals are suffering needlessly, aren’t they? How can anything change if it’s all brushed under the rug? Frank contacted me because he wanted to do something about it.” This stopped his retreat. “That’s why I came to Bragg Falls … to find out what he knew. Listen, we don’t have to meet in public and I won’t mention your name. Please.”
He scratched nervously at his goatee and Jude held her breath; when it came to animal abuse, many people wanted to talk. Whether they had witnessed mistreatment or been complicit, deep down they felt bad and needed to unload their burden. But just then, there was the sound of boots crunching on gravel. The man in cap and coveralls rounded the corner. He made his fingers into a gun, pointed at them and mimed pulling the trigger. Juan bolted, running past an old flatbed truck on cinderblocks, then disappearing into the tall weeds.
Chapter 10
Across town, Emmet stepped onto the kill floor, absorbing the one-two punch of stench and noise. The foul odor of offal, stomach contents and human sweat was smothering and the noise like claws that dug into his skull. Hooks clanked on the chain, pigs grunted and squealed, workers shouted, all of it competing with the strident whine of the overhead ventilation fans. The sounds rang in his ears long after the line shut down for the day, until the fourth or fifth beer finally quieted them so that he could watch TV. He adjusted his orange ear plugs and noted the time on his clipboard.
Tim Vernon was manning the stun station. A lot could go wrong at D&M, but more often than not, this is where it started. The hogs were driven from the chute into V-shaped restraining panels that squeezed the pigs to hold them steady. The restrainer then carried them forward until they got to Vernon, who grasped a large electrically charged device with two contacts for either side of the pig’s head and a third angled to connect with its back. Emmet watched as Vernon forced the tongs down onto a sow, delivering the two hundred and fifty volts meant to send her into instant cardiac arrest. With a shudder, the sow slumped, and the restrainer deposited the animal with a wet thud onto the shackle table, where another man pulled a linked chain down from the overhead pulley system and wrapped it around one of the sow’s hind feet. As the pulley chugged along, it lifted the shackled hog into a vertical position, swinging head down, ready for the sticker. The men worked with a fierce concentration; no movement could be wasted – not with a live animal coming through every seven seconds.
Next to Vernon stood a recent hire watching how the stunning was done. It was evident that this was his first time because his eyes were wide with apprehension. Whether it was due to the brutal felling of the animals in such rapid succession or the mercilessness with which Vernon did it was unclear. Emmet tapped him on the shoulder and drew him aside.
“Did you get the written instructions?” he shouted.
“Que?”
Emmet used hand gestures to indicate a book and shouted, “Instrucciones?”
“Si, si,” said the man and reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper printed with a few lines of Spanish and a diagram of where to place the tongs against the pig’s head and back.
“That’s all they gave you?” asked Emmet. Before he could get a reply, his attention was drawn to a nearby commotion. The man at the shackling table was screaming at Vernon, and Emmet shouldered his way forward to find out what the problem was.
“Just do your fucking job!” yelled the shackler, who was struggling to get a particularly large sow up on the chain. Only momentarily stunned, she had regained consciousness and was scrambling to get to her feet, hooves scraping and slipping on the metal table. “Get the fuck over here and hit it again!” he screamed at Vernon.
Vernon shot him the finger and put the tongs on the next one coming through. But the first jolt didn’t have much effect other than to drive the sow wild; it let loose an ear-piercing squeal and bucked against the restrainer, making it almost impossible for Vernon to place the tongs for a second shot. “Fuck your mother!” he shouted at the sow as he tried to make contact anywhere he could. He fired and this time the hog dropped.
“What’s going on?” Emmet bellowed.
“I don’t have enough juice,” Vernon yelled back, getting ready for another. “Not for these big suckers.”
Damn. The USDA vet had said he’d be coming by in thirty minutes and Warshauer had probably turned the voltage down, forgetting that they had a load of sows coming in today. If the voltage was set too high, it often resulted in burst capillaries along the pig’s back. Called blood-splash, they left dark patches on the meat, reducing its value. But when the hogs weren’t properly stunned they became conscious again within seconds and the shacklers down the line had a fight on their hands to get them hung. For the most part, the hogs that came in were all the same size, bred to be identical and sent to slaughter at the same age. But the spent breeding sows were much larger, and wrestling with a terrified four or five-hundred pound hog was a dangerous job.
Emmet let the men at the shackling table handle the situation for the moment and trotted down the line, waving his arm in a big circle – a signal to keep getting the hogs up no matter what.
The shackler yelled at him as he went by. “Stop the fuckin’ chain, will ya!”
“No can do,” Emmet tossed back. He moved on quickly, knowing he’d be in this bind for years to come. Hanging a conscious, struggling hog was not only a violation, but could get someone hurt. As the man in charge, he was the only one with the authority to hit the red button. But he�
�d known supervisors who had gotten fired on the spot for doing that. You did not stop the chain for a couple of live hogs – not if you wanted to make it to your next pay day.
Frank’s voice rang in his ears. Get out? This doesn’t get you out. It digs you in deeper. Goddamn Frank. Always making the problems on the floor worse by fighting about it with management. They’d first met at a mandatory meeting for new workers a few years back. The USDA vet Lawrence Cimino was instructing them that kicking and gasping in a stunned hog did not mean that it was conscious – it was a reflexive movement only. Frank raised his hand. “What does it mean when a hog jumps off the table and runs across the floor?” he asked as he picked a piece of white fat off his shirt and flicked it across the room. Cimino looked over his glasses first at the spot where the fat landed and then at Frank. He said with a frosty smile. “It means someone hasn’t done his job.” Frank looked over at Emmet and the silent exchange between them marked a new friendship.
Thoughts of Frank only brought back his last words to Emmet. You’re not yellow hat material … keep the line moving so corporate can squeeze us for the extra buck. He thrust the memory aside and strode quickly down the line, careful not to slip on the blood-soaked floor. As he closed in on the sticker – the man next in line who cut the hog’s carotid and jugular veins to bleed it out – he whistled through his teeth, three high-pitched, short whistles to warn him that a conscious hog might be coming his way.
“Sonofabitch,” cried the sticker, wiping the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his blood stained uniform. Then he gripped his knife tight in his hand and balanced on the balls of his feet in case he had to dodge flailing legs and biting teeth in his one chance to make a good stick. Emmet paused, waiting to see what was coming down the line, but Vernon must have hit the next ones right because they were all hanging the way they should – a few of them still making reflexive paddling motions, but none bucking or squealing. He cast a quick glance at the scalding tank further on down, where the bled pigs were submerged for hair removal. For now, things seemed to be running smoothly, but he wanted to keep it that way.
Emmet threw open a steel door to an area where the ever-whirring knife sharpeners were kept along with the hoses and cleaning equipment. The control box was just inside the door, set into the wall. He reached up to open the front panel only to find a shiny new padlock affixed to the latch.
Suddenly he felt a presence behind him. Thinking it was Pat LaBrie, he turned to tell him off. But it was the plant manager.
“What are you doing?” demanded Warshauer.
Emmet took him head on. “I’m turning it up. We have a shipment of big sows coming through and Vernon doesn’t have enough juice.”
Warshauer shook his head. “Screw him. He came in here yesterday and tried to jack it up himself. He’s a whack job. Pat LaBrie counted seven hogs with blood-splash.”
“Seven out of five thousand?” challenged Emmet. “So what? It doesn’t ruin the whole hog.”
“Nope. That’s meat I cannot sell.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, a couple of pounds?”
“Listen, you better start thinking about it in terms of ounces,” replied Warshauer irritably.
“Tell that to Cimino,” replied Emmet. “He’s making his grand entrance, coming down to have a look in about fifteen minutes.”
Warshauer practically jumped. “Shit!” He fumbled for his keys, opened the lock on the control box, and re-set the voltage. Then he turned back to Emmet and said, “Clean up and come to the office.”
After stripping off his coveralls and chlorinating his boots so as not to bring pathogens into the “cold” side of the building where the eviscerated hogs were cut into sellable pieces, Emmet trotted up the metal steps to the catwalk that ran outside the offices overlooking the cut floor. Warshauer was there, patrolling the walkway, making sure that all workers were in place and doing their jobs. From his elevated position he could ascertain from the color of the helmets where the key personnel were positioned, including the red hats of the USDA inspectors.
Warshauer saw him coming. “Why is Cimino going on the floor?” he demanded. “Who complained?” Before Emmet could respond, he leaned over the railing, having spotted a couple of women below on the floor removing their aprons. “Yo, ladies, where are you going?” he called down.
One of the women, whose dark hair was piled thickly into a hairnet, called back in accented English, “We on break.”
“No break,” corrected Warshauer sternly, pointing to the clock on the wall. “Not for three more minutes.”
The two women silently donned their aprons again and went back to work. They looked heavyset, but so did everyone on this side. The cut floor was kept at forty-two degrees and layer upon layer of clothing was the only defense against the long, chilled hours. Warshauer watched them for a few more seconds, then turned, motioning for Emmet to follow.
The office was warm and a respite from the constant clattering of metal pans on the tables below. “How’s Verna holding up?” asked Warshauer. He smoothed his blond hair that was so neatly coiffed and colored it had earned him the nickname the Clairol Nazi.
“She’s okay,” replied Emmet.
“My heart breaks for her. But I guess you could see it coming.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Bob.”
“Oh, come on, Emmet. Frank was a great guy, but he was popping pain killers like they were candy. I think it messed up his head.”
Emmet looked away in an effort to cut Warshauer off. “What did you want?” he asked.
“Did you know that he was talking on the sly to an animal rights group?”
“What?”
“Yeah, your buddy Frank was trying to sabotage the plant by bad mouthing us to some animal liberation people.”
“What makes you say that?” Emmet’s mouth had gone dry.
“Someone saw him taking pictures. And it’s come to my attention that a woman from that same animal organization is here in Bragg Falls. These activists are always trying to dig up dirt about farmers and all what else. I guess so they can get more regulations and make it impossible to do our job. She may try to talk to employees at the plant. You know what I’m sayin’?” Assuming Emmet’s agreement, he added, “Spread the word. No one is to talk to this gal, right?”
“Outside these walls I can’t stop anyone from talking.”
“No, but you can let ’em know that if they do talk to her they’ll be looking for work. And this is not just me, okay? It’s coming from corporate direct.”
“All right,” conceded Emmet. “I’ll get the word around.”
He was halfway out the door when Warshauer stopped him. “By the way, you being good friends with him and all, did Frank ever tell you about what he was doing?”
“No,” Emmet bristled. “No he didn’t say anything to me.”
“Of course not,” reassured the manager. “’Cause if he had, you would have told me.”
“Yeah, I would have told you.”
Warshauer called out after him, “Oh, the animal person? Her name is Jude Brannock.”
Emmet barely registered the name. His brain was burning about what Frank had done. Sure, he didn’t like the way things were run, but taking pictures? Talking to an animal rights group? What the fuck … was he trying to shut down the plant and lose everyone their jobs? Not me, thought Emmet. Godammit, I worked hard for this and I’m gonna keep on moving up the ladder ’til I get out of this stinking place. Shaking off the guilt and the doubt, Emmet went back down and suited up for the kill floor again. He had five minutes to make sure the prods and metal pipes were put away, Vernon was behaving himself, and the line was running smooth. Five minutes until Cimino came down to give a quick look around and conclude, “I don’t see any problem here, Chapel.” Yeah, because you wait until somebody like me cleans it all up before you step foot on the hot side,
you lazy sonofabitch! And then Emmet would steel himself to tell Vernon that if he tried to mess with the voltage again he’d write him a citation. He’d suffer the hostile glares of Vernon, Bisbee, Lovato, and all the other workers. At the bar, he’d drink alone or at Warshauer’s table. Anything to get off the kill floor where blood and violence earned you maybe twelve bucks an hour and where the chain grated and screeched like a living monster.
Chapter 11
I’m just curious,” said Jude. “How much would he have to take to kill himself?”
“Depends … how big was he?” asked CJ.
“Not sure,” she answered, checking her rear view mirror to make sure no one had followed her. After driving around trying to get a clear look at the D&M plant, she’d finally pulled over. A manned gate at the entrance prevented her from getting into the parking lot, and the buildings were set too far back from any of the encircling roads to see anything. Now parked on a hill behind the facility, she’d gotten CJ on the phone. “At the house I saw a photo of Frank and I’d say about five-nine, hundred and seventy pounds.”
“And if he was on medication for awhile, he’d be opiate tolerant. Hold on.”
Jude could hear the clacking of computer keys. “Probably around 500 milligrams,” CJ came back.
“They found an empty bottle of 30-milligram pills in his car.”
“Well, there you go. Pop fifteen or twenty of those babies or crush them up in a liter of whatever, even if he changed his mind he wouldn’t have made it ten minutes.”
“Do me a favor, CJ. See what you can find out about a company called PharmaRX.” She spelled it for him. “He may have ordered the pain killers from there.”
“Okay. What’s the plan?”
“I’m sticking around for awhile, see what I can dig up.”
“Watch yourself.”
