Diversion

 

 

 

                                                     DIVERSION

 

The pickup pulled into the small concrete lot and circled around in front of the employee entrance.  The building loomed over the truck, looking like a newly constructed warehouse clad in tan aluminum with stainless steel venting near the roofline.  The tops of the huge roof-mounted HVAC units were just visible from the lot below.  Regardless of its modern appearance, all the employees, even management, referred to it as The Barn.

The pickup’s passenger door opened and a plain-faced woman climbed out dressed in charcoal gray coveralls that were clean but showed signs of having been washed many times.  The woman was big—not just tall, almost six feet, but thick—the baggy coveralls seemed to emphasize her wide hips and barrel chest.  She had glossy black hair that hung in waves down to the middle of her back and had been gathered in a loose ponytail with a leather shoestring.  Guessing her age from her plain, unlined face would have been difficult—she could have been ten years either side of 40.

The woman carried a one gallon cooler in one hand and a large lunchbox in the other.  She turned and looked back at the driver before shutting the door.  The man behind the wheel had a deep farmer’s tan and wore a stained CAT ballcap cocked back on his head.  He glanced at the woman disinterestedly.  Another woman sat beside him on the Ford’s bench seat.  She had a round, plain face surrounded by short, frizzy, dishwater blonde hair.  Her baggy coveralls were white, and at first glace she appeared obese.

The woman outside the truck closed the door with her elbow, and watched the truck pull away.  She could see the blonde sliding over to make more room for the driver.  Then she walked to the employee entrance and set down her cooler and lunchbox.

She reached around her neck for her employee ID card to swipe through the reader but it wasn’t there.  She paused a few seconds in confusion, then grabbed the zipper up near her throat and ran it down between her two breast pockets, exposing a surprising amount of cleavage and the gleam of something that looked like plastic.  The ID card was on a cord around her neck and she pulled it out of the front of her coveralls and ran it through the reader.

The door buzzed and the woman let her card drop and quickly bent down to grab her lunchbox and cooler.  She pushed open the door and immediately felt the change in climate—outside the air still had a crisp, dry, early morning feel.  Inside the building it was warm, almost hot, and humid, and she could instantly smell the cows.

The hallway to the breakroom was well lit but empty for the moment.  The woman put her lunchbox on a shelf in the refrigerator and her gallon cooler jug on top of the appliance.  Then she left the breakroom, continued down the hall, and punched in at the time clock, ten minutes early.

Earl Swindell, day shift supervisor, was striding past and stopped when he saw her.

“Sally,” he said.  “You’re going to be mopping again today.  I want you to start at the far end of the barn,” he gestured with his hands as he talked, making sure she understood, “and work your way back this way.  Bobbi’s already out there, and Tink’ll join you as soon as she shows up.  Try not to get distracted by the cows; remember, you’ve got a job to do.  You won’t be able to get it all done today, but afternoon shift’ll take over where you three leave off, and then third shift’ll probably finish up.  If not you’ll have a little more to do tomorrow.”  He eyed her unzipped coveralls.

“You start mopping, your teats’re gonna fall right out if you don’t zip that up,” he told her, then strode off.

Sally started walking toward the supply room where the mop buckets were stored, glancing down at her coveralls.  As she grabbed the zipper and ran it back up she glanced over at the office to her right.  A sign on the door read Frank Vanderbilt, Chief Operations Officer, Vanderbilt Farms.  There were two men inside, one of whom she vaguely recognized.  The other one glanced at her through the window.

 

Ned Pickering saw the employee walk by outside the office and glanced at her briefly.  Her face didn’t look fat, but her body underneath the bulky coveralls was barrel-shaped.  She had that walk peculiar to fat women, where they seemed to lean back to counterbalance all that weight out front.  He thought it was a shame how some women let themselves go.

“What the hell am I reading?”

Pickering turned back to Frank Vanderbilt, C.O.O. and 1^st Vice President of Vanderbilt Farms, a business started by his grandfather over sixty years before

“You’ve been chosen to host a new pilot program for the Federal Department of Corrections, only one of three such locations in the whole state.”

“Yeah, I can read that much.  What the hell does it mean?”

Frank had no trouble understanding what he was reading; he was just hoping he was reading it wrong.

Pickering smiled like the bureaucrat he was.  “For the past decade or so the correctional institutions in this country—not just the FDOC, but state, county, and local as well—have been exploring non-traditional diversion.”

“Diversion?”

“In order to keep non-violent offenders out of jail, or prison, diversion seeks to provide alternatives to incarceration.  Juvenile boot camps, halfway homes, probation, work release, community service and the like.”

“Okay.  And that involves us how?”

“The purpose of diversion is to give first-time or non-violent offenders a chance to repay their debt to society in a way that, if not beneficial to them, at least will not in the end be harmful to them, as many argue incarceration would be.  The hope is that the experience will show them the error of their ways.  This new dairy pilot program—we hope—will do exactly that.  Vanderbilt Farms, because of your size and on-site resources, was chosen as one of the beta testing locations of the program.”

Frank swore, still looking through the paperwork.  “Can I assume because we fall under FDA jurisdiction and administration we can’t say no?  Or that if we do, we’ll suffer some sort of draconian bureaucratic punishment?”

Pickering smiled thinly.  “Page seven, paragraphs two and three.”

Frank flipped pages and then read for a while.  “Christ,” he said, finally realizing he had little choice in the matter.

“You should be proud that we picked you,” Pickering told him.  “In part it was the success you’re having with your emancipated cowbelle training program that convinced my superiors you should be one of the test sites.”

Frank Vanderbilt shook his head.  “It was good publicity, and we end up making money when everything’s said and done.  There’ve been some hiccups, but nothing we weren’t expecting or couldn’t handle.”

“The government is going to compensate you for your participation,” Pickering assured him.  “Quite handsomely, I might add.  You don’t have to worry about losing money.”

“That just shows that you or whoever thought up this hare-brained scheme doesn’t know anything about the dairy business.  You want to bring in—how many women was it?”

“Probably just half a dozen at first.”

“You want to bring in six women, criminals, with God only knows what in their backgrounds, and have them mix with my cowbells and think there won’t be a problem?  Even if they were used to dairy life their attitude problems alone’ll be enough to agitate the cows, and agitated cows don’t produce milk, at least not like they should.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Pickering said slowly.  “These women aren’t being forced into this program, they’re volunteers.”

Vanderbilt snorted.  “Hell, what women wouldn’t volunteer for it if the only other choice was jail?  But volunteering ain’t the same as wanting to be here, and I betcha they still don’t have a clue what they’re in for.  Not til they get here at least.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Pickering said, even more slowly.  “It’s not supposed to be a vacation.  It’s just supposed to be better than jail.  We don’t expect them to enjoy their time here.  They chose the program because they didn’t want to go to jail.  Being treated like a belle, I’m sure, is much preferable to being treated like a convict, and if they don’t toe the line here that’s just what’s going to happen to them.”

“The words ‘better than jail’ don’t exactly bring to mind the image of happy females,” Frank said.  “It says here they’re going to be hormonally induced to a production level ‘consistent with their assumed positions’.  What the hell does that mean?”

Pickering smiled briefly.  “Any pregnant woman can produce breastmilk, but the Senator that authored the original proposal is aware that belle production averages are altogether something different.  The diversion program volunteers are being given a specially formulated cocktail of hormones and other drugs which should get them producing at an accelerated rate.”

Vanderbilt squinted at the man.  “And they’re supposed to go back to normal after they’re out of the program?”

“I assume so,” Pickering said without concern.

Frank grunted.  “I don’t want to move them in with the rest of my belles.  I won’t be able to sell any of their product—the government has strict rules about that, look it up—and I know we’re going to have problems with some of them when they see what they’re in for, for what, six months?”

“Yes.  There’ll be a liaison officer available 24 hours a day if you have problems,” Pickering told him.  “And all the women will have electronic tethers, ankle bracelets with GPS locators to discourage them from running away.”

“How about I segregate them?” Vanderbilt asked the government man.  “Still treat them like belles, but keep them separated.”

Pickering shook his head.  “The whole point of this is to show them how worse things could be for them, short of actual prison, while giving them something constructive to do.  Program guidelines specifically state they’re to be treated no differently than the rest of your belles.”

Frank shook his head at what the government considered ‘constructive’.  “And with the hormones and whatnot, they’re going to be on the same kind of milking schedule as, say, a Verheiden?”

“That’s the stated goal.  Again, these first groups will be the….well, the first.  I’m sure there will be a few bumps in the road, but nothing, I’m sure, you can’t handle.”

“And your scientists that formulated the hormone cocktails for them, they think these women will just be able to walk away after their six months are up?  There won’t be any lasting effects?”

“That’s what I’m told,” Pickering said.  “I don’t think you really have to worry about that, they are experts at this.  Some of the same gentlemen that work on improving the genes of your belles were involved in this.”

“Fine,” Vanderbilt said.  “Thee government says so, fine.  Six months of being a cow, of living like a cow?  Okay, whatever you say.  How about this, then.  A separate sleeping area for these women.  During the day, they can mix with the others all they want, get milked whenever they need it, but at night have them all together.  That might even be better, I mean for your purposes.  They won’t be able to carry on any kind of a conversation with any of the belles, but at night, talking amongst themselves—could keep ‘em calmer.  Like they’re all in it together, you know?”

“A segregated sleeping area?”

“Not segregated per se.  Just have all of them close together, off in a corner.  They’ll be less disruptive, and probably happier.  Dairy life is not going to be what they’re expecting, no matter what they’ve been told.”

Pickering pursed his lips.  “I don’t see where that violates the guidelines.  I’ll run it by my supervisor.  Now, you’ll probably be getting the women in two weeks.  Is that enough time?”

“You want us to treat ‘em just like cowbells, right?  We get belles retiring and new ones coming in nearly every week.  If it wasn’t for having to change around some beds we could process them in right now.’

“Excellent.”

“But what the hell am I supposed to do with the milk?” Frank asked.  “You say you want them to be doing something constructive, but then your papers say you aren’t going to be collecting the milk.  It ain’t going to be much, I’ll bet, but I hate to just dump it down the drain.”

Pickering said warningly, “Genetically, these are normal human females.  Homo Sapiens.  The doctors will have to give them a huge brace of hormones to get them volume producing from what I hear, much more than I believe you do a Homo Lactilus.  Do you need to even need to induce belles?” he asked out of curiosity.

Frank shook his head.  “It depends.  Verheidens you sometimes had to, but not often; they matured slower, and when they were ready their milk came in.  The new T/Gs, their teats ripen at such an accelerated rate, they tell us we need to induce them, and hard, I guess to jumpstart their systems.”

“Hmm,” Pickering said.  “Well, as you know, a lot of the hormones come out in the milk of belles.  I doubt it will be any different with these volunteers.  I wouldn’t drink it, if I were you, but then you know more about this than I do.”

 

 

The FDOC Dairy Pilot Program liaison, a squirrelly annoying little man named Snyder, arrived fifteen minutes before the program volunteers.  He’d already visited Vanderbilt twice before, examining the facilities in general and the volunteers’ designated sleeping area in particular, and deemed them acceptable.  Frank knew he had some sort of background in diary farming, somewhere out-of-state.

Frank Vanderbilt waited beside Snyder, along with Earl Swindell, day shift supervisor-on-duty, and Marty and Randy, two experienced belle wranglers, known as “slappers” in the business.  The two slappers looked curious, but Earl just looked pissed off.

“Hope they’re paying you good for this, Mr. V,” Earl said to him, shaking his head and glancing at Snyder, who pretended not to hear.  “It’s got all the makings of a monkey-fuck.”

Vanderbilt had to laugh.  “Earl, you’re a poet,” he said.  He looked at Earl, then at the two slappers, who were looking on.  “Let’s do everything we can to make sure it isn’t,” he said seriously.  All three men nodded.

The air was warm and the afternoon sun was bright, and the men could catch occasional glimpses of a small group of belles being exercised in the yard behind the barn.  Their pale skin looked milk white in the early June sun.  The slappers had their hands full just getting the cows to walk in the same direction around the sheltered oval enclosure, and recalcitrant cows soon learned why their handlers were nicknamed ‘slappers’.

A few minutes later the large white windowless van pulled into the lot.  Vanderbilt waved it over and then pointed at the sheltered loading dock at the back of the building.  “Back it in there,” he told the driver, who’d rolled down his window.

Frank entered the building through a pedestrian door, swiping his card, and the other men followed.  Marty and Randy rolled up the intake door in the processing area and the van was right there, inching slowly backward.  The men motioned him back until the van’s bumper ticked the padded edge of the dock.  There wasn’t enough room for the driver to slip between the van and the side of the protective arch over the dock, and Marty went out the side door and led him in that way.  He was dressed in a grey FDOC uniform and looked around interestedly, even though there was nothing to see but bare walls.  City Boy, Marty and Randy both thought at the same time.

“What’s that smell?” the driver asked.

“Cows,” Marty told him.  He remembered the first time he’d ever smelled the inside of a dairy.  He’d been sixteen, applying for his first job at Brown Bell Dairy, who’d advertised they needed people for the cleaning crew.  One whiff and he knew he’d found a home.  The money maybe wasn’t as good as what he could make in some other fields, but after six years, he couldn’t imaging doing anything else, and it paid off in ways that didn’t show up on his payroll stub.

“No shit?” the FDOC driver said, eyebrows raised.

Randy smiled.  “Like vanilla ice cream and pussy….cept it tastes a little different,” he said with a laugh.  Frank shot him a look, and Randy saw the weaselly guy, Snyder, out of the corner of his eye, and remembered he was supposed to be on his best behavior.

“It smells like someone’s cooking dessert in a hot gym,” the driver said.

“Hey, that’s good, I like it,” Marty said.  He and Randy were both in dark grey coveralls with the Vanderbilt Farms logo on the front.

“Can we get on with this?” Snyder said impatiently, looking at his watch.

The FDOC guard/driver shot him a dirty look but grabbed a mass of jangling keys and went to work on the oversize lock on the back of the van.  After a few seconds he popped the lock and swung both doors open wide.

Inside, on two padded benches facing each other, were six women dressed in orange FDOC jumpsuits.  They blinked at the sudden light, staring at the men.  Earl hadn’t known what to expect, but somehow it felt different, knowing he was looking at women and not just cows.  Cows were an entirely different species, homo lactilus, and were treated that way, no matter how much they looked like normal women who’d just been served an extra helping or two of tit.  He wondered what these women might be thinking, which he realized he never did with cows.  Of course, that was mostly because cows didn’t do much thinking beyond satisfying their physical needs.  One or two of the women looked scared, but he also saw a familiar look in several of their eyes, and reminded himself that with the hormones they’d had to take it might not be that different from dealing with cows.

“Come on,” Earl said, waving them out.  “Get on out.”

The women, one by one, stood, and walked out of the back of the van.  Earl was surprised by the variety—he was expecting a bunch of ill-behaved, sullen teens.  Two of the females looked like teenagers, and one of those definitely fit the sullen profile, but two of the women had to be in their mid-to-late thirties.  And all of them seemed short and skinny to him, but compared to bred belles most human females were—excepting the new T/Gs, of course.  It was taking him some time to get accustomed to their skinny butts, after a lifetime of herding the massive Verheidens and the like.  Even with all the vaunted hormones they were taking, only two of the new arrivals had chests anywhere close to what a belle sported, although the uniform fronts of all of them were damp, soaked through from the inside.  One of the big-chested arrivals had soaked her jumpsuit from collar to waist and looked miserable.  Earl knew what to do about that.  The crotches of a couple of their jumpsuits had been soaked through as well.  Maybe it wouldn’t be so different from dealing with cows, no sir.

Normally they only processed one or two cows at a time, but seeing as these women weren’t really cows neither Earl nor Frank thought there would be a problem.

Frank pulled Earl aside as the last woman stepped off the van.  “I want you to make it very clear to the guys on all the shifts,” he told Earl.  “No cocking this stock.  Anybody gets caught doing it is gone, no warnings, and no exceptions.”

Earl opened his mouth to protest, and Frank held up a hand to stop him.  “I know what company policy is,” he told Earl.  “I was also raised around a dairy.  I’m not an idiot, I know what goes on.  I popped my cherry on a Verheiden three times my age that weighed twice what I did, and once the genie was out of that bottle there was no putting it back in.  There wasn’t a guy working here then that wasn’t putting it to the stock, and don’t try to tell me things have changed.  Which is one of the reasons I won’t put up security cameras inside the barn—I don’t want to know, because if I know, I have to do something about it.”  He pointed at the six women.  “Nothing is going to happen with these women.  I don’t want any of them calling the state police when they get out of here, claiming they were raped.  I don’t want any of them pregnant.  No contact, none.  I don’t care how much they beg, and there’s no telling how they might start acting after they’ve been living with belles a couple of months.  Are we clear?”

“Absolutely,” Earl said.  “Hands off.”

Marty opened up another door.  “In here,” he told the assembled women.  He held the door open and the jumpsuited females began to file in.

“I need you to sign this stating that you’ve taken physical custody of them,” Snyder told Frank, holding up a clipboard.  “You need to sign here, here, and here, and initial each page.”  He glanced at the women disappearing through the door, Randy and Earl following them in.  Normally they didn’t use so many people to process belles, but no one knew exactly how the volunteers were going to act once confronted with the reality of dairy life.  “What’s you admitting procedure?” Snyder asked Vanderbilt.

“Have our doc examine them, then wash ‘em if necessary, shear ‘em, show ‘em how to use the automilkers, show ‘em where they’re going to be sleeping, and then leave ‘em alone to get acquainted.”

“I can assure you all the volunteers were given a clean bill of health.”

“I’m sure, but I’m still having Fred check ‘em out before I stick ‘em in with the rest of the herd.  Besides, you said so yourself, even the docs who worked up the hormone mix aren’t quite sure how it’ll affect the girls in the long run, much less when we throw in the LactoMax.  I want a baseline examination just in case there are any issues later on.  It’ll cover both our asses.”

Frank suddenly had a thought.  “Hey, we were planning on feeding them what we give the belles, LactoMax Blue.  Two thousand calories a day, to start, and then adjust it up or down as necessary.”

Snyder looked impatient.  “Yes?”

Frank resisted the urge to slap the man.  “So their feed is stuffed full of hormones.  The only hormones our belles get is what’s in the LactoMax.  Did your docs plan for that when they worked up those hormone pills we’re going to be giving them?  I’d hate for these volunteers of yours to double up.  I don’t know what it might do to a regular female.”

Snyder brushed the idea away.  “I’m sure they took that into consideration,” he said.