Coop_ A Year Of Poultry, Pigs, And Parenting Part 11

I was down tending the meat chickens when Muzzy the butcher rolled into the yard driving a s.h.i.+ny red diesel truck with a winch and boom mounted in the bed. Custom Butchering & Sc.r.a.p Iron Custom Butchering & Sc.r.a.p Iron, it says on the driver's side door. He seemed to step from the cab while the truck was still in motion, already in stride as his feet hit the driveway. I was a ways across the yard, but I could see he was long-legged and cowboy-slim. His bill cap rode high and looked big for his head. The brim wasn't tracking with the rest of him-it pointed leftward. He was wearing a silver pistol in a black leather holster. The pistol rode loose, with the handle tipped out, and I noticed he had no fingers on his left hand.

He was stomping toward me, but he was looking down toward the pigs. The female was visible beside the feeder. "Oh, she's nice!" he said. "That's a good one! From here I'd say about two-twenty!" I shook his hand-the one with fingers-and walked him down to the pen. While walking I shot a glance at the hand and could see it had been patched up with flaps and grafts. Wherever those fingers went, they didn't go easy.

"Oh, look at that big guy!" he said, pointing to the male, who had come snuffling up from the back of the enclosure. "He's nice and thick through the shoulders. He'd be ready now. He'll go about two-fif...no...I'd say two-sixty." He had clambered over the gate and was right in there now, hands spanning the hog's front shoulders, poking and squeezing some. "Dandy!" he said. "That's great, thick through the shoulders like that." He was looking up at me and smiling, proud as if he'd raised 'em for me. Naturally it felt good to hear that the guy liked our pigs.

"The female, she'll go about two-thirty," he said, revising his original estimate upward. "Yah, you could butcher 'em anytime. Give my wife a call and she'll set it up."

We had been sitting Fritz the Dog again, but that is over now because he killed four of the laying hens. It took him a matter of minutes. When I walked to my office the chickens were beneath the big pine tree and Fritz was lying beside the sidewalk, and when I came back a few moments later there were feathers in the yard and Fritz was hiding behind the pump house. The White Rock was dead beside the light pole. Nothing was left of the Partridge Rock save a few brown speckled feathers. The third chicken had for all intents and purposed evaporated. But worst of all, there beside a pinecone in the gra.s.s was a segment of wing that I recognized immediately as a remnant of Little Miss Shake-N-Bake.

When Fritz tore up the cold frame, I flat lost it. When he killed the chickens, I felt something colder. I immediately flashed to the day I got off the school bus and found Dad stringing up dead sheep on the corncrib. Several of the sheep were horribly wounded, the flesh gnawed from their back legs, gaping chunks torn from their hams. Snags of wool hung loose from their bellies. I remember the bright red meat exposed, and the darker red of the blood in the wool, and I remember my father's grim face. "Dogs," he said. His deer rifle was leaning against the corncrib. First he shot the dogs; then he shot the sheep, one by one. A few were already dead, but some of the most grievously wounded were still alive and had been trying to escape the dogs by pulling themselves along on their front legs. One sheep was dead without a mark on her. "Shock, I think," said Dad. He was hanging them to be skinned, butchering them being the only salvageable option.

Nothing was so despised in the country as a dog that killed livestock. A coyote might kill your sheep one or two at a time, but when dogs get started, they don't stop. For Dad this was more than cruelty, it was destruction of property, putting his livelihood at risk. The dogs belonged to the neighbors just up the road. They were newcomers to the neighborhood. Dad went up there to tell them what had happened, and what he had done. He was straightforward but gentle about it. When we first moved to the farm we had a dog named Sam, and Sam had run over to the Andy Dunn place and killed Andy's sheep. Dad has been on the other end of the conversation.

When I recall the look on Dad's face that day, I realize he was facing a serious economic blow. That is hardly the case with our chickens, but man. We liked liked those silly birds. And Little Miss Shake-N-Bake...Amy was sad but composed. The killing happened at dusk, so in the morning I took her out and we tried to reconstruct the scene. "He killed my two favorite chickens," said Amy, picking through feathers. I wasn't sure which of the other chickens she meant, but I knew better than to interrupt. "I miss Little Miss Shake-N-Bake the most." She ran in the house, but then returned. "I put two of her feathers in my memory box!" those silly birds. And Little Miss Shake-N-Bake...Amy was sad but composed. The killing happened at dusk, so in the morning I took her out and we tried to reconstruct the scene. "He killed my two favorite chickens," said Amy, picking through feathers. I wasn't sure which of the other chickens she meant, but I knew better than to interrupt. "I miss Little Miss Shake-N-Bake the most." She ran in the house, but then returned. "I put two of her feathers in my memory box!"

Jane continues her attempts to convey herself, knitting her brow and squealing meaningfully when we get face-to-face. We are still on a stretch of enforced insomnia as she continues teething. One night I find myself driving to Eau Claire in the middle of the night to buy a tube of Anbesol. By the time I'm back she has fallen asleep. As with any baby problem, we're getting lots of free advice. Some of it we try-for instance, letting her chew on frozen rags. Some we don't try, like the pioneer method of rubbing brandy on the baby's gums-although I'm currently rethinking that one: After a speaking engagement during which I mentioned the teething and the fact that my wife was at home holding down the fort with a bawling baby, a man approached and introduced himself as a pediatrician. "Here's what you do: soak a rag in brandy and rub it on the baby's gums..." and I thought, Yeah, yeah, but then he said, "...and then give the rest of the bottle to Mom!"

Less than a week after the dog attack, we've lost another chicken. One of the Barred Rocks. I was working in the office and saw the birds down around the pigpen. I happened to look up just as the Barred Rock went in the brush behind the trash-burning barrel, and she simply never returned. When the other hens wandered back up to the yard without her, I went to check for feathers but found nothing. A fox? A fisher? A wrong turn? I guess I'll never know, but we have established a 50 percent loss rate. I really need to get that coop done. Mills was working on it the other day without my help. He tried to build a wall but shot himself through the finger with the nail gun. He took a picture of the punctured digit and the puddle of blood and e-mailed it to me. I felt bad for a split second, then mailed him back to check how the rest of the coop was coming along.

Our friend Karen has come over to make sauerkraut. She and Anneliese and Amy are on the deck, working in the sun. Jane is in her baby bouncer. The poor kid, we go about fifty-fifty with disposable diapers to cloth, and today she's wearing a cloth pair that makes her b.u.t.t look like a cabbage. It doesn't help that she's wearing them beneath a pair of brightly colored stretch pants. I call this her going-to-bingo look, although perhaps I should not. Lately she has developed a drooly gape-mouthed grin immediately recognizable in my baby pictures from the same stage. But her blue eyes, pale as winter sky-those are all Mom.

Anneliese is using a slaw board that was handed down to my mom from her uncle's mother and has been in our family for over a hundred years. The board is pretty much just that-a long board with wooden rails on either side and three deadly blades mounted at an angle between the rails. You slide the cabbage head up and down the board, and the blades slice it into strips. After a century of use the wood is smooth and dark. It got dry last winter and a corner of the wood cracked. When I came in from writing late last night, I found it on the table with a note from Anneliese asking if I could fix the crack. I spread wood glue over both surfaces, and then clamped the halves together using a conglomeration of miniature bungee cords and plastic clips. It looked hack, but in the morning the board held solid and the crack was nearly invisible. When Anneliese thanked me for fixing it, her smile was a fine reward, and for the umpteenth time this year I took note of the fact that I need to review my set list.

Almost immediately Karen cuts off the tip of her finger. I have just received a new jump kit from the local fire department, so it's a great opportunity to familiarize myself with the contents of the bag and review basic bandaging technique. We get the bleeding stopped and I do a serviceable job of dressing the wound. I do not use clamps or bungee cords. Karen is determined to continue, and as I pa.s.s back and forth through the house for the remainder of the day the pile of cabbage heads in a cardboard box transforms into a pile of pale green silage in a crock, and by the end of the day the kitchen counter is lined with gla.s.s jars set to percolate and produce the perfect side dish to those pigs of ours.

I am not a deadbeat husband-lately I work probably too much. But among other things this year is highlighting the difference between earning earning and and providing providing. I should be helping with that sauerkraut.

The next day Anneliese and Karen can sweet corn and tomatoes.

When Mills and I began working on the coop, the corn was short. Now it is turning in the field, and my chickens are still homeless. Oh, but take heart, fowl, because today on a sunny morning Mills and I met at his place, deconstructed the coop wall by wall, loaded it piece by piece on an equipment trailer, and hauled it home to Fall Creek. We are a.s.sembling it now as we giggle in the sun. Before we flop the floor over on its skids, we insulate it from below with strips of Styrofoam salvaged during yet another one of Mills's dump runs. I like to think that come January my chickens will have warm feet. Then we begin remounting the walls. We get the first one tacked up fine, but then there is a breakdown in communication ("Slide 'er a tad to the le-RIGHT!! RIGHT!!") and the eight-foot-tall front wall does a full-on topple, missing me by the skin of my bald head. It's made mostly of oak, and hits the driveway with a tremendous thump, blowing dust across my toes. "LOOOOORD MISTER FORD!" hollers Mills, his hammer dangling from one hand and his eyes and mouth three perfect circles. There is the iconic silent film in which Harold Lloyd stands fast as the front wall of a house collapses over him, and he survives only because he manages to stand right in line with the window. Same deal here, except I didn't hang around to thread the window.

Apart from a few busted boards, the damage is minimal, and we a.s.semble the rest of the walls without incident. Mills roughs out roof boards while I install the windows and tune the doorjamb. The windows were salvaged from my beloved New Auburn house, and it warms my heart to see them put to use. And they bring the structure alive-when I stepped back for the standard moment of appreciation, there was something about the light on the panes that took it from a bunch of boards to a coop coop. When we knock off there's still much to do-tarpaper the roof, install the insulation, mount the roof vent, put facing on the interior walls-but before we quit we cut sc.r.a.p plywood and nail it over the roof.

Meaning, tonight our chickens snooze in a coop. Sure, it's still sitting in the driveway blocking the garage door, and it's not really finished, but as dusk falls I lure the layers near by shaking a pail of feed, then I sprinkle a trail of it up the cleated gangplank of the door, and sure enough-after much clucking and nervous head-dipping-the Barred Rock pecks her way up the plank and into the coop, where she stands blinking at the new digs. I have to cheat a little with a couple of the other birds, give them a boost, but in short order they're all in place. I rig a divider between the two little doors and then haul the meat chickens over two by two, stuffing them in the second door. When everyone is in place I distribute feed and water, and then before I go into the house, where the kitchen light is now a yellow square in the dark I stand awhile and just listen to the sound of them shuffling and settling.

The mornings are cool now, and knots of color are appearing against the green slope of the valley. I called the farm today and no one answered, and then I realized Mom and Dad were at "convention," an annual a.s.sembly of the Friends at a farm an hour due west of here. For four days they will gather on gray wooden benches inside a large white barn to pray, sing hymns, and give testimony. Even this far removed I can feel the peace of it, the cars motoring in slowly while the mist is still clearing the hills, everyone parking neatly in the mown hayfield and making their way to the barn, Bible cases in hand. There will be some lingering and visiting in the yard up until ten minutes prior to service, at which point all but a few stragglers or parents with crying babies will be in the barn and on a bench, sitting in quiet meditation. Prepare your hearts unto the Lord Prepare your hearts unto the Lord, the Bible says, and so it is.

We always opened with a hymn, and it was a great joy to sing at convention, to hear all those voices raised. Even given our constrained ways and hymns t.i.tled "We Thank Thee, Lord for Weary Days," the sound of a few hundred open throats does grow you some wings. I remember most of all the older women, the ones with mysterious steams.h.i.+p bosoms and black stockings, and how purely their voices soared. I can't read music per se, but I retained enough from Mrs. North's piano lessons to tell when we were going up and when we were going down. John and I learned to harmonize simply by sitting beside each other and trying to hit notes that seemed to blend. Sometimes they were by the book, sometimes not. But by the time our voices changed brother John and I could manage a serviceable descant as the ladies headed for the rafters.

Anyone who had professed was free to partic.i.p.ate in prayer and testimony during the first portion of the service. The bulk of the meeting consisted of sermons from the workers, who rotated through in fifteen-or thirty-minute increments. There was one two-hour service in the morning, another in the afternoon, and a shorter, more gospel-oriented service in the evenings. Mom was realistic about having six or eight kids ride a wooden bench for four days straight; each year we each got a brand-new miniature tablet notebook with a fresh pencil, and during the afternoon meeting she would dole out a few pieces of hard candy to each of us and then-late in the afternoon, and we always antic.i.p.ated it-a single piece of Trident original flavor sugarless gum. I still buy it just for the memory. When Mom had to leave with one of the babies or to give a tube feeding, Dad's meaningfully raised brow was usually enough to quell any percolating misbehavior. I recall entertaining myself by drawing cartoon heads and watching doomed flies land on the flystrips dangling from the rafters, where they'd buzz in futility until their wings became trapped against the oily ribbon. Some of the boys used to catch flies. Then they'd pluck a long hair from their poor sister's head and tie it around the fly so it could get airborne but not get away. You'd see these flies circling in tethered orbit and some kid evilly grinning. We never got that one past Dad's raised eyebrows.

Between services we ate in a giant tent. It was dark green and probably army surplus. We stood in line, and when the dinner bell rang and the flap was opened we filed slowly inside to the homey aroma of beef stew and piping hot dumplings. We sat at long tables and sang grace, and then the food was served-great marbled plastic bowls of boiled potatoes, plates of sliced peppers and tomatoes, trays of bread and cookies. The whole operation from cook to bottle washer was run by volunteering Friends-children pitched in too, often carrying the pitchers of coffee, tea, and water from table to table, and gathering the dirty dishes as people finished. On cold days the tent was the best place to be, full and warm with the heat generated by all the cooking and the clouds of steam rolling around Mr. Ramsdell in his rubber gloves and ap.r.o.n beside the homemade scalder. The forks made a silver clatter when he dumped them from the basket, the sound of their steely tumble ringing above the m.u.f.fling green of the trodden gra.s.s.

When I grew older, the time between meetings became charged with the nervous hope of love. We were sometimes admonished by the workers to remember that convention was about wors.h.i.+p, not dating. But when you belong to a group as rare as this in which marrying outside the faith is fundamentally forbidden and you suddenly find yourself with free time and girls who believe, you make romantic hay. Or try. I rarely got past furtive glances. The standard procedure was to w.a.n.gle your way into conversation with a likely candidate and then invite her on a walk. The convention grounds were perfectly suited for this, with trails that wound all through the hills and fields, and on a sunny day between meetings they were filled with teenage boys and girls walking in couples and cl.u.s.ters. I envied the boys out there strolling, because I was too shy to pull off anything that straightforward. In line with church precepts, the girls who walked the paths wore long dresses-mid-calf at the least-that ranged in style from evening wear to Little House on the Prairie Little House on the Prairie. Their long, thick hair was wound and folded carefully into buns and swoops held in place with invisible pins and beautiful clasps, and the general absence of makeup lent their faces a frank clarity. To this day the look draws my eye in a way no swimsuit model can manage. I became hooked on the idea of purity, and that hair tumbling down. My poor wife has learned that if she dons an old jeans skirt and twists her hair up to grub around in the garden, I tend to lurk around the kohlrabi and attempt to make small talk.

Of all the children in our family, none have continued in the Truth. Looking out across the sunny country now, over the coloring hills and to the west, I think of Mom and Dad gathered right at this minute, and I wonder if this is heavy in their hearts. Once when it was early in my "losing out," I came to convention with long spiked hair and dressed like a cross between a U2 roadie and Don Johnson's personal shopper. I was sitting by Mom in the dining tent when she quietly wondered what the Friends must think. "I don't care care what these people think!" I snapped, and she turned her head quickly but I had seen the immediate flash of tears and I was sick with my cruelty. I am still ashamed. But I am better with it now, because although I don't believe, I have never lost the memory of how comforting it was to gather for four days in quiet circ.u.mstance with fellow believers. I am happy that they are there, and I hope it is peaceful. Soon enough they will have to come back out among us. Because of the cows, we always had to leave before the evening meal and service. How jarring it was to depart the quiet farm with its fellows.h.i.+p and murmur and shortly be pa.s.sing by taverns and gas stations and short-haired women in pants. what these people think!" I snapped, and she turned her head quickly but I had seen the immediate flash of tears and I was sick with my cruelty. I am still ashamed. But I am better with it now, because although I don't believe, I have never lost the memory of how comforting it was to gather for four days in quiet circ.u.mstance with fellow believers. I am happy that they are there, and I hope it is peaceful. Soon enough they will have to come back out among us. Because of the cows, we always had to leave before the evening meal and service. How jarring it was to depart the quiet farm with its fellows.h.i.+p and murmur and shortly be pa.s.sing by taverns and gas stations and short-haired women in pants.

Today my friend Buffalo came by to inspect the roof of our old granary to see if it would support a rack of solar panels. Actually, Buffalo has informed me they are photovoltaic photovoltaic panels, and that if we get some we will be part of the "PV community." Buffalo installs alternative energy systems for a living, and he and his wife Lori were the first set of friends Anneliese and I met and became close with as a couple. Although I am happy to say we each get on well with the friends the other brought to the marriage, it is also nice to have "shared" friends, and it doesn't hurt that they have two daughters roughly Amy's age. Anneliese invited them over today under the pretense of dinner, but in addition to spec'ing the granary, I've bamboozled Buffalo into helping me finish off the coop. While I cut and staple insulation between the studs, Buffalo tarpapers the roof and cuts a hole for the roof vent. After he helps me install a row of plywood facing around the base to keep the chickens from eating the insulation, I bring the tractor around and we make the big move. panels, and that if we get some we will be part of the "PV community." Buffalo installs alternative energy systems for a living, and he and his wife Lori were the first set of friends Anneliese and I met and became close with as a couple. Although I am happy to say we each get on well with the friends the other brought to the marriage, it is also nice to have "shared" friends, and it doesn't hurt that they have two daughters roughly Amy's age. Anneliese invited them over today under the pretense of dinner, but in addition to spec'ing the granary, I've bamboozled Buffalo into helping me finish off the coop. While I cut and staple insulation between the studs, Buffalo tarpapers the roof and cuts a hole for the roof vent. After he helps me install a row of plywood facing around the base to keep the chickens from eating the insulation, I bring the tractor around and we make the big move.

The tractor moves across the yard with the coop in tow. In a rare moment of foresight, we removed the windows so they wouldn't bust in transit, and Buffalo is riding crouched in the window waving at the kids like an underweight troll, his head of curls and big black beard flopping in the wind. For my part, I keep 'er steady with the tractor, one arm raised and pointing to the distance as if I am Hannibal headed for the Alps. The three little girls dance and wave from the deck.

We pull the coop into a patch of weeds beside a chokecherry tree, the windows facing south to catch the winter sun and allow the hens a view of the valley as they squeeze out their eggs. When we head to the house for supper I notice the coop is sitting at a pretty good angle, but it looks solid there on the horizon, just like I imagined all those months ago when I was poring over schematics drafted in 1933.

In the morning I rig a fence for the meat chickens. One of them developed splay-leg a week ago. I tried taping its legs together like it said to do in the chicken book, but he didn't get any better. He couldn't walk, so I put him within reach of the food and water, but the other chickens stampeded over him. "That's because chickens are small in the head," Amy said. Over the course of several days he declined, and today I find him dead, which makes me think I should have knocked him in the noggin early out of mercy.

Three days after the move, I have to leave to partic.i.p.ate in a literary festival, but it is only a few hours from here and the hosts have graciously offered a place for the whole family to stay, so we're turning it into a mini-trip. We have arranged for Anneliese's sister Kira to watch the livestock. I still haven't quite got all the layers trained to roost in the coop instead of the pump house, so to save Kira the trouble of rounding them up at night I decide to rig a makes.h.i.+ft fence. While trying to finish the fence in a rush the same morning we are leaving, I manage to knock the roll of steel chicken wire over just as one of the layers is making an inquisitive pa.s.s. It's one of those slow-motion moments where I can see the heavy roll falling and the chicken boop-a-dooping along right into its path, and sure enough even as I lunge for the roll it falls whump whump right on top of the chicken. She looses a horrid squawk and runs off when I lift the roll, but she is limping badly. Before we depart, I type up a letter of instruction for Kira and leave it on the kitchen table. It gives a fair summary of our progress here in the Year of the Coop: right on top of the chicken. She looses a horrid squawk and runs off when I lift the roll, but she is limping badly. Before we depart, I type up a letter of instruction for Kira and leave it on the kitchen table. It gives a fair summary of our progress here in the Year of the Coop: Hi Kira:First and foremost I shall apologize for (A) the cobbled-up state of my chicken operation, and (B) the length of this set of directions, which far exceeds the complexity of the tasks at hand and will take longer to read than the time required to actually care for the animals.PIGSThey oughta be fine, really. I have put feed in their feeder and they have water. If you have time on Sat.u.r.day, lug a pail of goat milk (in the fridge behind first garage door-keypad is broken, use opener on windowsill over kitchen sink) down and pour it in their handcrafted blue plastic trough. Then watch in wonder as they snarf it down, sometimes blowing bubbles out their snoots. If you have some spare sweet corn, throw it at them. You are allowed to scratch the pigs if you wish. There is a scratching stick conveniently placed near the fence for just that purpose. Please do not attempt to ride the pigs or take them to town for tattoos and piercings.CHICKENSI have done my best to eradicate all the chickens but have attained only about a 50 percent kill rate so you still have to feed the survivors. One black hen might be limping because today I-wait for the irony here-dropped a gigantic roll of chicken wire chicken wire on top of her. You really have to aim, and even lead them a little in order to do that, which is not easy with a heavy roll of on top of her. You really have to aim, and even lead them a little in order to do that, which is not easy with a heavy roll of chicken wire. chicken wire.The white chickens are basically meat cell replicators on legs. Pigs with feathers. Dumber than a box of, of, of, well, feathers. In the morning, open their little flap door and set them loose to run wild and free (within the confines of their fence). To access the compound, undo the netting where it is held in place on the coop with a drywall screw. You can load their feeder right up, they'll eat at it all day. Replenish their water. The hose is strung right over there. Don't forget to turn the water off when you're done because it leaks and also Anneliese has a little lecture she gives to people who leave the water on, if you'd like I can recite it by heart. I usually put their water and feeder out during the day but you can probably leave it in, that way if it rains the feed won't get all sogged up. The feed bag is right inside the coop. There should be a little cup inside the bag but I might have forgotten to put it there. Fill the feeder up again at night, please.The layers are mad at me because I penned them in today. They like to run free, but by penning them up I save you the trouble of running after them at dusk. It's a nice little evening frolic, and I rather enjoy it, but then that's me. So just turn 'em out in the morning, reload their feed and water (you probably gotta reach in under the netting divider to get to the feeder and waterer), and shuck 34 cobs of sweet corn (under the white plastic bucket under the brick) for them. If you think of it and have time, take the rake and give them some lawn clippings. It keeps them occupied and lends an earthy flavor to the eggs they don't lay. When you do open the gate to open and close their coop door, keep an eye on them: they are alacritous little b.u.g.g.e.rs and will shoot right out on you. The gate as you will see is held in place by tension and two nails. The chickens tend to put themselves in at dusk, and should be waiting for you to close the door.That should cover it. Call me at any hour with questions. There are no dumb questions, Kira, only questions that make me chuckle condescendingly.We are very grateful that you are willing (or guilt-laden enough) to help us out like this.I usually get paid by the word.

Pig-butchering day dawns crisp and sunny, cold enough that the chickens are fluffed out on the roost. The coolness makes it a good day for handling meat. I'm happy for that, but as I work around the garage-bagging the garbage, sorting the recycling, wrangling plastic pails for the morning's b.l.o.o.d.y work-I keep catching the pigs in my peripheral vision, and I'm surprised at the leaden patch of dread in my gut. This day was booked the second I wrote the check for those pigs, and when I brought them home I was bringing them home to be butchered. It has ever been the intent, and that won't change, but until the sun rose this morning the concept existed in the abstract. The pigs are not pets. They have taken just enough nips at me that I know they would afford me no courtesy given the chance, and I watched them crunch up that rabbit, but still: I liked having them around. They were genial in their grunty, hoggy ways. I'm musing along like this when I hear the truck coming, and once Muzzy hits the yard, all introspection ceases. He roars right past me, straight down to where the hog pen is, and by the time I'm down there he's already backed around and is stripping out cable from his hoist. The pistol is holstered on his belt. "Let me know what I can do to help," I say. "I could use a bucket of water," he says. I jog back up to the house, the young kid eager to please. I'm waiting for the bucket to fill when I hear the pop! pop! of the first shot. of the first shot.

I've told Amy it can be up to her if she wants to help with the butchering, but I didn't think she should be out there for the killing. I'm not sure why-she loves to go hunting with me, and last year she was at my side in the tree stand when I shot a deer. She tromped through the swamp and then sat there patiently in the cold for two hours without sound or complaint, and when I shot the deer, I put her on the blood trail and she followed it right up to the carca.s.s, at which point she exclaimed, "Oh! A nice plump doe!" But these pigs-I don't know.

When I return with the water, both pigs are down and bleeding out. The thing with pigs is you have to lance the carotid as soon as they hit the ground, or they flop around horribly. They're back in the paddock a ways, so I get the tractor and a chain to move them out to the truck to save Muzzy the trouble of threading the cable down through the gate and fence posts. Muzzy has hooked the hocks on a length of steel with a large eyelet at the center. While I feather the hydraulics, he hooks the chain to the eyelet, then takes a couple of wraps around the loader, and I back out of the paddock, the pig swinging head down until I lower it to the gra.s.s beside the truck, where Muzzy dives in with his knife, severing the front legs.

"Where's your daughter?" he asks.

"In the house," I say. "I figured that was best."

He pauses with the knife in midair, looks straight at me. "Well, I'm going to tell you I think that's a mistake." He lets the statement hang there a bit. "She should see this. Kids can learn a lot from this. Pig's very similar to a human. Sometimes I take the guts and eyeb.a.l.l.s into the science cla.s.s at the school, so they can study 'em."

He goes back to cutting, and I go to the house. Amy and Anneliese are working on a homeschool lesson. It turns out Amy has watched the slaughtering from the upstairs window anyway. They are both a little unnerved. I ask Amy if she wants to come out. She looks at her mother. Then she looks at me, a little hesitant. "It's up to you," I say, "but the man thinks you might learn some things."

"OK," says Amy, and so we all trek out. Jane is sleeping, so Anneliese takes the portable monitor.

Almost immediately Amy is engrossed. "What's that?" she says, pointing to the rumpled skin of one pig already flopped in the loader bucket. Muzzy works fast. "That's the skin," I say. "See the bristles?" "Oh," says Amy, then, "Ooo, look at the eyeb.a.l.l.s." And then it is full-bore biology lab. Muzzy's knife flashes as he circles the pig, the skin falling in a drape as he works. When he gets ready to split the belly, he stops and gives us a serious look. "Who's the shortest one here?" Amy raises her hand. "OK!" says Muzzy. "You get the job!"

"What job?" says Amy.

"I need someone to crawl in there and push the guts out!"

Amy looks at Muzzy, then looks up at me. "Whaddya think?" I say, breaking into a grin. She looks back at Muzzy; then you can see it dawn on her that he is joking. "Noooo!" she says, giggling. Muzzy laughs happily and starts peeling the guts out. But he keeps stopping, using his knife as a pointer, urging Amy to get closer, to have a good look. "See that? That's the spleen!" He cuts it free and splits it, points out the vascularity, tells her how it can be injured in a car crash. He gestures toward the underside of the liver. "That's the gallbladder!" Amy is fascinated. When he shows her the heart, he explains how it works and how a pig heart is like a human heart. "Sometimes they use parts of pig hearts in people," he adds. Amy is soaking it in. He lays the lungs on the ground and dissects them, showing her how the air goes in and out. Then he asks, "Are you going to smoke cigarettes?" Amy shakes her head solemnly. "If you smoke, your lungs will have all kinds of black spots inside them," Muzzy says. Then he slings the lungs in the bucket. They land with a slickery flop.

When it is time to halve the pig, he produces a monstrous steel hacksaw and plugs it into an inverter outlet on the truck. When the pig is split, he rotates one half out to show Amy how the brain lies tight in its case. She squats down and has a good look. "I can see his teeth!" she exclaims.

I have backed the pickup down to the butcher site and lined it with plastic. Muzzy swings the winch boom over the bed of my truck and slowly lowers the pig as I guide the halves into the bed. Then he starts in on the second pig, Amy at his elbow from start to finish. Muzzy continues in the professorial vein, but we also get him going on stories. He has been working the entire time with his fingerless hand stuffed in an athletic sock, the thumb protruding through a hole in the fabric. He keeps a small meat hook pinched between his thumb and the palm of the hand, snagging the meat and skin of the pig as need be to set up the cut. What the heck, I think, and just plunge in: "So what's the story with the missing fingers?" In more delicate company I might have antic.i.p.ated gasps and umbrage, but Muzzy launches off as if he thought I'd never ask.

"Corn picker!" he exclaims, almost triumphantly. "Took these three fingers right off, and degloved this one." I've seen a few degloving injuries in my day. I know he would have seen the bone sticking out naked as a Halloween skeleton, the skin stripped away. "So they amputated that."

"What about your thumb?" I asked. "Is it a toe?" The thumb looked a little flat, and I know they do that with toes.

"NO!" says Muzzy, emphatically. "They tried to do that. But I told 'em, I need need that toe. I was a truck driver at the time. You use your toes all the time-s.h.i.+fting, pressing the gas...Nope, I wouldn't let 'em take the toe. that toe. I was a truck driver at the time. You use your toes all the time-s.h.i.+fting, pressing the gas...Nope, I wouldn't let 'em take the toe.

"I was in the hospital for eight days. Four days after I got home I was back to butchering." The palm of the hand looks padded, like a mitt. "They took meat from my forearm to build it up," says Muzzy. "Then they covered it with skin they took from my leg. My leg hurt worse than anything else."

His thumb looks cold in the sharp air. The white sock is wet and reddish with blood. "No, the sock keeps it warm," he says. "Cold's not the problem. It's got good circulation. Cold don't bother it." He looks at me with a reckless grin. "But you stick it in a bucket of hot water, and I'll go to the moon!"

When both carca.s.ses are in the truck and Muzzy is gone, I pull the plastic sheeting around the pigs and drape a logging chain back and forth over the plastic to keep it from blowing loose. Then Amy and I drive the pigs north to Bloomer, where we will turn them over to my friend Bob the One-Eyed Beagle. "Tell him to save the fat," says Anneliese as we are leaving. "I want to render the lard."

I delight as usual in having Amy as my copilot. Bombing down a country road in a pickup truck with my daughter has become one of the signal joys of fatherhood. Throw a couple of dead pigs in the back and you've got yourself a Hallmark card on wheels.

Trucking the carca.s.ses up north is clearly a violation of local food principles, but loyalty trumps all, and the Beagle and I served on the same fire department together for over a decade. Furthermore, he is a good citizen and a fine butcher. And finally, only a shortsighted churl would pa.s.s on the opportunity to haul his homegrown pigs from a one-handed butcher with two eyes to a one-eyed butcher with two hands.

After we unload the pigs and see them swaying on their hooks, Beagle gives Amy a tour. She gets to see the knives and saws and the cold steel tables, the ma.s.sive half-cows hanging. She takes it all in, and turns to look at me with her eyebrows raised when the Beagle gives her three guesses to identify the one carca.s.s different than all the others, before revealing that it is a skinned bear. While the Beagle demonstrates the vacuum sealer, I think how grateful I am for those friends of mine who can do more than just sit and type; these friends who have fundamental skills and trades reflected in the condition of their hands. It is good, I think, that in the hubris of the digital age this little girl be given a look at the more gristly bits of existence.

We're just nine miles from New Auburn, so I drive up to the farm to visit Mom and Dad. Mom says there is a chance of an early first frost tonight, and their neighbors Roger and Debbie need help getting in the last produce. Mom joins Amy and me in the truck, and we drive the dirt road to where Roger and Debbie have their fields in the pines. We load their Gator with pumpkins and squash and watermelon and gourds, and when it is full, Roger makes the run back to the shed.

Before we leave Roger and Debbie encourage us to take whatever we like. We load up a little bit of everything and then head over to help my brother John and his wife Barbara pick all of their pumpkins and get them under cover. John and Barbara supply our family's jack-o'-lantern carving party every year, and some of their pumpkins are such monsters that John uses the skid steer to s.h.i.+ft them. We've picked up Amy's cousin Sienna on the way over, and the two of them are yakking and scampering through the vines, picking pumpkins small enough for them to lift and carry over to the pile. When all the pumpkins are picked and tarped, we head back to Mom and Dad's again. We need wood shavings for the chicken coop, so Amy and I go to the lumber shed and fill several bags from the fragrant mound of piney curls beside the planer.

Back in the house, Jed has come for Sienna. We wind up in the living room where we wra.s.sled when we were kids, only now we sit in chairs and just talk, and talk for a long time. A little bit about how he's getting along, of course, but also a lot about nothing in particular. When I look back at this day-from rising early to prepare for the pig slaughter right up to this easy moment-I wonder at how much can be had when there is no clock in sight, no destination pending. On the drive home it is cold enough that I turn the truck heater on, and by the time we pa.s.s Bloomer, Amy is asleep.

CHAPTER 10.

Sunday mornings when I was a boy I wors.h.i.+pped the Lord in a white clapboard house. I sat in a straight-backed chair against a hard plaster wall. In the summer the plaster was cool, and in the winter it was cold. The windows were narrow and tall, and the gla.s.s was ripply-a distracted little lad could rock in his seat and roll a s.h.i.+mmy through the trees. Sometimes when the snow was heavy on the ground and the living room was radiator warm, the boy got drowsy in his sweater and corduroys. When his head lolled back, it rang soundly on the plaster so that the windowpanes-resting loose in their fractured putty-buzzed like snares, the racket signaling that someone was snoozing along the path of righteousness. a boy I wors.h.i.+pped the Lord in a white clapboard house. I sat in a straight-backed chair against a hard plaster wall. In the summer the plaster was cool, and in the winter it was cold. The windows were narrow and tall, and the gla.s.s was ripply-a distracted little lad could rock in his seat and roll a s.h.i.+mmy through the trees. Sometimes when the snow was heavy on the ground and the living room was radiator warm, the boy got drowsy in his sweater and corduroys. When his head lolled back, it rang soundly on the plaster so that the windowpanes-resting loose in their fractured putty-buzzed like snares, the racket signaling that someone was snoozing along the path of righteousness.

The lady who owned the white clapboard house emigrated to this county in a Conestoga. Having read many cowboy books, I knew Conestogas were for pioneers. I would study the frail woman sunk in the worn chair with her Bible across her knees and thrill to think that once she was a young girl peeking from beneath the flapping canvas of a prairie schooner. Imagine: to wors.h.i.+p the Lord beside a pioneer! I can no longer conjure the lady's face. I remember she had yellowish white hair, which she wore pinned atop her head, as did all of the women in our church. I remember the voice of her son the church elder guiding us quietly from hymn to prayer to homily, the King James cadence of thee thee and and thou, thou, of of shalt shalt and and wilt wilt, and in the winter the big Jungers furnace in the corner with its blue flame wavering. For a hallowed hour this house was holy, and we were the chosen ones, cradled separate from the world.

I loved our church of no churches. I loved the little white clapboard house.

I did not doze off because I was bored.

I dozed off because I was cozy.

Within the house there were the chairs against the wall, and a row of folding chairs before those. We had no a.s.signed seats, but tended to gravitate to the same place every Sunday. There was Florence beside the Jungers, and her sister Vivian beside her, and their stepmother Myrtle-all three of them st.u.r.dy women who sometimes fished lace hankies from deep within their edificial busts, an utterly as.e.xual move that nonetheless widened a young boy's eyes. Along the wall, sunk so deep in an ancient wine-red velour couch that their kneecaps came to chin level, were the three Jacobson boys, teenaged grandsons of the woman who came here in the Conestoga. Mrs. Doury's granddaughters and daughter-in-law sat in adjacent chairs, and depending on the Sunday, a handful of other wors.h.i.+ppers might round out the congregation. Mrs. Doury's son-in-law John served as elder, meaning he directed the service. The bread and wine (grape juice and a slice of Wonder Bread) sat beneath a white handkerchief on an end table at his side.

We sat quiet until exactly 10:00 a.m., and then John spoke.

"Would someone like to choose a hymn?"

I was always hoping for Hymn Number 1, "Tell Me the Story of Jesus," because it was my favorite and I knew most of the words without looking, but it was usually reserved for gospel meeting. So someone suggested a number, and we paged to it in Hymns Old & New Hymns Old & New, and then one of the women-Florence, usually-would lead the singing, hitting that first note so the rest of us could follow in behind. Once she chose the range, you were stuck with it. Sometimes you'd have to drop an octave to hit the high notes and jump an octave to hit the low ones. When the first hymn was complete sometimes we sang another one. Then John said, "Let us bow our heads in prayer."

The prayers rose around the room in no particular order, with the exception that John the elder always went last. The prayers were usually brief and simply worded: Lord, we pray that thou wouldst grant us stillness in our hearts; That thou wouldst improve our spirits; That we might find ourselves worthy of thy mercy. Lord, we pray that thou wouldst grant us stillness in our hearts; That thou wouldst improve our spirits; That we might find ourselves worthy of thy mercy. Some prayed in a rush, some prayed briefly; some prayed a different prayer every Sunday, some prayed the same thing every week. By and large the prayers were poetic in simplicity in rhythm, and everything remained resolutely in the spiritual realm-overly specific requests were seen as unseemly. (Thus I was quite unprepared later in life when I overheard a prayer session among a group of young evangelicals at a local coffee shop during which a young woman quite fervently prayed, "Lord, you have got to get me out of this lease!") Throughout the time of prayer, we children were expected to keep our heads down and eyes closed. I do remember sneaking peeks, although not often, because somehow even with his own eyes closed, Dad would catch me and I would get the eyebrows. Some prayed in a rush, some prayed briefly; some prayed a different prayer every Sunday, some prayed the same thing every week. By and large the prayers were poetic in simplicity in rhythm, and everything remained resolutely in the spiritual realm-overly specific requests were seen as unseemly. (Thus I was quite unprepared later in life when I overheard a prayer session among a group of young evangelicals at a local coffee shop during which a young woman quite fervently prayed, "Lord, you have got to get me out of this lease!") Throughout the time of prayer, we children were expected to keep our heads down and eyes closed. I do remember sneaking peeks, although not often, because somehow even with his own eyes closed, Dad would catch me and I would get the eyebrows.

When the prayers concluded, we sang another hymn, and then it was time for testimonies, when those who chose to partic.i.p.ate shared a Bible verse or several that they had been meditating on during the week and then offered a homespun homily. The first time I gave testimony it took a while for me to get my gumption up, and I quaked as I said, "My thoughts this week have been on Matthew, chapter 19," and then I read aloud verses 16 through 22, in which a young man asks Jesus what good things he must do in order that he may have eternal life. Follow the commandments, replies Jesus. I have done that, says the young man. Then sell all your possessions and give them to the poor, says Jesus, and the man leaves in a funk, as he has a great number of possessions. "I hope that I will always live so that I am storing up riches not for this world, but for eternity," I said, and then the next person began to speak and I felt great relief. As with prayer, the testimonies moved around the room in no particular order, and then when all had spoken, John the elder gave his testimony. When John concluded, he set his Bible aside and said, "Would someone give thanks for the bread and wine?"

Once you professed in gospel meeting, you were allowed to pray and give testimony Sunday morning, but in order to take the sacraments you had to have been baptized. We were of the Anabaptist persuasion, eschewing infant baptism, trusting instead that when the Lord so moved us as believers we would seek out the workers and request to be included at the next baptism, a full-immersion ceremony usually held in a river or farm pond. I never got baptized and therefore never "partook of the emblems," as we used to say. I do remember helping pa.s.s them around the room, and how heavy the gla.s.s felt, and how I focused intently on handling it so as not to spill it, and how it seemed imbued with a heaviness far exceeding a gla.s.s of juice. As the emblems circled, each baptized person took a pinch of the bread and a sip of the wine that wasn't wine. Following the bread and wine, we sang a final hymn, and church was over. It rarely went over an hour. We rose and shook hands all around. You made sure you got everyone, young and old. It was an informally required formality. The grown-ups visited, and then we sorted our hats and coats from the pile in the kitchen and stepped back into the outside world for six more days.

When I went to help my sister and brother-in-law butcher their chickens, the thinking was that I would build up some sweat equity credit and they would help butcher ours, but now they won't have to. Our neighbor Terry-with whose family we split the original meat chicken order-has arranged to have his chickens butchered by a local Amish family. They can process up to fifty chickens per day, and since Terry has to haul his bunch over there anyway he asks if we'd like to buy a ticket to ride for our seventeen (originally twenty: one DOA, one terminal splay-leg, and one crunched by the chicken tractor). At first I hesitate, strictly out of hammerheaded pride (turning my chickens over to be butchered by someone else impinges on my delusions of self-sufficiency), but then I visualize the leaf pile of bills, Post-its, and rough drafts covering my desk, and it hits me that sometimes delegation is the better part of valor. Later I bolster this line of thinking with the justification that we are supporting the local economy, although to what extent I am not sure since we will be charged only two bucks a chicken. All arrangements have to be made by mail, so once we commit, Terry sends a letter to a man named Levi confirming the date and time and number of birds, and we mark the calendar.

The birds are ready. They have grown at a steroidal rate on their hog feed and now clomp around the confines of their pen like clucking sumos. As a man I think the bigger the better, but Anneliese finds their growth rate unnatural and would like to try raising some leaner heirloom varieties next year. We have managed to veganize them slightly by s.h.i.+fting their fence so they can peck at greenery, but they still lack the verve for foraging that we see from the layers, who frequently hit the yard in a flying wedge, driving autumn's last gra.s.shoppers before them like desperate fleeing popcorn.

I no longer believe all I believed when I sat in my chair in the white clapboard house, but I am not prepared to scoff. There is enough derision in the world. That is not to say I am above knee-jerk crankiness. When a stranger on a bus asked if I was a Christian, I shot back perhaps a little too sharply, asking if he would treat me differently depending on my answer, and I could see immediately he hadn't meant it that way. Because I grew up wors.h.i.+pping in a manner that could be described as unplugged and acoustic, I sometimes wax a tad irascible about churches that serve lattes and happy music. Church should not be easy, I said once while giving a talk, church should be hard hard. After which a woman mailed me an envelope containing full-color photographs of Asian children whose tongues had been ripped out after they professed Christianity. You see, the lady wrote, church is is hard. Clearly we were talking past each other by the width of several zip codes. I get most crotchety when someone proselytizes me with an aura of patient indulgence, as if I am a fuzzy-headed wandering lamb who scampered off to the devil's clover patch one day and never looked back. Just because you drop the dogma doesn't mean you don't dread the price of transgression. Mine is a chastened apostasy-I don't claim to have the answers, and although I stand outside the church of my parents, I still peek through the windows for guidance. hard. Clearly we were talking past each other by the width of several zip codes. I get most crotchety when someone proselytizes me with an aura of patient indulgence, as if I am a fuzzy-headed wandering lamb who scampered off to the devil's clover patch one day and never looked back. Just because you drop the dogma doesn't mean you don't dread the price of transgression. Mine is a chastened apostasy-I don't claim to have the answers, and although I stand outside the church of my parents, I still peek through the windows for guidance.

I wasn't surprised when Amy asked me about G.o.d. All children get around to it. It was actually a couple of years ago, and her voice came out of the darkness behind me in the van. I was stumbling through a wish-wash mumble when she granted me reprieve by interrupting with another question: "Why did the men kill Jesus?" That one is easier, because I may be a silly wandering lamb, but the story of Jesus, that one is written on my heart, every word. So I talked about Jesus. About how he lived, what he taught, and how he died. And then she asked if she could have a horse, and I was given time to regroup. But I realized the future had arrived, and there would be no opt-out. You cannot toss your seven-year-old a copy of Being and Nothingness Being and Nothingness. As eternally dangerous as it might be to end up a b.u.mbling agnostic, it may be even more dangerous to begin begin there. The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was a firm foundation. there. The greatest gift my parents ever gave me was a firm foundation.

Lately we have begun going to church.