Ricardo Luna sips a protein
shake mourning a lost finger
from the factory on the highway.
20,000 pigs a day. Hogs, what
you sell. Pork, what you eat.
Ricardo lifts his phone to show
me Popcatepetl, the Mexican
volcano, green and craggy,
from his hometown. Outside,
snow. Green curtains drape
Worthington’s windows. I
ask Liz, my photographer
and translator, about the
children cleaning the plant.
Ricardo sighs. “They are not
to blame.” But has he seen
them? “Si.” Liz repeats his
words. “Every morning, they
walk in the dawn, cold and
wet, breathing under the…
you know.” Her hands
wave, searching for the
right, awful word: “Freeway.”
Christopher Vondracek is the author of Dancing with Welk, a memoir, and the forthcoming collection of essays, Redlin or Rodin, from the University of Nebraska Press. He is a Washington D.C. correspondent for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
