roastin pigs

I think about kneeling down next to the cinder block oven and blowing and inhaling a lot of smoke, but also seeing the coals glow, and feeling an enormous satisfaction -- seeing fire smolder curling bits of cardboard, and feeling calm. I think about standing next to the outline of bricks and foil that I measured out in the dark, and hearing the murmur of other voices out alive in the Friday night, and the crickets and the rats too -- all of that rustling around me, but the foundations of the smoker standing silent and clean.

I think about Anna bringing the poor dead bastard in the back of a cab. Rather: I think about Anna getting up before first light, hauling ass in a cab over to Eastern Market, waiting, in her brisk way, for her pig. Matter-of-factly lifting it into the trunk. I think about how she did it in a dress. I think about both of us swinging our porky bride over the threshold. Hustling him down the stairs to the backyard. How we set him down together on a table out back and cut him out of his horrible, child-sized cardboard coffin, and rubbed him down with pepper and salt, and poked the bristles left on his nose, but also were like "your ass is ours." 

This was probably not a remarkable thing for some people, or even many people, to do. Cooking a pig I mean. But I think it was for two women who had no history of this intertwined with their upbringings, who had no reason to do this other than a desire to smoke a whole animal and feed someone with it. 

I think about my mom at Home Depot lifting the blocks with me into her van, on her birthday, a couple of weeks before the party. I think about me telling her to take a break, and her telling me, "But I want to."

I think about what feeling powerful means. Is it having the appetites of 50 plus people bent to your will? Is it charring a not-small animal's flesh, is it making fires, is it using two knives at once, is it moving heavy objects. Is it telling men how you want something to be built, and showing them how to do it, and then watching them follow your directions. Is it drinking beer next to meaty puffs of smoke. Is it all some kind of posturing? Is it deciding you want something because you want it, and teaching yourself how to do it, and doing it. 

And this too, sans fire and knives, needs mentioning: the cadre of women, some friends, some strangers, who assembled in the kitchen and began to clean. Relief at the fact that just at the moment when being horizontal on the living room carpet seemed most appealing, then came their silent move in on the wreckage. Feelings of tenderness and bitterness blooming in the chest at seeing certain patterns played out on a small scale. 

I meant it when I said I would do it for a living; I meant it when I said there will be a lamb roasting in that same spot come the crispness of the last days of fall.