Barn 8

by Deb Olin Unferth

  He was sound asleep when she called, though it was nearly eleven.

  They grew lonely, the investigators, once the initial thrill wore off. They were prone to dread. Laney had nightmares. Alphabet felt sorry for himself. Terrance joined pickup games in parks in every town to stave off the sadness. They were like overseas terrorists moving from town to town. They stayed in motel rooms, had with them only enough belongings that could be packed into a duffel in fifty-nine minutes and driven away.

  There was Mike, whose footage was always awful. No narrative energy. He never talked to the camera and what he did say was boring. Mike didn’t seem like he even thought being a farmhand was such a bad job. Then, of course, there was the beautiful moment when he accidentally left the camera on and filmed himself leaving the facility, driving to Subway, and ordering a meatball sandwich with cheese and a cookie. That footage got around somehow and the other investigators hated him for it.

  Still, he was a professional. He got his call around one, while he was tugging his fortieth dead hen of the day, tearing the skin off the bottom of the cage (carpet-pulling, they called it).

  Their shoes, their forearms (or their sleeves if they had tattoos: Cean, Robert, Katie, Calvin). Their moonwalks over the tops of the cages. Their echoing calls to the farmhands, the swoop of the camera when it scanned the higher cages and then swept down. The investigator’s breathing, the sniffles caught on the audio. (The dander gathered in the chest: Snake had endless colds, flus, bugs; and Rabbit, with his allergy—bad luck—to feathers.) Whatever got caught on the footage, that’s all you’d ever see or hear of them.

  Only a handful of directors and former directors she’d trust—Nancy, Cricket, Steve, Smoke. Then there were the investigators who didn’t specialize in on-site employment but in one-off encounter work—posing as a truck driver, food service, a customer. Not really investigators, but tough enough and trustworthy. Twenty-three of them.

  When a case went down PR would take over: a tele–press conference, a web page, a video on YouTube, a demand for resignations, a call to the DA, an online petition, a request for donations. The investigator would disappear. Tom would take a break to go hiking. Ula hid out in a motel room and watched TV. Jackson went to see his mother. They’d wait for the next assignment, new location.

  They called PR the smile team. The webguy was the spider.

  Carol. She’d grown a little weird—weirder (she was plenty weird to start). Her girlfriend had drifted away. She’d gotten a DUI and lost her license. When she saw who it was, she thought, Now what?

  Donnie. He was the one who started all that vasectomy business, and it spread through the investigators like a disease. Heather even had her tubes tied, a much more invasive procedure.

  Ray. He got his call at the end of the day, as he exited the barn and walked toward his car, muttering. Beyond the dumpsters, the razed fields, the sun dropping into them, the barns across the road burning red. The last time he’d seen Annabelle he’d thrown a chair at the wall and walked out. But he answered.

  Ron. He was old guard, X. These youngsters pissed him off. The millennials were crybabies, Gen Z cut corners.

  The investigators, their crackups and breakdowns containable, turning on a predictable cycle. Arnoldo, Sahara, Sam, Vince, Rocket, Fred.

  The long stories of their demise.

  When they finally quit and cut out, as almost all did (or, like Dill, were spit out), they had nothing: blank years on their résumés since what they did was strictly secret, no skills other than to perform jobs they’d spent their lives trying to abolish, alienated family, permanent back trouble. Zac had tremors, Mark PTSD, Liz lingering fears of being caught. When Sinan closed his eyes to sleep he saw behind his eyelids the barns, thousands and thousands of them, a grid stretching around the earth.

  Rainey. She was sitting in the bathtub crying when the call came.

  Bobby. Crouched on the roof smoking a joint. His phone sounded like a rooster’s morning crow.

  She called them all. Hank, Pal, Byrd, Mike. Ham, Hal, Cat, Frond. All the ones who’d quit, all the ones she’d fired, all the ones who’d stayed. Mel, Annie, Rake, Sol. Storm, Paz, Hop, Mic. All the ones who’d drifted away, said they’d come back but hadn’t.

  And Zee. He’d done thirty-one investigations in twelve states in six years. He’d changed cars five times, changed his facial hair over and over, changed his accent, legally changed his name twice and changed what he went by so many times he couldn’t count.

  One day he would marry Janey Flores, though on the day he got the call he did not know of her existence. His childhood name had been long left behind. He now went by Zee (for Zoro). And while he was still listening to Annabelle’s message, his phone beeped again. It was a text from Trish (née Francine) saying, Guess who just called, and soon other texts were coming in because Zee knew a lot of the investigators, though he’d never felt entirely comfortable with them. Last year he’d resigned and vowed never to return. He hadn’t worked an investigation in over a year.

  We’re planning an action. We need your help.

  The world is failing but we can fight back.

  Wear a ski mask when you get here. Can’t be too careful, even with each other.

  They didn’t know what she wanted but a few days later they went. They dropped their tools, wrapped up their investigations, or got sober. They filled their tanks, filed onto flights, boarded buses. They were on the move. It was biblical, mythological, fabled. They disappeared out of their spots like the rapture but there were so few of them and they were such loners, their absence was barely noticed. An assembling army called out of reserve. For what, they didn’t know, but they believed in their cause and, despite everything, they’d been waiting for the summons.

  SEVEN YEARS before Cleveland took the hen, Dill stepped onto the banker’s land for the first time and he felt his life might be perfect. He’d known the banker—Dev, still—for only one day.

  Early July, long days of flags and flies. For Dill: summer warmth, job success, and now the promise of sex with a stranger. They’d met at a street fair where Dill had been asked to speak. They’d wound up crushed in a crowd of dancers. Dill had liked his long eyelashes, small frame, dark skin, and even the fact that he was a banker, which Dill found cute. Dev had invited him over. A mild adventure, a forty-minute drive to this small town to be surely tearing off each other’s clothes within minutes.

  But Dill was surprised by what he was finding, pulling up. He had not expected this cartwheel of trees, this long driveway of pebbles and dust, this toppling house, barn poking out behind. Dill, who was not yet in love, had imagined the young man to be the son of determined immigrants (he was Indian). Dill had expected a tight duplex, slab of sixteen-by-sixteen lawn, compact appliances that slid into the wall—not this rambling homestead.

  Dev came out onto the porch. Dill shut his car door. The space between them was pockmarked with bugs, pollen, and moisture. The sky was so blue it seemed fake. Dev was young, shifting from foot to foot, out of place on this wide land, and he was handsome. You could see the hope and lust and innocence all over him.

  Dill was already two years into the weeds with Annabelle at that point—director of investigations of the most renegade animal rights group in America. “An investigative unit,” the press was calling them. He walked through the world with a blur in front of his face, his thoughts so loud they clouded his vision, but Dev was coming in clearly, was arriving in Dill’s brain lit up. How had he ended up living on this big piece of land? Had he found himself here by mistake and managed to fall in with what had befallen him? Or had this been purposeful? Had he wanted more than he could handle? Dill walked over.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”

  “Me either.”

  He led Dill around, gesturing and chattering, through the vast house and then out into the tallgrass. They walked toward the barn, Dev pointing out the equipment shed, the tire swing, his favorite trees.

  As they paused
at the door of the barn, Dev’s figure took on a mysterious glow. Who was this kid, this banker? Dill wondered. Could he handle Dill? (Because let’s face it, if you thought the investigators were bad …)

  Of course, one falls in love not because of who the beloved is but because of who the beloved allows you to be. What did this banker hope to be that he was now seeing reflected back to him in Dill’s eyes?

  Dill wanted it, whatever it was.

  That day—they’d known each other only a handful of hours (and Dill was already thinking “the banker,” perhaps a bad sign that he had to create distance, even while pulling in close)—they stood at the door of the barn (the same door Dill now walked toward seven years later, following the banker’s ghost). Dill took the banker’s face in his hands. “What is the ambition here for you?” he said between long kisses. “Are you in love yet? I want to know,” daring the banker to make a terrible choice.

  A week later Dill had moved in.

  God, he loved the banker for loving him. He had always known that one day the banker would change his mind, recoil in disgust (how could I have wanted that?) but Dill had counted on being able to handle it.

  That day had come.

  All right, so this was one way of “handling it,” but what did the banker expect? You get what you pay for, and the banker had certainly paid a lot.

  Now, seven years after his first walk across the weeds, Dill crossed them again to the barn. He could feel Annabelle and Cleveland behind him, watching from the window of the main house. Inside the barn a hundred investigators in ski masks waited for him. Dill couldn’t believe they were wearing the masks. She’d told them to, required it—Annabelle wanted to keep identities secret until everyone agreed—but after ten years of working with these people, he knew you couldn’t just call out a command and trust they’d follow. Unruly, petulant. He’d never been able to do much more than negotiate with them and if that didn’t work, curse at them, and if that didn’t work, threaten (never beg). On company property they were professionals, but the second they stepped off, they were Napoleons every one, absurd figures, the fuckers. Drove him and Annabelle nuts, quitting, crying, breaking equipment, punching walls in a temper tantrum, fighting or falling in love with each other, disappearing, reappearing to yell one more taunt or piece of paranoid nonsense. Really the banker had put up with a lot of crap on his land. Really it was no wonder.

  And yet here they were, a hundred investigators past and present like an end-of-the-world resurrection or reckoning, the banker installed several seas away, hating Dill at last after years of Dill goading him into it.

  Dill was going in alone to make the pitch—better to hold back Annabelle in the flesh just a little longer. If no one agreed (in fact they all had to agree) it was over. He was counting on them to make a terrible choice. He wouldn’t put it past them, what with him there to talk them into it. It was his specialty.

  He pushed the door open and walked in.

  THE HUNDRED INVESTIGATORS didn’t like the ski mask crap but on the appointed day they pulled the masks over their heads to protect themselves from themselves. They left their cars in the field and filed into the same barn many of them had trained in. They sat on the few benches or on the floor, or leaned against the wall, arms crossed, silent and suspicious. They waited.

  Dill came in. No ski mask. They shifted at the sight of him, his many bad qualities rising in their minds. But he didn’t give them time to start complaining. He stood at one end of the room and began.

  He’d tell them nothing, he said. They’d need to decide for themselves. The particulars, yes. The plan, of course. The step-by-step, the exit strategy, the cut-and-run, if it turned out to go down that way—all that they’d go over and over, and yes he had an inside expert on the team. But he and Annabelle weren’t interested in explaining themselves or in debating the justification, in discussing whether this would “work” in any sense other than on the physical plane, the mechanics. The investigators were not to think of this action—the evacuation of nine hundred thousand hens (it was the first time they’d heard this and a chorus of investigator-gasps, followed by curses and groans, forced Dill to pause and then go on more slowly)—they were not to think of it as a publicity stunt designed to attract attention to the cause. It wasn’t a statement, a threat, or a manifesto. They were not all going to be friends after this. They would not be an organization. They were not organizing. If that was the only way they could think about this, they should just leave right now. Why Annabelle had made up her mind to do this was not their concern. She was inviting them to take part in the sheer physical operation end of it, solely for the sake of the individual birds who would benefit. Annabelle herself had selected each investigator in this room. She had chosen them. But they’d need to have their own reasons for doing it. The masked heads of Dill’s potential phalanx turned back and forth, following Dill as he paced. Now he stopped. She and Dill were asking them each to show up with two more people—trustworthy, stable, and physically strong—in two days, on Saturday morning. There were a hundred of them here and they needed at least three hundred to make it possible.

  Hands were going up. They were trying to interrupt. But he shook his head. He placed a sheet of paper and a pen on the table. “Put an X on this page if you’re in.” He set a white digital kitchen timer. “We need you out in an hour.” He walked across the room. “Anyone who won’t be joining us, we know you’ll keep quiet. You’re all professionals.” He went out the door, shut it. The heads swung back.

  There followed a moment of silence.

  They all took a private moment to congratulate themselves. Annabelle had chosen them. They felt a little proud.

  They all took a private moment to ask themselves: Did they know two more people who’d come? Probably. They each had a handful of weirdos in their back pocket. Investigators have fans.

  Then they all took a private moment to come to their senses. What kind of crazy idea was this anyway? They began saying it aloud. What would this accomplish? What the hell did Dill mean this wasn’t designed to attract attention? How could you attempt the largest direct action any of them had ever heard of, that any of them had ever imagined, and say it wasn’t designed to attract attention? How could you take a million birds and not attract attention?

  One voice said, “It’s impossible. Can’t be done.” They thought about that and reluctantly agreed he was right. The sheer logistics. It was unworkable. This made them a little angry. They’d come all this way—the dramatics involved!—only to turn around and go home? What’s the big idea anyway, dragging them here? They were a little sad because they’d thought they were destined for a great act of heroism, not the fantasy of modern mad people gone madder.

  Somebody said, “Ten minutes,” meaning ten minutes had gone by. Already? Jesus. Well, were they going to do it or what? They looked around, faceless.

  Not only that, they reflected, but this was not the sort of thing you get a night in jail and a day with the judge for. This gets you put away for years. This is called terrorism these days.

  All right, in that case it made sense why some of them were there. They’d been arrested a lot. Some had been to prison. They’d done time for far fewer lives than these, for results far more humble. But were they willing to do it again? Most of them were in semiretirement these days, did little more than Feather-Free Friday protests and lunchtime leafleting, door-to-door donations, Songbird Day at the shelter. Those who were working did only employment-based operations—strictly legal, or at least arguably legal. And anyway, nobody—or almost nobody, apparently—did that direct action stuff anymore. There were the pet-shop parrot releasers, a handful of diehards letting birds out into climates where they’d never survive (no doubt those idiots were in there among them, face masks pulled tight) but even they would never come up with this.

  True, Dill had said they had an expert on the inside, that there were escape plans in place. He’d said at every stage there would be at least two escape
hatches. But people always say that, don’t they? The first hatch turns out to be the door of a cop car, and the second the sliding gate of an iron cell.

  “But how many of us could they put away, after all?”

  “A good many.”

  “Why not all?”

  “All. Of course they could put away all of us. Why not?”

  Was the point to get them all put away?

  They discussed this. Quickly. Twenty minutes had gone by. One said, “Aren’t we already accessories? Aren’t we incriminated just by being here? She goes off and pulls her stunt without us, couldn’t we still go to prison?”

  Yeah, but they had known that when they’d gotten into their various modes of transport to come here, the smarter of them had anyway, and they’d come, which made them maybe not so smart. They were all traceable, culpable. They were already in the crosshairs, gotten.

  This made them unhappy. Why had they come? they lamented. They pouted under their ski masks. What fools they were. Some of them were on probation.

  “At least we can’t point each other out.”

  “Who needs a finger? I know who you are,” said one and laughed.

  “Oh yeah?” said another, rising. “Is that a threat?” It started to get a little heated.

  “Annabelle came up with this,” one of them interrupted. “She’s got a reason.”

  Hell, of course she had a reason. They were sick of it too. They’d done dozens of investigations. They’d gotten farmers into court, propositions onto ballots, they’d single-handedly bankrupted whole egg operations. They’d ruined their own backs, relationships, minds, futures, they’d given it all they had, put their lives in danger again and again—for what? Those barns were still standing, more than ever before.