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57 Carlo on the Hog Slaughter Hog-killing day, wind face-chap cold. Fever got me good, woozing up my thought. I seeing triple, hunger fangs take a hold. Fire over water in a big black pot, Papa slit hog throat, rope him round the head, hang him from a gum tree, douse him right hot, shave him cleany pink. Next part I dread. Stab hog in the heart, let bright blood. For blood pie sake, save a pail a red. Rain, sleet, snow blows up, make shitty mud. Stray mutt twitchy from the swamp, slobber beard, coughing like a brimstone preacher ’mongst the crud. One dog, see, make three to me. I get skeered. Papa toss him hog-gut slime. Sky’s dark guts ooze out, turn the light blue-weird. Papa clean intestines and, checking for cuts, blow them up a like balloons. Mash B-grade meat for sausage links and the salt-skin gobbets dry to cracklin’s. Tongue, lips, ears, and feet pickled or ground to hog’s head cheese. Ain’t too much here a man can’t eat. Loin for lonza, quarters for prosciutto. Sugar, yeast, meal, and raisin make cake out of boiled backbone. Drop liver, heart, and kidney fresh in a grease, 57 sizzle with some pepper, salt, and onion. Scramble brains with eggs and fry. Cut fat and skin in bits, boil them in a cauldron for the family lard—year supply. Muddy man-shadows, making rag soap, scald waste fat and mix it up with lye. Only hair, hoof, intestine goop, and teeth get culled. No smokehouse, no stable, so we move inside. Papa rub a thick coat a salt in a fat slab. We store it on the cypress table in my leaky room, where it smells up my dreams. Dirty snow buries my Bible, chills my bed. Through knotholes in the floor of my head, I see a red-eye rabid dog and I’m skeered every night when the black blanket falls, I’ll feed a snorting ghost ripped from a hog. 58 ...

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