THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE

            Along the way, on the red dirt road, the men trudged with dirty backpacks slung over their shoulders, skin and shirts and hands coated with sweat and the red dust that the wind picked up since they began their trek many days ago. Black and green trees hemmed the road, onto which scattered shafts of sunlight beamed. Behind the trees, an opulent forest housed legions of undiscovered flora.

There is a town at the end of the red dirt road, they have heard.

I’ve heard there is a steady job there, they say to each other.

Each had parted from a distant home, on his own. Along the way their numbers had grown as roads of concrete intersected and converged in the red dirt road. Now, every man walked with others at his side.

When, setting foot upon the red dirt road, a man chanced upon the group of like men heading the same way, he would ask: Are you all going to the butchering town?

Yes, the others would answer, wiping sweat off their foreheads.

There were more questions. Such as:

Have you, as have I, heard that there are animals of all colors and shapes and sizes in the slaughterhouse?

Yes.

Have you, as have I, heard that one can kill as many as four-thousand

animals a day in the slaughterhouse?

Yes.

Have you ever met anybody from the town?
            Men would think about that question and realize that, no, they have never heard stories from someone who was actually from there. One man said: No, but my brother went there and he never returned. My brother said to me, if I never return, it might be that I am dead, or it might be that I am so happy that I forgot to send word. My brother doesn’t know how to write, see.

            They also talked about the women they had left, and, during midnight campfires, when the air cooled down and the mosquitoes preyed on their arms and legs and dotted them with red spots, the men showed each other pictures of their siblings, children, mothers, wives, and the others they had left behind. Around them, the forest creaked and groaned.

            But one night, during the campfire, when a man tried to tell a story about his wife, his mouth fell silent. When he searched in his pocket for a picture of her and took it out and showed it and said, look, here she is, isn’t she beautiful, he, for a moment, did not recognize the woman in the picture, and his mouth froze. And the man that he showed the picture to said, yes, I see it—I saw the picture last night, and the night before, and the night before that. And then another man added as he searched his own pocket, did I show you the picture of my wife? Yes, the two other men said. And the man who had originally held out the picture, who now looked at his photograph as if it were an artifact from a strange dream, said, Yes, but you can show it to me again. Then he put his picture back in his pocket.

So then they started showing each other pictures, until the pictures themselves became so engraved in the minds of the men that it became unnecessary to take them out of their dark pockets. Eventually they just sat in a circle and stared at the fire. Sometimes, to break the silence, they would ask the old questions as though they were new ones.

Are you going to the butchering town?

Yes.

Thirsty butterflies stuck to their shirts to suck out the sweat, and the men did not stare down at the butterflies.

Sounds accompanied them, too: flapping campfire flames and the other forest sounds that sometimes awoke them, later in the night, from their sleep—the sounds of nature conversing with itself. The creaking of branches, like that of old house doors, at the wind’s stroke. The humming of crickets and general click-clacking of insects.

One night, they were awoken by animal sounds. Sad howls, scattered bleats, snarls, hoots, chirps of unseen birds. They did not know if this was the tenth or hundreth night of their trek, but when they heard the animal sounds, they began taking count of the days.

This is the second night that we hear animal sounds, said one on the second night.

This is the third night, said another one the third night.

The animal sounds perked up the midnight chatter. The conversation turned to the possible origins of the sounds. Are they escaped slaughterhouse animals? they asked. Hallucinations? Many of them considered the sounds a sign of danger, others a sign that they were getting closer to the slaughterhouse. Maybe it’s both, thought a minority. Either way, all of them agreed that they had been on this road too long to turn back. They woke up every morning and marched farther along the red dirt road.

And today, under the shafts of hard morning light, as they walk, the leaves that hem the road begin to rustle. Then all the bushes and the leaves that surround them stir together, like thousands of clapping hands.

Some of the men grow stiff. Others are able to hold the stiffness in, show instead a learned fearlessness. A few draw knives.

All huddle close, tighten up their line, edge as far away as possible from the road’s edge, walk as close to the center of the road as possible, taking wary steps, their eyes darting everywhere now, looking for movement behind the leaves, listening for snarls, barks, chirps, their shirts hanging with round damp emblems of sweat, emblems that hang heavier and darker as the sunlight penetrates the canopy.

Then, from the bushes, the animals emerge, like strokes of exotic colors shooting from the sides of the road, red and blue and green macaws flying from trees and over the men’s heads, antelope and black-and-white zebras emerging from the bushes, trotting alongside the line, as do horses, brown, black, white, beige; a spotted cheetah and a striped tiger march along with a long-maned lion, the three of them not paying any heed to the zebras and antelopes. Mice and squirrels skitter between the men’s feet. Overhead, birds fly. Some settle on the men’s shoulders.

Dogs walk up to the men and, like long-lost slaves who find their masters, jump at them, lick their hands, the men’s hands then tingling and their hairs bristling with the lost memory of touch. The men laugh at the dogs’ clumsiness and put their knives back in their sheaths. Their hands reach out to all the animals, petting the skins of predator and prey alike. They do not ask questions.

During the night campfire they talk.

My wife would love this, one says.

This squirrel reminds me of my grandfather, another one says.

That night, the animals curl up beside the men, and the men sleep soundly and their dreams do not make them shiver.

For many nights zebra and lion and dog and rat march and sleep alongside man. Then one day, before the men get bored with the animals as they had gotten with the pictures, the forest ends and the path continues through an endless field of grass. For the first time, they can see above them the uninterrupted blue sky. Many of them stretch their arms, as one does when one leaves a cramped attic. And the animals run and play in the fields—always, of course, returning to their masters.

And way down, at the end of the road, the men see a structure, a gray building that grows taller as the men approach. It was a plain affair, painted with an nondescript gray. It did not bear the famous insignia of the company that they had so much heard about. But they knew that the giant, looming gravestone was the slaughterhouse.

When the men looked for something resembling an entrance, they saw but one opening in the building’s façade: a black rectangle, a black hole of a doorway.

And as they marched on, they realized that both animal and man were to go through the same entrance into the same place. This gave the men some pause, not in their outer movements (their bodies were too used to walking), but in their minute movements—nerves bulged in their foreheads, fists tightened, the corners of their lips quivered, their eyes vibrated microscopically.

Then the men hear the voices of their children once more, their wives calling out to them from the dark crevices of their minds. The men hear a call coming forth from the black hole in the slaughterhouse. They do not see it but they create it: a black angel of memory that waits for them behind that entryway. The animals walk on without any seeming change in their demeanor. But some men begin to salivate with the anticipation of reunion. And other men reach to their pockets and clutch the pictures that they had once forgotten, with the same force that they had before gripped their knives.

But none of them ever think of turning back.