Grandma handed him a bucket of scraps. “Throw these to the hogs, honey. But don’t feed the two we’re going to butcher.”
The boy walked out past the garage, through the chicken yard where the hens sat ruffle-feathered in the first sun, and to the hog pens. The sows and pigs welcomed him, but preferred the table scraps. He peeked into the shed where the two fattened ones fretted, thinking only of their stomachs and not of their doom. One was black and white spotted and he remembered it from the litter, when it had been weak and was taken into the house to be nourished on a bottle. The other was red, and it looked so like the others he had no special thoughts about it. He watched them a long time, thinking, and sneaked a handful of shots and fed them, then petted them and closed his eyes as he turned away.
He met his grandfather, walking through the chicken yard with the .22. “Want to shoot one?” The boy shook his head and broke into a run, sticking his fingers in his ears.
After the butcher hogs had been dragged away, he went back and looked at the place where they had been stuck and had bled. He would have gone to the house then, but his father yelled, “Hey, come stoke up the fire under this kettle,” and for the next hour he split kindling and fired up the copper kettle.
They were hoisted on a single-tree to a scaffold made of three saplings, set teepee fashion, and his father and grandfather each with a knife, worked on separate hogs, slicing the stomach’s open, while the hired man set tubs underneath to catch the intestines. His mother and grandmother came from the big house with wash pans and took charge of the liver and heart and lights and grandfather sliced a chunk of liver off and joshed, “Looks good enough to eat right now,” but grandmother scolded him and put the piece back in the pan. “I’ll fry you some for dinner. But raw! You act like a heathen.”
The boy’s mother looked at him suspiciously. “Where’s your coat?” He said, “I got too hot,” and she sniffed his hair. “You caught a skunk.” He twisted away for more kindling and his father said, “leave him be for now.” We need more hot water,” and she went away, complaining, “He’s lost another coat.”
The afternoon was a lark for the entire family, rendering the lard, finishing the sausage and trimming the hams. “It’s been a good year,” his granddad assured his father. “We’ll have hay and corn enough to take us to April.”
“Seen snow in April, though,” his father said, and his grandfather said, “Rare, almighty rare.”
The kid rustled up some scrap lumber (stole a few boards his father was saving for a manger) and built four box traps. More traps, more rabbits.
Later, he fed cows and the horses, avoided the hog pen and went into the house to appease his stomach. He grew drowsy by the fire, reading the Sears, Roebuck catalog, dreaming of the trapping supplies he would buy.
Time went by like quiet water. And one morning, 40 years later, awakening at 4 a.m., he flicked the controls of the electric blanket to “Off,” got out of bed and moved the thermostat to 72 degrees. He put on his robe and furlined slippers and moved outside to look at the thermometer. Across the way there, where he had been born, a light burned through a certain window. A door slammed. The yellow wedge of a powerful flashlight cut across the snow and he could see it touch the edge of the timber, quarter-mile away.
He chuckled and went back to the den, leaning back and reflecting. Directly, he heard the door open and he glanced around to see an oval face, eyes bright. “Gram’pa?”
“Yes?”
“Can I come in?” The smell of skunk entered, loud and clear.
He began to laugh: “Didn’t mind your ma, did you? Well, come on in. Must be some boy clothes in here someplace.”
