A Cook's Tour Read Online Free PDF Page B

sneering at vegetarians, I was having an unseemly amount of trouble getting with the program. I had to suck it up. I could do this. There was already plenty in my life to feel guilty about. This would be just one more thing.
         It took four strong men, experts at this sort of thing, to restrain the pig, then drag and wrestle him up onto his side and onto a heavy wooden horse cart. It was not easy. With the weight of two men pinning him down and another holding his hind legs, the main man with the knife, gripping him by the head, leaned over and plunged the knife all the way into the beast’s thorax, just above the heart. The pig went wild. The screaming penetrated the fillings in my teeth, echoed through the valley. With an incredible shower of fresh blood flying in every direction, the shrieking, squealing, struggling animal heaved himself off the cart, forcefully kicking one of his tormentors in the groin repeatedly. Spraying great gouts of blood, the pig fought mightily, four men desperately attempting to gain purchase on his kicking legs, bucking abdomen, and blood-smeared rearing head.
         They finally managed to wrestle the poor beast back up onto the cart again, the guy with the mustache working the blade back and forth like a toilet plunger. The pig’s movements slowed, but the rasping and wheezing, the loud breathing and gurgling, continued . . . and continued . . . the animal’s chest rising and falling noisily . . . continued and continued . . . for what seemed like a fucking eternity.
         I’ll always remember, as one does in moments of extremis, the tiny, innocuous details – the blank expressions on the children’s faces, the total lack of affect. They were farm kids who’d seen this before many times. They were used to the ebb and flow of life, its at-times-bloody passing. The look on their little faces could barely be described as interest. A passing bus or an ice-cream truck would probably have evoked more reaction. I’ll always remember the single dot of blood on the chief assassin’s forehead. It remained there for the rest of the day, above a kindly rosy-cheeked face – an eerily incongruous detail on an otherwise-grandfatherly visage. Imagine your Aunt Minnie bringing you a plate of cookies as you sat in front of the TV, a string of human molars strung casually, like pearls, around her neck. I’ll remember the atmosphere of business as usual that hung over the whole process as the pig’s chest rose and fell, his blood draining noisily into a metal pail. A woman cook came running for the blood, hurrying to the kitchen with it after it stopped draining freely, the death and killing just another chore. More women walked briskly to and from the kitchen with other receptacles. Food was being prepared. And I’ll never forget the look of pride on José’s face, as if he were saying, This, this is where it all starts. Now you know. This is where food comes from.
         He was right, of course. I’m sure that had I just seen a thoroughbred being inseminated, a cow being milked, a steer being castrated, or a calf breeched, I would have been equally ill at ease. I was a pathetic city boy, all too comfortable with my ignorance of the facts, seeing for the first time what was usually handled on the Discovery Channel (just after I changed the channel).
         The horse cart, with the now-dead pig aboard, was wheeled around the corner of the barn to a more open area, where his every surface was singed with long bundles of burning straw. All the animal’s hair was burned off, a time-consuming process that left black streaks and patches on his thick skin. He was then scrubbed and washed with cork, scrubbed again, and then – another brief but horrible Kodak moment.
         I was smoking and trying to look cool, as if what I’d just seen hadn’t bothered me at all. The pig was positioned head away, hind legs and butt pointed in my direction. Global Alan, one of the shooters for the TV