Crunching Gravel (4 page)

We seldom had meatless days. The staple, which we soon tired
of
, was corned beef from Argentina. “Not to be Sold” was stamped in black letters on the gray tins, followed by “U. S. Department of Agriculture.” I liked the meat best either straight from the can, cold, in huge forkfuls, or warmed with peas. We had variety, too: In the fall, at Thanksgiving, we had venison, and later a butchered pig or a yearling calf Chicken, a special treat, was reserved for holidays and an occasional Sunday. In late summer, when we culled the new flock, we frequently had chicken.

Butcherings occurred shortly after the first snows. The semiarctic cold would preserve the meat, cut into roasts and chops, wrapped in butcher paper, and hidden in snow on the roof of the house, secure from thieving dogs, skunks, and coyotes. Most meat, except for the occasional roast, we fried or braised, usually with sliced and fried potatoes. We would never eat sausage made from animal blood, in the German fashion, and my mother disliked organ meats.

We also ate much fish: in summer, walleyed pike, bass, pickerel, crappies, and sunfish caught on poles made of trimmed tree branches; in winter, pickerel and pike hooked through the ice on special flagged rigs my dad carved out of apple-box wood. And there were suckers and red horse seined during the brief spring spawning season and “cured” in my uncle's smokehouse.

Twice a month we made cherry cakes with lard or bacon drippings, cocoa, and icings of powdered sugar mixed with heavy cream and colored with food coloring. Soft, raisin-filled cookies were a favorite. We ground the raisins in a heavy food grinder, the sort you anchor by tightening a large wing nut to the table. Most meals, though, did not include sweets, except for a slice of bread covered with jam or cream and sugar. We sometimes ate fresh strawberries, wild raspberries, lettuce, and fresh vegetables in season. During the winter, greens were entirely unavailable, even in the grocery stores.

Pancakes were a staple. The sourdough starter was months, possibly years, old, and bubbled away, sitting in its crock (“You Beat Eggs, We Beat Prices”) on the kitchen range.

Dad was always first out of bed, winter or summer. He started the fire, building it from the quiescent coals of the night's banked fire. He flipped on the radio to WLS, and sounds of Roy Acuff, LuluBelle and Scottie, and Minnie Pearl wafted through the house as flames roared up the stovepipe.

Next, he fired the range, set the black fry pan and charred griddle over the heat, and added flour, a couple of fresh eggs, and water to his pancake batter. As bacon fried, he spooned grease onto the griddle and spread the batter. Upstairs, still in bed, I felt the rising warmth. A few inches from my face, frost melted and dripped from the nail ends.

I dressed quickly. Downstairs I piled griddlecakes on my plate and smeared them with fresh butter, clotted cream, and blueberry jam. Crisp bacon cut the sweetness. I drank fresh milk. Dad had coffee from a granite pot he kept brewing all day. He called the beverage “mud”; it was thicker than espresso. We never scoured the pot.

 

Dad told me to hold the knife and the pan.

I heard the click on wood

of the bullet inserted, rammed,

saw a flicker flash

in a tree beside the trough,

saw a grain in the sow's mouth,

felt my guts slosh.

“Stand back,” Dad said.

Waffled snow track

pressed by his boots and mine.

Blood and foam.

“Keep the knife sharp, son,

and hold the pan.”

One of us had shuffled,

tramped a design,

feet near the jack pine.

“She'll bleed slow.

Catch all the blood you can.”

A rose unfolded, froze.

“Can't we wait?” I said.

“It should turn warmer.”

Spark, spark buzzing

in the dark.

“It's time,” Dad said, and waited.

Bless all this beauty!
preacher

had exclaimed;
all sin and beauty

in this world, beast and innocent
.

Fistbones gripped the foreshortened

pulpit rim.

Thick glasses drove

his furious pupils in.

Dad brought the rifle to the skull.

The sow's nose plunged into the swill,

the tips of her white tallow ears as well.

Splunk! Straight through the brain, suet

and shell. Stunned! Discharge of food,

bran. Twitch of an ear. Potato, carrot,

turnip slab. “Quick. The knife, the pan.”

He sliced the throat.

The eye closed over.

Hairy ears stood up, collapsed.

Her blood soured into gelatin.

She had begun to shit.

We dragged her

to the block-and-tackle rig.

We tied her tendons, raised her,

sloshed her up and down.

We shaved her hair,

spun her around, cut off

her feet and knuckles,

hacked off her head,

slashed her belly

from asshole down through

bleached fat throat.

Jewels spilled out,

crotches of arteries,

fluids danced and ran.

We hoisted her out of dog reach,

dumped her entrails in the snow,

left the head for the dogs to eat—

my mother disliked head meat.

The liver, steaming, monochrome,

quivered with eyes.

We took it home.

I went to my room.

Tongues licked my neck.

I spread my arms,

threw back my head.

The tendons of a heel snapped.

What had I lost?

bit, bridle, rage?

Preacher in his pulpit

fiddling, vestments aflame.

He, blazing, stepping down to me.

Hot piss came.

I knelt on the floor,

bent over, head in arms.

Piss washed down, more.

I clasped my loins,

arm crossed over arm.

And I cried

loving my guts,

O vulnerable guts,

guts of creatures.

The day was like pewter.

The gray lake a coat

open at the throat. The border

of trees—frayed mantle collar,

hairs, evergreen. The sky dun.

Chilling breeze. Hem of winter.

I passed the iodine-colored brook,

hard waters open,

the weight of the sow's head

an ache from shoulder to waist,

the crook of my elbow numb,

juices seeping through

the wrapping paper.

I was wrong to take it.

There were meals in it.

I would, Dad said, assist

with slaughter, scrape off

hair, gather blood.

I would be whipped for

thieving from the dogs.

I crossed ice

that shivered, shone.

No heads below, none;

nor groans—only water, deep,

and the mud beds of frogs asleep

not a bush quivered,

not a stone. Snow.

Old snow had formed

hard swirls, bone

and planes with

windwhipped ridges

for walking upon;

and beneath, in the deep,

bass quiet, perch whirling

fins, bluegills, sunfish,

dim-eyed soaking heat.

Mud would be soft down there,

rich, tan, deeper than a man:

silt of leeches, leaves

tumbling in from trees,

loon feces, mulch-thick

mudquick, and lignite forming,

cells rumbling, rifts.

I knelt, chopped through

layers of ice until

water, pus, spilled up

choking the wound. I widened

the gash. Tchick! Tchick!

Chips of ice flew.

Water blew from the hole,

the well, a whale, expired.

My knees were stuck to the ice.

I unwrapped the paper.

The head appeared

shorn of its beard.

Its ears stood up, the snout

with its Tinkertoy holes

held blood. Its eyes were shut.

There was grain on its mouth.

It sat on the snow

as though it lived below,

leviathan come for air,

limbs and hulk

dumb to my presence there.

I raised the sow's head

by its ears. I held it

over the hole, let it go,

watched it sink, a glimmer

of pink, a wink of a match,

an eyelid.

A bone in my side beat.

 

Snowshoe rabbits were in great abundance. Resting places below flaring spruce trees were rich with droppings. Rabbit trails compacted the snow, creating banks. Dad showed me how to fashion picture-frame wire into a noose that would slip easily around a rabbit's throat.

I tied several snares to overhanging branches. Rabbits were smart, so I made the loop of wire big enough not to be seen.

For a week, nothing. Two snares were brushed aside. The others revealed no signs of rabbits, yet the trails were freshly used.

Finally, I dismantled the traps. One snare held snowshoe rabbit remains. There were signs of struggle, as though the death had been difficult. I freed the snare and swung it, still affixed to a frozen head, as far as I could into the swamp.

 

Dad hunted alone. Other men preferred groups, posting hunters at strategic spots on deer runs, assigning others as beaters circling the forests, clattering, frightening the animals, driving them in toward the waiting hunters.

Deer season always began at dawn. Dad ate a hearty breakfast and packed a lunch. Over his union suit he wore a wool shirt, a sheepskin undervest, woolen pants, two pairs of wool socks, gum-soled boots, leather gloves with insert linings, and a mackinaw cap with ear flaps. He took his favorite Springfield rifle, not the most accurate of guns. He seldom drove to a hunting ground, preferring to tramp back through the snow, often waist-deep, to the swamps where he had earlier observed deer.

Why didn't I hunt with him? Any father would have delighted in the company of a tall, strong son, and I was already over 6'. He never chided me for my fear of guns or for my exaggerated sensitivity to killing. Later, I could laugh, saying that the only thing I ever shot was a bumblebee inside a morning glory—I would stick the barrel of my .22 rifle in on top of the bee and fire. My efforts at killing squirrels were always misses. I would level my gun, pull the trigger, and flinch, dismayed by a puff of dirt behind my intended victim, who sat there chattering.

Each day Dad spent in the woods seemed interminable. Would he shoot himself or be killed by a bear? By twilight, as sunset stained the rich snow cover and dark was about to fall, my anxieties grew.

When Dad bagged a deer, he gutted it where he shot it and then dragged it through snowy thickets to a copse near Sundsteen Road. Then he walked home, cranked up the Model T, drove to the spot, draped the gutted deer over the hood, and drove back home.

First he sawed off the antlers; then he hacked off the head, which he threw outside for Fido, the dog. He flayed the hide. Later, it would go to a tannery, in exchange for pairs of gloves. We loved watching. Large pieces of venison he hung outside from an upright frame used for gutting and butchering. We would boil the ribs smothered in sauerkraut. Tougher, less-choice portions became hamburger. Much of the meat we wrapped in newspaper and stored on the kitchen roof Occasionally, Dad killed a second deer, usually a doe. This one Mother canned. The meat lasted until early summer.

 

Wednesday morning, December 20th. Shimmering trees were loaded with ice. My sister and I were dressed for the outdoors. “Get one with a good shape,” my mother said. “And be careful with that axe.”

We rushed on skis over the packed trail, crossing fields, the south pasture, and on through birch and tamarack to the lake. Fresh rabbit tracks had broken the ice crust. I carried the axe. We whirred along for half an hour and then we halted before a superb view of frozen Minnow Lake.

I shook a tree, a flaring spruce, freeing it of snow. It chopped easily. I tied a rope around it and secured the rope to my waist. “OK,” I said. “You lead, Margie.” The tree slid easily over the ski trail. We are exhilarated—cutting the tree was the first event of Christmas.

I built a clumsy stand in the living room, away from the heater. The odor of crushed needles, saps, and resins was magnificent.

We had few ornaments: Of a dozen glass pieces, my favorites were a pair of multicolored, miniature bass viols, and a small glass deer, missing its antlers. We made chains from the colored pages of old magazines glued with paste made of flour, water, and salt. I enjoyed fitting the pink and red twisted wax candles in their metal holders to the branches. We lighted the candles.

We drew pictures for one another, to keep secret until Christmas morning. We had made presents for our mother: I decorated a box of safety matches with fancy paper taken from envelopes supplied by our teacher, and I carved a bar of Ivory soap into a squirrel. Miss Crocker sketched the animal, and I was near tears before I managed to whittle the creature free of the soap. Around its neck I tied a small bit of green ribbon and a medallion saying Squirrel. I hoped my mother would like it.

 

For three weeks, on wintry afternoons, huddled near the heating stove, we rehearsed the Christmas Program. Each of us had an individual recitation: Most were short winter or Christmas bits with humorous twists. We recited “'Twas the Night Before Christmas” in unison. Paper snowflakes covered the windows. The tree was decorated with homemade ornaments: flashing tops from condensed milk cans, tiny crosses covered with gum-wrapper tin foil, Santa Claus heads, feeble attempts at reindeers, crayola renditions of balls, dolls, books. And, of course, the ubiquitous colored paper chains, with strings of popcorn.