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Show 68 pitchfork and spear it. Then I learned a better way. I would catch it in my gloved hand, its squirming body in my palm, its head between thumb and forefinger, then pinch closed. It was quick, merciful, yet I have never forgotten the feel of the giving of the skull between my fingers, the sudden, fatal collapse. When we butchered a hog one fall day, my father picked him out among the others in the pen and handed me the .22 rifle and told me to shoot him. Draw a line, he said, between his eyes, find the exact center, then go up one inch. I looked the pig in the eyes, I drew a line, I found the center and went up one inch and pulled the trigger and hit him exactly there. He went over with a grunt. My father ran up to him and cut his throat to bleed him. We butchered a steer once, and after we had shot him and cut his head off, his blood still came out in spurts, his heart still pumping. Night and day. winter and summer the pale horse drifts by, sometimes unremarked. Keeping me company while I milked. The cows were old friends, I had pulled on them enough, and some I liked the way I liked cows, better than pigs and less than horses, and some I hated. One cow swatted me with her tail, and sometimes kicked, getting her foot in the milk pail. I hobbled her to stop the kicking and still she switched, maliciously slapping the long tail hair across my cheek or around my neck, leaving a trail of manure. I would stand and beat her on the back with the stool. I tied the long hair of her tail to the hobbles and still she gave me trouble and I stood and beat her again, in a rage. Then one morning she could not get up, her hind legs paralyzed. My father could not figure it out, the vet could not figure it out, this mysterious disease, but I was pretty sure I could figure it out, I had damaged her spine. She died. I never told my father, or anyone. How could a farm boy feel more guilt than from killing the family cow? |
