THE DRIVE DOWN
“Hey
Mom, it’s me.”
“Oh
hi!”
“I
just wanted to remind you that I’m going out of town this week.”
“Oh
that’s right, where’re you going again?”
“Sainte
Genevieve.”
“When
are you coming back?”
“Valentine’s
Day.”
There
is a slight pause on the other end of the line, then a protracted sigh. “You know I don’t understand why you’re doing
this.”
“.
. . I know.”
“Well
just be careful and call me when you get there.”
My
mother is a very sweet, supportive person, but she doesn’t quite get why her
only daughter wants to play with knives and dead animals in her free time.
This
week I am moonlighting at an independent slaughter/butcher shop an hour south
of St. Louis. I have a new friend named
Eli who works part time in St. Louis—not far from the shop I work at—but lives
in Sainte Gen and has a job butchering down there. He talked to the boss at his shop, and told
me they’d let me come down for a few days and teach me some stuff I don’t know.
I’ve
been envisioning this trip as my “make it or break it” . . . it’ll push me one
way or the other—I’ll either love it or be completely repulsed by it. I don’t really predict the latter happening,
but sometimes a person doesn’t know where their line is until they’ve been
pushed to the very limit.
There
will be heavy hazing, or so I’ve been
warned. The dynamic in this shop is
vastly different from that of my own—these guys pester, plague, and prank each
other morning, noon, and night. I wonder
whether I’m actually going to learn anything, or if it’s just going to be three
days of a bunch of guys messing with me.
I
have a brief moment of panic on the drive down because . . . Eli and I really don’t know each other very well .
. . at all. So this could
go really well . . . or really, really
horribly.
DAY 1
Eli and I pull up to the shop around
9am.
“You ready for this?”
Exasperatedly I sigh, “No . . .” but
get out of the car anyways.
I go in the front, he goes in the
side. I begin my first assignment.
A large young man approaches from
the back of the shop. “Hello, what can I
do for you?”
“Well, I’ve never been here before .
. . and I was looking for some meat.”
“What kind of meat?”
“Well your case is empty so it’s
kind of hard to decide. What kind ya
got?”
“Um . . .”
I interrupt him, “What’s this ‘Fire
Sale’ all about on your sign there?”
“Oh, that. That’s a joke.”
“Well why’s it on the sign then?”
He seems a little bit
flustered. “Because I can’t get anyone
to take it down.”
“But what if that’s what I
want?”
“Um—”
“What if I want seventy-five percent off some grass-fed beef?”
“. . . I smell a joke here.”
I can’t contain my smile
anymore. “I warned Eli that I’m no
actress.”
Just then Eli finally walks by. “Aw man, ya gave up already??”
“He already called me out on it!”
He rolls his eyes and scoffs,
“Whatever. Evan, this is the chick I
told you about; she’s gonna be workin’ with us this week.”
We shake hands, and head deeper into
the shop.
Evan
is a 22-year-old Fundamentalist Christian farm boy who still lives with his
parents. Eli thought it would be funny
to tell him that I, too, am Fundamentalist, because he was hoping to talk me
into hitting on Evan.
“Are you fucking kidding me??? I’m like walking
blasphemy!”
“Come on,” Eli pleads. “It’ll be really funny.”
“You’ve got the wrong girl, dude.”
We go round in circles about this
for a while; in my mind, the matter is settled—non-negotiable. Eli doesn’t give up so easily. He really doesn’t
know me. Guess he’ll just have to find
out the old-fashioned way.
The shop is laid out so that first
you walk into a retail area, which contains a non-functioning meat case and
inaccurate pricing signs; then there is a small break room-type area with
microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker, chairs, and a table on which rests an
unused deli slicer. This is also where they
store towels, aprons, and rubber boots, and where we stow our stuff for the
day. Today a crock pot filled with pork
steak chili is cooking away next to the microwave. The chef responsible for this feast—the
boss—stands next to it, waiting to be introduced to me. His name is Rob, he’s a little older—though
not much—Catholic, but still he seems like a cool guy. From what Eli tells me, he doesn’t spend much
time in the shop. “Gallivanting” is the
word used to describe Rob’s workday activities.
The
next room I guess would be considered the cutting and packaging room: a long stainless steel table runs along one side;
meat grinder, bone saw, sausage stuffer on the other; and there’s a big sink at
the back. Evan has already returned to
his place at the bone saw, breaking down a portion of cow that looks heavier
than me. A short, older guy working
quietly next to him is introduced to me as Travis. There is a freezer for packaged orders; a
cooler for beef and one for pork (and other meat when they have it—they also do
deer, poultry, even goat); all the meat is dry-aged however long the customer
requests it.
The
last room is the Kill Floor, which resembles a warehouse: concrete floors with drains in the middle,
dingy windows, large rusted apparatus dominating one corner, blades and meat
hooks shining along the walls, rails, pulleys, and chains hanging from the high
ceiling. A heavy door leads to the
livestock pens out back.
We
conclude our tour and return to the packing room to find that Sawyer, the last
crew member, has finally arrived. Sawyer
is the resident atheist, rocks plaid shirts, ear buds, and a beard down to his
chest. I can already tell he and I are
going to get along just fine.
Eli regales him with the tale of how
I fell short in my attempt to hassle Evan over the “Fire Sale” sign.
I protest, “Hey I had him going for
a little while, but I told you I’m no good at lying . . . I tried to channel my
inner cunt and failed miserably.”
Sawyer points at me excitedly, “She
said ‘cunt’! That means it’s fair game!”
The whole “cunt” renaissance started
a few months ago when I ran into David at a party. One of his friends accidentally spilled my
drink, and David called me “the c-word.”
At first, I was rabidly indignant—as can rightfully be expected. But then I thought, ‘Cunt,’ really? That’s all you
got? A word? Well then I’m gonna own that
shit. I’ll be the biggest cunt you’ve
ever seen.
It’s just a word, same as any
other. The only power it has over
someone is the amount of power they give it.
The more you say it, the more you remove the stigma of “cunt.” If nothing else, Evan probably no longer
believes I’m a Christian.
There is only one pig in the Kill
Log for today, which unfortunately means I won’t be doing any
slaughtering. It also means that I’d
better pay attention, since we only get one go at this. They typically only do hogs on
Wednesdays—Tuesdays and Thursdays are cattle days—but they don’t have any
cattle on the book for today, so we’re hunting swine instead.
I
slip on rubber boots, walk out the side door and around to the pens. The day is cold and sunny, but the back of
the building is in a frigid shade. The
lone pig perks up when she sees me. I
don’t get too close at first; don’t want to spook her. Eli barges through the rusty metal door with
a loud bang. So much for not spooking
her. I decide to get as close as
possible to see as much as I can. He
steps into the pen and she is backing away, then pushing forward, sticking her
snout through the bars, eyes locked on mine.
He doesn’t bear down on her threateningly, but tries to coax her gently,
“Hey . . . hey . . . hey. . . .” They go
around and around for a little while, then he backs her in a corner and gets
her in the middle of the forehead with the gun.
Her eyes roll up in her head, she collapses in a series of kicking
spasms, blood leaks from her nose.
“She’ll kick for a while; let’s go
have some coffee.”
I’m walking away but I don’t want to
look away. Later on, Eli said I had a
weird look on my face and asked what it meant.
Honestly I don’t know. I was
trying to figure out what I felt, because I thought certainly I’d feel something.
We don rubber aprons and latex
gloves in addition to our rubber boots; things are going to get bloody. I wait in the Kill Floor while Eli goes out
back to get the pig. He returns,
dragging the pig by a chain around one of its trotters, a trail of thick mucus
trickling from its mouth. The pig is
hoisted up by the chain using a mechanized pulley system. Eli sticks a knife straight into the middle
of her throat, and a stream of blood bursts forth, steaming in the chill winter
air. She is bled out and rinsed off with
a hose.
We take her down and lay her on her
back; her hooves prop up like a begging dog.
First things to come off are the trotters. Slice across the joint until clear fluid comes
out, then get your knife in and slice through all the cartilage; bend it to the
side and snap it off. You have to be
careful with the back ones because there is a tendon on the back (comparable to
our Achilles) that will hold the entire pig’s weight when we hoist it back up
again.
Then we begin skinning her.
Normally, if they had more pigs to
do, they would use the scalder—the previously mentioned apparatus occupying a
large part of the Kill Floor. Imagine a
piggy Jacuzzi: it’s a big vat of hot
water used to soften the skin so the hair comes off easier. For removing the hair, they use the second
part of that apparatus: imagine . . . a
giant piggy spanking machine . . . okay don’t imagine that . . . there’s really no nice way of saying it’s a bunch of
paddles that smack all the hair off. So
then you’re left with a hairless pig and you can use the skin for
cracklings.
We are not using the scalder,
however, so we begin skinning her at the stubs where her trotters used to
be. This piggy also has a ruptured
belly—a softball-sized bulge in her stomach filled with god knows what kind of rancid
bodily fluids—that we have to work around.
I do not want to puncture
that, so Eli cuts around it, and then slices it off.
Skinning
an animal is actually not that difficult.
The tough part is getting started, but once you have the skin slit down
the insides of the legs and all the way down the belly, you can see that the
seams that hold an animal’s muscles together are the same seams that hold the
skin on. You just have to peel the skin
back a bit until you see all the little white whispy membranes, and then you
cut them. And then you peel, and then
you cut, and you just follow the little white whispies, and it’s like the pig
is skinning itself—it shows you the way.
As
the meat is exposed, I can see some of the muscles twitching erratically. Huh . .
. so that’s a thing. I mean, this
animal was alive not too long ago; it is still warm. Working with warm meat
is new to me; it’s different, but not unnerving. It’s sort of . . . comforting, in a way. I continue to use the term “intimate” almost
every post to describe what it’s like getting inside (literally) our food.
And that’s the word; I mean, there is no better moniker for it.
While I’m skinning away, Eli takes
the tongue out of the hole he made in the throat earlier. He hums under his breath, almost
imperceptibly, as he works. Then he takes
off the jowls—ooh! This one I know! Let me do it!—I wish I’d spoken up,
because he was not as gentle and precise with the face bacon as Foster taught
me to be. I want to yell, “Aaah! That’s precious, don’t you know?!?!” He doesn’t do it wrong by any means; he just doesn’t possess the reverence that I do
from knowing what wonderful culinary creations can be coerced from pig
jowl. Plus, he’s been butchering for so
long I bet he can do it in his sleep. By
this point he’s completely mutilated the neck; it is just one huge bloody
unrecognizable laceration, but that will make it easier to remove the head.
He makes a cut all the way around
the neck, then twists the head and crack-crack-crack
breaks it off. I stop what I’m doing and
straighten up. That . . . was . . . awesome.
We hoist her up a little higher—up
to this point, her head was still on the ground because neither one of us is
particularly tall—and open up the chest cavity.
The only part of this whole experience that made me briefly wrinkle my
nose was the first time I watched Eli skin around the tail and sphincter area,
but all I thought was, Well of course
there’s still poop in there. He then comes back to the open body cavity
and knifes around behind all the organs to release everything; the kidneys stay
inside; we remove and keep the heart and liver; take the gall bladder off. He has me throw everything else in the Gut Room.
“Don’t
fall in the Gut Room”—Eli’s favorite phrase for someone lugging viscera into
the barrels.
Yeah
they have a Gut Room. Guess what goes in
there? The floor of the Gut Room sits
about four feet below the floor of the kill room . . . however, the tops of the
barrels sit just above the floor of
the kill room, so you can’t just kick everything down into a barrel, you have
to lift it, then drop it. And seven full cow stomachs with intestines
attached . . . not like tossing out your usual bag of rubbish. Another disadvantage of the Gut Room: once you get the heavy stuff into a barrel,
the intestines will follow like a snake’s tail, but due to that barrel height,
the very end of the train of offal flips upwards as it slips in, flinging
intestinal goo upwards at a high rate of speed, so you have to get your face
out of the way pretty fast as well, otherwise you get a mouth full of innard
slop.
The pig is then cut in half down the
spine with a small electric saw, rinsed off, weighed, and rolled into the
cooler by way of the rail system hanging from the ceiling.
Soon as we set foot in the packing
room, the guys start railing on us—especially the boss.
“Never seen anybody take over an
hour just to do one pig!”
Eli shrugs, “Wha—I had to teach
her!”
“Yeah, he had to walk me through
it.”
“Don’t
. . . get . . . pissy,” Rob says with
a devious little half-grin.
I retort sarcastically, “Then don’t be a dick!”
A collective “Ooooh!” of approval
goes up from the rest of the group.
Rob
says, “This one pushes back; I like her.”
We eat the boss’s chili for lunch,
as well as some homemade pizza Eli cooked.
To show off what my shop can
do, I brought our smoked beef tenderloin and house-made horseradish sauce to
dip it in, our beef jerky, Burt’s Creole (jambalaya, sort of), and some of the
house-cured, cold-smoked sassafras bacon you may recall from “Sizzling,” as
well as deer sausage I got from a guy at my day job.
The rest of the day is spent in the
packing room. The insults fly fast and
furious around here; I wish I had a better memory and could’ve written down
more of the good jabs we took at each other.
Evan
is the only one who works the bone saw—because he’s the only one with health
insurance—he handles the big stuff. I
watch him do a few sides of beef; he is as deft with the bone saw as the others
are with their knives. He pretty much
breaks down an entire quarter of beef using the saw. Nobody requests tenderloins; everyone orders
steaks, which is odd to me because we can’t keep the case stocked with
tenderloin at my shop, it sells so well.
(“My” shop . . . I take a lot
of pride in comparing the two, though they are nothing alike. But at least I can brag that I didn’t come
into this blind; I have experience, I’ve had my hands inside a dead animal
before.)
Travis
bones out everything that doesn’t get made into steaks, cuts the big chunks
into stew meat, everything else goes for the grind, which Eli is currently
manning. They throw a lot of fat into
the grind; they call it 85% lean and double grind it—it comes out quite
pink. You may recall Tommy shaking a
tenderloin strap at me, explaining how our chuck is some of the best in town. Very little fat goes into ours, and it’s
typically dark red after being triple-ground.
They also have something called Cube Steak down here, which I’d never
heard of before: it’s tenderized steak
(run through a cuber—quicker than using a mallet) that’s typically used for
making chicken-fried steak. Sawyer and I
wrap and stamp everything for the freezer; he keeps a dutiful eye on me so I
don’t screw anything up.
We’re all discussing our plans for
the evening. Rob is going to his
daughter’s volleyball game.
Eli salaciously inquires, “The hot
one?”
Rob rolls his eyes, “Yes, ‘the hot
one.’” This is a game they have played
before. The daughter in question is
15.
“Why would you want to go do
that? Watching girls play sports is boring.”
Eli knows I am an athlete. And I know he’s saying this just to be a
dick, see what kind of reaction he’ll get out of me. So I decide to play along. I freeze my entire body, fix on a deadpan
expression, and slowly turn around until I see Eli, who has stopped grinding in
anticipation of my response, wearing a shit-eating grin on his face. I can only glare at him for a few seconds
before I succumb to laughter.
From over my shoulder, Sawyer says,
“That was awesome; I got to see that whole
thing.”
“So she can get offended!” the boss adds.
I
am not the first female they’ve ever had in this shop, though you wouldn’t know
it based solely on the way they act around me; guess I just bring out the best
in everyone.
Cleanup starts around 3:30 or 4:00
and takes about an hour. The Kill Floor
gets sprayed down with bleach; the packing room gets disassembled, scrubbed
down, and rinsed; I offer to do dishes since that, at least, is familiar to
me. Despite the latex gloves I wore in
the bleach-heavy water, I think the water was so hot that I actually burned all
the tips of my fingers. Instead of
complaining, I offered to do dishes the second and third days as well. The boss comes by and sets a can of Busch
next to me. My eyes widen in confusion,
surprise, and glee.
“. . . Do you want the beer?” he asks, unable to decipher my expression.
“Uh . . . wuh—yeah!” I stammer. Best.
Boss. Ever. A girl could get used
to this.
Thus ends day one in the adventures
of The Traveling Butcher’s
Apprentice. Stay tuned, kiddos, we’ve
still got two more days to get through.
And,
just because I don’t have any pictures to share from the first day, here’s a photo
of my new apron.
No comments:
Post a Comment