Wheezing, panting, struggling up sand hills and down, Hector Ramos blacked out and on again like a faulty computer. Sometimes he regained consciousness on his feet, sometimes on his knees. Sometimes carrying the drum, sometimes being dragged along. Even being dragged, his eyelids drooped closed.
Taking him back to the Line.
With a prolonged, grinding rattle, the chain of stainless hooks surges into motion. They sway back, then forward as they accelerate. They precess along without end, one every second.
An aluminum door folds open with a grating rattle, revealing one of the yellow plastic modules. Shoulder to shoulder, the men reach deep into it for the birds, which mill around furiously, squawking and flapping clipped wings. Hector flips one upside down, facing him, so it can’t shit on him. Inverted, the bird suddenly goes quiet. Hector spins. As one of the U’s approaches, he hooks the bird’s claws dexterously into the wire loops. Hanging upside down in the shackles, struggling only a little, the bird is carried out of sight through the slot in the wall. Another follows it, hooked in by Mahmou’, then another by Joju.
Then comes a seagull, struggling wildly upside down in the shackles, its broken wing hanging down to drag on the dirty floor. José barks a mad laugh and holds up his right arm, wagging his stump at the boys. Then come two more chickens, hooked in by Fernando and Sazi.
Then an unfaltering, unbroken stream of upside-down birds leaves the Hanging Room as the team settles into a rhythm, bending, grabbing, straightening, in a flurry of feathers, cursing, cackling, scratching, the hum and clash of steel in the deep red light. Hector gets a deep scratch from a poorly clipped beak, and blood streams down his arm, mixing with the shit from the birds. He keeps his fingers clear of the shackle as he hooks each chicken. The Line does not stop. If he gets caught, he’ll go through the wall along with the poultry. Into the Kill Room, where the pre-stunner stiffens them with direct current so they don’t move as a hydraulic blade snicks through their throats. Then the post-stunner, where a different current keeps their hearts beating, the blood pumping out, as they circle over vats. Then on to the scalding area, the picker, eviscerating line, unloader.
After chilling for seventy-five minutes they slide down stainless chutes polished to a mirror-finish by the carcasses. Only a few drops of pinkish fluid now ooze from the pimpled skin. Women pull the units off the ramp and impale them on tapered stainless stakes. Holding her knife tightly, so it doesn’t slip, each slices off the ribbon of fat that circles the back of the unit. Seizes it with her left hand, tears it free, and without looking drops it on the conveyor to go to another area of the plant. Then turns, to face the next unit, and the next.
There are many lines and processes, deboning, whole bird, grading, cut up. All the lines run at different speeds, but no one can stop. Five minutes’ break every hour. Half an hour for lunch.
Around them, the drone and snarl of machinery, shouts, the pulsing whir of exhaust fans, the mutter of propane-driven forklifts bustling cartons of flensed flesh to the freezers. Brown faces, black, now and then the wrinkled visage of an older white. Above, looking down from their offices, the bosses. Walking between the machines, the supers and foremen. And the clattering endless whine of the Line echoes from the high ceiling, stainless, reinforced with steel mesh, greased with fat and blood. But the chicken is cheap in the bright red packages with cheerful, friendly Farmer Seth, lanky and white-bearded, smiling from the plastic wrapping.
Hector always thought he looked not all that different, really, from Uncle Sam.
The Hats weren’t supposed to kick recruits, but somebody was kicking him. Hector came to clutching his gut and retching. He was curled at the bottom of a dune. The drum lay on top of him, and Brady was talking into the radio he wore on his belt. “Follow here. Got a casualty.”
“Get ’em all back here, ASAP,” the radio buzzed. Hector recognized the gravelly voice. It was the Heavy Hat, the second-to-senior drill instructor, who gave the junior Hats their orders. There were others above him, the officers, but only distantly glimpsed, unimaginable. “Shortest route, double time. They got a load, ditch it. Get ’em back to the Grinder. Out.”
Shouting above him. Hands, hoisting. The grating of the drum lifting from his legs, then the crackling hiss of it rolling off over the brittle grass. He kicked and feeling returned to his legs. Bleckford’s big soft mitts set him gently upright. Without the burden of the drum he felt ready to float up into the night. Like Jesus, ascending into the clouds in the holy pictures. They broke into double time, toward yellowish lights that suddenly winked on. Back to the Grinder.
They’d glimpsed the Senior only a few times during training. Usually standing off to one side, observing silently, his swagger stick locked behind him. Tall, thin, rugged. His dark face both severe and somehow compassionate, he looked across the heaving sea of recruits and DIs like God himself brooding over the sufferings of mortal men. From time to time his gaze sought one or another of the instructors, and a lifted chin or beckon of the stick would gesture him or her over. He’d called Brady over more than once. No one had heard what passed between them, but their DI had seemed subdued when he returned. Though unfortunately never for long.
The platoons formed up swiftly in the dark, on the yellow footprints they’d oriented on the first day they’d arrived. Their uniforms were stained with sand and mud, dark with wet. Some faces were bloody, some running with tears and snot. The Booger Squad formed up on the starboard side, toward the rear. The recruits stood trembling. The mustard-yellow lights glared down as a cold rain fell out of the dark, the wind blowing it across their ranks, stinging their faces.
A marine ran up, lugging a varnished platform with the eagle-and-globe insignia. Without glancing at it, the Senior stepped up. A woman brought a wireless microphone, while others positioned speakers. When the Senior flicked the mike with a finger, the snap echoed across the Grinder and off the barracks like the crack of a whip.
The rain blew harder as he lifted his head to stare out over them. “As you know, we are at war.”
Absolute silence reigned. Here and there a recruit wavered, sagged, then collapsed, and got dragged out of formation by a corpsman. But no one broke ranks.
“Many of you are undocumented immigrants. The Corps offered citizenship to anyone who joined the service, and completed a full term of enlistment.
“Congress has just passed an amendment to that legislation. Those who joined under that proviso are American citizens now, effective as of 0800 today.”
A couple of the other recruits glanced at him sideways. Hector panted, blinking rain and sand from his eyes. Shouldn’t he feel different? He was legal now. But he didn’t feel different.
“The Crucible is over,” the Senior went on. “Your recruit training is officially completed. You are now, all, Marines. Congratulations.”
He drew himself up to attention and came to a full salute.
“Atten-hut,” the DIs bellowed. “Pree-sent… harms.”
Hundreds of rifles snapped into position, compensators pointed up into the beginnings of a charcoal dawn. The Senior held his salute for three seconds, then broke it off like an icicle.
The DIs’ voices floated high in the misty dawn. “Orrr-der… harms.”