"As Blades Are Honed" by Pamela Ryder
Soon enough will come the clatter of dry leaves on the last of the standing corn and the hiss of whetstones spinning as blades are honed: pig sticker, throat slicer, belly gutter. At Ed Muller’s place, one farm over on the river road, the two black-spot hogs Sammy and Hammy hear their names called for the last time and at the rattle of the slop bucket bail they bound forth with simple porcine joy to the gate where the carnage will commence. Cudgel to the head. Bash. Throes. Hoists, ropes, hooks. Buckets positioned for the blood. Two black-spot hogs hung from the largest of tree limbs snout-down. Sammy in the oak and Hammy in the maple, though which is which who can tell with their skins pulled down like jackets inside out. The Muller children climb aboard the carcasses thus suspended and swing. Was this one Sammy? calls little Davey Muller, trying to keep a foot hold on the swaying corpse, slippery with hog fat and blood-slime. No that’s Hammy, says Joe. In a few days the buzzards come for the cast-off innards, a slow-going spiral of them so high they seem not birds at all but bits of soot flown away from a fire. Ed Mueller loads his Winchester and takes a shot but their circling continues unchanged as they rise unperturbed into the clouds. Everywhere the smell of rot, salt, hickory smoke. Folks toting home packages wrapped in white paper seeping pink: Sammy and Hammy turned into tenderloin, trotter, chop, hocks. A ham to salt and cure. Crabby apples for Alice Mueller to spice in cinnamon and put by. Pippins and Winesaps from what the old trees still bear, wormy parts pared out and cooked down to apple butter. Pumpkins to be tucked away in straw for the cellar, a cold corner shelf safe from rats. Alice dear, we’re all looking forward to your pies. Ain’t we now, boys? Ain’t it your favorite, Davey? There are yams to mash and a cabbage to shred and salt in the stoneware crock. Should be good with that tenderloin, dearest. Joe leans in the doorway, listening. Soon enough a story will be told, for it is again that time of year that children hear the fable of the lazy grasshopper and the industrious ant, but that both will soon enough meet the selfsame fate is never a part of that telling.
Pamela Ryder is the author of two novel in stories and a short story collection. As Blades Are Honed is a flash piece from a novel in progress about the boy-desperado, Billy the Kid.
