The Shoat

BY BILLY SNEAD

Whether or not my life after age 10 would be as perplexing as my first ten years remained to be seen. During my early years, all adult conversation overheard concerned the Depression and then, after 1941, all the talk focused on the War. But it was the resulting economics from those two events in history, which was so confusing to someone my age.

During the Depression there were plenty of things to buy but nobody had any money. The War brought jobs and people had plenty of money but very little to buy. No cars were being built, gas was rationed along with meat and sugar, but almost every product other than vegetables was scarce. A word I heard probably ten times a day. Even soap was scarce. "Scarce as hen's teeth."

I wondered why?

Do soldiers overseas take more baths than they did at home? It was real confusing. "It's the War effort", adults said and it would stay that way for "the duration." A term I understood to mean, maybe, forever.

But all this for me meant very little as I saw no change in my or my family's and neighbor's life style.

One night at the supper table Daddy made an announcement. "A fellow told me he was raising some pigs and that he would have plenty of meat for the winter".

"Who was telling you, Bubby?" Pop, my grandfather inquired.

"A man on the job, Imo doit too", Daddy replied.

He liked his meat. "How you going to keep the meat?" Minnie, my grandmother asked, thinking of the freezer in our icebox which held little more than two ice trays.

"Imo smoke it at Pop's. Pop had a farm out on Broad Street Road that he rented part of to tenant farmers. We called it "the country" and Daddy had grown up there. An uneasy feeling came over me during this conversation as I knew that it boded my participation in some way that I could only imagine would not be pleasant.

It was early spring and sure enough, the next Saturday morning Daddy said we're going to get the piglets and take them to the country. We drove to some other farm where Daddy paid for two piglets. The farmer had them in a small chicken coop, which we put in the trunk and tied the trunk door down to the bumper.

"I need that coop back", the old farmer said.

At the country, we released the piglets into the old pigsty about 100 yards from the house and next to the pasture.

Daddy had already fixed the sty with some new boards and some wire to block the piglets escape plans.

Boy, they were cute and I was already a little saddened to be in on Daddy's intent.

He paid the tenant farmer to slop and water the piglets during the week, but every Saturday afterwards, we would go back to the country carrying buckets of our household table scraps and stale bread he got from somewhere, to slop the pigs.

I blamed all of this endeavor on that darned "War effort" and even though we had already beaten the Germans last fall, we still had the Japs to go, prolonging "the duration."

I watched those pigs grow from that spring until late fall amazed at how much larger they grew with each passing week. Daddy was now calling them shoats or small hogs and I knew it was getting closer to their time here in this world.

The Japs had surrendered a month or so earlier bringing a closure to "the duration." I had helped an older neighborhood boy sell "Extra" newspapers at the Jefferson Davis statue on Monument Avenue on the day after the surrender.

Once scarce items were appearing back on store shelves and there was talk of new cars in production, but I knew Daddy had gone this far with the shoats and he would not give up his efforts. He explained to me that on the next cold Saturday, we would slaughter the shoats.

Slaughter? "Why does it have to be cold", I asked.

"So the meat won't spoil," he said.

It was mid December before the first cold Saturday and the Friday night before he told me that we would get up early in the morning and do the job.

It was pitch dark when I was untimely shaken awake.

"Dress warm and come on, breakfast is ready."

Momma was in the kitchen when I came down fixing bologna sandwiches for our lunch. "Go get your gun and some 22's and hurry up".

I had gotten a .410/22 over and under shotgun last Christmas which I fetched from my closet. Daddy gathered up the lunches and some other bags and we were off.

"Be careful!" Momma looked worried.

We rode to the country still in pitch black darkness on one of the coldest days in the world and in dead silence. Daddy was puffing on his pipe in deep thought of the task ahead. I was sure he had a plan but he had as yet not revealed it to me. He never did.

It was barely light enough to see when we parked and got out into the freezing cold dawn with a more than slight breeze wisping through the pine trees in the grove which was about twenty yards from the sty. The grove, where I had spent so many warm summer nights playing tag and hiding with the farmer's children, but today was not a play day and it was not warm either.

Work started immediately. I saw a large black three-legged cauldron propped up on bricks under an oak tree near the sty.

"Bring that wood over here and put it under the pot", he ordered.

"Not like that, stagger it", as he impatiently rearranged my pile into another pile which, to me, looked no different.

He then balled up newspapers and stuck them in with the logs and lit the papers with matches. The breeze fanned the fired papers too fast for the wood to catch.

"Find me some twigs." I was freezing and wanted this day to end and so I quickly gathered ample twigs and small limbs from the grove and stuck them under the pot, crammed in more paper which Daddy lit and in a short while, fire was achieved.

I still had no idea how the pot would play it's role. "Take this bucket and go get some water". I didn't know why as I ran to the well, but I didn't care, things were happening.

Running from the well, bent hard to one side trying to balance my load, the water was sploshing on my knickers, down my socks and into my shoe. It took about six or seven loads to fill the pot and by that time the outer side of my right leg was frozen from the water.

Meanwhile, during my trips, Daddy had strung up a heavy chain across a tree limb with one end tied to the tree trunk while the other end dangled over the pot with a large hook on it's end.

"Help me move this table." We moved a picnic table from the grove over next to the cauldron. I had a thousand questions but asked none. I looked at him for my next chore because I didn't want to waste any time.

He saw my eyes and said, "We gotta wait till the water boils."

I didn't ask or care why, but took the time to dry off my pants by the now roaring fire. I couldn't help but glance at the shoats from time to time and they were both staring back oinking and squealing and just as ignorant at what they saw as I was.

Dawn broke wide as did the bubbles of water in the cauldron as if one could not have happened without the other and I was more than eager to get on with the day.

"Go get your gun and load it and get that bag of carrots off the back seat." Carrots?

"Is it loaded?"

"Yes sir, the 22 is."

"With longs?"

"No sir, shorts. I didn't have no longs." "Damn!"

He took one of the carrots and walked into the sty where the shoats, anticipating slops, circled his feet. He led them with a carrot to the door of their shed, threw the carrot inside and when the first one entered, he slammed the gate behind it, leaving the other shoat in the open.

He then came outside the sty and picked up the gun and handed me a carrot.

"Awright, you kneel down here by the trough and poke your carrot between the rails and I'm gonna shoot him in his head. After I shoot him, go get me that short knife on the table so I can cut his throat and bleed him."

The horror. The horror.

He cocked the rifle, I stuck out my lure, and the victim eagerly came to dine. I could feel his breath on my hand as the gun went off. The ringing in my ears, the smell of gunpowder, and the high pitch squeal of the shot shoat threw me into a momentary trance.

When I came to, Daddy had dropped the gun and was climbing the fence yelling for the knife. I stared at the poor shoat. Daddy got him right between his now crazed eyes and blood was spurting from the hole like some fierce dragon.

What happened next was not in Daddy's plan. The uncooperative shoat rared up on his hind legs, turned and took off running. He ran through the side of the sty, boards, wire and all, and into the open pasture.

"Get him", Daddy yelled.

With each beat of the poor beast's heart, blood shot skyward as he raced in circles with Daddy in pursuit. Now I was over the fence and into the chase. He would run straight at us, slip between our legs, circle around us, and take off again.

"We've gotta tackle him."

Oh, if some candid camera could have captured those moments. Daddy was making diving, desperation tackles missing each time while sliding along the wet grass.

"Did you bring any shotgun shells," he yelled, struggling to get up off the ground.

"No sir."

"Damn!" he said for the second time that day at my thoughtlessness.

The chase must continue and it did until the shoat ran out of blood and collapsed, my job to fetch the short knife now being superfluous. It was only 10 o'clock.

Although the temperature was in the teens, we had sweated into a lather from the chase and we were blowing for breath.

We each grabbed a hind leg and dragged the dead pig to the cauldron. The fire had almost burnt out and the water had lost its boil. I got more firewood and soon the flames were licking from under the pot again.

Daddy made slits in some part of the back legs and stuck an iron rod through the cuts. He hooked the end of the chain around the rod and started hoisting the pig up over the cauldron.

Just as he got it raised over the cauldron, the rod slipped out and the pig fell into the water, sloshing it all over us.

Before that, all that sweat was freezing on us, and now almost boiling water had all but doused us. We were both sights, our clothes covered in mud, grass stain, and blood.

Daddy got him raised up again, secured the chain to the tree and told me to hold the water bucket under the pig's rear to catch the entrails.

He took a sharp knife, slit open the belly and with his bare hands started pulling out the insides trying to guide them into the bucket, which soon filled and got really heavy. "Throw that in the trough." For the brother to eat?

I did and returned, but a little too late to catch more stuff which had oozed into the now boiling water. It was right then that I realized something scary; that Daddy had never done this before, but had only been an observer or lackey, like me, and he was remembering the process as he went along, I hoped.

The entrails were now out and I had to get more water. He took the bucket and sloshed out the remaining blood and slime from inside the carcass. The pig was lowered slowly into the boiling water.

"We gotta pull all his hair out and you can't do it with gloves on."

It was misery. My hands were scalding and when I took them away to rest a minute, they would freeze.

"You finish this, I'm going to the smoke house."

When he returned, I had finished with the hair. He unhooked the carcass and threw it on the picnic table, which he had covered with an oil cloth. The butchering began.

It was getting dark and all I could think of was that we had to do all this again with the other shoat. After he made several trips to the smoke house with his cuts, he said, "I'll take the rest home and cut it up tonight. You hungry? We'll eat those sandwiches going home."

We didn't because they were frozen solid. We emptied the caldron, put out the fire and cleaned the knives. He wrapped the remaining meat in newspaper and bagged it. We got home way after dark.

Nothing was ever said about the other shoat left in the shed. I guess Daddy sold him.

I can vividly recall the look on Momma's face, when we walked proudly into the kitchen that night plopping bags of meat on the table while we were covered in mud, blood, grass stain, guts and pig hairs.

We had plenty of meat that winter, but so did everybody else.