Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (14 page)

He would stand with his hammer at the open end of the room, right at the
very beginning of the plant, and wait for the cows to come in from the
train yard. He had a ten-pound sledgehammer, long and heavy, with serrated
rubber around the handle to give him a better grip. He used it to hit the
cows over the head. They would herd the cows in one at a time, into the
chute, straight up to Mason, and Mason would swing his hammer down and hit
the cow between the eyes with tremendous force, driving the hammer
completely through the bone and into the brain, killing the cow instantly
in its tracks. There would be a gush of warm, sticky blood, and a spatter
of purplish brain matter; the cow would go to its front knees, as if it
were curtsying, then its hindquarters would collapse and drag the whole
body over onto one side with a thunderous crash—all in an eyeblink.
One moment the cow would be being prodded in terror into the chute that
led to Mason, its flanks lathered, its muzzle flecked with foam, and then—almost
too fast to watch, the lightning would strike, and it would be a twitching
ruin on the stone floor, blood oozing sluggishly from the smashed head.

After the first cow of the day, Mason would be covered with globs and
spatters of blood, and his arms would be drenched red past the elbows. It
didn't bother him—it was a condition of his job, and he hardly
noticed it. He took two showers a day, changed clothes before and after
lunch; the company laundered his white working uniforms and smocks at no
expense. He worked quickly and efficiently, and never needed more than one
blow to kill. Once Mason had killed the cow, it was hoisted on a hook, had
its throat cut, and was left for a few minutes to bleed dry. Then another
man came up with a long, heavy knife and quartered it. Then the carcass
was further sliced into various portions; each portion was impaled on a
hook and carried away by a clanking overhead conveyor belt toward the meat
lockers and packing processes that were the concerns of the rest of the
plant.

The cows always seemed to know what was about to happen to them—they
would begin to moan nervously and roll their eyes in apprehension as soon
as they were herded from the stock car on the siding. After the first cow
was slaughtered, their apprehension would change to terror. The smell of
the blood would drive them mad. They would plunge and bellow and snort and
buck; they would jerk mindlessly back and forth, trying to escape. Their
eyes would roll up to show the whites, and they would spray foam, and
their sides would begin to lather. At this point, Mason would work faster,
trying to kill them all before any had a chance to sweat off fat. After a
while, they would begin to scream. Then they would have to be prodded
harshly toward Mason's hammer. At the end, after they had exhausted
themselves, the last few cows would grow silent, shivering and moaning
softly until Mason had a chance to get around to them, and then they would
die easily, with little thrashing or convulsing. Often, just for something
to do, Mason and the other workmen would sarcastically talk to the cows,
make jokes about them, call them by pet names, tell them—after the
fashion of a TV variety-skit doctor—that everything was going to be
all right and that it would only hurt for a minute, tell them what dumb
fucking bastards they were—"That's right, sweetheart. Come here, you
big dumb bastard. Papa's got a surprise for you"—tell them that
they'd known goddamn well what they were letting themselves in for when
they'd enlisted. Sometimes they would bet on how hard Mason could hit a
cow with his big hammer, how high into the air the brain matter would fly
after the blow. Once Mason had won a buck from Kaplan by hitting a cow so
hard that he had driven it to its knees. They were no more callous than
ordinary men, but it was a basically dull, basically unpleasant job, and
like all men with dull, unpleasant jobs, they needed something to spice it
up, and to keep it far enough away. To Mason, it was just a job, no better
or worse than any other. It was boring, but he'd never had a job that
wasn't boring. And at least it paid well. He approached it with the same
methodical uninterest he had brought to every other job he ever had. It
was his job, it was what he did.

Every day, Mason would stand with his hammer and kill cows.

It is raining: a sooty, city rain that makes you dirty rather than wet.
Mason is standing in the rain at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to
come, as he does every day, as he has done every day for the past six
years. He has his collar up against the wind, hands in pockets, no hat:
his hair is damp, plastered to his forehead. He stands somewhat slouched,
head slumped forward just the tiniest bit—he is tired, the muscles
in his shoulders are knotted with strain, the back of his neck burns. He
is puzzled by the excessive fatigue of his body; uneasy, he shifts his
weight from foot to foot—standing here after a day spent on his feet
is murder, it gets him in the thighs, the calves. He has forgotten his
raincoat again. He is a big man, built thick through the chest and
shoulders, huge arms, wide, thick-muscled wrists, heavy-featured, resigned
face. He is showing the first traces of a future potbelly. His feet are
beginning to splay. His personnel dossier (restricted) states that he is
an unaggressive underachiever, energizing at low potential, anally
oriented (plodding, painstaking, competent), highly compatible with his
fellow workers, shirks decision-making but can be trusted with minor
responsibility, functions best as part of a team, unlikely to cause
trouble: a good worker. He often refers to himself as a slob, though he
usually tempers it with laughter (as in: "Christ, don't ask a poor slob
like me about stuff like that," or, "Shit, I'm only a dumb working slob").
He is beginning to slide into the downhill side of the middle thirties. He
was born here, in an immigrant neighborhood, the only Protestant child in
a sea of foreign Catholics—he had to walk two miles to Sunday
school. He grew up in the gray factory city—sloughed through high
school, the Army, drifted from job to job, town to town, dishwashing,
waiting tables, working hardhat (jukeboxes, back-rooms, sawdust, sun,
water from a tin pail), work four months, six, a year, take to the road,
drift: back to his hometown again after eight years of this, to his old
(pre-Army) job, full circle. This time when the restlessness comes, after
a year, he gets all the way to the bus terminal (sitting in the station at
three o'clock in the morning, colder than hell, the only other person in
the huge, empty hall a drunk asleep on one of the benches) before he
realizes that he has no place to go and nothing to do if he gets there. He
does not leave. He stays: two years, three, four, six now, longer than he
has ever stayed anywhere before. Six years, slipping up on him and past
before he can realize it, suddenly gone (company picnics, Christmas,
Christ—taxes again already?), time blurring into an oily gray knot,
leaving only discarded calendars for fossils. He will never hit the road
again; he is here to stay. His future has become his past without ever
touching the present. He does not understand what has happened to him, but
he is beginning to be afraid.

He gets on the bus for home.

In the cramped, sweaty interior of the bus, he admits for the first time
that he may be getting old.

Mason's apartment was on the fringe of the heavily built-up district, in a
row of dilapidated six-story brownstones. Not actually the slums, not like
where the colored people lived (Mason doggedly said colored people, even
when the boys at the plant talked of niggers), not like where the kids,
the beatniks lived, but a low-rent district, yes. Laboring people, low
salaries. The white poor had been hiding here since 1920, peering from
behind thick faded drapes and cracked Venetian blinds. Some of them had
never come out. The immigrants had disappeared into this neighborhood from
the boats, were still here, were still immigrants after thirty years, but
older and diminished, like a faded photograph. All the ones who had not
pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to become crooked politicians or
gangsters or dishonest lawyers—all forgotten: a gritty human
residue. The mailboxes alternated names like Goldstein and Kowalczyk and
Ricciardi. It was a dark, hushed neighborhood, with few big stores, no
movies, no real restaurants. A couple of bowling alleys. The closest
civilization approached was a big concrete housing project for disabled
war veterans a block or two away to the east, and a streamlined,
chrome-plated, neon-flashing shopping center about half a mile to the
west, on the edge of a major artery. City lights glowed to the north, high
rises marched across the horizon south: H. G. Wells Martians, acres of
windows flashing importantly.

Mason got off the bus. There was a puddle at the curb and he stepped in
it. He felt water soak into his socks. The bus snapped its doors
contemptuously shut behind him. It rumbled away, farting exhaust smoke
into his face. Mason splashed toward his apartment, wrapped in rain mist,
moisture beading on his lips and forehead. His shoes squelched. The wet
air carried heavy cooking odors, spicy and foreign. Someone was banging
garbage cans together somewhere. Cars hooted mournfully at him as they
rushed by.

Mason ignored this, fumbling automatically for his keys as he came up to
the outside door. He was trying to think up an excuse to stay home
tonight. This was Tuesday, his bowling night; Kaplan would be calling in a
while, and he'd have to tell him something. He just didn't feel like
bowling; they could shuffle the league around, put Johnson in instead. He
clashed the key against the lock. Go in, damn it. This would be the first
bowling night he'd missed in six years, even last fall when he'd had the
flu—Christ, how Emma had bitched about that, think he'd risen from
his deathbed or something. She always used to worry about him too much.
Still, after six years. Well, fuck it, he didn't feel like it, was all; it
wasn't going to hurt anything; it was only a practice session anyway. He
could afford to miss a week. And what the fuck was wrong with the lock?
Mason sneered in the dark. How many years is it going to take to learn to
use the right key for the front door, asshole? He found the proper key
(the one with the deep groove) with his thumb and clicked the door open.

Course, he'd have to tell Kaplan something. Kaplan'd want to know why he
couldn't come, try to argue him into it. (Up the stairwell, around and
around.) Give him some line of shit. At least he didn't have to make up
excuses for Emma anymore—she would've wanted to know why he wasn't
going, if he felt good, if he was sick, and she'd be trying to feel his
forehead for fever. A relief to have her off his back. She'd been gone
almost a month. Now all he had to worry about was what to tell fucking
Kaplan. (Old wood creaked under his shoes. It was stuffy. Muffled voices
leaked from under doorways as he passed, pencil beams of light escaped
from cracks. Dust motes danced in the fugitive light.)

Fuck Kaplan anyway; he didn't have to justify his actions to Kaplan. Just
tell him he didn't want to, and the hell with him. The hell with all of
them.

Into the apartment: one large room, partially divided by a low counter
into kitchen and living room—sink, refrigerator, stove and small
table in the kitchen; easy chair, coffee table and portable television in
the living room; a small bedroom off the living room, and a bath. Shit,
he'd have to tell Kaplan something after all, wouldn't he? Don't want the
guys to start talking. And it is weird to miss a bowling night. Mason took
off his wet clothes, threw them onto the easy chair for Emma to hang up
and dry. Then he remembered that Emma was gone. Finally left him—he
couldn't blame her much, he supposed. He was a bum, it was true. He
supposed. Mason shrugged uneasily. Fredricks promoted over him, suppose he
didn't have much of a future—he didn't worry about it, but women
were different, they fretted about stuff like that, it was important to
them. And he wouldn't marry her. Too much of a drifter. But family stuff,
that was important to a woman. Christ, he couldn't really blame her, the
dumb cunt—she just couldn't understand. He folded his clothes
himself, clumsily, getting the seam wrong in the pants. You miss people
for the little things. Not that he really cared whether his pants were
folded right or not. And, God knows, she probably missed him more than he
did her; he was more independent—sure, he didn't really need anybody
but him. Dumb cunt. Maybe he'd tell Kaplan that he had a woman up here,
that he was getting laid tonight. Kaplan was dumb enough to believe it. He
paused, hanger in hand, surprised at his sudden vehemence. Kaplan was no
dumber than anybody else. And why couldn't he be getting laid up here? Was
that so hard to believe, so surprising? Shit, was he supposed to curl up
and fucking die because his girl'd left, even a longtime (three years)
girl? Was that what Kaplan and the rest of those bastards were thinking?
Well, then, call Kaplan and tell him you're sorry you can't make it, and
then describe what a nice juicy piece of ass you're getting, make the
fucker eat his liver with envy because he's stuck in that damn dingy
bowling alley with those damn dingy people while you're out getting laid.
Maybe it'll even get back to Emma. Kaplan will believe it. He's dumb
enough.

Mason took a frozen pizza out of the refrigerator and put it into the oven
for his supper. He rarely ate meat, didn't care for it. None of his family
had. His father had worked in a meat-packing plant too—the same one,
in fact. He had been one of the men who cut up the cow's carcass with
knives and cleavers. "Down to the plant," he would say, pushing himself up
from the table and away from his third cup of breakfast coffee, while
Mason was standing near the open door of the gas oven for warmth and being
wrapped in his furry hat for school, "I've got to go down to the plant."