Meat

Three

At ten to five in the morning, Greville Snipe stood in his crisp white cow-gown at the back entrance to the milking parlour waiting for his four dairy boys; Harrison, Maidwell, Roach and Parfitt. They must have hated their job at the dairy to turn up so close to clocking on time and to leave so soon after their duties were complete. They spent as little time in the milking parlour as they could and only ever did the bare minimum to keep the place running the way he wanted it.

He tapped his watch as if it would make his absent crew arrive more quickly. The MMP buses for the early shift arrived well in advance of start time, but he knew they’d be off in a crowd by the gates smoking and laughing with their mates from other parts of the plant. Maybe they were laughing at him. He was fairly sure they joked about him behind his back but what could he do?

Youngsters and the majority of low-level workers were lazy. Snipe had known this long before he was promoted to Dairy Supervisor. Subsequently, he’d devised standards well above what was required by management. When any of the dairy boys fell short of those standards, he knew that his procedures were still good enough to pass any inspection. Even so, he let them know how he felt about their shortcomings, sometimes threatening them with their jobs. They may have hated the Dairy but they’d never find as well paid a job anywhere else in the town and they all knew it.

He didn’t believe he was a harsh supervisor. He’d known far worse in his early days at MMP. He liked to think that Greville Snipe wasn’t just about threats and bollockings; he was a man who tried to instil a sense of pride in the work that went on in the dairy. When he thought the Dairy boys had done well, and admittedly that was a rare occurrence indeed, he arranged bonuses for them in the form of extra milk, yoghurt, butter or cheese rations – things he knew they’d be thanked for again when they arrived home.

It was dark outside and the gas lamps were on. They illuminated circles of dirt all the way around the perimeter of the Magnus Meat Processing plant; all along the wide spaces between the pastures, the corrals, the barns, the outbuildings, the slaughterhouse and the dairy. He watched a couple of desultory moths circle and connect with the hot yellow bulbs again and again, believing that the light was a way out to somewhere when, in reality they were already free. Just like the Chosen, insects had stupid built into them. Nevertheless, Snipe felt a brief stab of melancholy at the futility of their attempts. When their wings were singed beyond usefulness, the moths would fall to the damp dirt and die, their efforts purposeless and suicidal.

Footsteps thumped in the grimy soil, approaching. He checked his watch again. Three minutes to go. They were pushing it – hardly enough time to change and get out to the parlour before five.

‘Come on, you bloody shirkers,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t piss me about.’ They skidded past him to the punch-card machine, clocked in and scrambled for the changing room. Red-faced, half giggling, half panicking. ‘If any of you are even a fraction of a minute late onto the parlour floor, I’ll take half an hour out of every wage packet. We’re a team. We do not let the side down.’

With a minute to go, they sprinted out to the parlour and the stalls still buttoning their stained cow-gowns.

‘And get those bloody uniforms washed!’

The lock-up garage was big enough for a small truck and a row of tools and storage boxes along each wall but it had been empty for years. It was made of concrete blocks and had no windows. The doors were wooden; painted a dull green like the others in the row and where the wood met the concrete floor it was damp and splintered. Icy draughts and dampness made it their home and even in the summer when the temperature outside was almost warm, the interior of the lock-up had a dark December heart. To enter was to shiver.

The other lock-ups in the row were doorless bothies to the miserable and the doomed. Too dangerous to sleep in, the transients did nothing more than shit there and move on before nightfall. It was a place where gangs brought rival captives and toyed with them throughout the long nights. It was far enough inside the Derelict Quarter, far enough from the nearest habitable houses that all screams went unheard. The sound of wood or glass or steel on flesh and bone might as well have exuded from some profound earthy pit.

There was no light in the lock-up and John Collins only went there at night. Sandwiched between the dirt and threat of it, he found a place to begin from. He took candles with him, set them up at the far end where he would sit on a high, backless stool and talk. In spite of the cold and the danger, in spite of the cramped space and the lack of light, people came to the lock-up to listen.

‘In the flesh, as we sit here… as people,’ he would sometimes say, ‘we’ve all come from the same place, from the same beginning. That beginning is where we’re all going back to sooner or later. That makes us all brothers and sisters. All of us. No one exists outside that simple truth. Can you see that much?’

If it was a new group, all first-timers, there’d be a silence then. Maybe one or two murmuring a faint ‘yes’.

‘I’m asking you an important question,’ he’d say. ‘So, I’m glad you’re thinking about it before you answer. Can you see we’re all branches with the same root? Can you see that we’re all brothers and sisters?’

There would be nodding, more yeses. It was a simple premise. Even the reluctant ones would shrug a silent I-guess-so.

John Collins would pause, take a sip of water, adjust the tattered grey scarf he always wore. Then he’d look back out at the six or seven rows of faces huddled, seated on the concrete. He’d look across each face and he’d know he’d seen some aspect of that face somewhere before and that he’d see other aspects of that face some time in the future. And there they sat, not recognising each other, fragments of a shattered self that had forgotten who it was.

He’d go to work on them again with whatever it took.

‘Do you think your life is some kind of accident? Is it random? Nothing more than a grand mistake? Do you think our existence, the presence of intelligent humanity is nothing more than a casual coincidence?’ He’d pause. ‘Hands up if that’s what you think.’

Sometimes there were hands. Usually not. To the hands he’d say, ‘Why did you come here tonight? You’ve risked your reputation if you have one. You’ve risked your friends if you have any. You’ve risked your family’s love. You’ve risked your life too.’ A pause. ‘You know what I think? I think your mind tells you that this life of yours is just a freak event in the lonely void of the wasteland and I think you’ve learned to believe your mind over the years. But I believe you’ve come here tonight because there’s another part of you. A quieter aspect that whispers in your heart and never goes away. I think that’s the part you’re waking up to. That’s the part you want to believe. Call it your soul. Call it your spirit. It doesn’t matter. That’s the part of you that makes you like all the rest of us. Spirit is where you come from and spirit is where you’re going back to. That’s what you know deep down to be true. But your mind wants to live in a safer world. Your mind wants footsteps on concrete and full stomachs and vodka. Your mind doesn’t even want to consider what will happen when you die or what you were before you were born. But your heart yearns for that knowledge. It yearns for truth and that yearning is a torment.’ A deep breath. A visible jet-stream of exhalation into the cold air. ‘You can speak freely, my friend. And you need not speak at all if you don’t wish to. The door’s as open for you to leave as it was for you to enter. Speak freely, please. Tell me why you came.’

It was as if they were alone in the lock-up. One listener, one speaker. John Collins could make a person feel free just with his words, just with his smile, just with a look from his wounded, understanding eyes. They’d say:

‘There’s something wrong in the town. Something wrong with me.’

‘I came because I feel trapped.’

‘I feel bad about the way I’ve lived my life.’

‘I want to change. I want to be better.’

‘I’m sick. I heard you were a healer.’

It was amusing to him how few of them ever said they no longer wanted to eat flesh. Perhaps the willing ones would have said it, but the ones who were uncertain had never come as far as that in their minds for the first meeting. They were still unable to admit to themselves what it was they wanted from Prophet John Collins.

‘If you thought this world and your life were an accident, that it was meaningless, you wouldn’t have bothered to come would you?’

No one ever disagreed.

‘It’s because this life isn’t meaningless, it’s because we’re all here for some special purpose; that’s why we’re all brothers and sisters to each other. When we die it’s natural that the special part of us goes back to where it came from, a place where we’ll all be closer and freer than we ever were here.’

He’d let that idea float for a few moments. And then he’d ask the question again.

‘Can you see that we’re all brothers and sisters? Can you see that much?’

All of them would say yes. All of them would smile a little and the smiles were always awkward strangers on their faces. They would look from side to side at each other and the smiles would widen and find a home having wandered alone too long. It could be a fathom below freezing on a winter’s midnight, breath fogging the air above their heads and John Collins would feel the warmth spreading out from all of them.

That was where it began.

Once a week, outside the lock-up on the littered and glass-strewn lot, there were no gang members divvying up the spoils of their battles, no rapes in the adjoining concrete cubes, no murders behind them, no suicides in the ruins beyond. Once a week, when John Collins was telling it, there was peace at the lock-ups.

Dark December peace.

The causes of mastitis were varied.

A teat cup removed before the vacuum was released might burst superficial capillaries allowing ever-present staphylococcus bacteria to enter the blood. A sudden backflow in the milk tubes could have a similar effect. Something as simple as incorrect sterilisation or cracked rubber in the teat cups. These problems had been legion before Greville Snipe was promoted to dairy supervisor. Since then the incidence of mastitis had halved.

Mastitis was a common problem among the milkers. Some recovered from it and others did not. The priority was that milk should flow. If a little pus was drawn from a few teats, it was no big problem. Pasteurisation and homogenisation took care of it. The milk was safe and no one would ever realise it was anything other than the healthiest and most nourishing liquid a person could drink. Milk-drinking townsfolk knew better than to ask questions about how it was produced as long as it tasted good. So, the occasional dead white blood cell did make it into the stomachs of the population. But the milk was safe. It tasted great. And that was all that mattered.

Mastitis caused swelling of the udder and teat in the first instance. Passing milk would be accompanied by a more intense ache than the milking machines usually caused. As the days passed and the infection worsened, a discharge would begin to leak from the affected teat. Typically this discharge would contain some milk, some blood and some pus. Milking would continue regardless of the contamination. The increasing pain caused to the milker was not taken into account.

Sometimes, the teat would harden and crack like baked mud. Blood and pus would then flow freely. At this point, most milkers would be given a day or two of rest because the flow of their milk was retarded by the infection. This was their chance to recover if they were going to. A few did. Most didn’t.

It was cheaper for Magnus to sell his milkers as meat than it was to treat them for the infection. Milkers whose mastitis worsened into fever were slaughtered, their meat sold for the most basic burger and sausage mince. In the long term, all milkers were headed for the grinder but those who made it through an episode of mastitis had a few more years of service to look forward to before they faced the bolt gun.

Richard Shanti watched the trucks grumble out of the packing department.

What had been living, what once was sacred, would now become the nourishment for thousands of townsfolk. Halves, hindquarters and forequarters being taken for further processing. Bloodless pink fillets, steaks, chops, ribs and roasting joints transported to butchers where they’d be arranged on sloping, glass-screened displays. Packets of mince, low-grade sausage and retrieved meat heading for the pie makers. There was no soul in the meat, no spirit. As far as Shanti was concerned, the sanctity of the flesh had died with its owners.

Where did that preciousness go, he wondered? Not with the meat in the trucks. Not to the tables of the townsfolk.

From time to time the magnitude of what he was part of and the daily repugnance of it washed far into the hinterland of his awareness, into the exposed avenues and byways of his conscience. How could such violation occur in such great numbers? In those rare moments, he could almost comprehend what it was he contributed in terms of suffering and how that weighed against what little good he did.

On those days he took extra ballast in his pack.

Greville Snipe lived to work. It worried his mum.

‘I’ve got no friends, no hobbies and no vices,’ he would often boast to Ida Snipe as he slipped her a few extra groats and a free two-litre carton of milk. He visited his mum once a week for Sunday tea and always took her some of the ‘bounties of his endeavour’ to keep her happy.

‘You should settle down with someone,’ she would tell him as she twisted a greasy hanky between gnarled, quivering fingers; her face an atlas of concern.

‘I couldn’t be more settled,’ he’d reply, annoyed that the good things he provided were never quite good enough. ‘I’ve got a decent job, plenty of money. I’ve got my health,’ which is more than you’ve got, he always wanted to add. ‘And I’m happy as I am.’

Ida knew her boy worked hard.

‘I’m proud of you,’ she’d say, little tears at the corner of her eyes. ‘You’ve always been a good boy. Good to me.’ But who was going to look after him? He had no time to find the right woman. A man took a good bit of looking after. She knew that because of Greville’s father, Anderton Snipe.

‘One of those poorer girls from the northern quarter would be perfect for you. Quiet, obedient. Good cooks, I’ve heard. And they keep a tidy house too, you know.’ She’d sigh to herself but loud enough for him to hear the wistfulness in it. ‘I’ve got nothing against poor people, Greville. Just remember that.’

Visiting on a weekly basis, Greville found it hard to forget his mother’s class-based forbearance. He told her he’d take a trip to the northern quarter and look into it.

There were things his mum didn’t understand. Things he could never tell her.

Greville Snipe lived to work. His mum would have worried a lot more had she known why.

The numbers of the Chosen were vast, more than ten thousand. But their numbers fluctuated in response to the town’s demand and also to diseases that occasionally afflicted them.

In warm weather, they roamed the fields to the far south west of the town in herds totalling many hundreds of head. Their pale bodies moved in swathes against the grass and mud. When it rained or if it was cold, they crammed into the huge, arch-shaped barns that had been there ever since the town began. The barns were ancient and rotting and there were holes in the roofs and in the walls. They gave the only limited shelter and the Chosen pressed close to each other to stay warm.

Around the perimeters of the fields there were wooden towers where stockmen could observe, count and keep the herds secure. Impenetrable hedges of blackthorn formed the borders of each field. Access gates were high and spiralled with barbed wire. The security measures were unnecessary, though. None of the Chosen had ever tried to break through a fence or a hedge in Abyrne’s history.

Closest to the plant were the dairy herds that needed to make the daily trip for milking. They were kept corralled in the plant to be milked twice in the course of the day and then returned to their fields in the evenings.

The meat herds spent much of their time in the fields and barns. Herds made up of pregnant or nursing mothers and their calves stayed corralled in the plant longer term. When their calves were old enough and their rituals were complete, they would rejoin the main herds as heifers or steers. The Chosen that saw the fields most rarely were the bulls. They were kept penned and separate to prevent fighting and stayed within the plant most of their lives. Veal calves, once in their crates, never saw the fields or any other cattle again.

Anticipation made his heart beat so hard he could feel the throbbing in his neck. His face was hot and his balls ached.

His alarm went off at four in the morning but he never pressed the snooze button. He was washed and dressed within five minutes and tucking into a breakfast of steak and black pudding. He needed plenty of protein for such a long shift. Accompanying his breakfast, Greville Snipe drank boiled milk with three large sugars. Thus fuelled, he was ready for a day in the dairy.

Not for him the clammy, dread air of the slaughterhouse that thrummed all day with stark, final seconds of anticipation. Not for him the blue rubber aprons and knee-high rubber boots. Not for him the captive bolt gun, nor the hoisting chain, nor the double-handled bone cutters. Neither the long-bladed knife nor the saw. Snipe saw himself as a kind man. A humane worker in an inhumane industry.

There was no death in the dairy. There were no struggles, no kicking, no letting of blood. In his working world he breathed a quiet air. Not quite serene perhaps, but certainly not a condemned air. Not yet. In the dairy, the milkers were in the prime of life with years of production still before them. In that time they would eat well and sleep well and the promise of their certain dispatch was far away. Snipe cared for them as best he could. They were valuable and they were his responsibility.

By five o’clock he was checking the herd over before the first milking.

He strolled with pride through the milking parlour. The cows stood with their wrists shackled to their ankles by a long chain. This prevented them interfering with the equipment or resisting the attachment of teat cups to their udders. Snipe’s team of four youths were quick and efficient because of his training. They ran from booth to booth and within minutes were able to connect a hundred and fifty cows to the machines. None of Snipe’s team wanted to be there. If there had been any other job in the world they could have taken, they would have. It was not a time when people had many choices. The milking parlour, the cows, the machinery; all of it gave the youths the creeps. That was another reason they were so fast. Fast, but not careless. He’d trained that out of them.

They were young too, none of them over nineteen and they would, in time, come to understand and appreciate the importance of the job they were doing. They didn’t know it but they were privileged and, unlike most jobs in the town, working in the milking parlour actually meant something. They were helping to provide for others.

Once the equipment was attached, the milking session was brief; only twenty minutes to harvest half of the day’s yield. Then Snipe’s lads passed through the parlour a second time removing teat cups and collecting them for sterilisation. Collected raw milk was then pumped into vats for pasteurisation and homogenisation. As those processes were fully automated, his boys could take a long break.

He then had a solid hour to pass through the milking parlour checking every cow in the herd. This was what raised his pulse.

There were four rows of forty individual milking stalls, the two centre rows were back to back. Between rows one and two and rows three and four were two broad concrete lanes with a gutter that ran down the centre of each. Many of the cows would urinate or defecate during milking. After they’d returned to pasture, the whole parlour would be hosed down a stall at a time. Snipe was used to the smell but his four lads wore their masks for the whole shift.

During his hour alone with the herd, Snipe inspected every cow in every stall. In a herd, they all looked alike, but it was possible to pick up on little distinguishing marks and individual behaviours. Snipe knew every cow by sight and number. He passed along the stalls, hands behind his back like a general inspecting his troops. In turn, every eye in the parlour watched his progress. As a dairyman, Snipe’s interest was in a good milk yield and a healthy herd. He felt obliged to check the udders and teats of every cow.

In most cases, the initial check was a glance. Deflated udders with a ruddy rim around elongated teats was what he wanted to see. Healthy, spent udder tissue with a suction mark in the right place. But where he found the red rim too close to or overlapping the teat, he would pause to see if the suction had caused any damage. He would note the stall number and the number of the cow in a small white notebook that he carried in the outer pocket of his white cow-gown. Later he would have words with whichever team member possessed careless, rushed hands.

Officially, mastitis went untreated, excepting the antibiotic shots that every animal in every herd regularly received to keep them infection free. But Snipe ran a proud unit and he liked to do a little more for his milkers. Whenever he saw damaged, cracked or sore teats on his cows, he attended to them. In his trouser pocket at all times was a small jar of cream that his mother had used on his dry skin when he was a child. It smelled of honey and old leather and was called Beauty Balm. In reality, it was a product aimed at women to keep their hands soft and smooth. Snipe had learned to use it for other things before he realised it could help soothe the udders of his milkers.

It caused him a very complicated feeling when he stopped to rub the Beauty Balm into the sore udders of one of the herd. His eyes would defocus a little and he would enter a righteous, delightful, guilty trance. He would look away from the face of the cow and concentrate on the feeling of the swollen udder beneath his gentle fingers. Sometimes a final dribble of milk would exude from the affected teat and Snipe would pause and look at the cow’s face. Suffused with temptation, his penis painfully rigid and his testicles sharply aching, he would continue down the rows.