The Fall Line, page 21
“I’ll go get the cattle prod. That’ll make ’em move.” After a moment of calm, Darrell spoke again. “Here you go. Use it on that big one in the front. When he goes, the others will follow him into the trailer. It’s a one-way ticket, boys.” A sharp, dry snap of electricity pierced the air, followed by a raspy screech. “Poke the son of a bitch again, Wayne,” Darrell growled. “Harder! Hold it!” Each pulsing electric shock and screech Jordan’s teeth on edge. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. “Make the sumbitch move,” Darrell yelled, laughing at every cry of pain the cattle prod caused.
Risking being seen, Jordan leaned forward slowly to peer around the corner of the box. She wanted to know who these men were, but all she could see were denim-covered legs and leather boots through the metal-bar panels, and a large hog, grunting and stumbling, desperately trying to move backward, but lurching forward reluctantly with every shock, his head bobbing as he moved step by step, resisting as if he knew his grim fate. She leaned back out of sight, continuing to listen to the men’s callous banter as they pushed and prodded the hogs one by one into the chute leading to the trailer outside. Wayne seemed apathetic to the pigs’ plight, but Darrell was something worse. He was a sadistic motherfucker seeming to take pleasure in commanding Wayne’s actions. She’d listened to enough true-crime podcasts to know that men like him were dangerous and often misogynists. The reality of what might happen if they discovered her was horrifying. She pressed her forehead against the sheet-metal panel in front of her and silently prayed they didn’t find her. After she finished the prayer, she mentally recited another for the hogs. The abuse seemed to take forever.
“That’s the last one, Darrell,” Wayne shouted over the sounds of slamming gates and sliding latches.
“Awright, Wayne. Drop the door when you’re done, and let’s get outta here. We got an hour’s drive, and this storm ain’t getting any better. I don’t know why these hogs had to be moved tonight. Seems like it coulda waited a few days.”
“I don’t never argue with the boss,” Wayne said. “Yes, sir. No, sir. Thank you for my paycheck, sir!”
The men’s laughter faded into the raging storm as the rolling door closed. She listened for the rumble of the truck engine, hearing it rev a few times, and then silence other than the white noise of the barn and an occasional squealing hog. When she felt safe, she unfolded herself and crawled out from behind the control box.
“Leda? Are you here? Please be here.” She scanned the area but found no trace of the spirit. She walked down the aisle to the far end of the barn, past another fifty or sixty hogs, and passed through a swinging door into a narrow room with smooth, white walls, a spigot with a hose attached, and a floor drain in the center. Anger rose in her at the spirit having abandoned her. A second door led into the other end of the barn. “Leda?” she called out as she pulled open the door.
Halfway across the threshold she stopped and gasped, sucking in the fetid air so fast it made her cough. A half dozen sows were confined in gestation crates, pens no bigger than the large animals they contained. She understood what she was seeing. In fact, she and Maddie had talked about gestational crates over dinner when she had first arrived in Oberon. Bonding over their mutually shared ideas about humane treatment of animals, she’d had no idea how prescient their conversation would be. The sows would be confined here for months, unable to turn around, forced to stand or lie down unnaturally, eating, urinating, and defecating until it was time to give birth. Then, they’d be moved to a slightly less restrictive cage that allowed them just enough room to rest on their sides to nurse but keeping them separated from their piglets. It was beyond inhumane. She began to feel claustrophobic, her hands shaking as her blood pressure rose.
“Dammit, Leda! Where did you go?”
Leda didn’t respond or appear. One of the sows chewed on a bar, the metal amplifying the sound of her teeth grinding against it, blood-flecked foam dripping from her mouth. Jordan felt helpless and hopeless. These animals were treated like meat-making machines, not sentient living beings who could be driven to compulsive behaviors and probably insanity by these conditions. She had seen enough. Spotting another door, she felt desperate to get out, even if she didn’t know how to find her way to the cabin. Thunderstorm or not, she needed fresh air and a clear head. She wasn’t a babe in the woods; she could figure out how to get back to the cabin if she kept her wits about her. If she stayed here, she would risk losing them like the mad sow chewing on the bars until her gums bled.
She bolted for the door but stopped dead when she witnessed yet another sign of the neglect these hogs endured—almost a dozen newborn piglets—bloodied, pale, and lifeless—clustered on the cold concrete floor.
Fumbling with the latch on the crate, hoping to release the sow from her confinement, she exploded. “You cruel, heartless bastards!” She tugged on the latch. The sow should have been moved out of the gestation crate before now. What was wrong with these men? Barron himself had a child. He must have seen what Tammi had experienced during pregnancy and how uncomfortable she must have been during the final weeks, unable to get relief in any position. How could he, or anyone who worked in this barn, not have a shred of empathy for these animals?
The latch was stuck. Grabbing it with both hands, she pulled as hard as she could. “Motherfuckers!” she roared, and the latch gave way. She stumbled backward as the door swung open, but the sow didn’t move. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice anything that was happening around her. She grunted loudly, her sides heaving with heavy breaths. She was still in labor, her sides quivering. Before Jordan fully processed what she was seeing, tiny toes and the nose of a baby pig came into view. Without thinking she bent, stretching her hands forward in time to catch the newborn, wet and wriggling in her hands. Instinctively, she cleared mucus from her nose, mouth, and eyes with her fingers and wished she had a towel to dry her. She improvised with the front of her T-shirt, rubbing the baby-tender skin. The piglet sneezed and head-butted the palm of her hand. She clearly knew she needed to nurse, to get the antibody-rich colostrum that her mother would produce for only a short time. Crawling into the empty stall next to the sow, Jordan reluctantly poked the sow, getting her to shift enough to expose her teats. The piglet latched on, sucking greedily.
She counted the piglets. Number twelve, the one in her hand, was probably the last and only surviving member of the litter. One of the dead piglets twitched and wriggled. It was alive. Wet and cold, but miraculously still alive. She reached for it, dislodging Number Twelve, who wriggled in protest.
“I don’t know what number you are, but I’ll call you Eleven, for now.” Although weak, Eleven reacted when Jordan took her to the sow’s side and held her next to Twelve. She began to suckle, slowly at first and then vigorously. When their bodies relaxed, Jordan figured they’d had their fill for the moment. While watching them nurse, she’d reached a decision.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you right now, mama,” she said quietly, standing up to tuck the little piglets under her shirt to keep them warm. “But I promise you, these baby girls will never again see the inside of one of these barns. And they will never grow up to be imprisoned, giving birth to litter after litter.”
Looking for a way out, she found that the door at the far end opened into a small room with a boot wash, utility sink, and a cabinet stacked with bottles of iodine and cotton towels. A handwritten note scrawled in all capital letters was taped to the edge of a shelf. FOR FARROWING ONLY. Using the supplies, she dabbed some iodine on the end of the umbilical cord, rubbed them both vigorously with a fresh towel, and then swaddled them together in clean towels before nestling them into her shirt against her skin. Hopefully she could keep them warm enough. With her shirt tucked into her pants and jacket zipped closed, her contraption made a pretty good carrier. She considered giving them one more chance to suckle but couldn’t bear the thought of going back into the barn.
“Look at those sweet little babies,” Leda said, flickering into form.
“Leda!” Jordan was relieved to see her.
“Are you stealing those piglets?”
“I guess I am.”
“Good for you. And good for them!” Leda leaned close to the piglets in her arms, looking at them adoringly, as if she wished she could hold them.
Jordan had been thinking about this as a rescue, but Leda was right. She was stealing towels and baby pigs. She was a pig rustler now. She stifled a nervous laugh. “I need you to get me back to the cabin and my car.”
“There is something else you need to see. It’s the real reason I brought you here.”
“What?” She wasn’t sure she could handle one more thing. “I don’t have time to look around, Leda. These guys need a warm place and more food soon.”
“You’ll see it as we go.”
“How far away are we?” she asked.
“Not far.”
“I mean, how much time will it take to get there?”
“Oh…time. You know, it’s all the same when you’re a spirit.” Leda frowned. “It’s hard for me to mark time. I can’t really say.”
Jordan sighed, impatiently pinching the bridge of her nose. But she needed Leda to get her out of here, so she spoke in a measured tone. “Compare it to the path between the cabin and the river.”
“I can answer that.” Leda’s expression brightened. “A bit longer. But not much if you walk fast.”
“Then let’s not waste any more time.” She flipped her hood over her head and reached for the exit-door handle.
It was still raining, but the storm seemed to have weakened. As they moved away from the barn, Leda began to glow softly, though not as intensely as when the lightning strikes were nearby. The air was still heavy with the sour odor of manure as they rounded the corner of the building. A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape—two flat, dark rectangles in the dark—manure lagoons: containment ponds holding the waste from the barn. The news broadcasts during the last big hurricane on the East Coast had featured tragic stories about millions of chickens and thousands of hogs drowning in barns. Dramatic aerial footage revealed breached hog-farm lagoons, spewing a toxic pink slurry of waste and pathogens into waterways. The news reporters described massive fish kills, which meant not just fish, but anything living in or near the water was sickened or killed. Those factory farms in South Carolina had been negatively affecting people’s health for years. The companies had been sued repeatedly and lost every time, but the fines were a slap on the wrist for the mega-corporations, just part of the cost of doing agribusiness, so they continued operating without making changes, creating an environmental disaster ready to happen.
Barron’s dirty little secret was a smaller-scale version of one of those massive factory farms, but he was operating under the same principles: too many animals crammed into small spaces for the sake of quick money. And God knows, he had a lot of it.
She put on her headlamp and clicked it on. As she turned her head side to side, the sweep of light revealed the liquified waste very near the edge of the muddy earthen berm containing it.
“That looks awfully close to the top,” she said as they walked past. The smell was overwhelming.
“It is. The other side is what worries me. We’re going that way, so you’ll see.”
Before they reached the far side of the lagoon, the rain had stopped, and the milky-white moon peeked through the fast-moving clouds. The piglets grunted and wriggled against Jordan’s belly, then settled, nice and warm. They descended the soggy, steeply sloping dam to a small stream below. Being this close to a waterway, the manure lagoon had to violate environmental laws. Barron was a criminal.
Leda pointed across the stream. “The cabin is that way.”
“If the lagoon overflows—” She clutched the piglets close as she waded through the shallow water. “God, it stinks worse down here.”
“We called this Little Turtle Creek when I was a child. Lots of turtles and crawfish lived here. It’s like a sewer now,” Leda said.
“You think the dam will fail?” Given their proximity to the river, this creek probably flowed directly into the Cahaba.
“It’s already leaking. That’s what you’re smelling.”
“This is an environmental problem waiting to become a disaster.” She adjusted the piglets and picked up her pace, wanting to get as far away from the lagoon as she could. Her boots swished in the muck, making her nauseous knowing she was walking through effluent.
“It is,” Leda said.
They remained silent the rest of the way to the cabin. After they intersected an ATV trail on the top of the hill and followed the ridgeline, the walking was easy and fast. Keeping one arm wrapped around the waist of her jacket to support her piglets, who couldn’t have weighed more than two pounds each, she followed Leda until she stopped by a tall pine tree and directed her to turn downslope, promising the cabin was near the base of the hill.
The sight of the cabin and her 4Runner in the moonlight was a huge relief. She had been running on adrenaline, and it was beginning to wear off. The piglets squirmed again, probably hungry. “Hang on just a bit longer, little piggies,” she said gently as she grabbed a beach towel from the back, removed the bundle from under her shirt, and put them on the passenger seat. After starting the engine, she turned on the seat warmer.
“Do you want to ride with me?” she asked Leda, who hovered outside, near the driver’s side window. “Can you?”
“I can sit in your car, but when you drive off, I’ll still be here.” She shrugged. “Some things just don’t work for spirits.”
“Then I’ll meet you back at Palmer House.”
“Good. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a drink. I’ll be there before you,” Leda said with a wink and disappeared.
Jordan backed away from the cabin and sped down the gravel road. When she patted the towel, the piglets underneath let out excited grunts. That was a good sign. If they were wriggling and vocalizing, maybe they’d be okay.
“Hang tight, little ones,” she said. “How do you feel about goat’s milk? I hear that all the baby mammals love it. Fortunately for you, I know just the place to get some.” As she turned on to the paved county road, she hoped it wasn’t too late to stop by the next-door grumpy goat farmer’s house for some milk.
Chapter Fifteen
Maddie poured a cup of coffee while her sister pulled boxes of cereal from a kitchen cabinet. When she sat at the kitchen bar, Chip waited patiently by her feet, watching her, knowing the rattle of cereal boxes meant she might get a treat.
“Are you sure you want to leave this morning?” Caroline said over her shoulder. “Another bad storm’s coming. You can stay longer if you like.”
“Thanks for the offer.” She grinned over the rim of her cup. “But I have a date tonight.”
“You could reschedule. I’m sure Jordan would understand.”
“Maybe I don’t want to,” she said, realizing she sounded like a petulant child. She scrolled through the forecast on her phone. The weather-radar graphic looked ominous, with shaded orange trapezoids warning of severe thunderstorms. Yet another big storm system spiraling up out of the Gulf of Mexico was projected to move across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, following the same route she’d be driving. The pattern was typical, but with climate change, storms had become stronger—the rain heavier, the lightning more violent, and more tornadoes.
Caroline lined up the cereal boxes in front of Maddie, frowning at the splotches of green, yellow, and red on the weather map on her phone’s screen. “If you want to stay ahead of that, you better leave soon.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not. We weren’t going to be able to do much this morning anyway. I have to take Sophie to soccer camp, and it’s an office day for Rob.” Caroline placed bowls and spoons next to the cereal boxes. “I can’t believe you’re willing to drive through hell and high water just for dinner.”
“I won’t be, as long as I stay ahead of the storm,” she said confidently.
“Then you better not wait for Rob and Sophie. Go ahead and eat your breakfast.” Caroline pushed a cereal bowl toward her.
“It’s not just dinner.” She grinned while pouring multigrain flakes into a bowl. “It’s a date! One that I’m really looking forward to. I have a good feeling about Jordan.”
“I have no doubt she gives you good feelings.” Teasing, Caroline handed her a carton of milk. “But she lives in another state, so I’m surprised you’re interested. That didn’t work out so well for you before.”
“Jordan’s not Vanessa.” She sliced half a banana on top of the cereal and poured milk into her bowl. “And Tennessee’s not Wisconsin. Chattanooga is just a few hours’ drive. Chip likes road trips. Don’t you, Chip?” She glanced down at the black shepherd and offered her a thick slice of banana. Her tail thumped the floor as she took it delicately from her fingers with her big, white teeth.
“Look at you, being such the optimist.” Caroline shook her head, smiling. “You know, Mom said she noticed a change in you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Last night at the Carousel Bar. I recall she used the words ‘lighter’ and ‘distracted.’”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why be sorry?” Caroline cradled her cup in her hands and leaned back against the counter.
“I’m here visiting all y’all and—” She pointed at her cell phone on the counter. “I’ve been on the phone talking and texting like a teenager.”
“More like a preteen these days,” Caroline said. “Fortunately, mine’s not quite there yet.” As if on cue, Sophie shuffled into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and hair uncombed. She was dressed in a blue-and-white shirt, shorts, and tall socks, appearing ready for a day of chasing a ball around a field. Chip trotted to her, wagging her tail energetically as Sophie wrapped her arms around her thick neck and patted her head between her ears. “You’d better give Aunt Maddie a hug, too. She’s leaving soon.”
