Have Knives, Will Travel - Part III

DAY 3

Valentine’s Day.

I didn’t want to miss any of the cows today so I made Eli set his alarm extra early.  When it goes off, I mutter, “Five more minutes Mom . . .”

Eli gets out of his bed, stomps over to the futon where I lay, and whacks me in the head with a pillow. 

Happy fucking Valentine’s Day. 

When we get to the shop, we find one cow has already been broken down into sides, and there are no more waiting in the pens out back. 

“Oh no . . . were they fuckin’ with us?” Eli asks.  There are supposed to be five cows in the kill log for today.

We set to work in the packing room for the time being, but soon enough, a trailer backs in to unload three cattle into the pens.  These cows are more than hesitant; they flat out do not want to leave the trailer.  I want to watch how the guys get them to move, but I can’t get too close—Eli tells me to stay around back, out of sight. 

Once they finally cross the threshold and get down the ramp toward the pens, they are each gated separately.  The door to the Kill Floor is opened, and one cow is prodded through into a makeshift pen assembled from two large metal gates that swing out from the walls, enclosing the cow in the corner.  The beef slaughtered this morning is still hanging nearby, hasn’t been pushed to the cooler yet, but the blood has been washed away because the scent will spook the new cattle.

Evan is the only one they let slaughter cattle.  He uses a .22 caliber rifle between their eyes, then stabs down one side of the neck to get the jugular.

I stand in the bathroom to watch; door slightly ajar, gloved palms over my ears because my fingers still have a bit of blood on them.

Cows kick for a lot longer than pigs.  This one moans a little bit, despite the gushing hole in the side of its neck.  It even manages to somewhat get its feet under it at one point and make a feeble attempt to stand.

A lot of blood comes out of a cow.

One cow fell inwards towards the center of the room rather than against the wall; its head ended up covering one of the drains and blood just kept pooling up around it, thicker and thicker, deeper and deeper . . . the previously skinned and eviscerated sides of beef overhead still wet, warm, and twitching. 

The cow is done pretty much the same as the pig, but do you have any idea how big cows are?  Do you?  Cows.  Are.  Huge.  Four hundred pounds a side—that’s eight hundred pounds, minus the hide, head, hooves, and all the internal stuff—none of which is exactly light.  So call it a thousand pounds live.  That’s half a ton.  That’s over eight times my body weight.  Even when they’re done, pushing the four hundred-pound sides along the railing (over three times my body weight!!) leaves me out of breath. 

They had me drag a full hide into the Gut Room (“Don’t fall in the Gut Room,” apparently is also Sawyer’s favorite thing to say).  Hides are kept separate from the rest of the “guts” and sold.  It took me a while—I had to drag it bit by bit, trying to grip the warm hairy side rather than the slippery underside.  It took me longer than them, but I managed.  I think they just liked watching me struggle.  Everything takes me longer right now, but I can do it.  I can do this, I just have to be patient with myself and hope my instructors can do the same.  I’m half their size, so certain parts of the job take me twice as long (not unlike doing pigs with Foster). 

I hadn’t considered how much fecal matter the hide and hooves would have on them, but it doesn’t really bother me since I have gloves on. 

The cow is skinned on its back, one front hoof chained and suspended from the pulley system.  Blade up, so you’re not cutting the hair into the meat; hair is more difficult to get off of meat than excrement.  Travis takes the three unfettered hooves off by slicing around the joint until thick synovial fluid leaks out, severing all the cartilage, then twisting outwards and breaking them off with a hollow POP.  Eli makes two cuts underneath the jaw, pulls the tongue out of the hole in the throat, cuts it off, and tosses it on what I’ve come to call the Organ Table. 

Then the cow gets hoisted up by the tendons of its back legs, same as the pig, and the remaining hoof is removed.  Most of the hide is off by now, except for the head, which they take off by twisting it and breaking the neck—no tools required.  Every time someone does this I cannot help but think of the line from Super Troopers when they’re chugging syrup:  “I am all that is man!”  They’re never patient enough to let me do one, though.  There are three of us working on each one, and they move quick. 

I feel like I have to tone down my enthusiasm around these guys.  I mean, I’m really excited to be doing this stuff, but they do it every day—to the point where they find it monotonous, like they’re just going through the motions.  I can tell that Eli doesn’t like it when I introduce him as “My friend Eli—Eli the butcher,” because he doesn’t identify with it the way that I want to.  So when a thought like, Holy shit I’m skinning a cow! runs through my head, I keep it there . . . play it cool . . . no big deal, just . . . casually . . . skinning a thousand-pound beast. . . .  

Next you take a knife and carve down either side of the sphincter, then go around back and cut it free from the tail and spine, then push it forward again.  Now you can deal with the tail much more easily.  I watch Eli cut a slit straight down through the hide, cut it away a little bit on either side; I’m expecting him to keep scraping away the seams when suddenly he grips the little flaps he has cut away and R-I-I-I-P . . . two-thirds of the tail is peeled.  Seriously.  Cut the oxtail off at the top, and where the hide stops, put it with the offal.

Now that the entire hide is off, you take a hand saw and split the pelvic bone.  You may recall my old nemesis the hand saw from Pig Day with Foster?  Well it turns out they’re a lot easier to use when they have sharp blades!  Once again this is something that takes me a long time to get through because I simply don’t possess the upper body strength the guys do.  But I am determined, and once the saw is through, the bone splits with a definitive POP. 

I exhale as I hand the saw back to Eli, “That’s the most satisfying thing I’ve done in a while.”

A verbal sigh emits from the body cavity as the internals settle.

Now, there are two different versions of what happened next.  From my perspective, without telling me to stop cutting, Eli kept sticking his hand in front of my knife to show me where next to cut before I was done cutting, so I kept sticking his hand.  In his viewpoint, he would show me where to cut and I’d go to cut it before his hand was out of the way.  It’s not like I broke skin, though, so I don’t know what his problem was. 

Oh, and you have to take the “wiener” (Eli’s term) off, too.  A long thin rubbery tube, it sits (on this particular cow, anyways) just to the right of center, under the skin.  Just get your knife underneath and slice down till it’s out, then up till you reach where it starts, and snip.  It’s not quite as emasculating as it sounds, since the bull’s already been castrated.  (Still . . . I cut off a cow’s dick!!)

You split through the skin and the casing holding all the organs in, bit by bit, till you get down far enough that all the heavy stomachs are ready to come tumbling out, and then you have to slit it fast before everything spills out on you.

While this is happening, you are also cutting out what’s holding everything in from behind . . . diagonal downward cuts through the diaphragm reveal what you need.  This is the point where most of my head and arms were inside the cow’s body cavity so I could see what I was doing.  (My HEAD is inside a COW right now!)  You leave the kidneys and all the fat holding them in.  Since I was too slow, the liver started ripping on me—pulled down by all the other heavy organs still attached to it—and Eli had to go in and cut it out quickly because that’s one of the organs we keep.  (As Dan Akroyd a la Julia Child would say:  “Saaave the livah!”)

When I watch Sawyer do this, he does it a little differently from how Eli showed me.  I point this out to him. 

His response is, “That’s because Eli . . . does it wrong.”

 

 

                I cut most of the heart out of its casing, Eli helps me at the end, then thrusts it into my hands so I can take it over to the table with the other offal.  Later on I tell Rob, “Eli gave me a heart for Valentine’s Day.”

Rob says, “Aw, how sweet.”

“Yeah, it was still bleeding.”

Now he gets the joke.  “Awwww. . . .” 

Now all the insides are on the outside, Eli stabs two holes in the casing around the stomachs, the sudden outflux of air blows my hair back, and . . . a smell is expelled . . . the likes of which I’ve never encountered.  Count yourself among the lucky if you’ve never had the pleasure of inhaling the partially digested contents of a cow’s stomach.  I could list off every synonym for the word “putrid” and not even their powers combined would do it justice.  Just keep in mind that this is matter midway through the process of becoming shit . . . and yet, I am currently surrounded by the scent of said shit, and said shit smells pleasant in comparison.

The two cuts have a purpose though:  they are the handles I will use to drag all of this offal to the Gut Room (“Don’t fall in the Gut Room!”).  This is yet another task I manage similarly to the cow hide—slowly, yet determinedly.   

The cow is split down the backbone with the same saw that was used on the pig, which seems odd to me since the cow’s spine is so much thicker than the pig’s, but it works.  Typically, the spinal cord will end up on one side or the other; you just dig your knife in under it and pull/cut it out. 

While they split the beef I hose off the heavy, slippery organs.  The heart is kind of fun, because you stick the hose in one ventricle, and red liquid shoots out another; keep pumping water through it until everything runs clear.  Then you stab an S-shaped hook through the tip of the tongue, the meatiest part of the tail, and the bottom of the heart, hang them up, and the liver goes on its own hook. 

 

(The organs as they hang in the beef cooler.)

Sometimes the cows are so large that parts of their severed necks and forelegs reach the ground even when they are raised to the very height of the ceiling rails.  In this case, you take a long thin S-hook, stick one end through the frayed neck meat, pull it up, and stick the other end in between two vertebrae.  For the “arm,” you stab a slit in the belly meat near where you split open the body cavity; knot one end of a long strand of twine through that slit, and tie the other around the arm.  Pull it tight until the foreleg is lifted off the ground. 

Then they’re weighed, rinsed, and pushed into the cooler; the offal is tagged and hung on a bar separate from the carcasses. 

Four cows killed, skinned, and eviscerated by lunchtime.  I think that might be the most productive I’ve ever been in my life before 1pm.

 

 

(A few valentines I received from friends.)

 After lunch, Eli and I set to work in the packing room; Sawyer works on cleaning out the livestock pens. 

“So, did you enjoy cutting up cows?” Evan asks.

“Yeah, it was really fun!”  (I cut off a cow’s dick!) 

He chooses his words carefully, “You . . . are . . . a . . . strange girl. . . .”

“Yeah.”  Do “normal” girls take time off from their paying day jobs to come here and work for free?  Don’t think so. 

While I’m wrapping an order, Rob walks behind Evan and tries to smack his ass, but Evan deftly blocks him. 

Eli laughs, “Can’t touch that!”

Rob nods at me, “I bet she could, though.”

Evan shakes his head and keeps cutting.

“What do you think?”

I think that this is one area where I might be a bit quicker than the guys, so I put down what I’m doing, leap over to Evan’s side and throw my arms around his shoulders so his right arm is pinned down; his left is free, but it’s his knife hand, so he politely keeps it still.  There’s about two seconds while everyone’s jaws drop at the fact that he’s not fighting me off, then they all shout their approval. 

When Evan clocks out the guys tell him he needs to give me a hug goodbye.  I am washing dishes.  He is hesitant.  We already hugged, after all.  One a day might be his limit.  I hold my arms out and expose all my teeth in a huge, “How could you not love me?” smile.  Evan abstains, un-tempted by the flesh.

I shrug and say to no one in particular, “Eh, who wants to hug a wet chick covered in meat, anyways?”

“Hey, if that’s all I get, I’ll take it!” Eli yells.

“Eli needs a girlfriend,” Rob says, “you got any dumb friends?”

“She does; the dumbest is standing right here.”  Eli points to himself.  Beat ‘em to the punch and they can’t really get ya.   

Before I leave, I remind them of all the food they haven’t tried yet:  the bacon, the Creole, and there’s still jerky in the fridge. 

“Dang, you really did bring a lot of food,” Rob comments.

Eli says, “Yeah, she takes care of her man—men.”

Yup, too bad I can’t find one able to recipro—you know what?  Fuck that.  I have so many amazing men and women in my life who are ready to kill or die for me at the drop of a hat, and who I would go to the ends of the earth for as well . . . that line of thinking is just uncalled for.  Life’s too short to waste time on hypothetical people who aren’t even a part of your life; your time should be spent appreciating the ones who are.  

When I say goodbye to Sawyer, he offers his hand; I look at him like he’s nuts and clasp him in a tight hug.  The boss gets a hug, too; when we pull apart he says, “Ooh, you smell good!”

“Really, ‘cause I just had my head inside a cow.”

“Come back any time; we like having you here. When you’re here, Eli actually does work!” 

A few days later I jokingly ask Eli if he thinks Evan misses me.

            “Um, I think all of us miss you, because when you’re not there . . .  it’s a shop full of dudes.” 

            So, in the final analysis:  could I do this? 

            An emphatic hell yes; I could spend all day on that Kill Floor, skinning and eviscerating. 

            Is this what I wanted, though?

            Unfortunately, no.  I would not want to spend all day watching someone else break down a cow with a bone saw.  My endgame is to learn how to do the breaking down myself, with a knife (and a hand saw for the tough parts).  I definitely want to go back, though, to do more hogs, and deer once it’s in season again.  Maybe I’ll even get to slaughter something next time.  There is still much to learn.  I must journey onward, until I reach my goal. 

As I write this, I am back at my day job, sitting behind a desk, wearing dress pants and a cardigan, my hands noticeably devoid of grime, the snow and the wind whipping away outside this building of steel and glass . . . and I’d much rather be wearing a blood-smeared rubber apron, hair tied back under a bandana, standing over a warm bovine corpse, knife in hand . . .

My phone buzzes, receiving a text from Eli:  “Killing and scalding 9 hogs today.”

All I can think is . . . I can’t wait to go back. 

 

(A few pictures Eli took of cow’s blood pooling on the Kill Floor.  He posted them on Facebook and I commented, “Nothin’ says lovin’ like congealed cow’s blood!”  Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.)

One final note:  I didn’t realize that comments were only enabled for “registered users” (whatever the hell that means) but I fixed the settings so that anyone can comment.  If you have tried to comment before and were unable to, I apologize.  Thanks for reading!