By Joy Williams, from Ninety-Nine Stories of God, which was published last month by Tin House Books. Williams is the author of four previous short-story collections and four novels, including The Quick and the Dead.

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One of the schools I attended as a child arranged for our class to visit a slaughterhouse. This was to prepare us for what the authorities called the real world as well as to show us what real work, rather than intellectual labor, sometimes consists of. We were bused to the facility, but there, more sensible heads prevailed, for we were not…