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Show crashing down. He is still there, in the backyard of the farmhouse, plains stretching like hide in all directions, the squeals of the pig riding the currents of air. I have heard the story enough times to know he has carried that pig with him for sixty years. What lessons did he learn about the sanctity of love or life, the security he should expect from his father, his family, his future profession? ByjmLmaihandjou^ destroy not an ant, not a caterpillar, not even a dying bird, bu^ananimal you have loved, feaLfrem-ve>uf4ianil bathed. What else vanishes the moment you bring the hammer down on its skull, feel it shatter, know the moment it ceases to struggle? The pig is not alone. There are also kittens, legions of tiny kittens birthed by the barn cats anfriot needed on the farm. My father's job was to kill them. Every few months, another batch. Rather than knot the entire litter in a sack and throw them into the Tricounty canal, my father was taught to drown each kitten separately, to hold its tiny^ head under the water in a barrel that stood outside the barn. One after another as the sun climbed the sky. The struggle, the clawing, then limp. He got to where he could do it without even looking, could attend to the cows m the nearby corral. It was a farm, he would say. Animals died. You had a duty to them. Sometimes that duty included putting them down, the violence becoming a commonplace, stacked up like so many pieces of white bread on a farm table, consumed without a thought. And yet it seeps back out, the violence. It doesn't stay submerged with the kittens or left with the blood on the slaughtering stumpAYou are hit. You are asked to kiu". And 21 |