Barn 8 Read online

  “Remember, this was your idea.”

  “Is that what you’re going to go to every time? It was my idea?”

  Dill called over them, “We’re not going anywhere, Jarman.”

  Jonathan opened the door a chained three inches and let a triangle of light fall into the hall. “What do you want?”

  It had been two years since she’d contacted him. He thought he’d shaken her at last, made it out, escaped. But there was her sidekick, a little worn and thin. Dill.

  “We’re looking to move some chickens, Jarman.”

  “You’ve come to the wrong place. Chicken catchers are outside in the rain.”

  “We need more than that. We need an engineer,” said Dill.

  Jonathan sighed. He had no choice but to wave them inside, Dill and the two women wearing some kind of uniforms, and shut the door behind them so the neighbors wouldn’t see him talking to them and mention it to Joy. What would he say? Bible people? Salesmen? He’d told her a little but really she had no idea how deep a hole he’d climbed out of to reach her. They took seats on the sofa. Where had he seen those uniforms?

  “Look,” he said, “you know I don’t do that work anymore.”

  “She thinks you’ll make an exception.”

  “You tell my wife she no longer qualifies for exceptions.”

  The women looked confused. He couldn’t believe she’d sent them over without telling them.

  “Annabelle,” said Jonathan, “is my wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” said Dill. “Divorced.”

  Their faces reacted, then recovered. “Who cares?” said the pretty one, pretty enough she should be on TV. “We’re talking about a major removal.”

  “Are you even eighteen?” he said to her. “What has she gotten you into?”

  “Ask me what I got her into.”

  “Even worse.”

  Dill said, “Jarman, up to me, I’d never see your smug face again, you know that. She insisted.”

  Then it struck him: auditor uniforms. That’s what those were. Jesus. Annabelle was going to get into a fuckload of trouble this time. There weren’t a lot of ways this could go. She’d wind up in prison for sure. He was furious. And exhausted.

  “Why isn’t she here asking herself?” he said.

  “She’s not available,” said Dill.

  “Neither am I.” He got up. “We done?” He had to move. He didn’t want them to see him shaking. “You tell her, she wants something from me, she’s going to have to do better than send her little friends over here like Red Rover.” He walked to the door. “You tell her to come by and say pretty please like the nice girl her daddy raised her to be. Show some manners.”

  AFTER THEY LEFT, Jonathan got into bed and lay in the dark thinking his life was probably over again. Every time she came back, she ruined it.

  The night before with his girlfriend, Joy, he’d been so happy, so relieved without knowing it, so baffled by Joy’s two little girls, who scared him, frankly. Joy had been helping one of the girls into her pajamas, but the top seemed to keep coming down backward, and then with an arm in the neck hole, and then inside out. In front of his very eyes it was becoming a hilarious, delightful, Chaplinesque game, and he was laughing, until he saw Joy’s face and realized, no, wrong, not delightful. She’d played this game one too many times, and he had said, “Can I help?” in a voice that he hoped was beyond that of a stranger because the plan—which they’d discussed—was for him to “participate in family activities,” for him to attach himself to them in a way other than hanging off the end as if off the edge of a cliff, for him to be enfolded, and to eventually move in, and they had decided that one way to head toward this was for him to “help.” So he had said, “Can I help?”

  She’d looked up gratefully and said, “Could you take her to brush her teeth?” meaning the other child, because he’d managed to do that with the child once before, somewhat successfully, so if it went well again, maybe it could be his “job” going forward. The child ran ahead of him into the bathroom and stripped off all her clothes—so now he wasn’t sure it was appropriate for him to be in the bathroom with her—and hopped up onto the toilet. He stood in the doorway, uncertain. Surely he shouldn’t go in? He could run back and ask Joy, but does one leave a child so small alone on the toilet? (He had messed up earlier on a similar point in an episode in the KidZ DanZ parking lot and had received shocked, angry words from Joy.)

  How innocent they’d all been!

  Now, lying in bed in his modern condo, where every appliance, tile, wall, and blind was the same eggshell white, he thought about that moment from the night before, how close he’d been to having the darkness of his life fully retreat. How charming that his difficulties might now amount to this: how to behave around a four-year-old girl. That was all ruined now. He’d known the minute he’d spotted Dill in the lot that his life with Joy was imperiled.

  In the morning he texted Joy. See you tonight, beautiful? And on his lunch break he did something impulsive. He drove to a jewelry store and bought an engagement ring and, what the hell, a full wedding set for $14,000, and when the salesman asked if he wanted an inscription, he said yes, in the man’s ring: NOW ONLY JOY. He went to her house, late, after the children were in bed. He needed Joy tonight, only Joy. She opened the door and let him in. They got into bed and he lay, heart bleeding in the dark, clutching her to him.

  HE THOUGHT with luck that would be the end of it, but she came the next night, showed up alone in the rain. He was getting out of his car, had one foot on the ground, and he saw her there in a rain jacket, hood up. He could see the ends of her hair and the bottom of her dress, her rubber shoes. He gestured toward the door of his complex, but she shook her head—she really was one paranoid chick, probably thought the place was bugged—so he clicked open the lock and she got in. They sat in the dark listening to the rain.

  “Good to know you’re alive anyway,” he said. “You might send a postcard now and then.”

  “I did better than a postcard and you sent them away.”

  “How do you know you can trust those two women? What makes you think they’re not FBI? They look like someone stabbed those uniforms onto them with staple guns.”

  “I’ve looked into them. They’re fine.”

  “Those are the kind that are going to land you in prison. Those people will get you killed.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t tell me what to do.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t live like a teenager.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like a parent.”

  He wanted to say, “I am a parent, almost.” But almost is far from enough.

  “Forget it,” she said. “I don’t know why I thought you would help.” She opened the door.

  Jesus, the woman gave him a headache.

  “Stay,” he said. “Come on. Stop it.”

  She closed the door.

  “What do you need?”

  “I thought they told you. We’re moving some chickens.”

  “Why call on me? You know how to move a hen.”

  “It’s a lot of hens.” She let the hood down and pulled up her hair to shake it away from the hood and, God help him, he still loved her. Buying the rings seemed like a desperate move now because no matter what he did or what happened, he would do whatever she asked. He’d taken a vow in front of her father and his, and the entire egg community (his lifeblood no matter how much he resisted it), a vow to protect this goddamn cracked egg, and that’s what he was going to do.

  “Those two are involved?”

  “A lot of people will be involved.”

  “I thought you hated people.”

  “When did I ever say that?”

  “You said that.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “I thought you weren’t doing this anymore.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Looks like you are.”

  The thump of water was making rain stars on the windshield.

  He let out a breat
h. “I have to get something out of it,” he said at last.

  “What do you want?”

  “We do this one last thing and then you stop. For good.”

  The windows shone.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “I’ll stop. I’m done. I’m retiring. After this one.”

  He didn’t know what to say. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  What could it mean? He wasn’t sure, but if there was one thing he knew about her, she kept her word, so he said, “What do you want me to do?” but if there was another thing he should have known by then, it was: do not make this woman any promises, because then she told him what she wanted him to do.

  A: Yeah, I don’t see how any of this is relevant but that’s pretty much how it happened.

  Q: He agreed.

  A: More or less. He wanted to cut Dill out. I refused. I’d done everything with Dill from the time we met.

  Q: Which was where?

  A: At an ecoterrorist hangar bar outside X. He leaned in and said to me, “Who are you supposed to be, FBI?”

  “I’m better than FBI,” I told him. “I’m big ag.”

  Dill was the first person to lay it all out for me, tell me how it had all gone down. The Animal Liberation Front was over. Nothing left but vandalism and hubris and rubble. There were open rescues—people filming themselves taking animals. Little more than trespassing, and utterly ineffective. “I’ll tell you this,” I said. “You people are no match for my industry.” I had a different vision, other areas of expertise, an alternative approach.

  Q: Which was?

  A: The employment-based investigation. Had never been done. We hired and trained our first two employees. Within months we were closing out investigations. In the first three years we did thirty-six investigations in eighteen states. We had convictions, raids, legislation, more press than we ever thought possible.

  Q: And your husband?

  A: He was the numbers man. He was good.

  Q: What went wrong?

  A: Yeah, the divorce. He didn’t want to help after that.

  Q: No, what went wrong with the investigations?

  A: What do you mean? Nothing.

  Q: But—

  A: We grew. We influenced. Investigative units popped up all over the country. Nothing went wrong. Nothing’s wrong.

  Q: You left. You were, let’s see, “resting.” On a chemical waste contamination site.

  A: Oh that, well.

  THEY GATHERED, the four of them, she sweeping in in her dress, he strutting to the table, Janey and Cleveland in uniforms, walking in behind. They all sat down at a card table in Dill’s shed. Then Dill and Annabelle argued for an hour.

  First they argued about how many trucks they’d need. Then how many investigators. Then how many hours. Then how many birds fit on a truck. Then they seemed to be arguing about simple multiplication. Then they started saying their calculators couldn’t be trusted. The calculators were “listening,” even when off, at which point Dill turned to Janey and Cleveland and said, “You left your phones in the car, right?” One raised her hands, “How many times?” while the other said, “This is hopeless,” and returned to the printouts she’d brought of the last audit, marking them up with a highlighter.

  Next they argued about the size of the barns. Annabelle said four of one kind, two of another, and two singles. Dill said six of the eight barns were all the same now. Annabelle said she obviously knew the place better than Dill, and Dill said, “Remember Gemperlee.” Annabelle lifted her chin and said, “Remember Norco.” They leaned forward over the table and stared until Dill blinked.

  Cleveland finally intervened. “If you two are finished, the last audit is right here.” She held up the folder.

  “Give me that,” said Annabelle, reaching.

  Then Jonathan arrived, in casual-corporate khakis. “Where’s your husband, Dill?” he said. “I always liked that guy,” and Dill made a horrible face.

  Now Dill and Annabelle had their arms crossed in denial. Both were frowning. Jonathan glanced at his watch.

  “It says so right here,” Dill was saying, pointing to a page.

  “I know it. I see it.”

  “What?”

  “Barns 7 and 8 will be empty.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Janey said with authority. “Depop, the week before our target date.”

  “Here are the housing specs.” Cleveland passed Jonathan the folder.

  “Fuck, what’s the point in emptying a farm that’s a quarter empty?” said Dill.

  “Same point as emptying one that’s full,” said Jonathan. “No point at all.”

  “Let’s wait. Put it off, say, three weeks.”

  “No, the timing is good,” said Annabelle. “Ricardo takes his vacation at the end of April. He sees his mother in Puerto Rico.”

  “Who the hell is Ricardo?” said Janey.

  “Oh, you guys don’t have that in your file? Ricardo. He’s always been there. Night security guard.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” Dill was saying. “Two empty barns. That brings it down to nine hundred K. Not even a million.”

  “A lot more than you ever did,” Janey said.

  “Wait.” Jonathan was turning the pages. “No, this is good.”

  “Of course you’d think so.”

  He looked up at Annabelle. “Now it’s possible. You might be able to do this.”

  “Okay, if your guys can depop fifteen hundred birds an hour …” Jonathan was saying.

  “Yeah, we’re not going to do it like that.”

  “I thought not.” He sighed.

  “The idea here is we want each hen lifted with two hands, one hen at a time.” Cleveland demonstrated with her arms. “That’s going to slow us down.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “See what you can come up with,” said Dill.

  “One hen per hand?”

  “One hen per two hands. Are you deaf?” said Janey.

  “That’s going to take longer. How many cage free?” Jonathan had the pages fanned in front of him.

  “Two barns. So we’ll need emptiers and catchers.”

  “I don’t know if it can be done,” said Jonathan. He ran his finger down one of the sheets. “Probably not. Any way we can shave off some time?”

  “Like what?”

  “How about a vacuum? For the cage-free barns?”

  Dill shook his head. “Too many injuries. Anyway, these are aviaries. Vacuum won’t work.”

  “Vacuum?” said Janey.

  “Yeah,” said Annabelle. “The chickens are pulled by howling wind into these giant rotating rubber brushes and shot out onto a conveyor belt.”

  “I’ll have to do some computations. The question is,” said Jonathan, “how many birds per minute need to be leaving the barns.”

  Annabelle took out a pad.

  “You got a chisel too?” He rose. “I’ll go get my laptop.”

  “Why don’t we phone the FBI and invite them over?” Annabelle slapped down a pen. “Everything goes on paper.”

  Jonathan appealed to the ceiling.

  “Where are you going to get all the trucks for this?” Jonathan was saying. “You’re going to need poultry trucks with battery racks. Have you thought about that? You’ll need, let’s see … hand me that, would you?” He took the pad. “This pen doesn’t work. Does anybody have a pen? Okay, how many trucks …”

  “I’ve got twelve lined up already,” said Dill.

  “Twelve?” said Jonathan. “See, this is the problem with you people. You can’t do simple math. You’re going to need,” he took a pen from Cleveland, “at least forty trucks. How many hens fit on a truck?”

  “The new ones can hold up to nineteen thousand layers or eight thousand broilers,” said Cleveland.

  “Well, we don’t have any broilers, obviously,” said Jonathan, “so nineteen K per.”

  “We can’t use commercial trucks.”

  �
��It’s only for a few hours. We’ll get them off quickly.”

  “We’re not putting nineteen thousand hens on a truck.”

  “All right, how about fifteen? In that case we’d need …” Jonathan scribbled. “Sixty trucks. With sixty trucks, maybe.”

  They all sank back in their seats. Dill whistled.

  Jonathan tossed the pen onto the table. “You’ve got twelve? I’d like to know where you’re going to get another forty-eight trucks.”

  No one breathed.

  “I can get the trucks,” said Janey. They all looked at her.

  “I know a guy.” She shrugged.

  JANEY WAS STAYING QUIET. She knew she couldn’t do it without them. But she hoped this wasn’t all a mistake. They were taking over, her authority ebbing away. She’d entrusted her vision to them, and it still felt delicate and raw.

  The night before, she’d been at home with her father. She’d glanced up from her laptop to see him visibly aging in front of the TV. She thought about how upset he’d be if she wound up in prison. He’d blame himself.

  “What, do I have Twinkie on my face?” he’d said. He brushed his nose with the back of his hand.

  So, yeah, she wanted to contribute (though the whole dream was her dream in the first place). Admittedly, she should not have offered this. She’d worked trucking dispatch three years, but she’d been fired with plenty of cause and enemies.

  But she’d been thinking of Manny. Her former supervisor. He might conceivably help. He called himself a workingman’s revolutionary with a laugh. Talked unions. Talked politics. He’d quit a few months before she’d been fired, hadn’t seen the worst of her surly antics. That night she found him online, and drove through a few towns the next afternoon. She rode past the chain-link fence onto a cracked blacktop, a low thud of building, a sign that read:

  NOY’S TRUCKS

  IOWA AG-PERMIT COMPLIANT

  And Manny. Janey spotted him at the desk behind the counter through the storefront window. It seemed ages since she’d seen him and he looked old. She felt a press of sadness, out here on this wasteland with the trucks and truck husks that dotted the landscape like primordial crustaceans left over from when the oceans crept back. The last time she’d seen Manny she’d been counting words and dreaming of the old Janey and her mother. The world was turning out to be bigger than she’d thought, had room for more than she’d imagined. She could barely see the old Janey now. Was she there, underneath, a palimpsest? Janey put her head on the steering wheel and tried to see her, wherever she was. But the old Janey was a sheltered kid, unequal to this. Janey dismissed her. But wait. She summoned her back. She needed them both.