Chapter 8: The Second Shift
Time lost all meaning, fracturing into a series of smells, sounds, and crushing weights.
Maggie’s milk was thinner, fresher than Clara’s, a warm spray across his cheek as she adjusted herself over his mouth. Joan took him from behind with a methodical, piston-like rhythm that hammered his hips into the packed earth beneath the hay. Caleb disengaged. He floated somewhere near the rusted metal roof, a spectator to the ruin of his own body. The initial shock had burned away, leaving a hollow shell that buzzed with overstimulation. He grew hard again, soft again, hard again, a meaningless physical response detached from any will of his own.
The chaos around him escalated. The careful, predatory order of the line dissolved into something messier and more voracious. A tremendous cracking sound echoed from the far wall—the hasp on the old feed closet yielding to a coordinated shove from two broad, naked shoulders. The scent of molasses, cracked corn, and alfalfa pellets exploded into the humid air.
A frenzy erupted.
The hucows converged on the spilled treasure. They fell upon the sacks, tearing them open with fingers and teeth. Grain poured out, swallowed by handfuls, choked down with guttural sounds of pleasure. They fed each other, they fed themselves, they crushed the pellets into paste against Caleb’s skin and licked it off.
“God, the sweet feed! Gimme!”
“Someone pass that bucket of molasses, my udder’s crampin’ for some sugar.”
“Move your hoof, Doris, you’re hoggin’ all the oats!”
Caleb was pulled, sat up, dragged into a new position. He became a piece of furniture in an orgy of consumption. A warm, hefty back settled against his chest as its owner leaned forward to scoop up a fistful of grain. He, in turn, was entered from behind by another, the two movements crashing into him from opposite sides in a jarring, steady rhythm. He stared blankly over a muscled shoulder at the seething mass of bodies.
They were changing. The last vestiges of playful seduction fell away, revealing something older, more foundational. Their eyes glazed with a pure, single-minded hunger. They weren’t just seeking pleasure. They were gorging.
They sucked milk from each other’s teats with loud, voracious pulls, kneading the swollen flesh with rough hands. They mounted each other, a tangle of limbs and lowing sounds, not waiting for Caleb to be free. He was just another part of the pile now, a warm, erect convenience to be used when the orientation was right.
The smells intensified, layering into an almost visible fog: sweet feed, soured milk, the tang of semen, and the deep, barnyard perfume of hard-working bodies. Then, underneath it all, a new, profoundly earthy note bloomed.
A heavy cowgal squatting near the wall let out a grunt of profound effort. The sound of a thick, wet, copious dump hitting the straw floor was unmistakable. The smell—ripe, vegetal, and hot—wafted over the gathering. Nobody flinched. A few sniffed the air with appreciation.
“Ooh, someone’s been eatin’ the good clover,” chuckled a redhead from the edge of the feed pile.
“Warm off the press,” the squatting one sighed with contentment, not bothering to move.
Caleb’s stomach lurched. His mind, which had been floating in a protective numb haze, snapped back into his body with a sickening jolt. He looked away, squeezing his eyes shut, but he couldn’t escape the scent. It was the most basic, undeniable fact of the place. This was a barn. They were animals. He was in it.
A soft, wet plop landed on his thigh.
His eyes flew open. A warm, brown-steaming clump was nestled against his skin. He gagged, trying to jerk away, but the body behind him held him fast.
The culprit, a younger heifer with a splash of white across her forehead, giggled. “Oops. Little spillage.” She leaned over him, her large breasts swinging, and without a hint of hesitation, scooped the waste from his leg with her fingers. She brought it to her nose, sniffed, then popped it into her mouth.
Caleb’s world tilted. His throat seized.
She chewed thoughtfully, a slow, cow-like cudding motion. “Mmm. Still got good grain in it. Wastin’ not.” She bent and licked the spot on his leg clean with a broad, rough tongue, then moved off, seeking another mouthful of spilled sweet feed.
The night became a loop of surreal horror. The fucking was constant, a grinding, grunting undercurrent to the feast. Bodies slid against bodies, glistening with sweat and milk and other fluids. Caleb was used in every conceivable way until the sensations blurred into a single, relentless ache. He felt a tongue rasp against his balls. Teeth grazed his shoulder. He was rolled onto his stomach, his face pressed into hay that smelled of sex and manure, while immense weight settled on the back of his thighs.
The women talked over and through him, their conversations utterly mundane amidst the deviance.
“Think we’ll get that new salt lick tomorrow?”
“Better. My tongue’s been feelin’ off.”
“Clara says the farmer’s gonna bring a bull in next week for the south pasture heifers.”
“’Bout time. My back’s been itchin’ for a proper, ignorant rutting.”
He felt himself finishing again, a dry, painful spasm that elicited a cheerful “Atta boy!” from the woman riding him. Nothing came out. He was empty. A squeezed-out rag.
Dawn was not a sudden light but a gradual, grey dilution of the shadows. The single high window turned from black to the color of old milk. The frenzy slowed. Bellies were distended, full of grain and molasses. The hucows lay in sated piles, limbs intertwined, some still nursing lazily from one another. The air hung heavy and spent.
Caleb lay on his back where he’d finally been left, staring at the now-visible cobwebs on the beams. He was coated in a crust of dried milk, sweat, seed, and stranger things. His body felt like it had been run through a thresher. Every muscle was a separate protest.
Clara’s face appeared above him, blotting out the grey light. She looked rumpled, satiated, peaceful. She licked her thumb and roughly wiped a streak of molasses from his forehead.
“Shift’s ‘bout over, calf,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You made it.”
He tried to speak. His throat was dust. A raw croak emerged.
She nodded as if he’d said something wise. “First long night’s the worst. Gets easier.” She straightened up, her joints popping. “Alright, girls. Water trough then sleep. Move your lard asses.”
Groans and sleepy mutters answered her. The massive pile of flesh began to stir, untangling itself.
Caleb didn’t move. He couldn’t. He listened to the sounds of their departure—the heavy, plodding footsteps, the contented sighs, the distant splash as they lowered themselves into the trough outside. The great barn door rumbled shut, leaving him in the grey, ruined silence.
The silence was worse. It allowed the throbbing to take center stage. It allowed the smells to solidify. It allowed the memory of the warm plop on his thigh to replay, crisp and vivid, behind his eyes.
He was still lying there, perfectly still, when the main door creaked open an hour later. The regular farm foreman, a grizzled man named Earl, stepped in, a thermos of coffee in his hand. He took in the scene: the shattered feed closet, the strewn, soiled hay, the wreckage of the night. His eyes found Caleb.
Earl took a long sip of his coffee. He didn’t look surprised. He looked, if anything, mildly impressed.
“Huh,” Earl grunted, his voice echoing in the quiet. “You’re still in one piece. Most run screamin’ by midnight.” He walked over and nudged Caleb’s boot with his own. “Sun’s up. You’re on muck-out duty. Them ladies produce a powerful lot of waste.” A slow grin spread across his weathered face. “Consider it part of the job.”