The Soft Spot
Mohave River Review
by gayla m. mills
We all have tender spots, places we try to protect. It’s best not to talk about it too much. You have to build calluses. You can’t be too sensitive or you’ll go crazy.
Sometimes, though, you hear something random, and it pokes that spot. You’re not ready for it, because conversations overheard can of all sorts. Sometimes they’re funny. Who can believe what people will say?
One woman said “The mosquitoes are bad tonight. I just got bit.” The man replied “Do you want me to switch seats with you?”
In a grocery store, one roommate said to another “I’m going to get the Chocolate Chip Cap’n Crunch.” The second replied “Not me, I’m a Cap’n Crunch purist.”
One frazzled mother explained to her daughter as she threw the bacon in the shopping cart “Pigs would be eating us if we weren’t eating them, and that’s just the way it is, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
I laughed at the last one, but really I felt kind of sick about it.
This afternoon I drove down the highway during rush hour. There were cars and trucks filling the lanes, though we moved steadily at a 75-mile-an-hour clip. You could see the fields on the sides, if you could tear your eyes away from the road long enough to take a look. The truck ahead was a bit slower.
I decided to play the game “what kind of truck is that?” It had lots of vents. As I passed it on the left, I glanced over just long enough to see the pigs. Three rows stacked one on top of the other. The pigs, I think, were lying down. Why would they be that passive? What a strange place for them to be, packed in tight, the cold air rushing in at 75 MPH as trucks passed right beside them, as the cold metal box carried them to their final destination, an end to their brief but painful lives that were most likely lived indoors, in a small cage. I felt kind of sick thinking about it. People really like bacon, so I guess that makes it okay.
I try not to think about the nine billion animals eaten each year. Most of them live harsh lives worse than the worst lives we can imagine. Then they are killed. I’m not talking about the pretty animals we see in the fields in our lovely commonwealth. I’m talking about the places where most animals live, indoors, breathing air that’s toxic from the ammonia fumes from the feces they live in. I read yesterday that a million chickens a year are boiled alive by mistake. That’s how they die, because the conveyor belts move so quickly now that the workers can’t properly tie down one percent of the birds. They know all this because when birds die from being boiled alive—instead of having their throats slit—their skin mottles. So they know it’s a million. But people really like chicken too.
I live in a world full of evil things. I just wish the animals didn’t.
(Spring/Summer 2019)
Next
Sometimes, though, you hear something random, and it pokes that spot. You’re not ready for it, because conversations overheard can of all sorts. Sometimes they’re funny. Who can believe what people will say?
One woman said “The mosquitoes are bad tonight. I just got bit.” The man replied “Do you want me to switch seats with you?”
In a grocery store, one roommate said to another “I’m going to get the Chocolate Chip Cap’n Crunch.” The second replied “Not me, I’m a Cap’n Crunch purist.”
One frazzled mother explained to her daughter as she threw the bacon in the shopping cart “Pigs would be eating us if we weren’t eating them, and that’s just the way it is, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
I laughed at the last one, but really I felt kind of sick about it.
This afternoon I drove down the highway during rush hour. There were cars and trucks filling the lanes, though we moved steadily at a 75-mile-an-hour clip. You could see the fields on the sides, if you could tear your eyes away from the road long enough to take a look. The truck ahead was a bit slower.
I decided to play the game “what kind of truck is that?” It had lots of vents. As I passed it on the left, I glanced over just long enough to see the pigs. Three rows stacked one on top of the other. The pigs, I think, were lying down. Why would they be that passive? What a strange place for them to be, packed in tight, the cold air rushing in at 75 MPH as trucks passed right beside them, as the cold metal box carried them to their final destination, an end to their brief but painful lives that were most likely lived indoors, in a small cage. I felt kind of sick thinking about it. People really like bacon, so I guess that makes it okay.
I try not to think about the nine billion animals eaten each year. Most of them live harsh lives worse than the worst lives we can imagine. Then they are killed. I’m not talking about the pretty animals we see in the fields in our lovely commonwealth. I’m talking about the places where most animals live, indoors, breathing air that’s toxic from the ammonia fumes from the feces they live in. I read yesterday that a million chickens a year are boiled alive by mistake. That’s how they die, because the conveyor belts move so quickly now that the workers can’t properly tie down one percent of the birds. They know all this because when birds die from being boiled alive—instead of having their throats slit—their skin mottles. So they know it’s a million. But people really like chicken too.
I live in a world full of evil things. I just wish the animals didn’t.
(Spring/Summer 2019)
Next