“I know,” says the boy quietly, but he does not feel like he has done well. He does not feel proud of that night in the barn with the screams and the musk and the breathing of the thing in the darkness, or the lightning flash and thunder of the shotgun. And the way the floor was soaked, soaked in blood.
They both look at the dead thing on fire and watch the hay blacken and curl. It burns out. The boy steadies the carcass once again and the man cleans it of all hair, and they flip it and burn again and flip it and burn again until it is smoked and smooth. Its ears are crunchy and they break them off and toss them away and peel the hooves off like old fruit. They brush it down to remove the rest of the hair and soon it is hairless and raw and pink, just as it would hang in the butcher’s shop.
The man stoops now and removes the eyes and they begin to flush out the blood, again and again. They set up the butchering plank, an old, thick door that once hung in the front of the house. The stranger and the boy and some of the other men strain to lift the animal and set it up on the door, and still they flush out more of the blood. They step back to catch their breath.
“How’d you get those scars, mister?” asks the boy.
“I have always had them,” he says.
“Since you were born?”
A queer look comes into his eyes. “Since I was born, yes.” He looks back at the animal hanging on the door. “I cannot even remember the first slaughter I attended.”
“Been doing this for a while?”
“Oh, yes. But then, everyone has, in a way.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Everything needs to feed. And, in doing so, it must kill. Perhaps not with a knife or with a gun, but all things strive to learn of more ways to eat, and consume, and live another day, and so they learn of killing. Even those with no mind such as corn in the field and trees in the forest rejoice and grow stronger with more to consume. And always in sating hunger, in some form or another, one can find death.”
“Huh? Like, killing something?”
“Yes.”
“Trees don’t kill nobody. Unless they fall on someone.”
“No. But if a man buys a steak, did he kill the cow? He did not kill it himself, certainly, but it died for him and so he eats it and is satisfied for a day or more. Just as a tree’s roots eat the decaying bodies of animals and other trees, even if it did not choke out their life. And we eat the fruit of these trees, or the corn or the wheat or the animals we have raised from these fruits.” He begins to approach the animal’s body, hatchet now in hand. “All that lives kills. All that breathes murders. Prays for it, even. It is simplistic, yes, but so is life and death. All living things are friends of death, whether they know it or not.”
And the man steps forward and stops as though struck by a sudden thought, and he turns and looks at the boy. His cheeks twitch strangely, pinching around the eyes, and the boy realizes he is trying to smile.
“My friends,” says the man to the boy. He walks to the dead beast without another word, flipping the hatchet in his hand as though it were no more than a toy.
The stranger takes the hatchet and prunes the legs off of the animal, cracking and tearing, and sets them aside like kindling. Then he splits the head of the animal with terrible ease and he wriggles the blade of the hatchet in the gash and then pulls it apart, one half in each hand, and the men say they have never seen someone do that so effortlessly. The stranger chokes his grip up on the hatchet and then removes the jaw until the animal is headless and legless. He swaps the hatchet for a knife and makes a cut in the animal from its groin to its neck and his eyes narrow in concentration as he makes sure not to puncture the intestines. The men all nod, seeing how familiar he is with this task. Then he takes a metal pail and removes the intestines, the stomach, the heart and the bladder, making sure not to rupture any and release their foulness.
It is practically done. Almost ready to roast or salt. The man steps back and nods at his work. He is not even sweating.
“That was the quickest I ever seen a man do that, mister,” says the boy’s father. “What’s your name?”
His mouth twitches again as though to smile, but he cannot. “I have been in a slaughterhouse. It is an easy thing.”
“We don’t have much to pay you with.”
“I wouldn’t ask it of you. A bit of food would do me well, though.”
The boy’s father tells him to go into the house and fill a sack with rolls and jerky. The boy does so, and as he stands in the kitchen he watches the men working through the window. One man takes the pail with the animal’s organs and sets it down by the back door. The boy continues his work, but then he hears something. It is the wind, or so he thinks, yet he hears it again. He goes back to the window. There is nothing there except the pail and the late setting sun, stretching out the shadows.
But then the boy sees him. It is the stranger, casually walking to the pail, yet he turns to see if he is being watched. Satisfied that he is not, he takes a small handkerchief from his pocket and walks to the pail, looking in. The boy withdraws, stooping to watch and not be seen. The man’s eyes dart through the bucket, and the boy sees they are alight with wild delight, even hunger. The man looks about once more. His chest is heaving and he is sweating slightly and as he reaches down into the bucket his hand shivers. He picks something up, something hard and gray and red, and the boy sees it is the pig’s heart. The stranger gazes at it, treasuring it, and swallows nervously. His head darts around, checking behind him, and then his mouth opens, opens more than any mouth should, revealing newspaper-gray teeth and a dull, sandy tongue, and he bites into the heart, ripping and tearing with his neck, and his head snaps back with his mouth full and his lips watery-red.
The boy ducks down, panting. He calms himself and listens. The man is still outside. The boy hears rustling, then footsteps trailing away, but the boy is unable to move from fear. He wants to run to his father but he does not. He does not want that man nearby any longer than he needs to be. And he does not want his father to know what he has seen. The image of the man’s face still lingers in his mind, the way his face became distended and unearthly in his ecstasy.
The boy steels himself. He walks out front. The stranger is there, speaking amiably with the men. His hands are not red, nor is his mouth, and he is not quivering anymore. He looks nothing like the man in the window. Instead he looks stronger, more alive and alert, like he has been rejuvenated by what he has done here. He glances at the boy approaching, his eyes still dead and distant, and reaches out to take the sack from him.
“I thank you kindly,” he says. “It is good to work with one’s hands. Sometimes you forget what you excel at, or what you are here for.”
“That may be so,” says the boy’s father. He does not notice the way the boy pales when he draws close to the stranger.
The stranger waves to them, tosses the sack over his shoulder, and walks back toward the road, heading southwest. He kicks up a trail of dust as he walks, red clouds going waist high and swallowing him. The trail hangs in the air as he walks away and the boy watches it disappear.
Connelly and the others listened as he finished his story.
“He ate the heart?” asked Pike.
“Yes sir,” said the boy softly. “Just as sure as I’m alive and breathing, he took that heart and bit out of it like it was a great big apple. And he stowed it away in his kerchief and took it with him. I checked. It wasn’t in the bucket.”
They were silent as they thought about this.
“Any of you ever hear of him doing that?” said Connelly.
They shook their heads.
“I heard of injuns doing that,” said Roosevelt. “With buffalo. They eat them ’cause they think it’s holy. They think they’re eating its spirit.”
“Maybe the man is deluded,” said Pike. “Maybe he believes that stuff.”
“If he’s a cannibal I never heard of it,” Hammond said.
“No,” said Pike. “No, I expect we wouldn’t.”
The boy looked at him. “He didn’t steal nothing from you all, did he?” he said quietly.
“He did, in a way,” said Hammond.
“You did right,” said Roosevelt to the boy. “You did exactly what I would have done. You had to get him out
