In the traildust now

"'Yes here,' continued the Professor, nodding down at the Yards as they began to flow by beneath, 'here's where the Trail comes to its end at last, along with the American Cowboy who used to live on it and by it. No matter how virtuous he's kept his name, how many evildoers he's managed to get by undamaged, how he's done by his horses, what girls he's chastely kissed, serenaded by guitar, or gone out and raised hallelujah with, it's all back there in the traildust now and none of it matters, for down there you'll find the wet convergence and finale of his drought-struck tale and thankless calling, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show stood on its head--spectators invisible and silent, nothing to be commemorated, the only weapons in view being Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches to knock the animals out with, along with the blades everybody is packing, of course, and the rodeo clowns jabber on in some incomprehensible lingo not to distract the beast but rather to heighten and maintain its attention to the single task at hand, bringing it down to those last few gates, the stunning-devices waiting inside, the butchering and blood just beyond the last chute--and the cowboy with him. Here.' He handed Lew a pair of field-glasses. 'That little charabanc down there just making the turn off Forty-seventh?'

As the airship descended closer, Lew watched the open vehicle pull up inside the Halstead Street gate to discharge its passengers, and understood, with some perplexity, that it was an excursion group, in town for a tour amount the killing-floors and sausage rooms, and instructive hour of throat-slashing, decapitation, skinning, gutting, and dismemberment--'Say, Mother, come have a look at these poor bastards!' following the stock in their sombre passage from arrival in rail cars, into the smells of shit and chemicals, old fat and tissue diseased, dying, and dead, and a rising background choir of animal terror and shouting in human languages few of them had heard before, till the moving chain brought in stately parade the hook-hung carcasses at last to the chilling-rooms. At the exit the visitor would find a souvenir-shop, where they could purchase stereopticon slides, picture-postcards, and cans of 'Top Gourmet Grade' souvenir luncheon meat, known to include fingers and other body parts from incautious workmen.

'Don't think I'll give up steaks just yet, Lew said, 'but it does make a man wonder how disconnected those folks down there'd have to be.'" -Pynchon, Against The Day