My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

  A larger hopper dominated the room, used for funneling the mixed feed into the auger system. There was a refrigerator in one corner and an industrial sink in the other. Next to me was a long stainless-steel counter, which I leaned on. Stacked against the wall were more paper sacks, like large flour bags, containing what I suddenly recognized as various brands of powdered drugs. A thick coat of dust covered every surface. At first I didn’t think anything of it. Dust was everywhere, indoors and out. But then I noticed I had dust on my hands from the stainless-steel counter, and up close it seemed to consist of a mix of ground-up grains and powder.

  Something caught in my chest, a quick little fear, and it traveled straight down to my gut. I went to the sink to wash my hands. Next to the sink was a large metal garbage can filled with small empty bottles. I picked one out and examined the red and white label. Lutalyse, the hormone used to synchronize the estrus of a herd for easier artificial insemination. I didn’t understand. Gale was not breeding cattle. Why would he be using Lutalyse in a feedlot? In the garbage can I found the insert that came with the bottle.

  WARNING:

  Not for human use.

  Women of childbearing age, asthmatics, and persons with bronchial and other respiratory problems should exercise extreme caution when handling this product. In the early stages, women may be unaware of their pregnancies. Dinoprost tromethamine is readily absorbed through the skin and can cause abortion and/or bronchospasms. Direct contact with the skin should, therefore, be avoided. Accidental spillage on the skin should be washed off immediately with soap and water.

  Use of this product in excess of the approved dose may result in drug residues.

  I was still holding the bottle. I dropped it back into the garbage and turned on the tap. My hands were shaking and the bar of soap kept slipping from my grip and landing on the bottom of the sink with a drumlike thud. There was a brush next to the faucet and I scrubbed my hands with it as hard as I could. I couldn’t stop scrubbing. Or shaking.

  “Are you all right?” Dave asked, suddenly next to me.

  I pointed to the garbage pail. “I touched it.”

  Dave picked out the bottle and looked at the label. “Lutalyse,” he said. “Fairly common. It shouldn’t be a problem—”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Dave stared at me. “You shouldn’t be here at all.”

  Just then Suzuki gave the thumbs-up. I turned to Gale and tried to control my voice.

  “Why are you using Lutalyse? Are you breeding cattle?”

  John and Bunny looked confused. Gale snickered with pride. “Now, ain’t that something? You see what I mean? That’s just another example of modern science comin’ up with a way to kill two birds with one stone. We ain’t breedin’ here, but we use that same Lutalyse to abort our heifers when they get accidental bred, you know? Before gettin’ here. Actually, we give ‘em all a shot when they come in for processin’, just in case. They abort so nice and smooth they don’t go off their feed for a second, don’t even miss a mouthful.”

  “But why?”

  “Jeez,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t have pregnant heifers in a feedlot. All they do is eat, eat, eat, and never gain. Our job here is gainin’”

  John snorted. Suzuki panned over to him, adjusted the frame, and continued to roll.

  “Crazy, that’s what it is,” John growled. “Used to be you waited till an animal was sick or needed it before you pumped ’em full of drugs. It’s all a scam, son. You’re just throwin’ your money at these big pharmacooticals.... My money, I should say. Them scientists of yers, they git their paychecks from the pharmacooticals, and they’re all in cahoots with the gov’ment.”

  “Can’t do it any other way, Dad,” Gale whined. “I’ve explained all this to you. Times have changed.”

  He turned to address us. The pitch of his voice was rising again, the more excited he got.

  “Profit’s so small these days you gotta deal in volume, and without the drugs we’d be finished. The math just don’t work out. I’m bringing more head to slaughter than he ever did. If it weren’t for the modernizing I accomplished around here—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard all that before,” John interrupted loudly. “Maybe it’s so, Gale, but that don’t make it right. Getting so you gotta be a goddamned chemist to fatten up a cow.”

  He spun his wheelchair around and headed toward the door. “Come on, Bunny. Bring your daughter. This ain’t no place for a child to be playin’.”

  Bunny looked at us and shrugged.

  “Rosie, baby, come on,” she called. “Uncle Gale’s got work to do.”

  “Uncle Gale?” Rose whispered, tugging at Gale’s elbow as he watched Bunny help his father negotiate the threshold. “Uncle Gale ... ?”

  Gale ignored her, but she persisted.

  “Uncle Gale ... ?”

  Finally he noticed, crouched down, and put his arm around her. “What is it, darlin’?”

  She whispered something in his ear. He grinned and stood and went to the dusty refrigerator. As he opened it I got a glimpse of the shelves inside, lined with row after row of little rubber-topped bottles. Gale reached into the freezer section above and pulled out a bright-blue popsicle on a little plastic stick from a tray of molds. He saw me watching.

  “You want one?” he asked. I shook my head. “You mix’em up with Kool-Aid. Rosie loves ’em. Can’t have a visit with Uncle Gale without an ice pop, hey?”

  Rosie took the popsicle in her dust-covered hands and stuck it in her mouth. The heat started melting it almost immediately and the sticky blue liquid ran down between her fingers. Contentedly she licked it off and sucked at the pop.

  “Come on, Rosie,” called Bunny from outside. Rosie reached her arms up to Gale. He bent down and she planted a sugary kiss on his cheek, then scampered out the door. When he stood up again I saw that her kiss had left behind a wet mark on his skin, like a brand, in the encrusted dust.

  “He’s an old fart,” said Gale, more to himself than to us. He stood in the doorway watching Rose run after her father. “Can’t see an inch beyond the tip of his pecker.” He noticed Suzuki was still filming and put up his hand to block the lens. “Don’t you use that last thing I said,” he growled at me. “Don’t need you stirring up more trouble round here.”

  I told Suzuki to cut and thanked Gale for his time and for the tour. He grunted, then went back to work, turning his attention to one of the large drug sacks. All I wanted was to get out of that room. I washed my hands again quickly, but by then Suzuki had spotted a cutaway shot—a shaft of sunlight filtering through a high window, illuminating the dust particles that were sent swirling in the air as Gale dragged the sack toward the hopper. I fled through the door before he had time to rip it open, then waited outside in the blistering heat until finally the crew emerged. Suzuki apologized: Gale had started to mix up some feed, he explained, and he had gone ahead and shot the scene without me. He watched me with a worried expression.

  “Takagi, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have thought of it. Of course we need that footage. I should have stayed....”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. Are you all right physically?”

  “I’m fine, Suzuki, thanks. Really. I’m sorry. It’s just ...”

  “You should go home and take care of yourself and the baby.”

  “I know. But really, I’m fine now. Let’s just get this over with.”

  My throat ached and I felt tears pressing up into my eyes. I was losing it, losing focus, control, forgetting what I needed for the show. The shots of Gale mixing the feed were essential—without them I’d never be able to edit together his interview on the subject. And we needed footage of the entire feedlot too, to show the extent of the Dunn operation. But the heat was sucking the air from my lungs, and for the first time, I was scared.

  I wanted to get out of there, to go back to the motel and get perfectly clean and then curl up in cool she
ets and hug my belly for the next few months, until it was huge and viable.

  Instead I led the crew in the direction of a cluster of long, low buildings that Gale had identified as the processing area, telling myself all the while to stop being self-indulgent.

  The Dunns had a custom lot, where ranchers brought their cattle for finishing. Nearby we heard the clatter and clang of hooves striking steel and the whump of a hydraulic squeeze chute. This was followed by a bellowing cry of pain. Oh shuddered. The cattle wound in a long curving line toward the chute; confined between high narrow walls, they waited their turn to get processed. A young cowboy was operating the squeeze, and two others were branding and administering injections. Every time an animal was released, the row of waiting cattle reluctantly advanced by one and the animal at the head was forced, struggling, into the chute, where a metal collar trapped its neck and the hydraulic sides of the pen compressed to restrain its body.

  “Sonofabitch,” said the young cowboy, planting his heel down hard on the bony rump of a recalcitrant steer.

  The terrified animal evacuated copiously and the smell of searing hair and flesh from the brand added to the stench.

  “What’s that?” I asked an older cowboy. He was wielding an enormous hypodermic needle, which he plunged into the steer’s neck. The thick hide twitched. The cowboy ignored me and withdrew the needle.

  Suzuki swung himself up onto the top of the chute to get an angle on the incoming cattle and the action inside the squeeze. Dave stood next to him, supporting him with one hand and holding the camera with the other. The cowboys watched skeptically, but the sight of Dave seemed to reassure them. I waited for Suzuki to get settled, retrieve the camera from Dave, and turn it back on.

  “Lutalyse?” I asked again. “Is that what you’re injecting?”

  The older cowboy snorted with derision. “This here’s a steer, miss. Don’t give Lutalyse to no steer.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Dunno.”

  “You don’t know what you’re giving them?”

  “Nope.”

  The young cowboy grinned and winked at me. “Boss’s special formula.”

  The older cowboy frowned at him. “Listen. We just shoot ’em up. Don’t ask no questions.” He sounded too curt and he realized this.

  “It’s medicine to keep ’em disease free,” he added. “Good clean meat for you city folks. That’s all I know.”

  “Yup, these cows here’s goin’ straight to Japan,” said the young cowboy conversationally. “I heard they even eat the assholes and everything. Is that where y’all are from?”

  The older cowboy spit. “Donny, you just shut yer mouth and don’t go sayin’ shit you don’t know nothin’ about.”

  “Well, that’s what Roy down at the packin’ plant told me. Straight to Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. You ask me, it’s a darn shame, wasting all that good American meat on a bunch of gooks. No offense,” he added, looking over at me.

  “None taken.”

  It was a great sound bite. Having had his say, Donny settled back into a silent sulk. We watched them process a couple more animals, then headed back to the van down one of the long access roads that cut between the acres of pens. Cows huddled, tails swatting, hides quivering with flies. You forget how big cows are, slow and warm and solid. Sometimes they looked up as we passed, watching us with mournful, seeping eyes. Suddenly Suzuki stopped dead in his tracks and handed me the Betacam. He clambered up the side of a pen and held out his hand. Passing him the camera, I climbed up next to him. On the far side of the pen was a cluster of heifers, feeding at the bunker. Suzuki ignored them and trained the camera on the ground just below us. In the dust lay a slimy, half-dried puddle containing a misshapen tangle of glistening calf-like parts—some hooves, a couple of bent and spindly shins. It was an aborted fetus, almost fully grown, with matted fur, a delicate skull, and grotesquely bulging eyes. Suzuki rotated the lens into a telephoto setting, but even without it, through the swarm of flies, I could see that the eyes of the calf were alive with newly hatched maggots.

  We drove to the motel. Inside the van we were all silent. I thought the boys were asleep, but when I looked back they were wide awake, each slumped on a long bench seat by himself, staring out the window at the flat horizon. Dave kept glancing over at me and nervously adjusting the temperature controls. He didn’t speak, either. It was cool in the van, but I was sticky with perspiration and dust. I kept imagining what the dust must contain, the microscopic particulates of toxic powder, dissolving in my sweat, now leaching back through my pores, and the thought made my skin prickle and flush and sweat some more.

  At the motel, we unloaded quickly. I was desperate for a shower, for sleep, for even just a short nap. We were due back at the ranch at five to shoot Bunny serving cocktails, still there was time. But as I shouldered my knapsack and headed toward my room, Suzuki stopped me.

  “Takagi-chan, chotto ...”

  “Suzuki ... what?” I turned, about to snap, but then I saw his face. And Oh’s, behind him.

  “Gomen, ne ... ,” he said. “Sorry. I know you are tired. But there is something I think you must see.”

  “Can’t it wait? Until tonight after we finish?”

  Suzuki and Oh exchanged a quick look.

  “No,” Suzuki said.

  “I will cue up the tape,” said Oh. “If you would like to take a shower.”

  The hot water revived me, washed off the dirt, which ran in soapy rivulets down my legs, spiraling into the drain between my bare feet. But as I watched, it occurred to me that the heat of the water, by opening my pores, might increase the osmosis of any poison that remained on my skin. Panicked, I twisted the shower knobs and gasped as the water turned icy. I stood there shivering. For the first time, I think I was aware of the danger I’d walked into, the effect it might have on the baby. I needed to make a choice. I could continue with the shoot or abandon it right here, turn it over to Suzuki to finish, or call Kenji down from New York to take over. I rubbed my stomach, stupidly, as if that would help, and cried a little, then got out of the shower and dried myself off. My teeth would not stop chattering.

  We gathered in Oh’s room. He had cued the last half of the interview with Gale. It looked great: awkward and grandiose, Gale leaned against the rail of the cattle pen, gesturing expansively around him. I started to feel a little better.

  “How did you know to ask him about feed?” I asked Dave. “It seems to be his little hobby.”

  Dave grinned. “When we were in the office I saw that he had all these copies of Feed Sense and Feed Stuffs and Food Chemical News all neatly cataloged on the shelf, and when I pulled one out I saw he’d tagged articles like he was seriously studying them. It seemed like a good bet he’d have something interesting to say.”

  The interview was over and Gale was leaning with his back to the pen and behind him the cautious cattle were drawing closer in a line, doleful and curious, when suddenly a swish pan triggered by a squeal of joy caught little Rose running from the middle of the dust cloud. She leapt into Gale’s arms and he swung her up and tossed her high, and the camera followed her arc so that for a moment it looked as though she would just keep on flying up into the bright blue sky. But then she came down and landed on Gale’s broad hip and behind them the cattle scattered.

  Suzuki had lingered for a moment on this shot of the two of them, then slowly framed in on Rose. She buried her face in the softness of Gale’s neck, but met the encroaching gaze of the camera and stared back into its depth. Suzuki kept zooming.in, so close you could see the crosshatched texture of Gale’s sunburned skin. Rose just stared, unblinking. It wasn’t a look of particular intelligence, but once more, something struck me about the girl.

  “She’s odd, so weird-looking ... ,” I said, and realized I was whispering.

  Again, we had all fallen silent, drawn by the camera as it slowly passed across the little girl’s face and down her body. Gale had wrapped his thick arm around her. His forearm sup
ported her back and his hand held her in place, tight around her stomach, partially hidden in the folds of her dress. The camera paused there, studying this image, taking it in with a long, steady gaze, when suddenly it tipped, as though an unexpected shift in gravity had rocked the world.

  “Oh God,” said Dave in a low voice. I looked at him. He was staring at the screen, so I looked back too, but it was the same frame as before—the man’s callused hand clasping the little girl’s body.

  “What ... ?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “She’s ... precocious,” Dave said, and it sounded like a dirty secret, a cruel joke that I still didn’t get. Rose was hardly precocious. Slow, perhaps even dumb ...

  “No, not her personality,” said Dave, shaking his head impatiently. “Her development. Here.” He clasped his hands to his chest.

  “Oppai ga aruyo,” said Suzuki, pointing at the monitor. “Look. Right there. See? I noticed it when I was shooting. I wanted to show you. She has breasts.”

  His finger tapped the screen where he had zoomed in further to Rose’s chest. There, resting on the callused edge of her half-brother’s hand, was a pronounced swelling, which had looked like bunched fabric at first but now, up close, had the weight and heft of a woman’s breast. Underneath the white smock dress, pulled tight by Gale’s hand, you could see the shape of the enlarged areola and the outline of her nipple.

  “It’s premature thelarche,” said Dave. “I read about cases in Puerto Rico. Precocious puberty. These little girls with estrogen poisoning. They thought it was some kind of growth stimulants in meat or milk or poultry. I think they suspected DES. You asked Gale about it, so I guess you know about DES?”