Windlass

He rang the bell with both hands, the wails of the feeble child muffled by the clanging. Using her body as a windlass she worked her way closer to the front, the rector’s assistant shouting orders from his bench above the masses. The first calf, its back legs trussed with wire, was dragged onto the pulpit, the stink of shit and turned milk stinging the eyes of those who had made it to the front. The feeble child’s mother watches as the first calf is brought to its knees, the rector’s assistant directing the carnage from his seat above the horror-struck mob. From the back of the crowd, flattened under hurrying feet, the feeble child’s wails can be heard, the bells deadening the calf’s cry. Not sure what to do or what she has witnessed, the mother of the feeble child cuts around the hobbled bled calf and down the side street next to the grocers, the unearthly wail of her child weakening behind her.