Skyglow

by Leslie Thiele

  He enjoyed being first in. The floor and walls were cleanest then, the faint tang of antiseptic stinging the frigid air. It was easy in the silence to imagine his job as something more than it was, something surgical. Precision was required, the taking of flesh from the bone a skill he’d spent a lifetime learning.

  As a younger man, he’d worked the killing floor, awash with blood. They wore navy blue in there; face masks wiped every ten minutes just to see what they were doing. It had taken some getting used to. He’d learnt you could get used to anything after a while. Still, he was happier once he’d been promoted to boning. It was quieter, only one man on the floor at a time, and he could have music playing in the background if he wanted. All things considered, it could be quite pleasant.

  Over on the far wall, a collection of knives gleamed on a magnetic strip. The handles were inscribed with names, each cutter possessive about their personal blades. There was no greater sin than using another man’s knife without his knowledge. His own had a long, thin, flexible blade with a heavy wooden handle he’d inherited from his father. There weren’t many wooden handles about these days, with all the controls on timber. It was a bit of a relic, dating back to a time before they’d modernised the plant. Perfectly weighted and balanced for sliding between bone and flesh, gliding through tough tendons and leaving the bone clean.

  It was an individual thing, having your knife just right, learning to trust the sliver of blade, the heft of the handle in your hand. The bone-crushers hated having to pick bits of flesh out of their machines at the end of the day, and the meat processors liked their cuts to come through cleanly with no trimming required. He was good at his job; they’d no need to complain about his craftsmanship.

  Paul pulled a fine chain glove over his left hand to the sound of machinery cranking up in the killing room next door. Years ago, you couldn’t hear anything over the lowing of fear and despair coming from there. There had been instances in the past when workers had become so disturbed by the noise, they’d been unable to continue. Stress leave, they called it. For some, the more they did this sort of thing, the more distressed they became; but for others, it worked the opposite way. He’d always been in the latter category himself.

  A while ago, one of the foremen worked out a way of injecting a solution into the vocal chords, paralysing enough to prevent any noise during the process. It was trickily done, harder than boning out. They called them vocalists, the guys who did it. Paid them a king’s ransom. He didn’t begrudge them their pay. They had saved the company an enormous amount of money in lost production. The silence he worked in now meant he could enjoy his music; the machinery clanking in the background, a quiet percussion.

  The first quarters began to move through, and he geared himself to concentrate. Speed and efficiency were essential, to keep up with the carcasses as they swung through on hooks. Slide the blade through the tendons and down smooth along the bone. Sever at the joint so the flesh comes away with a satisfying weight. A flick over the shoulder towards the steel carts; bones in one, flesh in the other. Simple.

  He’d been doing the job for so long now, it had become automatic. While his hands and eyes concentrated on the work, his mind was apt to wander into daydreams of bike rides through the new-forest, tracing the peace of it again in his mind; the magical sounds of repopulated birdsong, the rumbling motor of frogs. These days, his thoughts inexorably turned towards Josie. It wasn’t so bad to let the memories surface at work, with his hands and mind busy. At home alone, he had to be more vigilant.

  Slide, sever, flick.

  He missed his wife, the depth of the ache constantly taking him by surprise. In the middle of doing the most mundane of tasks at home, he would turn to tell her some small thing and be sideswiped all over again to find her gone. They had married over the protests of his family, and he hadn’t regretted it for a moment.

  His father, still alive back then, had been the most adamant. ‘She’s a good ten years older than you, son. Think about what that means.’ The intensity of his argument shone in his eyes. ‘It might seem like nothing now, but later on…’

  Paul hadn’t listened, hadn’t cared. He and Josie were soulmates. They’d had twenty amazing years together. His father was of a different generation, an impressionable child during the great protests of the 2030s when the New World Government had seized power and forced the reforms.

  His father’s father had been a slaughterman too. It ran in the family and had instilled in his father a deep bitterness for government controls, with an equal contempt for all the bloody bleeding hearts, those radicals who’d come out against those who made their living killing things. It had been a time of deep civil unrest and protracted union strikes; a bitter time of change and social upheaval, leaving those unable to adapt suspicious and angry. The protestors ended up having a major role to play in how the profession continued under the new laws. He could still see his father, greasy with beer, hissing in disbelief at some new reform. ‘Where the bloody hell do they think their food is coming from?’

  Slide, sever, flick.

  In the end, the bleeding hearts won the day, and the NWG stepped in with a carte blanche to change the order of society as it saw fit. The reconstructions brought in during that tumultuous time now seemed about as relevant as all the old war stories they banged on about every United Earth Day. Faded old tales about something that had to happen.

  It frightened him to think of those times and how close they had all come to the brink. The reforms had been necessary; you only had to look around to see the good it had done. Every chance they’d had, he and Josie would travel to different parts of the world, marvelling at the natural world surrounding them and the continual process of regeneration after the bleak time of his grandfather’s generation.

  The years of deep protein fertiliser spreads had enriched soil all over the globe, allowing reforestation to expand at a much faster rate than had been forecasted. So much seemed to be cumulative in these things, destruction as well as repair, slow to begin but gathering momentum all the time. Every year, there were more wonders to see. In the past thirty years, many of the species under threat of extinction had reached their critical mass of breeding population, the results of harsh legislations finally coming to fruition. It was a remarkable time to be alive.

  On their tenth anniversary, they’d gone to Borneo to see the orangutans. In a garish electric minibus, they’d bounced down a track deep into the tangled steaming jungle with a few other young tourists. Their guide’s commentary included his own knowledge about his grandfather who had worked burning this very area to convert the ground for palm oil plantations. The figures he’d bandied around seemed unbelievable. In only thirty-three years, 30,000 square kilometres of the forest had been destroyed, with a United Nations Environmental Programme report, back in the early 2000s, warning it would all be gone in just decades. Saved at the last minute by NWG intervention.

  That night, tipsy on the local rum, Josie had leant back in her chair, her dark hair reaching downward to the poly-tiled floor and her eyes fixed on the spangled night sky above.

  ‘I think we should get a tattoo.’

  ‘What?’ he’d said. ‘What for?’

  ‘For us. To remember this trip, later, when we’re old.’

  They’d chosen a small palm tree on their right shoulders over the laughing protests of the tattoo artist, who insisted most tourists wanted tigers or snakes. Even half drunk, the palm tree seemed daring enough.

  Slide, sever, flick.

  On a later trip to Africa, they had stood on a platform lookout, watching the great annual migration unfold below them across the Serengeti. The sheer number and variety of animals was astounding, a great river of beasts of all descriptions flowing westward in numbers not seen for hundreds of years. Josie stood behind him, her arms around his chest, leaning her forehead against his shoulder. ‘It’s all worth it, isn’t it? All those laws they made, I can see why now.’ They’d kissed in the cold wind, the rumbl
e of a thousand hooves rising up through the ground to match the pounding of their hearts.

  It was on that trip, Paul had first noticed the small lines around her eyes. When he mentioned them, she’d laughed with her usual light spirit. ‘You worry too much. Everyone has to get old sometime.’ She’d smiled, examining herself in the mirror of their hotel room. ‘Do you think it makes me look ugly?’ Through sudden tears, he’d replied she was more beautiful than ever.

  Slide, sever, flick.

  They’d decided years ago they would forego having a child of their own, instead taking the NWG childless bonus to use as a deposit on an apartment in the new precinct. Children were such a tie. It was the reason they hadn’t got a dog, though Josie would have loved one. The laws surrounding canine cohabitation were onerous, forbidding leaving any type of pack animal alone for more than an hour or two. It was deemed too distressing for the animal by the government; human interest over other species long gone.

  They had been too fond of travel to accommodate a co-companion then. Now, Paul couldn’t imagine wanting to travel alone. A dog would be good company. He had a huge backyard and the new-forest behind where the old retirement housing used to be. There would be no concerns about infringements for restraining a canine. He could take home all the meat and bones he needed from the offcut room.

  It was something to think about.

  Paul’s stomach rumbled, and he took a look at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime. This morning he’d packed salad, bread and a banana for himself. All home-grown. His vegetable garden was growing beautifully with all the blood and bone. They used to use animal offcuts as fertiliser, he’d heard. You wouldn’t get away with that nowadays; killing animals because people wanted protein, as if soy wasn’t enough. The ignorance must have been staggering.

  His knife jagged on gristle, his attention snapping back to the job as he worked on a bit of stubborn collarbone. Freeing the snag, he grasped the shoulder joint and turned it to bone out the flat outer blade.

  Slide…

  He took a second look, felt his gorge rise.

  Sever…

  He held the cut in trembling hands, tears streaming down his face. He’d never thought, never made the connection. No, that wasn’t true. He had known, they all did, they just didn’t talk about it. Of course, she would come here. She’d been there, in the next room, voiceless and afraid. Knowing he was here.

  All the riots from the past. His father’s anguish. His despair at the cold, empty spaces at home. The unspoken vanishing. He spat in futile anger at the shining floor, small clots of meat lying there, pink under the blue lights. He hated it all. He hated himself and the blind, shallow selflessness of his own generation. The ones who were never crowded, who had enough to go around and never questioned how.

  He lived in a world that supported a minimum of people, so it could support a maximum of everything else. He understood the logic, he saw the sense in it, but he hadn’t understood until now.

  All the tears on Josie’s fiftieth birthday, all the sad good-byes and rationalisations. They were all right here in his slaughterman’s hands, right here in a faded palm tree tattoo that matched his own.

  Inshallah

  A commotion in the street brought Jacques from his workroom towards the front of the house where Marie stood listening. The thunder of fists pounded on the door. She turned a worried face to him, her eyes startling in the pallor of her face.

  ‘I warned you, Jacques,’ she whispered. ‘Now they’ve come.’

  He held up a broad hand, apology and warning in his calloused palm. ‘I will deal with them.’

  Picking up her skirt, his wife walked past him, fear and contempt in her eyes. She had warned him often enough, and he had done nothing but go his own way. He deserved the scorn. Bravado was all well and good behind closed doors, but exposed to light it squirmed, a weak and wormy thing. Now he would face whatever was coming. He braced himself as the pounding started anew. In two strides, he was at the door, heaving it open.

  On the stoop, two church wardens stood like crows, their fleshy cheeks and beady eyes betraying the excess of their calling. Behind them gathered the usual mob of onlookers, hungry for gossip in the crowded arrondissement. Like all the large market towns, Saint Denis attracted many types of people, not all of a kindly disposition. Let them stare. He would be ashamed of nothing.

  The fatter of the two, his lace collar grubby above the dull black robes, turned and spat thickly in the street. ‘We’re to see your workroom. Stand aside.’

  There was nothing to see but some samples he’d been working on and piles of wood scrap and stone. And the structure itself, of course. Had someone talked? Marie had warned him, time and again, that nothing good would come of his mad ideas, his pagan ways.

  ‘What would the Church be wanting with me?’ Jacques cleared his throat anxiously. ‘I am a tradesman, of which there are many better placed to do work at the Abbey.’

  Already they were pushing past him. Jacques slammed the door on the press of avid faces and followed the Abbott’s men along the flagged passage towards his workshop. He could hear the murmur of his wife’s prayers and the sound of dough slapping hard on the benchtop. When they pushed open the door, light flooded the passageway. In that second, Jacques didn’t care if he would die for what he’d done.

  ‘Jesu!’

  The two church vultures stood gazing upward in the centre of the room. Light streaming through glass high up in the soaring walls lit their upturned faces in shades of blue and green. The surprise on their faces sent a fission of satisfaction through Jacques. This is what could be done if one had vision.

  The thin one tore his gaze from the high ribbed ceiling. ‘We had heard rumours,’ he said. ‘How is it done?’ The shadow of bully in his tone. He would be hard to resist in interrogation. ‘What ungodliness is involved here?’

  Jacques stared at the windows for a moment before answering, caught as always by the beauty there. ‘No devil’s work,’ he said. ‘Only one man, inspired by his God.’

  ‘Infidel idolatry more like.’ The fat one snorted. ‘Look, even the floor is patterned! The love of our Lord is unadorned and pure in its wisdom. The Abbot will be the judge. I daresay he will determine outcomes less to your advantage than you would wish it.’ He spat again, this time the yellow gobbet landing on the mosaic tiles with a splat.

  Jacques wondered at the man’s disregard for cleanliness in such a place, for all his talk of purity. ‘What has this to do with the Abbot?’ he asked. ‘There has been no crime here. This is my personal workspace. It offends no-one.’

  ‘It offends me and that be enough!’ The fat one rubbed his hands together and smiled coldly. ‘The Abbot sent us to investigate. He will decide on crimes and offence.’ His eyes traced again the high lines of the roof, the shards of bright sunlight, before coming to rest again on Jacques, scepticism at war with curiosity in his gaze. ‘You’re to accompany us to the Abbey. Now. You can answer directly to Suger.’

  ‘I have things I must be…’

  ‘I’m not interested in what you may have to do, and I very much doubt our Father will have much of a care either. You’re to come now.’

  ‘Will I…’ He cleared his throat with difficulty. ‘Will I be released before dark? I must inform my wife.’

  The fat one cocked an eyebrow and shrugged, unconcerned. ‘Get your coat.’ Signalling to his companion, he stumped back to the front of the house.

  Marie peered out from the kitchen as Jacques lifted his heavy woollen cloak from its peg.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself. I’ll be back before nightfall, God willing,’ he said.

  She shook her head, her face changing from anger to pity, scold dying on her tongue. ‘Sometimes, I think it would have been better had you never come back.’

  ‘Yes, sometimes I think so too.’

  ‘God go with you, Jacques.’

  ‘And you. Marie, I…’ He couldn’t think how to finish.

  ‘I know,’ sh
e said.

  He stepped out into the cold street, pulling the door shut behind him.

  The two churchmen said nothing as they pushed their way through the thronged streets, only once looking behind, so sure were they of their power, of his acquiescence. Once through the gates, they stepped into the familiar central entrance. There were no pilgrims about. Had it been a feast day, there would have been no room to move through the narrow entrance. After the tumult and noise of the market square, the hollow silence of the Abbey was unnerving, the only sound the sharp clacking of their wooden soles on the flagstones.

  The last time Jacques had attended, he had seen a small child crushed up against the stone walls, lips blue by the time he’d managed to pull him free from the crowd, all pushing desperately through the entryway to touch the holy altar. Surely, Saint Denis would not have wanted this, this madness, in his name? It had been shocking enough that Jacques hadn’t attended the past few special days. He’d spent them instead in his workshop where, despite his wife’s protests, he felt closer to God.

  It was ugly, the Abbey, place of God or no. The low roof, small high windows and poor ventilation all combined to make occupancy of the darkened building conducive only to misery. Jacques knew most would argue that the discomfort of parishioners only honed their love and fear of God. That any comfort or beauty could only distract from devotions. Jacques knew this was not so. There were moments in his workshop when he stopped and simply gloried in his Lord’s power, when awe overtook sensibility, and the work he was engaged in came to a standstill as he contemplated, deeply and completely, all the glories of God. The love of God need not be an ugliness. On this belief, he would now live or die.