Chapter
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With a sound like two twigs snapping, the chicken’s legs broke
in his hand. The bird transformed from a hanging bundle of limp feathers
to a screeching mess and his fingers instantly uncurled. It dropped
fifteen feet to the sand covered ground where it began flapping round
in tight circles like a clockwork toy gone wrong.
‘Grab ’em when I lift ’em upwards!’ shouted
the man in shit-spattered overalls, standing on a narrow ledge on the
lorry’s side. ‘If you don’t,’ he carried on
with a note of triumph, ‘they swing back and that happens.’
He nodded towards the ground but his eyes remained locked on the younger
worker.
‘Yeah, sorry,’ the teenager replied, disgustedly peeling
silver scales of chicken skin from the palms of his hands.
Despite his heavy build, the man clambered nimbly along the stack of
cages welded to the lorry’s rear until he was directly above the
stricken bird. With its ruined legs splayed uselessly off to one side
it continued its futile revolutions, the repeated cries from its open
beak merging into something that resembled a thin scream.
He dropped from the side of the vehicle and landed with both boots on
the bird’s outstretched head and neck. A thick squirt of blood
shot out from under one heel and all movement immediately stopped. The
only thing to disturb the silence that followed was a pigeon cooing
gently from amongst a copse of beech trees nearby. The man stepped back,
revealing a pulp of bone mashed into the loose sand. Then, relishing
the appalled attention of the audience watching from the shed above,
he swung back a stubby leg and booted the carcass high into the air.
A handful of reddish coloured feathers detached themselves, one catching
in the current of air blowing from the extractor fan mounted on the
shed’s side. The feather tumbled away, up into the clear blue
sky.
With arms that seemed a little too long for his body, he climbed back
up the wall of cages, each one bristling with beady eyes, jagged beaks
and shivering combs.
‘It’s simple – keep ’em hanging upside down
and they don’t move,’ said the man, reaching into another
cage and dragging two squawking birds out by the legs.
Once their heads were hanging downwards in the open air they immediately
went still and he lifted their passive forms to the open door. This
time the youth successfully grabbed the legs, and before they could
start swinging back, he whipped them inside the shed.
‘You’ll be doing four in each hand by lunch – now
out the way,’ said the man perched on the lorry’s ledge,
another brace of birds already dangling from his arm.
Though no one said anything, something about the over-enthusiastic way
the older man gave out directions reminded everyone of the playground.
A schoolboy, prematurely invested with authority by his teacher.
The youth got off his knees and, with a bird in each hand, turned around.
Immediately in front of him inside the shed was a tier of empty cages,
six high. It stretched away in both directions, the dimness inside the
shed making it impossible to see right to either end. The walkway he
was standing on was made of rippled concrete and barely wider than his
shoulders. Coating it was a mishmash of shell fragments, feathers and
dried yolk. Awkwardly he had to struggle round the person next to him,
banging one of the chickens against the wall. Once past, he set off
into the shed’s depths.
Away from the fresh air at the open door the temperature suddenly picked
up and the sharp smell of ammonia dramatically increased. His way was
lit by a string of naked bulbs dangling at ten metre intervals from
a black cable running just above his head. Thick sandy coloured dust
clung to everything. Even the top of the cable was covered in it like
powdery snow on a telephone line. The bulbs themselves were almost completely
obscured – only the bottom third of each was exposed, and the
yellowish light they gave out made him squint. In the gloom above, the
residue had formed into web-like loopscurling from the roof, the occasional
strand brushing the top of his head. It seemed like a living thing,
a kind of airborne mould that made the very air thick and heavy. He
imagined that, if he stood still long enough, the spores would settle
on him, and eventually he too would become wrapped in its cloying shroud.
To his right the small conveyor belts running along in front of each
cage clanked and whined, the moving surface transporting pellets to
scores of cages that would soon be stuffed full of birds. Set into the
ceiling above him was the occasional fan, blades lazily revolving. Their
motion served only to circulate the warm air, carrying the dust into
every crevice and on to every available surface.
He walked to the first gap in the steep row of cages, turned right and
then immediately left into one of the central aisles. In the gloom ahead
of him a dark form crouched. As he walked up to the person he had to
step over a lump on the ground. Looking down he saw the tips of feathers
and was shocked to realise it was a dead bird. From the layer of powder
almost engulfing it he guessed it had been lying there for quite some
time. Now in front of the person, he held the two birds out.
‘Cheers,’ said the woman emotionlessly, taking them from
him and shoving them upside down into the open doorway of the nearest
cage. The birds began clucking in protest, and one started flapping
its wings. ‘Get in,’ she said aggressively through clenched
teeth, forcing them with the flat of her hand. Inside what was little
more than a hamster’s cage, two other birds were already jostling
for a firm footing on the wire mesh floor. He watched as one wing fluttered
at the side of the door. With a final shove she forced them inside,
breaking several feathers in the process. Swinging the wire door shut
she announced, ‘Home sweet home.’
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