Death, Walk With Me (feat. Gentle Ihors Devotion)
from Live At Cow Palace by six by seven
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lyrics
Death, Walk With Me
I work in a slaughterhouse.
It’s a job, okay. I need to eat, you need to eat and the public likes to eat meat. Where do you think all that meat comes from?
It took a bit of getting used to – the smell I mean. All that shit, guts, piss and blood makes a real stink. It hits you in the face like a punch. Once I’d got used to that though, I could go in just fine.
One of my jobs is to stun the cows before they get strung up and butchered. I’m good and I’m quick. I once saw a guy try and stun a one-ton heifer and he rushed it. When the heifer was being hooked up for the butchering it kicked out in blind panic and hit him in the groin. He was off work for a week.
Everything in the slaughterhouse is done on a production line: one person bleeds the cow, another person guts it, and another saws it up into parts. Someone told me Henry Ford got his idea of a car production line from visiting a slaughterhouse. He saw how the animal was made up of different parts and how each worker got expert at removing it as the carcass moved along. He just reversed the process, assembling instead of disassembling.
He was clever, that Henry Ford.
No one really talks much at work. Some of it’s because a lot of the workers are foreign and don’t speak much English. There’s a lot of noise too – some of the animals sense what’s going on and panic before they get to the stun pen. The panic seems to spread to the workers like a fire. It’s an unwelcome reminder that killing is what they do.
So a lot of it is to do with front. You have to pretend you’re not affected by the killing. You pretend you can cope.
They can’t of course – I can see it in their eyes. They’re like the cows’ eyes when they first come into the shed – full of fear and panic and bewilderment.
The unsuitable workers don’t last more than a few hours before they quit. A lot will try and tough it out but it’s not long before one of them cracks up.
There was this one time I stunned a fat cow and when it had been hooked up for butchering this young lad sliced it open and a foetus fell out. It was still alive, twitching and jerking in the bright light. Well this kid just lost it. He started waving his arms about and shouting hysterically – ‘what the fuck! What the fuck!’
The supervisor came out and took him off to the office. That’s where people go when they need to calm down.
The kid had to take the rest of the day off but when he came back the next day I could see the change in him. His face was harder and his eyes had that, it’s not real aspect to them. I could tell he wasn’t going to last much longer. People come and go all the time in this place; it’s relentless. Everywhere you look, it’s just death.
And sometimes, death stares back.
The worst place is the head skip. Everyone avoids it if they can. It’s a skip where all the cows’ heads end up. They’ve been flayed of all the usable meat and what’s left is all the stuff that no one wants – the bone, gristle and sinews.
And the eyes. They’re still in the heads, staring out at anyone passing by. Some of the workers act all guilty when they walk past and can’t look at them. I find it funny watching the way people react to the skip the first time they see it – both the cows and humans look at each other with wide-eyed expressions of horror.
For most people, working here is like walking a tightrope – you have to keep your concentration. You have to keep reminding yourself the animals are just pieces of meat.
One time, during an outbreak of TB, we had to slaughter three calves. They were too small to fit into the stun pen so we had to spend a few minutes figuring out what to do. The calves, being so young, didn’t know any better so wandered around the place all curious and sniffing at things. Some of the workers were taken by surprise. They stopped concentrating. They petted them and the calves responded by trying to suckle their dirty fingers.
Then the foreman said put them in the stun pen all together and do the best you can. So we killed them. It was messy. It broke some of the workers who petted them. They fell off the tightrope. I could see it.
One of those workers was Jimmy. He started about the same time as me. He threw up on his first day. The stink is really brutal and then you see your first animal die in front of you – it’s a hard business for most people.
Anyway, after the calves incident Jimmy put on a brave face and stuck it out. He had to; he had a wife and new baby at home. He kept talking about not being here for much longer. Everyone thought he was talking about getting another job but I saw it, I knew what he meant.
Sure enough, a few weeks later, he topped himself.
I wondered about that. I wondered if being surrounded by death all day made you think it was some kind of companion and suicide was just another friend.
Or maybe this place attracts people who have the urge to self-destruct?
Not me though. I don’t mind it here. I’m one of the longest serving workers.
I sometimes wonder if people would die in the same way as the animals? It would be interesting to find out.
I work in a slaughterhouse.
It’s a job, okay. I need to eat, you need to eat and the public likes to eat meat. Where do you think all that meat comes from?
It took a bit of getting used to – the smell I mean. All that shit, guts, piss and blood makes a real stink. It hits you in the face like a punch. Once I’d got used to that though, I could go in just fine.
One of my jobs is to stun the cows before they get strung up and butchered. I’m good and I’m quick. I once saw a guy try and stun a one-ton heifer and he rushed it. When the heifer was being hooked up for the butchering it kicked out in blind panic and hit him in the groin. He was off work for a week.
Everything in the slaughterhouse is done on a production line: one person bleeds the cow, another person guts it, and another saws it up into parts. Someone told me Henry Ford got his idea of a car production line from visiting a slaughterhouse. He saw how the animal was made up of different parts and how each worker got expert at removing it as the carcass moved along. He just reversed the process, assembling instead of disassembling.
He was clever, that Henry Ford.
No one really talks much at work. Some of it’s because a lot of the workers are foreign and don’t speak much English. There’s a lot of noise too – some of the animals sense what’s going on and panic before they get to the stun pen. The panic seems to spread to the workers like a fire. It’s an unwelcome reminder that killing is what they do.
So a lot of it is to do with front. You have to pretend you’re not affected by the killing. You pretend you can cope.
They can’t of course – I can see it in their eyes. They’re like the cows’ eyes when they first come into the shed – full of fear and panic and bewilderment.
The unsuitable workers don’t last more than a few hours before they quit. A lot will try and tough it out but it’s not long before one of them cracks up.
There was this one time I stunned a fat cow and when it had been hooked up for butchering this young lad sliced it open and a foetus fell out. It was still alive, twitching and jerking in the bright light. Well this kid just lost it. He started waving his arms about and shouting hysterically – ‘what the fuck! What the fuck!’
The supervisor came out and took him off to the office. That’s where people go when they need to calm down.
The kid had to take the rest of the day off but when he came back the next day I could see the change in him. His face was harder and his eyes had that, it’s not real aspect to them. I could tell he wasn’t going to last much longer. People come and go all the time in this place; it’s relentless. Everywhere you look, it’s just death.
And sometimes, death stares back.
The worst place is the head skip. Everyone avoids it if they can. It’s a skip where all the cows’ heads end up. They’ve been flayed of all the usable meat and what’s left is all the stuff that no one wants – the bone, gristle and sinews.
And the eyes. They’re still in the heads, staring out at anyone passing by. Some of the workers act all guilty when they walk past and can’t look at them. I find it funny watching the way people react to the skip the first time they see it – both the cows and humans look at each other with wide-eyed expressions of horror.
For most people, working here is like walking a tightrope – you have to keep your concentration. You have to keep reminding yourself the animals are just pieces of meat.
One time, during an outbreak of TB, we had to slaughter three calves. They were too small to fit into the stun pen so we had to spend a few minutes figuring out what to do. The calves, being so young, didn’t know any better so wandered around the place all curious and sniffing at things. Some of the workers were taken by surprise. They stopped concentrating. They petted them and the calves responded by trying to suckle their dirty fingers.
Then the foreman said put them in the stun pen all together and do the best you can. So we killed them. It was messy. It broke some of the workers who petted them. They fell off the tightrope. I could see it.
One of those workers was Jimmy. He started about the same time as me. He threw up on his first day. The stink is really brutal and then you see your first animal die in front of you – it’s a hard business for most people.
Anyway, after the calves incident Jimmy put on a brave face and stuck it out. He had to; he had a wife and new baby at home. He kept talking about not being here for much longer. Everyone thought he was talking about getting another job but I saw it, I knew what he meant.
Sure enough, a few weeks later, he topped himself.
I wondered about that. I wondered if being surrounded by death all day made you think it was some kind of companion and suicide was just another friend.
Or maybe this place attracts people who have the urge to self-destruct?
Not me though. I don’t mind it here. I’m one of the longest serving workers.
I sometimes wonder if people would die in the same way as the animals? It would be interesting to find out.
credits
from Live At Cow Palace,
released January 14, 2022
All words Gentle Ihor Devotion
All words Gentle Ihor Devotion
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