Cashed Out

by Michael Rubin

  Damn! There was no mistaking what these were. Receipts for shipments without detailed information meant that someone didn’t want things to be tracked. But “SBP” meant St. Bonaventure Parish. And WFF? The stylized crawfish gave it away. It was the logo of Wholesale Flesh and Fur.

  Chapter 31

  FRIDAY

  On a map, St. Bonaventure Parish looks like a thirsty salamander slinking toward the Gulf of Mexico. Its snout is far south in the brackish marshes, but its long, curved tail stretches ninety miles north, almost to West Baton Rouge Parish.

  Wholesale Flesh and Fur is just about at the tip of the tail, and the quickest way to get there was not on the interstate but rather across the old Mississippi River bridge that Huey Long had built high enough to let the main river traffic through, but low enough so that ocean-going vessels could get no further than Baton Rouge, all in an attempt to save and stimulate the city’s maritime trade. The metal used to be pink, stained by the tons of bauxite imported from Jamaica for aluminum. The Kaiser Aluminum facility used to sit right at the foot of the bridge, and the bauxite dust had permanently discolored everything within a couple of miles of the plant.

  It has all been repainted to remove the stains, and I planned to use G.G.’s money to remove the stains of sorrow from my past, left there by Taylor and Catch.

  At last I got to St. Bonaventure Industrial Park where Wholesale Flesh and Fur was located. Reflections from dozens of metal-roofed buildings shimmered through the early morning haze.

  Wholesale Flesh and Fur was at the rear of the Park, backing up to the bayou and the swamp beyond. Fencing topped with razor wire surrounded the facility except for a small visitor’s parking lot marked by a sign – a red crawfish in a circle, the same design that had been on the delivery tickets and the web site. There were at least four big buildings in the complex that I could see.

  A small bus was just unloading as I pulled in. Weegie was leading at least two dozen people, all middle-aged or older. Even though Weegie was dressed in overalls and hiking boots and had her hair tied back in a denim scarf, she was even more attractive than I remembered from the night before.

  This was better than I had hoped. I had planned to just walk in and ask for Trey, but now I could blend in with the tour group and, perhaps, get more information than Trey might have been willing to give me.

  I caught up with the tail-end of the group. Weegie was preoccupied and had not yet turned around to notice me, but a woman with a broad-brimmed straw hat said as I approached, “You’re a bit late. Did you miss the bus? I didn’t see you at the hotel last night or this morning.”

  “Oh, I’m from Baton Rouge,” I said. “Just thought I’d join y’all on this part of the tour.”

  The woman hit her husband on the arm. “I told you, Morris, they really do say ‘y’all’.”

  Morris grunted.

  “We’re from San Diego,” she announced proudly. “This is our third EarthResponsible tour!”

  She paused to wipe her brow with her handkerchief. “This is our first time in Louisiana. Is it always this hot here? Even so early in the morning? And the bugs. Ugh! They crawl. They fly. And walking here’s like trying to exercise in a sauna, what with all this humidity. It’s not like San Diego at all, is it, Morris?” Morris grunted again, non-committally.

  Only when we approached the front door did Weegie turn to face the group. That’s when she saw me. She ushered the group though the door, grabbing me by the arm as I started to enter. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well,” I said, “last night you announced you were giving a tour here. Thought I’d drop in to see what brings your tour group all the way down to these parts.” I tried to make this sound as plausible as possible.

  I hadn’t charmed anyone in years, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to start trying again. I’d try with Weegie. No harm. “Is there a problem if I tag along? After all, I’m sure that you, as a tour guide, wouldn’t object to having another customer. I’ll gladly pay whatever the tour company charges.”

  “I’m not a tour guide. I’m a Coordinator,” she said.

  I had offended her by misperceiving her role. “I stand corrected. Coordinator.”

  “Standing corrected is good for the posture,” she said with a smirk. “Step inside with the rest. Maybe you’ll learn something that will make you more environmentally sensitive.”

  “So this is sensitivity training?”

  She looked at me quizzically and then gave a wry smile. “All right,” she said, acknowledging my poor joke. “In a way, I guess it is. EarthResponsible’s tours are part of our overall fundraising and grant efforts. We use them to raise money so we can continue and hopefully expand all of our worthwhile projects. Tour participants have a way of becoming EarthResponsible donors. Perhaps by the time we’re finished I can hit you up for a donation.”

  I thought that might be interesting. Since she planned to hit on me, I figured I might, given the right opportunity, try hitting on her.

  The two of us entered a narrow waiting room with only four chairs. The group was milling about on the ripped indoor-outdoor carpet. An alarm, triggered when the front door opened, continued to chime, but no one was in the receptionist’s cubical, which was made out of the same cheap paneling that covered the walls.

  At last, the inner door opened. A small Asian man in jeans and a white lab coat entered. “I’m Kuo Htay, the production manager. On behalf of Wholesale Flesh and Fur, let me welcome all of you visitors from EarthResponsible. We normally give tours in the afternoon, but Mr. Trey said you’d be here at eight and you’re right on time.”

  Weegie shook his hand. “Weegie Melton, EarthResponsible. We’re happy to be here, Kuo . . .” she mangled the pronunciation.

  Kuo smiled. “Everyone does that. Can’t get their tongues around the sounds. Call me Kirk, everyone does. It’s easier.”

  “OK, Kirk.”

  “Mr. Trey said that you’re to get the run of the place. The first-rate, in-depth, no- holds-barred explanation and inspection.” He raised his voice so everyone could hear. “Mr. Trey is very proud of the way we run this facility. It’s the finest in the state – and in the region. Just follow me. You’re in for an eye-opening experience.”

  Chapter 32

  In sharp contrast to the shoddy waiting room, the interior of the plant was gleaming. Corrugated metal walls, almost iridescent, stretched up at least thirty feet to the steel trusses that crisscrossed under the aluminum roof. Huge black ducts wove overhead, punctuated by grates dispensing a constant flow of cool air. Pipes in bright reds, greens, yellows and blues were braided through the metal work, connecting to large chrome cylinders on the ground, to vats that squatted along the walls, and to color-coded spigots over bronze assemblies.

  Thirty or more women, all Asian and dressed, like Kirk/Kuo – whatever his name was – in jeans underneath thigh-length lab coats, were on either side of a metal platform. At one end, slowly moving down the rollers, were long rows of aluminum trays piled high with crawfish.

  “We’re running two shifts right now, because it’s the end of crawfish season,” Kirk/Kuo said as we walked past the ladies. Their fingers moved swiftly with no wasted motion, reaching into the piles of crawfish on the tray and peeling the tails in a single movement.

  “Come on outside first, and I’ll try to show you how all this works. Mr. Trey said you need to understand how we support the things that EarthResponsible stands for.”

  We followed Kirk/Kuo through the length of the building, past more walls with double metal doors, past locked metal doors, past more machinery and equipment, through hanging strips of plastic and out another series of doors, finally emerging onto a concrete loading dock that ran along the side of the building and terminated in a landing on the bayou.

  Everyone’s glasses fogged up from our encounter with the warm morning air. “Happens all the time,” Kirk/Kuo said. “We have to keep the humidity low in the building. Look over here.”

 
Kirk/Kuo pointed to the conveyor belt system that ran in two sections, one from the area where tractor-trailers backed up to a loading dock, and one from the landing where boats coming down the bayou could tie up.

  “All of this feeds the farm-raised crawfish into the separating sieves. We try to buy only from Louisiana growers, although the Mississippi growers think they can raise them. But what do they know? Half of them still call a ‘crawfish’ a ‘crayfish.’”

  “So they’re grown in aquaculture, like catfish?” Weegie asked, both for her own benefit and on behalf of the rest of us on the tour.

  “Not so deep. More like modified rice fields. In fact, many are raised on what used to be rice fields. Sometimes, on flooded fields used at other times of the year for soybeans. We’re almost at the end of the season.

  Kirk/Kuo pointed to several refrigerator-sized wire tubs tilted on an angle. “We run water through them and sort them. We’ve got five sizes of sieves. Only two are up right now. Put crawfish in, start the water, and they just slosh through. The big ones stay in the main drum. The smaller ones drop through to the next. The pieces and debris drop out the bottom,” he said, pointing to a trough that ran through the loading area, “and we dispose of all that.”

  That stuff being disposed of had to be shipped somewhere. But so what if this went to Camellia Industries? There was nothing toxic about crawfish. No need for an injunction to shut down a company for taking crawfish waste. You could bury it in a hole or grind it up and fertilize fields.

  Kirk/Kuo continued leading us through the building. “Once they’ve been sorted by the sieves, we turn the tubs upside down. The crawfish go right into the pots.”

  We accompanied him back into the cool interior of the building, where we followed the path of the conveyor belt and ended up in front of tremendous containers. They were as tall as I was, and the streams of rising steam were whisked up into vents that hung from wires.

  Kirk/Kuo shouted to make himself heard. “These are our boiling canisters. Each holds four hundred gallons. We can process up to two tons of crawfish a day if we have to. Just wait a minute, but step back so you don’t get splashed. We’re about at the end of one of the cycles.

  A soft, electronic bell went off and machinery next to one of the containers whirred. A pulley in the ceiling, its thick chain clanking, turned and lifted a gigantic mesh basket, filled with glistening red crawfish, from the huge vat, pouring them into another tub.

  “Once they cool down, the ladies over there peel them and then we package the tails. Twelve-ounce and sixteen-ounce packages for stores; four-pound packages for restaurants. Fresh crawfish. Can’t beat it. We also flash freeze the smaller sizes for use throughout the year – the season, even though the growers have extended it, can’t last all year, but the demand for crawfish surely does.”

  “I have a question!” It was the woman on the tour who was still wearing her broad-brimmed straw hat, even though we were indoors.

  Weegie whispered to me, “That’s Myrna. She and her husband are quite a pair.”

  Myrna pointed to the Asian women who worked the piles of red bodies, and asked “Do they live around here? Morris, they don’t look like they belong here, do they?” Morris grunted again.

  The women on the line pretended not to hear the question or the tone with which Myrna spoke. They merely carried on, efficiently eviscerating the crawfish, putting empty shells on one conveyor belt and expertly extracted tails on another, ignoring Myrna’s implied insult.

  Kirk/Kuo responded with a tinge of sadness, “They, I, we – we’re all living here now.”

  “Here being St. Bonaventure Parish?” Myrna inquired. “I didn’t see a lot of houses or apartments on my way over from Baton Rouge. Is there a town or neighborhood nearby I missed? This is really in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it? I mean, do people really live out here?”

  Kirk/Kuo tried to ignore her insensitivity. “They live here, here being the United

  States.”

  Myrna hit her husband in the arm. “Morris! He knows what I mean. He’s making fun of me.”

  I could see that Kirk/Kuo was not going to bother to explain to Myrna that south Louisiana was filled with the second, third, and now fourth generations of those who had escaped from Vietnam as boat people, or who had gotten out through Laos or Cambodia. They had come here because they knew about fishing and seafood, and because the climate and the waterways reminded them of home.

  As we entered the next room, Kuo flipped a switch. Overhead doors came down, sealing off the crawfish picking room and relieving the women on the production line of having to endure more of Myrna’s insensitive comments.

  Kirk/Kuo corralled us towards a set of double doors. “This will be our last stop. I think this is the part you’ll probably remember most. That’s what everyone says after we take them through this next section.”

  Chapter 33

  Kirk/Kuo opened the steel latch. This room was a good ten to fifteen degrees colder than the crawfish and shrimp processing areas.

  The doors slid shut behind us. We were in another metallic room. Racks of tall cylinders, each marked with a skull and crossbones inside a yellow triangle – the symbol for toxic chemicals – were propped against the walls. The center of the area was filled with wide stainless-steel tables on wheels. Each table, at least fifteen feet long, had a deep trough that emptied into drains in the floor. The roof was lined with overhead rods along which ran pulleys dripping with chains, each of which ended with a thick two-foot long hook. A modern-day Inquisition could have been held here.

  “This,” said Kirk/Kuo, rubbing his hand across the top of the slightly convex surface of one of the tables, “is what you’ve all heard about.”

  The group gathered around him. They didn’t want to miss anything.

  I hung back. There was nothing here I hadn’t seen in other places. This was just fancier.

  “Alligators are an endangered species,” said Kirk/Kuo, “but not here in Louisiana.

  And Mr. Trey is a big supporter of EarthResponsible. I’m told he contributes lots.”

  “That’s what they say,” said Weegie, fingering one of the hooks that hung low over the table; it swung gently back and forth on its chain as she touched it.

  “Nutria are not endangered. Neither are most snakes. We process them all. Nutria used to be big in the fur trade, but that’s dropped off a lot. Almost can’t give it away now. Still, we do some nutria. Some muskrat too. We treat the pelts in the next room. But here’s where we do skins. Reptiles some, but mostly alligators. We process them. Harvest the meat. Tan the hides. That’s what those chemical tanks are for – please don’t go near them or touch any of the valves. Nothing wasted in any alligator we get. We handle it all, start to finish.”

  “You know, before I read the brochure for this tour, I thought you couldn’t even sell alligators legally,” said Myrna. “I mean, Morris had a pair of alligator shoes, but I made him give them to the Salvation Army when we joined EarthResponsible, didn’t I Morris?”

  Morris nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “As those reading materials we sent out to you explained,” Weegie said, “here in Louisiana you can sell alligators if you have a permit.” She seemed displeased at the idea that permits would even be issued.

  Kirk/Kuo continued his pre-programmed patter. “You need permits each step of the way. There’s a short hunting season. Each hunter is licensed. Each alligator is tagged when caught. The Wildlife and Fisheries agents are very strict. They check the tags when the boats and pirogues come in from the bayous. They check the tags again when they come here. And we can’t even harvest the hides until the agents are present. There’s a shortage of agents right now – they’re stretched too thin and we’re stacked up, although they should be here next week and then we can start again.”

  “I don’t understand all this. And he talks in a funny accent,” complained Myrna to Morris in a voice that was loud enough for all to hear.

  Weegie wa
s gentle but firm. “Myrna, why don’t we let this nice man finish the tour, and then there will be plenty of time for questions at the end. Here’s a pad and an EarthResponsible pen. It would be great if you could take lots of notes so that you can help us all when we get to the Q&A session.”

  Kirk/Kuo looked relieved and thankful for Weegie’s help.

  He pointed to some diagrams in frames on the wall. “Having an agent present when we do the skinning is critical, not only because it’s illegal to do it without agents around, but also because each year we have to cut the skins differently. These are the patterns for this year. The cut changes from year to year so that any agent looking at a skin can tell in which year the harvest occurred.”

  Kirk/Kuo walked over to a large stainless-steel door on the side of the room. “Until the agents arrive for the cutting, we keep the alligators in here.” He pulled open the door. Inside was a huge walk-in freezer.

  Piled almost to eye level were stacks of dead alligators. Bony-plated backs and deadly faces with ferocious features. Eyes staring blankly. Open mouths with razor-sharp teeth. Vicious claws, bigger than catchers’ mitts. Stiff-ridged tails protruding at odd angles.

  The group became excited. They pulled out cameras and cell phones, holding them high over their heads, trying to get a good shot of the interior of the freezer. Shutters snapped incessantly.

  “Almost fifty of them in here right now,” Kirk/Kuo said. “It’s all a self-contained system. See those pulleys? We hook up the gators to bring them over to the peeling tables. Skin goes into the treatment tanks for tanning. Flesh goes to the restaurants.” “Restaurants?” asked Myrna, squinching up her face in disgust.

  Weegie shot her a look and Myrna immediately quieted down and wrote something in her pad.

  “Yes,” Kirk/Kuo continued. “Restaurants. Alligator tastes kind of like chicken . . . swamp chicken. Very good in a stew.”

  Kirk/Kuo started to close the freezer door, and as he did, Weegie announced, “Alligators are endangered, and but for a quirk in federal law and state politics, their skins would not be ‘harvested,’ to use the euphemism, to provide high-class handbags and shoes and wallets. Or food for tourists. Don’t you let me catch any of you sampling any ‘swamp chicken’ on this EarthResponsible tour!”