DEAD PILE XIII Pocket
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Jeremy is an undercover investigator for a nameless animal-rights nonprofit, sent to a dairy outfit in southern Indiana on an anonymous tip about cruel treatment of the cows there. His insufferable superior in Chicago, Davey, warns him that “your being black is a liability,” but Jeremy’s race doesn’t much figure into the story: he gets hired and starts mixing with the rest of the hands pretty quickly. The real conflict arises from Jeremy’s discovery that there are no easy villains—or solutions—when it comes to transforming how humans feed themselves.
But Russell seems powerless to do anything about the rotten wages dad pays out. That parsimony falls heaviest on R.J., an Angry White Male described by Russell as “the only man I know who curses at ESPN Classic.” But it also bedevils sweet, hapless Nance, whose family lost their own farm. Nance embarks on a kinda, sorta love affair with Jeremy, mostly prompted by her hope that he’ll save her from having to muck out cow manure year after year for seven bucks an hour. As she notes, farm work pays enough to keep you going, but not to take you anywhere better. Mike Mroch’s set made of junk and movable metal fencing neatly suggests that the workers are as penned in as the livestock.
