With a minute to go, they sprinted out to the parlour and the stalls still buttoning their stained cow-gowns.
‘And get those bloody uniforms washed!’
The lock-up garage was big enough for a small truck and a row of tools and storage boxes along each wall but it had been empty for years. It was made of concrete blocks and had no windows. The doors were wooden; painted a dull green like the others in the row and where the wood met the concrete floor it was damp and splintered. Icy draughts and dampness made it their home and even in the summer when the temperature outside was almost warm, the interior of the lock-up had a dark December heart. To enter was to shiver.
The other lock-ups in the row were doorless bothies to the miserable and the doomed. Too dangerous to sleep in, the transients did nothing more than shit there and move on before nightfall. It was a place where gangs brought rival captives and toyed with them throughout the long nights. It was far enough inside the Derelict Quarter, far enough from the nearest habitable houses that all screams went unheard. The sound of wood or glass or steel on flesh and bone might as well have exuded from some profound earthy pit.
There was no light in the lock-up and John Collins only went there at night. Sandwiched between the dirt and threat of it, he found a place to begin from. He took candles with him, set them up at the far end where he would sit on a high, backless stool and talk. In spite of the cold and the danger, in spite of the cramped space and the lack of light, people came to the lock-up to listen.
‘In the flesh, as we sit here… as people,’ he would sometimes say, ‘we’ve all come from the same place, from the same beginning. That beginning is where we’re all going back to sooner or later. That makes us all brothers and sisters. All of us. No one exists outside that simple truth. Can you see that much?’
If it was a new group, all first-timers, there’d be a silence then. Maybe one or two murmuring a faint ‘yes’.
‘I’m asking you an important question,’ he’d say. ‘So, I’m glad you’re thinking about it before you answer. Can you see we’re all branches with the same root? Can you see that we’re all brothers and sisters?’
There would be nodding, more yeses. It was a simple premise. Even the reluctant ones would shrug a silent I-guess-so.
John Collins would pause, take a sip of water, adjust the tattered grey scarf he always wore. Then he’d look back out at the six or seven rows of faces huddled, seated on the concrete. He’d look across each face and he’d know he’d seen some aspect of that face somewhere before and that he’d see other aspects of that face some time in the future. And there they sat, not recognising each other, fragments of a shattered self that had forgotten who it was.
He’d go to work on them again with whatever it took.
‘Do you think your life is some kind of accident? Is it random? Nothing more than a grand mistake? Do you think our existence, the presence of intelligent humanity is nothing more than a casual coincidence?’ He’d pause. ‘Hands up if that’s what you think.’
Sometimes there were hands. Usually not. To the hands he’d say, ‘Why did you come here tonight? You’ve risked your reputation if you have one. You’ve risked your friends if you have any. You’ve risked your family’s love. You’ve risked your life too.’ A pause. ‘You know what I think? I think your mind tells you that this life of yours is just a freak event in the lonely void of the wasteland and I think you’ve learned to believe your mind over the years. But I believe you’ve come here tonight because there’s another part of you. A quieter aspect that whispers in your heart and never goes away. I think that’s the part you’re waking up to. That’s the part you want to believe. Call it your soul. Call it your spirit. It doesn’t matter. That’s the part of you that makes you like all the rest of us. Spirit is where you come from and spirit is where you’re going back to. That’s what you know deep down to be true. But your mind wants to live in a safer world. Your mind wants footsteps on concrete and full stomachs and vodka. Your mind doesn’t even want to consider what will happen when you die or what you were before you were born. But your heart yearns for that knowledge. It yearns for truth and that yearning is a torment.’ A deep breath. A visible jet-stream of exhalation into the cold air. ‘You can speak freely, my friend. And you need not speak at all if you don’t wish to. The door’s as open for you to leave as it was for you to enter. Speak freely, please. Tell me why you came.’
It was as if they were alone in the lock-up. One listener, one speaker. John Collins could make a person feel free just with his words, just with his smile, just with a look from his wounded, understanding eyes. They’d say:
‘There’s something wrong in the town. Something wrong with me.’
‘I came because I feel trapped.’
‘I feel bad about the way I’ve lived my life.’
‘I want to change. I want to be better.’
‘I’m sick. I heard you were a healer.’
It was amusing to him how few of them ever said they no longer wanted to eat flesh. Perhaps the willing ones would have said it, but the ones who were uncertain had never come as far as that in their minds for the first meeting. They were still unable to admit to themselves what it was they wanted from Prophet John Collins.
‘If you thought this world and your life were an accident, that it was meaningless, you wouldn’t have bothered to come would you?’
No one ever disagreed.
‘It’s because this life isn’t meaningless, it’s because we’re all here for some special purpose; that’s why we’re all brothers and sisters to each other. When we die it’s natural that the special part of us goes back to where it came from, a place where we’ll all be closer and freer than we ever were here.’
He’d let that idea float for a few moments. And then he’d ask the question again.
‘Can you see that we’re all brothers and sisters? Can you see that much?’
All of them would say yes. All of them would smile a little and the smiles were always awkward strangers on their faces. They would look from side to side at each other and the smiles would widen and find a home having wandered alone too long. It could be a fathom below freezing on a winter’s midnight, breath fogging the air above their heads and John Collins would feel the warmth spreading out from all of them.
That was where it began.
Once a week, outside the lock-up on the littered and glass-strewn lot, there were no gang members divvying up the spoils of their battles, no rapes in the adjoining concrete cubes, no murders behind them, no suicides in the ruins beyond. Once a week, when John Collins was telling it, there was peace at the lock-ups.
Dark December peace.
The causes of mastitis were varied.
A teat cup removed before the vacuum was released might burst superficial capillaries allowing ever-present staphylococcus bacteria to enter the blood. A sudden backflow in the milk tubes could have a similar effect. Something as simple as incorrect sterilisation or cracked rubber in the teat cups. These problems had been legion before Greville Snipe was promoted to dairy supervisor. Since then the incidence of mastitis had halved.
Mastitis was a common problem among the milkers. Some recovered from it and others did not. The priority was that milk should flow. If a little pus was drawn from a few teats, it was no big problem. Pasteurisation and homogenisation took care of it. The milk was safe and no one would ever realise it was anything other than the healthiest and most nourishing liquid a person could drink. Milk-drinking townsfolk knew better than to ask questions about how it was produced as long as it tasted good. So, the occasional dead white blood cell did make it into the stomachs of the population. But the milk was safe. It tasted great. And that was all that mattered.