The Journey Prize Stories 21 (22 page)

Turning up the tap to add more hot water, I pour silvery conditioner into my hand and lather up my scalp. Run my fingers through the full length of my dark hair, starting at my forehead and tracing behind my shoulders. Touching my
scalp, I feel a phantom fingertip – as if the last half-inch of my right baby finger were still there.

The accident was over two years ago. Can't complain much; I got $2,700 in insurance money and seven days off work. I don't even think about it anymore. Except the occasional Friday night – like tonight – when I drag myself to the Ox for cheap beers. Even then I only think about it for a second, reminding myself it's one less nail to paint. A lot worse coulda happened.

In the grit of a dive or between sweaty sheets, most guys don't notice. Some men I've dated took weeks to mention the finger. Then again, roughnecks aren't much for holding hands or paying close attention to you. Some don't even kiss.

I ease my head back under to rinse out my hair. I'll be in this town till Dad dies. Don't know how long that'll be, he's taken to falling, though. He needs me; living right downstairs has come in handy more than once. Valerie got to escape to Vancouver once she got married. I'll get there too someday.

What'll I even do in B.C.? I've been cutting meat so long I don't know what else I'm fit for. Maybe lick my wounds and go on pogey for a while? That's hard to imagine. I've always had a job. Val stays at home raising three boys, and I don't envy her. I like to work.

You get used to the plant. You cope. I wield a sharp knife all day long. It's ridiculous, I know, but sometimes I pretend I'm slitting fabric to make little girls' dresses, instead of carving carcasses into steaks. Agnes, who works next to me, sings Sudanese songs to help get through the day. She taught me one, called “Shen-Shen.” I asked her once what that song is about. “Life is unfair, Wanda. That is what it is about,” she
said, and went back to singing. Agnes sends money to her mother and father in Juba every month via Western Union. Can't complain about the wage. Fifteen dollars an hour is nothing to sneeze at. The men you meet though. Christ.

Last guy I dated from Slaughter was Karl Willson – a blond behemoth, prairie farming stock. He was twenty-four, six-three, and very strong – so he was quickly recruited for the harshest job on the kill floor. He's a stunner and sticker: he kills live cattle and drains their blood. I don't think less of guys in Slaughter because their jobs are dirtier than mine. The rest of us can't feel holier-than-thou about chopping steaks, filling sausage links, or grinding burger meat. The reason I don't like Karl is he's a prick.

He came to Alberta a few months ago from Saskatchewan with his younger brother, who got hired to dress carcasses. Karl was well suited to a job as a cutthroat. He didn't mind killing, he liked it. He was fast. Speedy workers are the company's wet dream.

We only dated a few weeks. Karl was brooding and edgy. That made for rough, satisfying sex – but I knew something bad would spring from his constant, simmering anger. One night at the drive-in, I teased him about something – I think it was a cowlick that made his hair look funny – and he punched me hard in the face. I don't put up with bullshit – that was the end. We haven't spoken since.

He got moved to B shift. That means I work days and he works nights. When I go to the Ox on a Friday, he's usually not there because he can only make last call by coming right from the plant. He sometimes does, the need to drink outweighing the duty to clean himself up first. The smell of
Processing wasn't as bad as Slaughter, but I never went to the bar without taking a long bath.

Standing up to dry myself off, I close my eyes a sec. Hope I don't run into Karl tonight. I shouldn't be going out – it's the height of summer so we're on a six-day week at the plant. I need to be there tomorrow morning at seven, even though it's a Saturday. But I need something to make me forget for a while.

Pulling a towel off the rack, I dry my breasts, my belly, the insides of my legs, the bottoms of my feet, and then scrub at my wet hair with the efforts of nine determined fingertips.

The harsh blare of the alarm clock seeps into my consciousness through the hot haze of slumber. I stretch across Makok's broad, dark shoulders to finger the snooze button. Unable to stifle a belch that reeks like last night's whisky sours, I slump back for nine more minutes of rest, draping my arm across the width of his back. He stops snoring, but doesn't stir.

Morning's light streams through the bedroom window, and I squint. Makok works on Karl's floor but I don't think they're friends. His wife does dayshift on the line. She's not in my section, but I can see her from where I stand at the boning table. I've seen the two of them at the
IGA
together; they've both worked at the plant for a few months now.

I think back to last night, and don't recall much. Makok smiling at me as he leaned over the pool table, cue in hand. Asking him to buy me a drink though I could afford my own liquor. Flattering compliments in halting English. More drinks. His brown eyes locked with my own, an unspoken decision to go ahead.

He faces away, hugging a pillow. I scan his smooth back, visually tracing its one blemish: a three-inch, curved white scar across his right shoulder. Must have been a meat hook; that's common. Or something that happened back home – like many at the plant, he's from Sudan. I'm not going to ask.

The alarm buzzes again. Makok shakes awake; both of our hands reach for the noisemaker this time. He smacks the top of the clock and then grabs my fingers.

He turns and our eyes meet. I lean toward him, we kiss. He pulls his bulky frame onto mine and I welcome the pressure. We fuck one more time; fiercely and quickly. Before the alarm sounds again, we're done. Makok eases out of me, strokes my cheek, then abruptly pulls himself to his feet and stands naked above me, a drizzle of semen still hanging off the tip of his foreskin.

“Mende is pregnant.” He walks to the bathroom.

I sit on the toilet and piss while Makok showers; I put out a clean towel. He doesn't offer me a ride to work – he leaves while I'm in the shower. I tie my hair into a loose braid and throw a sweater into my knapsack. Hot as it is outside, my part of the plant is refrigerated.

I pop four ibuprofens on my way out the door. Hop into my Civic and head for the plant. I crack the window. It's too hot not to, but you don't open it very far. The closer you get to the plant, the more the air smells like shit. Bosses call it “the smell of money.” No matter which way the wind blows, you can't escape it.

The locker room smells like wet sawdust and it's crowded. The air's humid with steam emanating from the shower stalls
at the end of the room. On a bench between two rows of lockers, I'm surrounded by women. I recognize some but have never talked to them. You can't know everybody in a plant of two thousand people. Once we're suited up, recognizing anyone is hard.

Lockers are assigned in numerical order based on hire date and then reassigned because of turnover – not everyone can handle this job. All around me, women chatter, yell, laugh – none of it in English. You get used to that.

I put on my gear in the same order every morning. First the yellow rubber boots. Next I pull on my steel mesh apron. It runs from my shoulders to my knees. I reach around to tie it in the back, drawing my head to my chest. There, I catch my first whiff. Though I scrubbed it at the end of yesterday's shift, my apron still hosts the faint but dizzying scent of bull's blood.

I hear a rumble from the shop floor; they're turning on the grinders and getting ready for the shift to start. I check my pockets for earplugs. Rubber sleeves that run from my wrists to my elbows. A hairnet, then my bump cap – a yellow construction helmet. Plastic safety goggles that hang from my neck by a nylon cord; I'll put them on once I'm on the line. I grab my long, thin knife and stuff it into the waist pocket of the apron. Thank God I sharpened it yesterday. With this hangover, I'd cut myself if I tried today.

Last, thick rubber gloves, with a crumpled paper ball jammed into one fingertip to keep it from flopping, or getting caught in anything. All around me, women who've arrived late crowd in and clamber into the same uniform. We have to be on the line when it starts up.

Wading through the crowd and the roaring machines, I
arrive at the boning table to find my co-workers already in position. With a smirk, Kwadwo calls out in his West African-accented baritone.

“Wanda, you look like you were up late,” he says in a chastising tone.

My shoulders slump. Then I puff out my chest and beat him at his own game. “I was with your dad last night, Kwadwo. I hope you have as much energy in bed as him!”

Kwadwo giggles like a tickled schoolboy. “My father is fifty-six – and he still lives in Ghana. No wonder you are tired …”

“I went out to the Ox for a few – but not much was going on,” I confess.

“As long as you weren't with Kwadwo's father – or any other fathers – then it is good,” Agnes pipes in, arching an eyebrow as she adjusts her hairnet over a short-cropped Afro.

Agnes is a generation older than me, but the Sudanese community is close-knit. Could she be friends with Makok and his pregnant wife?

She smiles and gives me a friendly elbow. “Use protection, or you will make someone a father!” I grin, relieved.

Next to me, Kwadwo, Agnes, and three girls from Newfoundland work at our compact boning table. We're short one man, a French-Canadian, the nephew of Mr. Leger, the floor supervisor. Funny that our table is mostly whites – we're a minority on the floor. That's another thing you get used to.

With another clickety-clack rumble, the line kicks into gear. Meat moves into the room from the kill floor downstairs. Along the west wall, enormous whole cattle emerge from the
trap door, suspended from above by hooks that pierce one of their back limbs. The men at the front of the room take them down one by one and begin to cut.

First, off with their heads. Then, out with their guts. Next, off with their hides. The carcasses hit three other cutting tables before reaching ours. We get manageable, medium-sized slabs ready to be reduced to supermarket-grade cuts. The first will reach our table in just under ten minutes. Several hours of slicing and dicing later, we get lunch at eleven o'clock. I'm so used to separating meat from bones I could do it in my sleep.

Mid-morning, I glance at the bone-shiners table further down the line.

There, a group of women wield electric knives to remove excess meat from bones before they're sent to Rendering. It's hard to tell anyone apart between the mouth protectors, goggles, hairnets, and helmets, but I think I recognize Makok's wife, Mende, among the dozen African women at the table. Most chat and smile while they work – with one tall, rigid exception.

At lunch I sit with Agnes, Kwadwo, and Kathy, one of the girls from our group. The cafeteria fare is bearable today: lasagna and fruit salad. We keep it light – no sex, religion, or politics at the lunch table. My aching, dehydrated brain is glad for that. Normally, I love to listen to Agnes talk – she is passionate about current affairs in her homeland – but I couldn't cope right now.

Taking my tray to the garbage bin, I feel an object thunk onto my back. Turning around, I look at the floor and see a leftover grape from someone's fruit salad. A loud guffaw, and then a big, blond dickwad is in my face – Karl's brother, Kevin
Willson. He has a V-shaped scar on his cheek and the smile of a carved pumpkin with one front tooth missing.

“Oh sorry, Wanda. I was aiming for the trash. Guess I missed.”

I offer a fake smile.

“Hey, heard you had a busy night. Up late, weren't you?” He sneers. “You like the dark though, don't you?”

That fucking piece of shit. I didn't see him at the bar last night. I shove him out of my way, and head back onto the floor.

Leger approaches our table as we ready to go back to work, a young girl in tow. She looks nineteen. Vietnamese probably, with a very pretty face. She won't last long – she'd be better off in another section. This girl is too short. She'll have to reach upward to make all her cuts. The boning table is designed for people of average height; she'll end up with very sore shoulders.

“Kids, this is Anh. Show her the ropes.” With that, he walks away. From behind, it looks like he's picking his nose.

Agnes and I exchange a knowing look. But she smiles when she turns to Anh.

“Where are you from, girl?”

Her voice is a whisper but I manage to hear because she's right next to me. “Cambodia.”

“Pull your face mask over your mouth, Anh. I'll show you what to do.”

Anh exhales visibly. Agnes has a way of making people comfortable. We all pull our face masks on and get to work. Because of staggered lunch breaks, meat has begun to pile up.