by Robin Lamont
Jude waved at the two teenagers, “Run! Now!” she yelled. Then she thrust her head into the window opening, finally seeing the light reflected in Finn’s eyes. Terrified, he had backed himself into a corner. He’d been imprisoned in this dark, tiny space and now thought he was being attacked. “Come on, Finn, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she coaxed breathlessly. He crouched lower, trembling. He didn’t understand.
“Come on, Finn,” Jude pleaded.
Jack tugged at her sleeve and shouted, “He’s coming!”
“You go. I can’t leave Finn!”
Mears had stepped down from the porch and was marching in their direction, inserting more slugs into the shotgun chamber.
Jude screamed at Jack and Caroline, “Go! Go!”
They ran.
Mears took two more steps, then raised his rifle and pointed it directly at her, barely forty yards away – kill range.
A shot rang out and Jude cringed, fully expecting this time to feel the blast. When she realized she had not been hit, she lifted her head. Mears wore a stunned expression and was staring at a spot just inches from his boots. Another shot ricocheted in the dirt, digging a crater even closer to his feet. He jumped back. Someone was shooting at Roy Mears and the shots were coming from the trees behind the house. He cursed and wheeled around to fire back.
In the erupting chaos, Jude turned back to the shed. And at that moment, as if he knew it was his last chance, with a courageous howl, Finn leapt up onto the window ledge and out to freedom.
Mears had forgotten about them. His face a mask of anger and confusion, he fired blindly into the trees. Jude ran for all she was worth with Finn at her heels.
Chapter 25
Richard Hillman pressed the phone to his ear to make sure he heard every word.
“I don’t think he knew who was out there,” Bloom was saying. “But he was for damn sure going to shoot somebody, and we need the Chapel girl alive.”
“Think he’ll call the sheriff’s office?”
“Not if he doesn’t want to explain why his property is all shot up.”
Hillman tightened the sash on his bathrobe and walked over to the bar in his office to grab the decanter of Glenlivet Scotch. If his wife smelled it on his breath when he got back to bed, he’d take some heat for choosing whiskey over a glass of warm milk, but that was the least of his worries. He uncorked the decanter, noticing a slight tremor in his hand. He rationalized that at least he could report to Seldon that Brannock would most likely be on her way. It had been quite unpleasant informing the CEO that someone in Bragg Falls had taken her goddamn dog, because it meant that she wouldn’t leave until she got it back. Goddamn rednecks would have screwed everything up. Boy, he just hated to involve Seldon in this kind of detail. Hillman took a large swallow of scotch. “Who is she again?”
“Name’s Caroline Chapel. She’s the daughter of a new supervisor at the plant. She’s been trailing after Brannock for a while now, which is why I got to her phone.”
“And what makes you think she has a copy of the tape?” asked Hillman.
“There’s texts back and forth from her to Marino’s daughter. They’re arguing about ‘the video’ and the Chapel girl taking it. Marino’s kid reminds her that it’s the only copy and that it’s her father’s legacy.”
Hillman rubbed his red eyes and asked, “Can you find the girl again?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, get it.”
“What do I do with her?”
“Whatever you have to.”
“And Brannock?”
“I repeat. Whatever you have to.”
The phone went dead and Hillman poured out another inch of scotch.
* * *
“Holy shit!” whooped Jack as they reached the cars. “What happened back there? Who was shooting at Roy Mears?” Out of breath and somewhat giddy, he reached into the glove compartment of his truck to retrieve a small bag of weed. With shaking hands, he rolled a sloppy joint.
“I wish I knew,” said Jude, feeling a bit wobbly herself. She kneeled down next to Finn and felt along his back leg. As soon as they had gotten away from Mears and into the woods, she noticed that his limp was much worse. He was able to keep up, but now wouldn’t put his back paw to the ground, obviously in pain. Still, he licked her face and pushed his muzzle into her neck while they reconnected, gratefully breathing in each other’s warmth and scent.
“Oh my God, you’re bleeding,” Caroline told Jude.
Jude examined her hand, which had started to throb; the cut was deep and might need stitches. Jack handed her his bandana and she wrapped it around her hand. “Don’t worry about me. Let’s get Finn into the car. We can’t stay here,” she said to the teens. “I don’t think Mears will come after us, but I’d just as soon not give him that opportunity.”
After they helped her lift Finn into the cargo area, she embraced Jack and whispered, “Thank you. Finn thanks you, too.” She could feel the heat of a blush against her cheek. “You should go home now. I’m taking Caroline with me. And for Pete’s sake,” she added, nodding to the joint in his hand, “don’t get pulled over.”
Back on the main road, neither she nor Caroline spoke for awhile, letting the shock of what had just happened dissipate. Then finally Jude turned to Caroline and said, “You had better tell me everything.”
Caroline poured out her confession. It started weeks ago. Sophie had overheard her parents talking about houses in Florida and she knew her father was looking at rentals on his computer. Anxious that they would be separated if the Marinos moved, one night the girls decided to sneak a look. They found Frank’s laptop and browsed his files. It wasn’t long before they came across the video of D&M. What they saw was disgusting and shocking, yet they couldn’t stop watching. Whenever the opportunity arose, they logged in again to see what he had added. It became a kind of ritual, but they never told anyone. It felt secret and dirty, like pornography. One afternoon when Caroline was angry at her dad, she convinced Sophie to make a copy on a DVD. But in the process, they messed up a setting on the computer and her dad found out. Frank was furious. He confronted Sophie and wanted to know if she’d been looking on his computer. When she admitted that she had seen the video, he made her promise she would never look again and would never say anything about it. Sophie felt so guilty she didn’t reveal that she had, in fact, made a copy. Two days later her father was dead and she buried the disc in the jumble of her music collection. And then Jude appeared in Bragg Falls. Caroline thought they should give it to her, but Sophie refused – she had given her word and after her dad’s death felt an even deeper obligation to keep the video secret. The arguments began.
“Where is it now?” asked Jude.
“Here,” said Caroline, digging into her nylon bag. She withdrew an unmarked disc in a clear plastic case and handed it to Jude. Then, as though she had unloaded an unbearable weight, Caroline leaned her head against the back of the seat and pressed her dirty palms against her face. “Sophie’s so pissed. She’s been sending me mad texts all night. I shouldn’t have taken it today, but … I don’t know, I had to.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to help you … and help the animals.”
Jude drove in silence for a minute, unsure what to do. Finally, she said, “I’m taking you home.”
“Please no,” pleaded Caroline. “I don’t want to see my father. I can’t look at him now.”
Jude guessed the source of her pain. “Your dad’s in the video?”
“A couple of times. I knew right away it was him.” Caroline’s voice was heavy with sorrow, an echo of her father’s just hours ago in Jude’s hotel room. “What they do in there is horrible. It’s so bad what they’re doing to the animals. All this time, my dad working there, I never had any idea. There’s one part where this man is kicking a pig, trying to make it get up. You can see
it’s trying somehow to escape, trying to crawl away, but it’s hurt. And the man just keeps kicking it, over and over.” She turned her head away from Jude. “I knew who he was, too. He came over to our house with his kids once for a barbeque. I thought he was a nice man.”
You go dead inside was what Howard Bisbee had said. Jude thought of trying to reassure Caroline that the barbeque guest might have been a good person, yet inside the slaughterhouse he became someone else. But she wasn’t quite sure she could square the two, much less explain to this child whose world had been upended by what she had witnessed.
“Please don’t make me go home tonight,” begged Caroline.
And Jude didn’t.
Chapter 26
Well past midnight at the Kings Court park, the trailers looked like rows of shipping containers in the dark. No sounds came from within and even the loose dogs were asleep. Shavings of light appeared at the bottom of the drawn shades at the Vargas trailer, however, where Abelina scurried around in her robe, gathering gauze and antibiotic cream for the wound on Jude’s hand. Her medical training was well-known at the trailer park, particularly since so many of the workers were loathe to report their injuries in case they were instructed not to come to work. And like them, Jude counted not only on Abelina’s nursing skills, but her discretion. She gritted her teeth as she received her five stitches. Finn lay on the floor of the miniature kitchen. Abelina didn’t think his leg was broken, but suggested Jude take him to a vet in the morning. For now, he was quiet, his eyes following Abelina and checking every once in a while to make sure Jude was near. Caroline had crashed on a cot set up in the sitting area; Daniel was somewhere in the neighborhood trying to drum up a computer so Jude could watch the video.
When Abelina was done, Jude called the Chapel home and Emmet picked up. “She’s fine, Emmet,” said Jude. “But she doesn’t want to come home just yet.”
“Where was she?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to wake his wife.
“She’ll tell you,” said Jude simply.
“I’ll come over and get her.”
“No, don’t, she’s asleep. I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll bring her home on the way.”
They listened to each other breathe for a moment. While the memory of their earlier intimacy whispered over the line, so did the guilt. Finally Jude said, “Goodbye, Emmet.”
Thirty minutes later, she sat by herself at the dinette table and opened the laptop Daniel borrowed from his cousin. He and Abelina had retired to get a few hours sleep before they had to take the baby to a neighbor, then leave for their D&M shifts. Finn was sleeping at her feet, exhausted after his ordeal, his breathing now deep and even. Jude took the disc from its case and examined it, wondering that something so small could have caused so much misery. She inserted it into the drive and waited for the first images to come up.
The picture quality was terrible at first – jerky and often focused a foot or two below what Frank was trying to photograph. Jude guessed that the camera lens had been hidden in a shirt button, and his inexperience was evident in the erratic footage. But he got better as he went along. About two minutes into the video, the stories came alive.
A crew is herding a truckload of hogs into one of the lairage pens. Here’s a mound of pig carcasses – the ones who did not survive transport dumped like so much garbage in a heap. Hundreds of flies buzz around them. Two of the pigs are still kicking, one of them at the bottom of the pile. Date stamped: September 9th.
It’s now inside the slaughterhouse. Jude can almost feel the oppressive heat and the damp, foul air close in around her. Two workers run by. A pig is bucking and fighting in the chute. Behind him, traffic is at a standstill and the men are frantic to get it moving, first using an electric prod, then beating it with pipes. The pig collapses on the floor. A white-helmeted worker appears with a large metal hook and he hammers it through the animal’s mouth and drags the hog into the stun area. The stunner finally silences the hog’s screams. Date stamped: September 13th.
A pig drops onto the shackling table. With a practiced, fluid motion, the shackler reaches up to the moving rail and pulls down a chain with an alloy hook at the end. Once shackled, the pig is hoisted by its leg and pulled forward. The camera stays on the animal as it regains consciousness. It lifts its head and writhes on the rail until it gets to the sticker, who lunges with his knife. The pig continues to buck as blood pours from its throat. Date stamped: September 14th.
A man has fallen and is scrambling backwards away from the rail, cursing and holding his side. Workers stop what they’re doing to look. A figure appears waving his hands in the air and yelling. Keep it going. You, yeah you – get in and replace him – keep it going! The figure turns his face toward the camera. His expression is not of anger, but of fear. He has a thick, white scar running from his cheekbone up into the dark recesses of his helmet. Date stamped: September 21st.
Jude’s mouth ran dry as more played out. She fast-forwarded through much of the footage. Hundreds of hogs thundered by, some with open, infected wounds, broken legs, ears or tails chewed off – signs of having been cannibalized in the factory farms. Animal excrement splashed on the tile walls. Men and women with grim faces, blood-soaked up to their elbows, flashing knives. Conscious hogs going up on the chain. Writhing, squealing. Hogs dumped into the scalding tank, some struggling to get out. Of course Jude knew that the industry accepted that a certain percentage of animals would be shackled and bled out while fully conscious, industry standards deemed it acceptable that a certain number went into the scalding tank alive. At D&M it was relentless.
As suddenly as the images had started, the screen went black and it was over. Jude would have stopped the tape and removed the disc, but still in shock, she just sat there. Soon she became aware of muffled sounds and the flickering of dark shadows on the screen. It wasn’t over. Heavy breathing and grunting. Was it Frank? If so, he was laboring. He cursed under his breath, his footsteps shuffled on the ground. And then men’s voices, dim at first, but getting louder, echoing as if from far away.
She’s a beauty. I gotta admit, I’m jealous.
Another man said, It’s got Smart Phone Integration with a roof-mounted antenna that gives you great reception, even when you’re out here in the sticks. And this BMW has great re-sale potential if you want to trade it in.
How much?
Fully loaded ... about seventy-five grand. Hey, it’s not out of reach. I was just where you are a few years ago. There’s a place for you in corporate, Bob. And it could be sooner rather than later.
Oh yeah?
Listen, I’m going to be spending less of my time in Raleigh and a lot more talking with the folks in Washington. That’s where the money is. And once you get in the door to a couple of House members, you can add a lot of value. I’m not saying you’d come into my spot, per se. But there’s a regional management job opening up, and that’s the first step. I can put you on that list, and I think Seldon would consider you.
Thanks, Ned. Appreciate that.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Jude tried to picture the speakers. “Bob” had to be Bob Warshauer, the plant manager, but who was “Ned?” And then she remembered what Frank had told her about recording a conversation between Warshauer and a rising VP in the corporation. Had to be Ned Bannerman, Marshfield’s favored son.
Hey, Bob, we need to talk. Shut the door, okay? Jude leaned in to hear better. How many head you turning?
A little more than five hundred an hour.
Yeah, I know. Not enough. We’ve got three other plants with the same equipment and they’re outpacing you.
Warshauer’s reply was offered up almost as an apology. We’ve tried speeding it up in the last few months, but the workers can’t keep up. They quit, they get hurt.
Train ’em better.
We’re always training, but the turnover means I got new people on the line every day
. Half of them don’t speak English and the other half don’t give a crap. You know I can’t risk a recall. When we pick up the speed, we have to prod every hog, they get jumpy, don’t get stunned right, and more of ’em go up live on the bleed rail. That turns into high injury rates on the floor. I don’t need OSHA breathing down my neck.
You running out of folks looking for work?
No, but–
Hey, everybody’s in the same boat. You just gotta take the heat. Who’s heading up your USDA inspectors? Bannerman was asking.
Patrick LaBrie, and Frank Cimino’s the vet in charge.
You on good terms with them?
Yeah, pretty good. It’s give and take.
So there’s no problem. Look, I know those guys, they’re team players. They used to work over at the Rock Hill facility. You’re lucky to have them here. You just worry about the end product, hear? The animals are not talking.
Jude caught herself holding her breath.
Let me lay it out for you, Bannerman was saying. At forty-six hundred hogs per shift, you’ll be in Bragg Falls a long time. At forty-eight … forty-nine, you’ve got a ticket to Raleigh.
That’s … that’s close to a hog every six seconds. Jude could almost see the sweat pouring down Warshauer’s face.
What can I tell you? That extra five percent is where we beat the competition, it’s how we keep the big supermarket chains, and it’s how you build your resume. There’s only one manager getting that regional job and I’d like it to be you. But you got to give me the numbers. You need one good year.
Yeah, well … I suppose I can pump up the tally again, but the animals … the workers …