1
On a steel-cold January morning with the frozen lake booming and the wind whining along the telephone wires—a morning so cold that the pump in the kitchen was frozen and three inches of ice capped the stock tanks—the Brailsfords rolled out at four to begin butchering. They left the deep warmth of their feather-beds, came down the narrow, precipitous back stairs worn in hollows by years of weary feet.
Early Ann thawed the pump with hot water from the tea kettle; Sarah started the oatmeal, ham and eggs, toast and coffee. Gus scratched a peep-hole in the hoar frost on the window pane and looked out into the ten-below moonlight.
"It's a cold day to butcher," Sarah said. "Mightn't we wait a few days, Stanley?"
"Hank Vetter says he ain't got a pork chop left in his shop."
"I suppose if we must, we must."
The men pulled on arctics, wrapped red mufflers about their necks, drew on their worn dogskin coats and fur caps, and taking milk pails and lanterns went out to the barns. They had no time this morning to carry water for the stock. They chopped holes in the ice on the tanks; drove the animals out to drink. The water froze as it streamed from the beasts' lips. Breath froze in white clouds about the horses' nostrils. The great bull, led by the nose, bellowed and snorted in the lantern light. The horses' hooves rang on the frozen mud of the barnyard.
"It's a rip snorter today," said Stud, coming in from the barns. He warmed his hands over the roaring stove.
Sarah dipped him hot water from the reservoir and poured it into the wash basin. She hung his coat toward the fire to keep it warm, and hastened to serve the breakfast. While they ate they argued the all-important problem of which animals were to die; and by five-thirty they were ready to begin the day's work.
Sarah, steeling herself for the ordeal; Early Ann, who pretended she did not mind slaughtering; Gus, who had a sentimental fondness for every animal on the place; and Stud, for whom this day was the climax of the hog-raising season, trooped down the hill to the slaughter house, started a fire in the stove, and carried water to fill the great iron kettle just outside the slaughter house door.
Stud began whetting his knives on his butcher's steel, making a sound which cut through Sarah's flesh like a blade. He liked to whet knives. And he could not deny it, he liked to slaughter. He had the finest butchering equipment of any farmer on Lake Koshkonong. Sticking, boning, and skinning knives in their rack—the steel blades and brass studs in the rosewood handles gleaming in the lantern light; the biggest butchering kettle in the township; the best pair of hand-wrought gambrels, hung from the finest reel on the strongest hickory axle.
Some farmers still carried away the blood in buckets, but Brailsford had built himself a slanting trough. His heavy cleavers with their hickory handles, his meat saws, hog hooks, scrapers, chopping block and sausage machine were the best that money could buy.
As always, Sarah felt an agony which she would not show. She could not understand that quality in Stanley which made him enjoy killing,—enjoy going out at night to knock the sparrows out of their nests in the straw to wring the necks of the drowsy, blinded birds. At haying time, too, he was careless of the rabbits and half-grown quail as he drove his mower through the timothy and clover. Sometimes when she lay beside him at night she thought of his God-like power to give life and to take it away.
Sarah's job on the farm was to feed, nurse and tenderly raise. She supposed that Stud must kill. And yet it frightened her to think that she and her family were no more secure from death than these animals. When the time came God would take them all as easily and with as little ceremony.
"Go get the hogs," Stud shouted to Gus. "And, Early Ann, you start the fire under the kettle."
Out of their warm hog house the pigs and sows were driven by the hired man's boots. They were herded across the pig yard, littered with thousands of corn cobs from the tons of corn they had eaten. They went in a complaining, squealing drove past the soul-satisfying mudholes (now frozen) where they had wallowed during the summer. They grunted and clambered over one another as they were shunted into the slaughter house.
Early Ann, meanwhile, was starting the great fire of hickory and oak under the black iron kettle mounted on its tripod. The red and yellow flames licked up around the kettle, made a scene in the darkness which might have accompanied an early witchburning on the wind-swept New England shore. Sarah was singing a hymn as she cleaned the sausage machine:
"Sweet the Sabbath morning,
Cool and bright returning...."
Then:
"The lovely spring has come at last;
The rain is o'er, the winter past...."
"Bring them on," cried Stud. He stripped off his mittens, picked up the big sledge, spit on his hands and rubbed them on the smooth, yellow hickory handle. He tested his strength with a couple of preparatory swings, striking the sledge against the base of the twelve-by-twelve hickory upright in the center of the building. His blows shook the roof.
"Send me a big one, Gus."
The squealing of the pigs had by this time become terrific. The crackle of the flames in the fire under the kettle, the thud of Stanley's sledge, the shouts of Gus herding the pigs, the sweet, clear notes of Sarah's singing filled the great, old building.
"Send me a big one, Gus. We'd better get going. It's lighting up in the east."
Just as the edge of the sun appeared, sparkling like red fire across five miles of frozen lake, Gus lifted the narrow sliding door and booted a sow through the opening. "Crack, crack" went the big sledge on the sow's skull. The pigs screamed and plunged about in their pens. Quickly, now, they hooked the gambrels through the tenons of her hind legs, heaved and sweat on the big pulley, lifted the sow clear of the floor and snubbed the rope around a post. Stud reached for his sticking knife, slit the sow's throat; the blood poured into the trough beneath. There were horrid sounds of breath gurgling through the slit throat.
All day they labored. They slaughtered six hogs and two young steers, cleaned sausage casings, ground and stuffed sausage, coiled it in tubs carefully. They scalded pigs and scraped them white and smooth, then hung them up to freeze. They set aside a pail of blood for blood pudding and blood gravy.
Stud sweat like a draft horse despite the chill of the building. His big muscles worked like fine, heavy machinery. He was as happy as a lark until they drove Ulysses S. Grant into the slaughtering pen. Then his heart misgave him.
Ulysses, whom he had raised and tended so carefully. Ulysses whom he had displayed so proudly at fair after fair. The great boar whom he loved and hated, pampered and fought. But it could not be helped. His breeding days were over. He was fierce and dangerous. A menace to have about the farm. Ulysses Jr. would have to take his place.
The boar's eyes gleamed wickedly as he stood with feet apart, waiting. He smelled the blood, but he did not scream. He was ready for his last fight and unafraid.
Stud trembled as he spit on his hands and picked up the heavy mall.
"Let him come, Gus. Get out of the way, girls."
He raised the sledge high above his head and brought it down with every ounce of his strength squarely between the animal's eyes.
Then he dropped the sledge to the ground and cried like a baby.