Warning: explicit and graphic detail – meat processing.
This is the second of two scene development exercises: The Task: Describe places where you have worked …Describe how the people handle their tools and machines. Objective: To concentrate on the details and energy of a workplace. Workplaces make perfect story setups because they make it easy for you to integrate the place and the character. People shape the place, the places shape the people.
Novakovich, Josip. Fiction Writer’s Workshop (p. 41). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
“Half a dozen labourers for the Kill Floor.”
Mister Kaiser’s last call for the morning caused a stir among the men and boys who’d stayed, hopeful of casual work. Christy and Benny were up in flash and in the queue. There’d be no fishing for the next few days.
“Got your boots?” Mister Kaiser asked.
Christy and Benny nodded, holding them up as proof – cheap PVC boots that they used on the sand flats.
“They’ll do,” said Mister Kaiser. “Get in here and get signed on.”
Signing on was quick. They both looked fit and strong enough for work. No need for medical or injury histories, no safety induction, wage discussions, or any of that stuff you’d need to go through now. It was all Award work. A kill had been scheduled for that morning and the boys were needed quick smart on the Floor to get the line working.
“Sign here and get yourselves to the Store to get fitted out. You,” he said, pointing at Christy with the tip of his biro. “You’re on calves. And you,” indicating Benny, “Sheep.”
There wasn’t much the boys needed from the Store – only aprons that you could hose down. It would come out of their pay.
They hurried up the concrete steps – two at a time – keen to get to the Floor and check in with the Foreman.
Christy had seen sheep and cattle butchered in the bush when the homestead needed meat. But never anything on this scale.
The Floor was a vast area of concrete and stainless steel spread out on one level and criss-crossed by concrete gutters with overhead rails.
Along the side of each gutter was a raised steel platform with a mesh floor. On each platform men were already taking up their positions, sharpening knives on steels with no guards at a speed too quick for the eye to follow and testing sharpness against the hairs on their arms for proof. Other men were testing water and air hoses, turning knobs and looking at complicated dials.
Inspectors and graders were checking their stamps and ink pads. You could tell them by their white boots, aprons, and hard hats – signifying that they were officer class.
Christy found the Calf Line Forman and got his orders. He’d be working near the head of the line, close to the Kill. The blokes would tell what he had to do once the Line started.
It was strange, Christy noticed, that nobody had any names here. At least none that they would share with the casual labourers. So, it was all, “You” or “That bloke” or “Him there.”
“You’ll pick it up pretty quickly,” was all the reassurance he got.
Christy climbed onto the platform and took his place in the Line.
Over on the Sheep Line, it had already started. Benny was on hide barrows. A few yards to the back of him, Christy could see the start of the Pig Line. He could hear the pigs squealing out the back.
As Christy stood in his place on the Line, the bloke next to him gave him his instructions. He also gave him a fresh calf’s tongue that he’d just rinsed off. It was rough, rubbery and hollow.
“You put your finger in there,” he said, indicating the hollow of the tongue and that Christy should wear it like a finger stall.
“And when they come to you, you wipe the shit and hair out of their arse.”
Just how that might come to be, Christy had yet to find out. But that was how the job was done in 1971, and Christy prepared himself to do it.
To his left, he heard a hiss-bang as a compressed air gun shot a steel bolt into a calf’s skull.
The calf fell down and the Line came alive.
Sunburnt Speculations 
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