by Shawn Syms
More praise for:
Nothing Looks Familiar
“I’ve been saying that Shawn’s stories shimmer and sparkle ever since I first encountered them. They are queer in the way all our interiors are queer—radically singular, cruel, gentle, wrong, vulnerable, and erotically secret. I don’t know another writer like him for facing down the strange with such warmth of heart.”
—Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things
“Here was my experience reading each and every story in Nothing Looks Familiar: I’d arrive—breathlessly and often shockingly—at its end, and I’d have to set the book down. I’d have to think through my own assumptions, and how Shawn Syms was challenging me to look deeper, to find our common humanity, our fear and fury and joy. His range is incredible; we’re in the mind of the kid who punishes himself for swearing, the heart of the eighty-year-old woman so desperately wanting to be touched, the hopes that the meth addict has for her children, and countless others, all drawn in direct, unflinching, near-cinematic prose. The best story writers ask us to look past what’s familiar. Count Shawn Syms among the best.”
—Megan Stielstra, author of
Once I Was Cool and Everyone Remain Calm
In memory of Frank Syms (1943–2014)
On the Line
I won’t go out with another man who works on the kill floor. I can’t handle the smell of them, or their attitudes. Forget about men from the plant altogether, that’s what I should do. It would drastically cut down on my chances for a date though. Maybe a better solution would be to get out of town altogether.
I take a deep breath, inhaling the eucalyptus scent, then immerse my head in hot, soapy bathwater. My knees rise above the water line, the tips of my breasts poke out above water, still covered in suds. Underwater, I rub my temples with both thumbs. I stay submerged as long as I can, until I come up gasping for breath again. Work ended at three-thirty. It’s almost ten now, and I’m finally beginning to feel human.
Turning up the tap to add more hot water, I pour silvery conditioner into my hand and lather up my scalp. Run my fingers through the full length of my dark hair, starting at my forehead and tracing behind my shoulders. Touching my scalp, I feel a phantom fingertip—as if the last half inch of my right baby finger were still there.
The accident was over two years ago. Can’t complain much; I got $2,700 in insurance money and seven days off work, with pay. I don’t even think about it anymore. Except the occasional Friday night—like tonight—when I drag myself to the Ox for cheap beers. Even then, I only think about it for a second, reminding myself it’s one less nail to paint. A lot worse coulda happened.
In the grit of a dive or between sweaty sheets, most guys don’t notice. Some men I’ve dated took weeks to mention the finger. Then again, roughnecks aren’t much for holding hands or paying close attention to you. Some don’t even kiss.
I ease my head back under to rinse out my hair. I’ll be in this town till Dad dies. Don’t know how long that’ll be. He’s taken to falling though. He needs me; living right downstairs has come in handy more than once. Valerie got to escape to Vancouver once she got married. I’ll get there too someday.
What’ll I even do in BC? I’ve been cutting meat so long I don’t know what else I’m fit for. Maybe lick my wounds and go on pogey for a while? That’s hard to imagine. I’ve always had a job. Val stays at home raising three boys, and I don’t envy her. I like to work.
You get used to the plant. You cope. I wield a sharp knife all day long. It’s ridiculous, I know, but sometimes I pretend I’m slitting fabric to make little girls’ dresses instead of carving carcasses into steaks. Agnes, who works next to me, sings Sudanese songs to help get through the day. She taught me one, called “Shen-Shen.” I asked her once what that song is about. “Life is unfair, Wanda. That is what it is about,” she said, and went back to singing. Agnes sends money to her mother and father in Juba every month via Western Union. Can’t complain about the wage. Fifteen dollars an hour is nothing to sneeze at. The men you meet though. Christ.
Last guy I dated from Slaughter was Karl Willson—a blond behemoth, Prairie farming stock. He was twenty-four, six-three, and very strong—so he was quickly recruited for the harshest job on the kill floor. He’s a stunner and sticker: he kills live cattle and drains their blood. I don’t think less of guys in Slaughter because their jobs are dirtier than mine. The rest of us can’t feel holier-than-thou about chopping steaks, filling sausage links, or grinding burger meat. The reason I don’t like Karl is he’s a prick.
He came to Alberta a few months ago from Saskatchewan with his younger brother, who got hired to dress carcasses. Karl was well-suited to a job as a cutthroat. He didn’t mind killing; he liked it. He was fast. Speedy workers are the company’s wet dream.
We only dated for a few weeks. Karl was brooding and edgy. That made for rough, satisfying sex—but I knew something bad would spring from his constant, simmering anger. One night at the drive-in, I teased him about something—I think it was a cowlick that made his hair look funny—and he punched me hard in the face. I don’t put up with bullshit—that was the end. We haven’t spoken since.
He got moved to B shift. That means I work days and he works nights. When I go to the Ox on a Friday, he’s usually not there because he can only make last call by coming right from the plant. He sometimes does, the need to drink outweighing the duty to clean himself up first. The smell of Processing isn’t as bad as Slaughter, but I never go to the bar without taking a long bath first.
Standing up to dry myself, I close my eyes a sec. Hope I don’t run into Karl tonight. I shouldn’t be going out—it’s the height of summer, so we’re on a six-day week at the plant. I need to be there tomorrow morning at seven, even though it’s a Saturday. But I need something to make me forget for a while.
Pulling a towel off the rack, I dry my breasts, belly, the insides of my legs, and bottoms of my feet, and then scrub at my wet hair with the efforts of nine determined fingertips.
The harsh blare of the alarm clock seeps into my consciousness through the hot haze of slumber. I stretch across Makok’s broad, dark shoulders to finger the snooze button. Unable to stifle a belch that reeks like last night’s whiskey sours, I slump back for nine more minutes of rest, draping my arm across the width of his back. He stops snoring, but doesn’t stir.
Morning’s light streams through the bedroom window, and I squint. Makok works on Karl’s floor, but I don’t think they’re friends. His wife does dayshift on the line. She’s not in my section, but I can see her from where I stand at the boning table. I’ve seen the two of them at the IGA together; they’ve both worked at the plant for a few months now.
I think back to last night, and don’t recall much. Makok smiling at me as he leaned over the pool table, cue in hand. Asking him to buy me a drink, though I can afford my own liquor. Flattering compliments in halting English. More drinks. His brown eyes locked with my own, an unspoken decision to go ahead.
He faces away, hugging a pillow. I scan his smooth back, visually tracing its one blemish, a three-inch curved white scar across his right shoulder. Must have been a meat hook; that’s common. Or something that happened back home—like many at the plant, he’s from Sudan. I’m not going to ask.
The alarm buzzes again. Makok shakes awake; both of our hands reach for the noisemaker this time. He smacks the top of the clock and then grabs my fingers.
He turns, and our eyes meet. I lean toward him; we kiss. He pulls his bulky frame onto mine, and I welcome the pressure. We fuck one more time, fiercely and quickly. Before the alarm sounds again, we’re done. Makok eases out of me, strokes my cheek, then abruptly pulls himself to his feet and stands naked above me, a d
rizzle of semen still hanging off the tip of his foreskin.
“Mende is pregnant.” He walks to the bathroom.
I sit on the toilet and piss while Makok showers; I put out a clean towel. He doesn’t offer me a ride to work—he leaves while I’m in the shower. I tie my hair into a loose braid and throw a sweater into my knapsack. Hot as it is outside, my part of the plant is refrigerated.
I pop four ibuprofens on my way out the door, hop into my Civic, and head for the plant. I crack the window. It’s too hot not to, but you don’t open it very far. The closer you get to the plant, the more the air smells like shit. Bosses call it “the smell of money.” No matter which way the wind blows, you can’t escape it.
The locker room smells like wet sawdust, and it’s crowded. The air’s humid with steam emanating from the shower stalls at the end of the room. On a bench between two rows of lockers, I’m surrounded by women. I recognize some but have never talked to them. You can’t know everybody in a plant of 2,000 people. Once we’re suited up, it’s hard to recognize anyone.
Lockers are assigned in numerical order based on hire date and then reassigned because of turnover—not everyone can handle this job. All around me, women chatter, yell, laugh—none of it in English. You get used to that.
I put on my gear in the same order every morning. First, the yellow rubber boots. Next, I pull on my steel mesh apron. It runs from my shoulders to my knees. I reach around to tie it in the back, drawing my head to my chest. There, I catch my first whiff. Though I scrubbed it at the end of yesterday’s shift, my apron still hosts the faint but dizzying scent of bull’s blood.
I hear a rumble from the shop floor; they’re turning on the grinders and getting ready for the shift to start. I check my pockets for earplugs. I put on rubber sleeves that run from my wrists to my elbows, a hairnet, then my bump cap—a yellow construction helmet. Plastic safety goggles hang from my neck by a nylon cord; I’ll put them on once I’m on the line. I grab my long, thin knife and stuff it into the waist pocket of the apron. Thank God I sharpened it yesterday. With this hangover, I’d cut myself if I tried to today.
Last, thick rubber gloves, with a crumpled paper ball jammed into one fingertip to keep it from flopping or getting caught in anything. All around me, women who’ve arrived late crowd in and clamber into the same uniform. We have to be on the line when it starts up.
Wading through the crowd and the roaring machines, I arrive at the boning table to find my co-workers already in position. With a smirk, Kwadwo calls out in his West African–accented baritone.
“Wanda, you look like you were up late,” he says in a chastising tone.
My shoulders slump. Then I puff out my chest. “I was with your dad last night, Kwadwo. I hope you have as much energy in bed as him!”
Kwadwo giggles like a tickled schoolboy. “My father is fifty-six—and he still lives in Ghana. No wonder you are tired … ”
“I went out to the Ox for a few—but not much was going on,” I confess.
“As long as you weren’t with Kwadwo’s father—or any other fathers—then it is good,” Agnes pipes in, arching an eyebrow as she adjusts her hairnet over a short-cropped Afro.
Agnes is a generation older than me, but the Sudanese community is close-knit. Could she be friends with Makok and his pregnant wife?
She smiles and gives me a friendly elbow. “Use protection, or you will make someone a father!” I grin, relieved.
Next to me, Kwadwo, Agnes, and three girls from Newfoundland work at our compact boning table. We’re short one man, a French Canadian, the nephew of Mr Leger, the floor supervisor. Funny that our table is mostly whites—we’re a minority on the floor. That’s another thing you get used to.
With another clickety-clack rumble, the line kicks into gear. Meat moves into the room from the kill floor downstairs. Along the west wall, enormous whole cattle emerge from the trapdoor, suspended from above by hooks that pierce one of their back limbs. The men at the front of the room take them down one by one and begin to cut.
First, off with their heads. Then, out with their guts. Next, off with their hides. The carcasses hit three other cutting tables before reaching ours. We get manageable, medium-sized slabs ready to be reduced to supermarket-grade cuts. The first will reach our table in just under ten minutes. Several hours of slicing and dicing later, we get lunch at eleven o’clock. I’m so used to separating meat from bones I could do it in my sleep.
Mid-morning, I glance at the bone-shiners’ table further down the line. There, a group of women wield electric knives to remove excess meat from bones before they’re sent to Rendering. It’s hard to tell anyone apart, between the mouth protectors, goggles, hairnets, and helmets, but I think I recognize Makok’s wife Mende among the dozen African women at the table. Most chat and smile while they work—with one tall, rigid exception.
At lunch I sit with Agnes, Kwadwo, and Kathy, one of the girls from our group. The cafeteria fare is bearable today: lasagna and fruit salad. We keep things light—no sex, religion, or politics at the lunch table. My aching, dehydrated brain is glad for that. Normally, I love listening to Agnes talk—she’s passionate about her homeland—but I couldn’t cope right now.
Taking my tray to the garbage bin, I feel an object thunk onto my back. Turning around, I look at the floor and see a grape from someone’s fruit salad. A loud guffaw, and then a big, blond dickwad is in my face—Karl’s brother, Kevin Willson. He has a v-shaped scar on his cheek and the smile of a carved pumpkin with one front tooth missing.
“Oh, sorry, Wanda. I was aiming for the trash. Guess I missed.”
I offer a fake smile.
“Hey, heard you had a busy night. Up late, weren’t you?” He sneers. “But you like the dark, don’t you?”
That fucking piece of shit. I didn’t see him at the bar last night. I shove him out of my way and head back to the floor.
Leger approaches our table as we get ready to go back to work, a young woman in tow. She looks about nineteen, Vietnamese probably, with a very pretty face. She won’t last long—she’d be better off in another section. This girl is too short. She’ll have to reach upward to make all her cuts. The boning table is designed for people of average height; she’ll end up with very sore shoulders.
“Kids, this is Anh. Show her the ropes.” With that, he walks away. From behind, it looks like he’s picking his nose.
Agnes and I exchange a knowing look. But she smiles when she turns to Anh.
“Where are you from, girl?”
Her voice is a whisper but I manage to hear because she’s right next to me. “Cambodia.”
“Pull your face mask over your mouth, Anh. I’ll show you what to do.”
Anh exhales visibly. Agnes has a way of making people comfortable. We all pull our face masks on and get to work. Because of staggered lunch breaks, meat has begun to pile up.
I pick up the first piece and carve, glancing from time to time to watch Agnes and Anh. The girl’s cuts are tentative, which is to be expected at the start. Given the jostling from the other tables when things get busy, she’ll likely cut herself today. Might as well get her first self-slice out of the way. In contrast to boisterous Agnes, singing and carving next to her, Anh looks fragile. I fear one slit from a sharp knife might cause her to completely disassemble.
Just as Anh gets the hang of things, a loud scream erupts from a table ten feet away. A tall white guy grasps at the red gush of blood coming out of his right biceps. His still-buzzing hock cutter, a hand-held version of a small buzz saw used to slice the limbs off cattle, bounces onto the table in front of him. The electric saw falls onto the concrete floor, glancing off the woman next to him. Shit. Continuing to cut my meat, I watch Leger rush over with a nurse, face riddled with anxiety. I know the bastard’s worried about keeping up the speed of the line, not some poor sucker’s hacked limb. It wasn’t fully severed, anyway. I put my slices into a grey plastic tub, put it on the belt, and grab my next piece of meat.
Anh has dropped her knife to the ground. She watches with widened eyes as the tall man, now hunched over with a white towel pressed against his red and sopping shirt sleeve, is led away by the nurse, sobbing. Meat continues to pile up on the belt in front of us.
Agnes reaches down to grab Anh’s knife off the wet floor and holds it lightly by the blade, pointing its handle back at the young woman. She gestures to Anh with the handle. “Anh, you can’t stop.”
Anh continues to stare mutely toward the hock area, where everyone else is busily back at work with a tiny bit more room per person. Agnes puts the knife into Anh’s gloved hand, closes her hand around it, and gently turns her back to face the boning table.
“You can’t stop.” Agnes sighs and looks in my direction, then picks a piece of meat up off the belt and places it in front of Anh, who looks down at it and starts to cut.
The guy is back on the line two hours later. I go into autopilot for the rest of the day. I’m no longer slicing meat; I’m assembling a simple, elegant wedding dress out of peau de soie, an A-line with pleats that run from the waist to the feet. No frilly train, but it has a subtle band of patterned lace around the waistline. Sleeveless, but not low-cut, with thin straps. Pretty but unassuming. And the sheerest, most delicate bridal gloves. No fancy patterns, basic white, and they cut off just before the elbow.
The day ends. I hope Anh comes back tomorrow. We need the extra hands at the boning table. I head for the locker room. Pushing my way numbly through the all-female mass, I reach my locker and pause. My combination lock’s been snipped with a bolt cutter. I remove it and pull open the door.
The severed head of a dead calf lolls lazily on the top shelf of my locker. Most of its hair has been shaved off, but tufts still cling to its floppy, oversized ears. Both lips have been removed, exposing its skeletal teeth. Its fat, amputated tongue has been stuffed back into its mouth, and it sticks out at an abnormal angle. It smells like vomit. The flesh around the base of the head is mottled and bloody. Along the hacked neckline, two flies sit and feast.