“Okay … Ralph Waldo Emerson. Funny, that. Name kind of rings a bell.”
I borrowed Velma’s car and drove back out to Robbinstown. I parked in the shadow of a large computer warehouse. St. Croix Meats was surrounded by a high fence topped with razor-wire and the front yard was brightly floodlit. A uniformed security guard sat in a small booth by the gate, reading
I waited for over an hour, but there didn’t seem to be any way for me to sneak inside. All the lights were on, and now and then I saw workers in hard hats and long rubber aprons walking in and out of the building. Maybe this was the time for me to give up trying to play detective and call the police.
The outside temperature was sinking deeper and deeper and I was beginning to feel cold and cramped in Velma’s little Volkswagen. After a while I had to climb out and stretch my legs. I walked as near to the main gate as I could without being seen, and stood next to a skinny maple tree. I felt like an elephant trying to hide behind a lamppost. The security guard was still awake. Maybe he was reading an exciting article about the sudden drop in cod prices.
I had almost decided to call it a night when I heard a car approaching along the road behind me. I managed to hide most of me behind the tree, and Mr. Le Renges drove past, and up to the front gate. At first I thought somebody was sitting in his Lexus with him, but then I realized it was that huge ugly Presa Canario. It looked like a cross between a Great Dane and a hound from hell, and it was bigger than he was. It turned its head and I saw its eyes reflected scarlet. It was like being stared at by Satan, believe me.
The security guard came out to open the gate, and for a moment he and Mr. Le Renges chatted to each other, their breath smoking in the frosty evening air. I thought of crouching down and trying to make my way into the slaughterhouse behind Mr. Le Renges’ car, but there was no chance that I could do it without being spotted.
“Everything okay, Vernon?”
“Silent like the grave, Mr. Le Renges.”
“That’s what I like to hear, Vernon. How’s that daughter of yours, Louise? Got over her autism yet?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Le Renges. Doctors say it’s going to take some time.”
Mr. Le Renges was still talking when one of his big black vans came burbling up the road and stopped behind his Lexus. Its driver waited patiently. After all, Mr. Le Renges was the boss. I hesitated for a moment and then I sidestepped out from behind my skinny little tree and circled around the back of the van. There was a wide aluminum step below the rear doors, and two door-handles that I could cling on to.
“You are out of your cotton-picking mind,” I told me. But, still, I climbed up onto the step, as easy as I could. You don’t jump onto the back of a van when you’re as heavy as me, not unless you want the driver to bounce up and hit his head on the roof.
Mr. Le Renges seemed to go on talking forever, but at last he gave the security guard a wave and drove forward into the yard, and the van followed him. I pressed myself close to the rear doors, in the hope that I wouldn’t be quite so obtrusive, but the security guard went back into his booth and shook open his paper and didn’t even glance my way.
A man in a bloodied white coat and a hardhat came out of the slaughterhouse building and opened the car door for Mr. Le Renges. They spoke for a moment and then Mr. Le Renges went inside the building himself. The man in the bloodied white coat opened the car’s passenger door and let his enormous dog jump out. The dog salaciously sniffed at the blood before the man took hold of its leash. He went walking off with it — or, rather, the dog went walking off with him, its claws scrabbling on the blacktop.
I pushed my way in through the side door that I had seen all the cutters and gutters walking in and out of. Inside there was a long corridor with a wet tiled floor, and then an open door which led to a changing-room and a toilet. Rows of white hard-hats were hanging on hooks, as well as rubber aprons and rubber boots. There was an overwhelming smell of stale blood and disinfectant.
Two booted feet were visible underneath the door of the toilet stall, and clouds of cigarette smoke were rising up above it.
“Only two more hours, thank Christ,” said a disembodied voice.
“See the playoff?” I responded, as I took off my raincoat and hung it up.
“Yeah, what a goddamn fiasco. They ought to can that Kershinsky.”
I put on a heavy rubber apron and just about managed to tie it up at the back. Then I sat down and tugged on a pair of boots.
“You going to watch the New Brunswick game?” asked the disembodied voice.
“I don’t know. I’ve got a hot date that day.”
There was a pause, and more smoke rose up, and then the voice said, “Who
I left the changing-room without answering. I squeaked back along the corridor in my rubber boots and went through to the main slaughterhouse building.
You don’t even want to imagine what it was like in there. A high, echoing, brightly-lit building with a production line clanking and rattling, mincers grinding and roaring, and thirty or forty cutters in aprons and hard hats boning and chopping and trimming. The noise and the stench of blood were overwhelming, and for a moment I just stood there with my hand pressed over my mouth and nose, with that fried shrimp sandwich churning in my stomach as if the shrimp were still alive.
The black vans were backed up to one end of the production line, and men were heaving out the meat that they had been gleaning during the day. They were dumping it straight onto the killing floor where normally the live cattle would be stunned and killed — heaps and heaps of it, a tangle of sagging cattle and human arms and legs, along with glistening strings of intestines and globs of fat and things that looked like run-over dogs and knackered donkeys, except it was all so mixedup and disgusting that I couldn’t be sure what it all was. It was flesh, that was all that mattered. The cutters were boning it and cutting it into scraps, and the scraps were being dumped into giant stainless-steel machines and ground by giant augers into a pale-pink pulp. The pulp was seasoned with salt and pepper and dried onions and spices. Then it was mechanically pressed into patties, and covered with cling-film, and run through a metal-detector, and frozen. All ready to be served up sizzling-hot for somebody’s breakfast.
“Jesus,” I said, out loud.
“You talking to me?” said a voice right next to me. “You talking to
I turned around. It was Mr. Le Renges. He had a look on his face like he’d just walked into a washroom door without opening it.
“What the fuck are
“I have to cook this stuff, Mr. Le Renges. I have to serve it to people. I thought I ought to find out what was in it.”
He didn’t say anything at first. He looked to the left and he looked to the right, and it was like he was doing everything he could to control his temper. Eventually he sniffed sharply up his right nostril and said, “It’s all the same. Don’t you get that?”
“Excuse me? What’s all the same?”
“Meat, wherever it comes from. Human legs are the same as cow’s legs, or pig’s legs, or goat’s legs. For Christ’s sake, it’s all protein.”
I pointed to a tiny arm protruding from the mess on the production-line. “That’s a baby. That’s a human baby. That’s just
Mr. Le Renges rubbed his forehead as if he couldn’t understand what I was talking about. “You ate one of your burgers. You know how good they taste.”
“Look at this stuff!” I shouted at him, and now three or four cutters turned around and began to give me less-than-friendly stares. “This is shit! This is total and utter shit! You can’t feed people on dead cattle and dead babies and amputated legs!”
“Oh, yes?” he challenged me. “And why the hell not? Do you really think this is any worse than the crap they serve up at all of the franchise restaurants? They serve up diseased dairy cows, full of worms and flukes and all kinds of shit. At least a human leg won’t have
