“Hellfire, Archer, thought I might see your butt out here before long,” exclaimed Dill when he spied Archer.
“Hey, Dickie,” he said with little enthusiasm.
“This here’s Archer, boys,” announced Dill to the group of rough-looking gents. Most were smaller than Archer, but a couple were giants who looked like they were put out by having to share the same air with him.
“He’s one of us,” said Dill.
“What were you in the joint for?” growled one of the giants. His clothes were filthy and so was his thick beard. One eye lurched inward too far, giving him an unsettling expression.
Archer looked up at him. “Something stupid. What were you in for?”
“Killing a man who needed it. And he wasn’t the first one who bought the farm with me. Just the only one they caught me on,” he added proudly.
“How long did you do?”
“Long enough. This was in the Big House, ’cause the son of a bitch was a snitch for Hoover and the G-men. Woulda done a lot longer ’cept the guards got too scared ’a me.” The man did not appear to be joking.
Dill pulled Archer aside. “Buddy ’a mine got put back in Carderock.”
“Who might that be?”
“Dan Bullock. You saw him at the Checkered Past. He told me you gave him some good advice. Only the man got all cockeyed and didn’t take it.”
“Hey, I’m always looking out for people like us.”
Dill grinned. “You always were okay in my book, Archer.”
But there was something in the little man’s features that made the hair on Archer’s neck stand up and salute. A man like Dickie Dill did not understand nuance. And when he put his arm around Archer’s shoulders, the steely fingers bit in a little too deep, relaying critical information his mouth had not.
An old Ford truck with a sputtering radiator pulled up. Its open rear bed had wood slats on the sides and rough wooden bench seats. The driver came out and dropped the rear gate, and the men climbed on one by one. Dill sat next to Archer as the truck pulled away.
“What’cha gonna be doing at the slaughterhouse?” asked Dill.
“Don’t know yet. Guess whatever needs doing.”
“If it’s killing the hogs, I’ll show you how.”
“Thanks. Hey, saw you rolling the dice back there.”
Dill’s friendly expression faded. “So what? You ain’t thinkin’ ’bout snitchin’ on me to Miss Crabtree?”
Dill plucked something from his pocket. Archer saw it was the man’s switchblade.
This was the Dickie Dill he remembered and loathed.
Archer leaned over and whispered, “All’s I’m saying is you better watch yourself around games of chance. You remember inside Carderock?”
“Hell, that game was fixed by that bastard Riley.”
“Yeah, it was. And just like with Riley, you crapped out five times in a row back there except for your first roll, where you got your eleven and sweetened the pot and then crapped out right after. And the man who took your money palmed the dice after each throw. He sees you as a patsy for sure. So next time he asks you to play, just tell him, ‘no dice.’ Funny, huh?”
Something seemed to go off in Dill’s head and he looked viciously over at the man who’d taken his dollar. “I’m gonna cut the bastard up.”
“No, you’re not. Remember, third time’s the charm. You’re not going back to prison. Now, put the blade away. You’re not even supposed to have a weapon, Dickie. That’ll get you put right back in Carderock.”
Dill slowly slid the knife back into his pocket, but he kept shooting looks at the other man the whole ride out.
Archer could smell the place about two miles before they arrived there. The stench made his nostrils seize up. Dill noted this and chuckled, as did two other men on the truck.
“Hellfire, Archer, after a while you can’t smell nothin’,” said Dill. He touched his nose. “Goes dead in there.”
“Well, I like to smell things.”
“Like Miss Crabtree’s perfume?” said Dill with a wicked look.
“We already talked about that, Dickie.”
“Man can damn well dream.” He licked his lips, his lascivious look turning Archer’s stomach as he thought about what a man like Dill would do to a woman like Ernestine Crabtree given the chance. He was glad he had fixed the woman’s bedroom door. But then he heartened himself by thinking that Crabtree might just shoot the little bastard before he could do her any harm.
The slaughterhouse was a large, one-story cement block building with hog pens on three sides, teeming with very much living stock.
When Archer asked about this, Dill said ominously, “Ain’t for much longer,” as they marched through a door after climbing off the truck. “This here is where the hogs come to die,” he added gleefully.
They were processed in by a burly foreman wearing a long white coat and safety hat. The man told Archer, “Yeah, she called. Pays five dollars a day. Get your money end of the day on Friday.”
“Look, can I get an advance, friend?” said Archer.
“You trying to be funny or stupid, or what?”
“Guess so.”
“Coat, gloves, helmet, and goggles in that room over there. Find what fits.”
“So, what’s my job? Not crushing hog skulls, I hope.”
“Naw. We got enough of those. You’re gonna be sawing up the meat and racking it. You just watch the fellers in there to get the hang of it.”
“Why the hat, goggles, and all the rest?”
The man laughed. “You’ll see why. Now beat it.”
Archer put on a long white coat that was stained with blood, and a helmet, goggles, and gloves.
Dill, similarly dressed, came over to him. “Hey, you wanna watch me bash some hogs in the head? Got a guy who ropes ’em by the neck, holds ’em steady like, then I come in from the rear, so’s not to spook ’em, and bam! Hog brains all over.”
“No thanks, Dickie, I’ll take your word for it.”
Archer was led to the room where he’d be working. There were long wooden tables all over and hog parts of all descriptions hanging from ceiling hooks connected to a powered conveyor belt.
An older gent showed him how to use the saws and knives, how to make the cuts, and then how to rack the parts on the hooks.
“They kill ’em and then slit their throats to bleed ’em out. They boil ’em next, that makes the hair and skin a lot easier to get off. Then they split ’em in half and hang ’em up for a while, let the meat get right. Then it comes our way to carve up. When the hooks are full, the belt takes ’em to the cold room.”
After watching Archer a few times, he deemed him ready to do the work on his own.
Within the hour, Archer was covered in blood, bits of bone, cartilage, and hog meat. He had to keep wiping his goggles clear from foul things and the film of humidity, for it was uncommonly warm in here. And more than once he suffered a coughing spell because of some foreign matter getting inside him. His gloves were soon soaked in blood and other unsavory detritus. By the end of his shift his arms, back, and legs ached with the sawing and slicing and the lifting of the heavy carcasses onto the hooks.
A horn sounded and the men instantly stopped what they were doing, midslice, or mid — brain bash, for that took place in the next room over. Archer had heard nothing but the squeals and terrified sounds of hogs about to die and then dying, for it was clear that the suffering beasts were not always killed instantly with the first blow from the sledgehammer.
As Archer was taking off his coat, helmet, gloves, and goggles in the locker room, he asked the older man who’d helped him, “How long you been doing this?”
The man closed the door of his locker. “Too damn long, son. Too damn long.”