Richard Shanti had blood on his hands. Unlike his coworkers he didn’t deny it. He didn’t pretend it was okay. While they absolved themselves with placatory readings from the Book of Giving or the Gut Psalter, he bore his guilt fully, at least in his own mind. He never spoke of his culpability to anyone. He did not share his horror at the part he played each day. Instead he made himself suffer in every way he knew. In this manner he planned to punish himself for his wrongs while he was alive. Perhaps his next life might not be lived in a similar sort of hell to the one he was employed to create every day of the working week. And if there was no next life, some small justice would still have been served upon him.
His understanding of animals had been obvious from the outset. He began his career an untrained casual worker. They made him clean up blood and off-cuts. Even then, he’d been drawn to the more agitated of the Chosen, the ones that struggled and resisted. He wasn’t authorised to be anywhere near the chain but in his first week a young steer went crazy in the crowd pens, halting the chain. Shanti walked straight over to the panicking animal and calmed it in moments, delighting the stunner who managed to recover a decent chain speed. Similar incidents happened many times in those early days. Soon Magnus Meat Packers gave him a permanent position: Shanti the pacifier, Shanti the whisperer, as he’d been back then.
‘Oi! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Greville Snipe’s roar echoed around the milking parlour. Roach and Parfitt jolted inside their cow-gowns with the shock of it. They turned off the high-pressure hoses and turned toward their boss. In the corner, against the white tiled wall, WHITE-047 cowered, shivering; water running off her reddened skin. Neither of the lads could look him in the eye.
Snipe approached with deliberate slowness and stealth letting them know they were his prey. He lowered his voice to a whisper:
‘I asked you a fucking QUESTION.’
And screamed the last word.
‘Look at me. LOOK AT ME.’
Weighted, their heads came up. Their eyes slid around, looked everywhere but at him.
‘You should be ashamed. Drop those nozzles – you’ve got no business using them that way. What did you think you were doing?’
Roach and Parfitt glanced at each other but neither spoke. Behind them, the sighing and hissing that came from WHITE-047 vibrated with the uncontrolled tremoring of her muscles. Snipe looked from face to face and then slapped Roach across the side of his head. The sound of the blow reverberated in the silence. Roach’s eyes blazed white but gravity overcame his anger. He stared down at his feet.
‘I’m going to ask you once more. I don’t care who answers me. But I want to know. I want to hear it from your lips. What do you think you were doing?’
‘I…’ began Parfitt. ‘Well we… she was dirty. Sir.’
‘All cows are dirty. What was so special about this one?’
‘She was… covered in shit, Mr. Snipe,’ said Roach, finding his voice at last.
Perhaps, thought Snipe, he thinks I’m giving them an opportunity to make an excuse for their behaviour.
‘Harrison and Maidwell aren’t exactly intelligent,’ said Snipe. ‘But you two are probably the stupidest dairy boys I’ve ever had the misfortune of working with. I bet that cow’s got more brains than the pair of you put together. Since when have you been stockmen?’
The two lads looked at each other again, not seeming to understand what they were meant to say.
‘Dear Father of Abyrne, this is your last chance to speak to me before I report you to Mr. Magnus himself.’
‘W… we’re not stockmen, sir,’ said Parfitt.
‘So why are you doing a stockman’s job? What makes you think you’re qualified, eh?’
‘We’re not,’ said Roach.
‘Oh? So you do know what job you’re supposed to be doing then? That’s a fucking relief. For a moment there I thought you were trying to get promoted out of the dairy. You have no idea how much I’d have missed having you here.’ He walked between them to WHITE-047. ‘Stay where you are you two. I haven’t finished with you yet.’
He opened the large wooden milking parlour doors and shooed WHITE-047 from her corner and out towards the feedlots. The cow hobbled, bent almost double. He called out to a stockman and pointed to the cow: ‘Missing one?’ The stockman nodded. Snipe nodded back and pulled the parlour doors closed again.
He gathered the two idiot dairy boys had been talking to each other. Parfitt took the job of spokesman, seeing as Roach had already received a palming.
‘Sir, we didn’t mean anything by it. The cow was a mess so we tried to clean her up. It won’t happen again.’
Snipe stared at them and then grinned in disbelief.
‘You must think I’m a mushroom that grew in yesterday’s cow pat if you think I believe that rubbish. You two deliberately separated a cow from the herd and abused it with the high-pressure hoses. Hoses that are designed, as you’re well aware, for cleaning encrusted shit off tiles, brick and concrete. What do you think that kind of jet does to an animal’s body? I’d be very surprised if that cow isn’t damaged goods now. Might even have to be processed.’
‘It’s only water, sir. Couldn’t have done it much harm,’ said Roach.
Snipe smiled a different kind of smile.
‘Do you know what Rory Magnus does to employees that abuse his cattle?’
The pair of them drained white.
‘You’re not going to report us are you, sir?’ said Parfitt. ‘You can’t… I mean, we need this job. Our families need our help to survive.’
‘You should have thought about that before you started damaging the herd.’
‘Please, sir. We didn’t damage the herd,’ said Roach.
Snipe cupped an elbow in one hand and drummed the fingers of the other against his mouth.
‘I’ll give you a choice,’ he said. ‘A very simple choice. Either I send you over to the mansion now to report yourselves with a written note from me, or, you find out how undamaging it is to be on the other end of one of these.’ He gestured to the stiff hoses at his feet.
‘But, sir—’
‘It’s a simple choice, Roach. Even a shithead like you knows the right answer. Get those gowns off, the pair of you. Come on. And chuck your clothes in a pile over there.’ Snipe bent down and picked up both hoses. ‘Let’s see if it’s possible to wash off two severe cases of stupid.’
They were so much like animals the townsfolk had forgotten what the Chosen were. Forgotten, or put it out of their minds. Shanti hadn’t forgotten, though. Not when he worked with them every day, not when he listened to their harsh whispers and coded knocking on the walls.
Not when he looked into their eyes as he placed the captive bolt gun to their heads.
In the twilight, she saw him. The wire-tight tendons, the slick of sweat, the hammering of the pack against him, the never-straight legs, the penitent smile. Her eyes widened, the irises floating in pure white anger. She wanted to scream.
She confronted him as he threw cold water over himself in front of the old trough. Hands on hips, eyes luminous in the dusk she began with just two words.
‘You promised.’
He couldn’t look at her. The bloody coward. The weak-willed, pathetic coward.
‘You don’t care about anyone else except yourself, do you?’
He clenched his teeth. His ribs still heaved as his body recovered from the run.
‘You can’t manipulate me, Maya. It’s wrong. It’s dishonest.’