Cows by Matthew Stokoe Read Free Book Online

garbage tipped from a pail.

CHAPTER THIRTEN

    O n the line that morning a cow got loose, somehow slipped from a grabber before the slaughtermen put the bolt in its head, and came clattering into the process hall, half slipping on blood, scattering men, ramming the inverted dead bodies of its brothers. Looking for an escape from cow hell. But its terror must have made it blind and it ended by slamming its soft nose against a ventilation grille until Cripps came over and blew its brains out with a shotgun.
    The ruthless efficiency of the killing took Steven’s breath away. Cripps moved without doubt or hesitation. He did not consider the phases of his attack, he simply saw a problem and removed it in a flawless, perfectly economic stream of action.
    If Steven possessed such clarity, such sureness of purpose, ridding himself of the Hagbeast would pose no greater problem than crushing an insect. At breakfast he had decided to poison her as she was poisoning him, but now considerations of practicality had begun to cool the fire that had earlier singed his veins with the ecstasy of confrontation.
    Could he force himself through it?
    Would she really eat whatever he gave her?
    And if it killed her, would his own body be strong enough to survive?
    The resolve of just a few hours ago was becoming infested with the worms of doubt.
    Cripps had spoken of mastering the self, of releasing a potential for action that benefited no one but the individual concerned. Of selfish epiphanies in blood. And Steven wondered, as he watched him carry his shotgun back to the slaughter room, if there might not be some crutch beyond those plastic strips that could support him through the killing of the Hagbeast.
    The afternoon shift was half through when Cripps appeared at his side and took him away from the grinder.
    “You look ready, boy. I’ve seen you watching the slaughter room and I know what you’ve been thinking—‘Is he right? Is there something in there for me?’ Well, I am right, boy. The slaughter room gives up its secrets to any man with the cock to ask. Are you asking? Have you got the cock for it, boy? Have you?”
    Inside the slaughter room death was in full swing.
    The place was a storm of bawling cows and goading, muscular men working with fierce precision. These men moved as Cripps had during the shotgun execution—without weakness, without even the thought that they might position a hand or a foot unsurely as they punched and kicked and prodded the animals with stubby electric lances along the alleys that led to a final bondage of pneumatic presses. Some were stripped to the waist, all were streaked with blood and wet cow shit. They sweated and wrestled cows into position, faces creased in tight grins of effort, taking pleasure in their own strength, calling to each other over the din, directing, pointing, clapping hands like it was all a play in some bloody contact sport.
    Some of the cows in the alleys bucked against the rails, trying to turn and plough back into the reassuring brown and white and black cowmass, rearing up and scrabbling at steel and brick with slippery hooves, eyes white all the way around, nostrils wide, snorting in as much air as they could hold, knowing that its taste would soon be lost forever and trying to imprint it on some soul memory so it could be remembered after death, shaken out like a tablecloth and searched for meaning. Others trotted madly in a straight line, refusing to see the swinging V of the grabber in their path, running only for the blur of white light from the process hall that maybe looked like freedom. Like moths.
    On the platforms by the grabbers slaughtermen worked the boltguns on their counterweighted chains … Swing smoothly forward over the rails, nudge the muzzle into the soft hollow behind the ear, look at the cow and wait to make sure it knows what you’re going to do, then pull back on the trigger and send a four-inch hardened-steel bolt through skull and into brain, swing