The Gunners

by Rebecca Kauffman

  Jimmy said, “Did you ever have any sort of inkling about any of this?”

  Mikey shook his head. “But something . . . Well, it’s never been easy, me and my dad.”

  The server appeared with their fish sandwiches, served on greasy paper in little red plastic baskets with Cajun fries on the side.

  Mikey ordered a second beer. A fierce sadness and longing was climbing through him. He wished he knew what he felt.

  The two of them talked of other things as they ate: Jimmy’s recent travels and recent investments, his apprehension about seeing his own parents later that day. He described the guilt he felt over not telling them the truth about his sexuality weighed against his fear of their judgment, their disappointment.

  Jimmy said, “I still want to be me to my parents, I still want to be their son Jimmy, not their gay son Jimmy. But how much of me is being gay? I’m afraid of throwing the whole ratio out of whack if I tell them. I don’t want who I am to be overshadowed by the fact that I’m gay.” Jimmy paused and sighed again. “Anyhow. I won’t know how they’re going to react until I let them react.”

  Mikey said, “Sometimes life feels like one big guessing game, doesn’t it? I don’t know what I mean by that.” He felt unspeakably weary.

  Jimmy drank lots of beer very quickly, his turquoise eyes distant and watery. “I know exactly what you mean by that,” he said.

  Eventually, Mikey finished his beer, and Jimmy waved down the server for the bill.

  Mikey and Jimmy parted ways outside of McDowd’s. The wind had picked back up, and it skimmed across the frozen lake, bringing with it a painful chill. The sun loomed over them like a weight. Mikey shrank his neck so that the collar of his coat reached his nose. He hugged Jimmy tightly.

  Jimmy said, “Guess we’ll be seeing each other in Pennsylvania for the wedding next month.”

  Mikey nodded. “Take care, brother. I hope you have a nice time with your folks.”

  Jimmy nodded, and Mikey watched as a certain melancholy passed through Jimmy’s bright eyes at the mention of his parents.

  Jimmy said, “I know they love me. I’m not sure what I’m so scared of.”

  Mikey took a right out of the parking lot at McDowd’s instead of a left, which would have taken him home. He took Route 11 six miles north, then got onto Route 68, out toward Eden.

  He had never been to his father’s workplace and wasn’t even sure he’d be able to find it.

  Chapter 24

  The Galway Brothers Meat Processing Plant was not hard to find; it was the biggest business in Eden. The building itself was practically a mile long, set just off the main street through town, beyond the only stoplight. Smoke rose from the plant in dark columns from many black chimneys of varying height. The sign at the main entryway featured a square brown paper parcel tied with string as the logo, alongside the name of the company. Mikey followed signs to the visitor parking, then made his way across the salted lot to the front entrance.

  Inside, the place smelled of bleach, and the lighting was a piercing, sterile white-blue. Mikey approached the front desk, where a heavyset middle-aged woman wearing a bright green silk top sat before a massive computer.

  She looked at Mikey over her reading glasses, then lowered them from her face so they dangled against her large breasts on a string. Her lips were glossy pink, and her teeth were yellow. She wore a very thick and opaque application of foundation, an uncomfortable look akin to someone wearing way too many layers of clothing in a hot room.

  Mikey said, “My father works here.”

  “What department?”

  “Department?”

  “Department.”

  “Oh . . .” Mikey thought for a moment. “Probably slaughter. Is that a department?”

  “I’m gonna need to see some ID,” the woman said.

  Mikey reached for his wallet.

  “Gotta make sure you’re not a YouTuber,” the woman said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Oh, these kids sneak in here with their hidden cameras, going after some footage for their animal rights videos and whatnot. That’s why security’s the way it is,” she explained, running her thick tongue over her lips.

  “Sure,” Mikey handed her his ID.

  “What’s your dad’s name?” she said.

  “John Callahan.”

  She typed this into her computer. “He expecting you?”

  Mikey shook his head.

  The woman said, “Lemme call on back. Go on and have a seat.” She nodded toward several brown vinyl chairs in the lobby, next to a small table. Mikey picked up a Field & Stream magazine from the table and paged through it.

  The woman spoke into the phone, “Says he’s here to see John Callahan. You wanna send him up? I see . . . Right, I’ll let him know.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at Mikey.

  He set the magazine back on the table and said, “If it’s any trouble, I’ll just come another time.” Suddenly, he felt squeamish and shy, uncertain of himself and how he would explain his visit.

  “No, hon,” she said. “He’s just in the middle of something. His colleague’s on his way up, though.”

  Mikey stood up and made a subtle move for the door. “It’s all right. I don’t want to interrupt anyone.”

  The woman waved a floppy hand at him, and her bracelets tinkled against one another. “Just sit tight.”

  A few minutes later, a man approximately his father’s age appeared around the corner of the lobby. He wore a white hard hat, rubber gloves, a large rubber apron over work boots, and a grimy-looking white uniform decorated with blood splatters, just like Mikey’s father wore. He had a gray beard, a bulbous red nose, friendly eyes that shrank to coin slots when he smiled.

  “I’m Don,” he said. “I’d shake your hand, but the gloves.”

  Mikey said, “You work with my dad?”

  Don nodded. “Forty-two years. You believe that? We started within a month of each other, right after finishing high school, been working side by side ever since.”

  “Really!” Mikey didn’t want to offend the man by making it any more obvious that his father had never mentioned this colleague of forty-two years.

  Don said, “Why don’t you come on back to our workroom, have a coffee?”

  Mikey said, “If he’s busy . . .”

  “Nah.” Don was already making his way back down the hallway from which he had come. “He’s probably about to finish up and take lunch.”

  Mikey followed.

  It began to smell less like bleach and more of something pungent and weird and raw and unpleasant. Mikey breathed through his lips.

  “We’re goin’ allllll the way back,” Don said. “Nobody wants to be close to the guts and gore.” He laughed. He glanced briefly at Mikey. “It’s good to meet you after hearin’ all about you from your pop over the years.”

  “Really?” Mikey was legitimately surprised by this. He could not fathom one single thing that his father might have said about him.

  Don said, “Says you’re quite the cook. Brought me one of them croy-sants you baked a couple months back.”

  Mikey blinked. His father had barely acknowledged the croissants. Machines whirred behind doors as they continued to make their way down the hallway. Mikey peeked in through the windows. Machines churning pink meat. Conveyor belts where tubes spat pink meat into little tins. Women in hairnets writing on clipboards. Printers shooting out colorful labels. Huge stacks of mail. Empty boardrooms.

  Finally, they reached the far end of the hallway.

  Don walked Mikey into a small workroom with a single Culligan’s water cooler, a Mr. Coffee, and two long rectangular tables, where half a dozen men were seated, eating sandwiches from Saran Wrap or soup from steaming Tupperware containers. Uniforms stained with blood. The slaughter crew. Only half of them lo
oked up from their lunch when Don and Mikey entered the room.

  Don said, “Got John’s kid here.”

  The smell was making Mikey nauseous. He adjusted his glasses.

  A red-haired guy with an Australian accent raised his can of Coca-Cola and said, “Cheers.”

  A guy with no eyebrows said, “We been wantin’ to meet you,” he said. “So’s we could say thanks.”

  Others in the room nodded.

  Mikey said, “What for?”

  The Australian said, “Holidays.”

  Mikey didn’t understand. “Holidays?”

  The guy without eyebrows clarified: “How your pop always works the holidays. So’s we can be with our families.”

  All the men in the room nodded.

  The Australian said, “Your pop says you’ve always been real understanding about it. Easygoing.”

  Mikey said, “Oh.” He felt something sort of broken and

  confusing.

  “Anyhow,” Don said, “let’s see how much work your pop’s got left.” He walked Mikey through the door on the far side of the workroom, which took them to a dark, smaller room with a single window opening on a massive chamber filled with animal carcasses that hung from hooks and rods and chains.

  Mikey stared into the room. Massive. There had to be two hundred dead animals hung up in there. Blood everywhere. He felt his stomach lurch. He couldn’t believe the sheer volume of the operation.

  Don nodded toward a locker just to Mikey’s right. “Grab an apron and a hat in there. Mask, too, if you’re worried about the smell.”

  Mikey stared at him.

  Don said, “I’ll walk ya through. Find your pop. Not every day a boy gets to see his old man hard at work.”

  Mikey was almost certain he’d vomit upon entering that room, but he didn’t want to appear weak or judgmental or squeamish. He opened the locker and pulled out a bleached apron that covered his clothing from his collarbone to his knees. He tied it around his back and put on a white hard hat. He pulled a mask from a box and put it over his face so that only his eyes were uncovered, and fit his glasses over the mask. He put on a pair of rubber gloves.

  Don clapped him on the back and led him through a door into the main chamber.

  It was very, very cold.

  Mikey continued to breathe through his mouth, sucking in the fabric of the mask.

  They walked briskly past rows and rows and rows of animal carcasses, some very recent kills, Mikey guessed, many still dripping blood into a wide tilted canal on the floor beneath them. Men in various stations were actively and methodically butchering animals. Very few wore masks. Cleaning the animals. De-hairing them. Removing heads. Stripping meat from bone. Hooves sawed off. Kidneys in bowls. Blood spray on the floor and counters. Great mounds of yellowy fat globules. Don and Mikey walked through unnoticed; the butchers did not interrupt their work to acknowledge them.

  They walked the full length of this chamber; then Don led Mikey into another room, this one smaller but with a similarly high ceiling. Above the noisy whirring of machinery, Mikey could hear the distant bray of cattle. On the far side of the room, he could see small columns of daylight, snow, the outdoors. Mikey’s eyes fixed on his father at the far end of this room.

  His father stood in full uniform with several other men along the far wall, which was a mass of metal boxes and gates. One of the men held a two-foot-long black apparatus. A wide conveyor right in front of these gates stretched the length of the room, leading through a six-by-six-foot opening in the wall, protected with plastic flaps, that went back toward the large carcass chamber from which they had just come. This room, Mikey understood, was where the animals died.

  Don leaned toward Mikey and said, “Don’t wanna get any closer till they’re finished. High voltage and all.”

  Mikey watched as an animal entered the area, a tight space behind the conveyor. He could tell that it was a cow, and from behind the gate, he could see only the top of its bristly brown back. It did not appear to be resisting or in any sort of panic. The man with the black apparatus nodded toward the other men. Then he approached the animal and reached the apparatus over the metal gate with a swift, practiced movement, and administered a shock that caused his own shoulder to jerk a bit with the jolt. Immediately after, this man jumped out of the way as the gate to the conveyor was lifted with large hinges, and the animal fell forward onto the conveyor. Here, Mikey could see the cow in its entirety: a nice rust-caramel color, hooves still wet with dirty snow, floppy ears, a numbered yellow tag through one, black eyes wide and glassy.

  Mikey watched as his father moved closer to stand over the animal as its legs kicked violently for a few seconds. His father lowered himself so his own face was near the animal’s head, and he removed his rubber gloves from his thick arms and stroked the animal’s face gently with his bare hand as it kicked.

  Don explained, “Thing loses consciousness right away . . . it’s not in any pain. Legs kickin’ is just a reflex. It’ll get slaughtered in the other room. That’s when it’ll actually die, but it won’t feel a thing between here and there.”

  Mikey nodded. Then he watched as his father knelt fully to the ground before the animal’s head and gently touched it near its eye.

  Don said, “That’s how you make sure it’s actually out. No corneal reflex. Otherwise you need to stun it again.”

  Mikey nodded.

  Don said, “Most guys say that’s the worst part. Nobody wants to be near the face, lookin’ straight into the eyes of somethin’ while it’s dyin’.”

  Mikey watched as his father stroked the animal’s cheek again, still with his bare hand, as gentle and kind as if it were a newborn child. He saw his father’s lips move as his fingers continued to softly graze over the broad cheek of the animal.

  Even after the other men involved with the stunning had moved to another part of the line and were chatting with one another, wiping their brows and laughing over some crack, Mikey’s father was still bowed low before the animal. Still touching its face, until finally the conveyor belt groaned into action and started to move and the animal was slowly dragged away from this site and into the slaughtering chamber.

  Mikey watched as his father put his palms on the ground to steady himself while rising to his feet, wincing noticeably with the effort. Mikey felt something hot and sad pressing on his insides.

  “I keep tellin’ your pop it’s no wonder his knees are so bad,” Don said, “gettin’ down on the ground like that for every single one.”

  Chapter 25

  Don called out across the room. “John-John!”

  Mikey’s father looked their way, and did not register immediate surprise; Mikey realized his own identity was still hidden behind his mask, his glasses shadowed by the hat. His father walked slowly in their direction, removing his own hard hat to wipe his brow into his elbow.

  When he drew near, Don clapped a hand over Mikey’s back and said, “Your boy here to see you.”

  John’s posture suddenly stiffened; his eyebrows lifted as he met Mikey’s eyes.

  Mikey gave him a nod. He felt shaky and ill, his voice on the verge of breaking out in high and desperate pitches.

  His father wiped his face into his elbow again and said to Don, “I’ll meet you back in the workroom. I’ve got a few more before my break.”

  Don said to Mikey, “Good to meet ya, son,” before heading back for the long walk through the slaughter chamber.

  Mikey’s father gazed at Mikey. He wore an expression of mild irritation. “What’s this all about?”

  Mikey said, “I was thinking—”

  His father gestured toward his own lips. “Can’t hear ya behind the mask,” he said.

  Mikey lowered the mask so that it crinkled across his chin and his mouth was exposed. The smell was hot and rancid, and he coughed.

  His father laughed
. He offered his hard hat, upside down, to Mikey. “If you’re gonna yak, do it in here.”

  Mikey didn’t take the hat.

  “Why’d you come here?” his father said. He had hair and blood on his apron and gloves. Flecks of sawdust on his rough face. Behind him, a garage door groaned, metal on metal, as it rose a few feet off the ground, and Mikey heard the distant bray of cattle once again. In addition to the smell of death, this fresh air brought with it the aroma of animal shit and cigarette smoke and snow. He could see hooves through the sliver beneath the door. Men in rubber boots slogging through shit and mud and snow, whistling as they herded the cattle.

  “I didn’t know this is what it’s like,” Mikey said.

  “My job?”

  Mikey nodded. “You never talk about it.”

  “What am I gonna say?”

  Mikey was quiet for a bit.

  “You’ve got my number, ya know,” his father said. “No need to come trampin’ around my workplace to find me.”

  “Sure,” Mikey said. He couldn’t explain, of course, the source of his sudden and desperate need to be in John’s presence, the compulsion to come here as sharp and painful as a blade at his back.

  “Anyhow.” His father ran a thick knuckle under his nostrils and said, “I only packed one sandwich.”

  “I’m not gonna stay for lunch,” Mikey said, “But why don’t you come to my place for dinner sometime this week?”

  Mikey’s father had never once been to his home in the twelve years Mikey had lived there.

  A strange sound slid out of his father. “Huh.”

  “Why don’t you come over?” Mikey said. “Why won’t you ever come over?” The first was a question, and the second, Mikey realized as it came out of his mouth, was an accusation.

  “I’m allergic,” his father said.

  Mikey laughed. “To me?”

  “Cats.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  His father nodded.