"Gardner Dozois - A Kingdom by the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

would be a gush of warm, sticky blood, and a spatter of purplish brain matter; the cow would go to its
front knees, as if it were curtsying, then its hindquarters would collapse and drag the whole body over
onto one side with a thunderous crashтАФall in an eyeblink. One moment the cow would be being
prodded in terror into the chute that led to Mason, its flanks lathered, its muzzle flecked with foam, and
thenтАФalmost too fast to watch, the lightning would strike, and it would be a twitching ruin on the stone
floor, blood oozing sluggishly from the smashed head.

After the first cow of the day, Mason would be covered with globs and spatters of blood, and his arms
would be drenched red past the elbows. It didn't bother himтАФit was a condition of his job, and he hardly
noticed it. He took two showers a day, changed clothes before and after lunch; the company laundered
his white working uniforms and smocks at no expense. He worked quickly and efficiently, and never
needed more than one blow to kill. Once Mason had killed the cow, it was hoisted on a hook, had its
throat cut, and was left for a few minutes to bleed dry. Then another man came up with a long, heavy
knife and quartered it. Then the carcass was further sliced into various portions; each portion was
impaled on a hook and carried away by a clanking overhead conveyor belt toward the meat lockers and
packing processes that were the concerns of the rest of the plant.

The cows always seemed to know what was about to happen to themтАФthey would begin to moan
nervously and roll their eyes in apprehension as soon as they were herded from the stock car on the
siding. After the first cow was slaughtered, their apprehension would change to terror. The smell of the
blood would drive them mad. They would plunge and bellow and snort and buck; they would jerk
mindlessly back and forth, trying to escape. Their eyes would roll up to show the whites, and they would
spray foam, and their sides would begin to lather. At this point, Mason would work faster, trying to kill
them all before any had a chance to sweat off fat. After a while, they would begin to scream. Then they
would have to be prodded harshly toward Mason's hammer. At the end, after they had exhausted
themselves, the last few cows would grow silent, shivering and moaning softly until Mason had a chance
to get around to them, and then they would die easily, with little thrashing or convulsing. Often, just for
something to do, Mason and the other workmen would sarcastically talk to the cows, make jokes about
them, call them by pet names, tell themтАФafter the fashion of a TV variety-skit doctorтАФthat everything
was going to be all right and that it would only hurt for a minute, tell them what dumb fucking bastards
they wereтАФ"That's right, sweetheart. Come here, you big dumb bastard. Papa's got a surprise for you"тАФ
tell them that they'd known goddamn well what they were letting themselves in for when they'd enlisted.
Sometimes they would bet on how hard Mason could hit a cow with his big hammer, how high into the
air the brain matter would fly after the blow. Once Mason had won a buck from Kaplan by hitting a cow
so hard that he had driven it to its knees. They were no more callous than ordinary men, but it was a
basically dull, basically unpleasant job, and like all men with dull, unpleasant jobs, they needed
something to spice it up, and to keep it far enough away. To Mason, it was just a job, no better or worse
than any other. It was boring, but he'd never had a job that wasn't boring. And at least it paid well. He
approached it with the same methodical uninterest he had brought to every other job he ever had. It was
his job, it was what he did.

Every day, Mason would stand with his hammer and kill cows.

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 A Kingdom by the Sea



It is raining: a sooty, city rain that makes you dirty rather than wet. Mason is standing in the rain at the
bus stop, waiting for the bus to come, as he does every day, as he has done every day for the past six