Lake, Paul

Hog Killing Christmas

1. Tubs, gloves, boots, blood, fat, hogs’ heads, entrails,
2. the glass knob on the back door so greased and slippery
3. with hog fat, I turned and turned it on the top step with two hands
4. and couldn’t make it open –
5. that was Christmas.
6. That was, after Daddy let us open our presents a week too early,
7. all that was left on that first morning to do
8. after breakfast – a dull, cold, dry December day
9. perfect for hog killing, just as Daddy’d called it
10. when they set out to the barn
11. booted and gloved, to do the slaughtering.
12.  
13. Later, it became a family ritual
14. and Christmas meant
15. ax helves and hogs hung
16. upside down by the hocks; it meant
17. watching, as year by year, I grew
18. almost old enough, old enough, then too old to
19. merely wait, loafing in the living room
20. while Rexanne, my older sister, read
21. from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King
22. or “Break, break, break/On thy cold gray stones, 0 Sea,”
23. which I had given her one year
24. in a leather-bound book.
25.  
26. Always the bookworm,
27. always the baby…
28. Even hunting I’d never killed bigger game
29. than squirrels or rabbits,
30. for most of my life content
31. to he my older sister’s little brother,
32. in love with words, while always somewhere nearby
33. my brother and father performed their offices
34. for the farm and family,
35. blood drenched in the clamorous hog pen
36. or piling hay.
37.  
38. Imagine a boy
39. like that, my joy when,
40. after she’d married and moved away,
41. Rexanne came back, not many months afterwards
42. alone and uncharacteristically
43. quiet, to visit at Christmas time
44. and resume the old intimacy
45. of coconspirators
46. against the routine of the family farm.
48. At supper, the truth came out:
49. Divorced and bankrupt.
50.  
51. Eyes down (except to glance at me), she tried to explain:
52. “It’s better this way, Daddy.”
53.  
54. Then Daddy uncomprehending:
55. “You don’t want to pay your debts to the people you owe?”