Morning Sacrifice

“Think about hamburger,” I said to my daughter. She was holding her nose against the acrid smell of warm manure.

The man pulled faded yellow waterproof overalls over his narrow hips and snapped the fasteners on his black rubber boots. He hooked a chain around his waist. A knife sharpener and a metal knife holster with two knives dangled from the chain. One knife was short and straight, and the other longer and curved. He was a priest ready for sacrifice.

“I’ve never done a school class before. We made a movie once. And I’ve had people watch. But I’ve never done a school class before.”

The fuchsia sunrise had faded to steely gray. The wind was picking up.

He pulled a rifle from his truck, loaded it, and crossed the fence into the pasture. The three steers huddled warily together. They blew steam from their nostrils and watched.

He stood ten feet away from the biggest one, Number 6. He aimed and shot Number 6 in the forehead. The steer stumbled and fell over on his side, his back legs bicycling the air. The man knelt beside it and pulled the trigger again. There was a muffled sound and the steer kicked some more.

He walked to the second one, mooing softly. He shot again, and the second steer thumped to the ground on its front knees and then fell sideways, eyes rolling back. It kicked, but not as much as Number 6. The third steer walked slowly away, toward the back of the pasture. The man took a feed bucket and knocked it to get the steer’s attention. He mooed again, and the steer walked back toward him. He shot, and it went down.

He took his short straight knife from the metal holster and knelt beside Number 6. Number 6 was still twitching and kicking. He cut jaggedly into the loose skin at the neck, reached in and cut the carotid artery. Dark blood spilled through the opening in the skin. Number 6 kicked some more and more blood spilled out. It steamed on the brown grass.

He backed the truck into the pasture and hoisted Number 6 up by one leg on the lift.

“Do you want to see all the organs?” He had blood on his forearms and on his overalls.

We nodded.

He cut out the tongue, rinsed it from the tank on the truck, and dropped it into a white bucket lined with a plastic bag. “Take a look.” It was bluish, rough, and very long. The blood on my hands dried and my hands began to freeze.

He skinned and cut off the head, then tossed it over. Something bright green spilled out. I thought it was brains, then realized it was Number 6’s last meal spilling from his esophagus. I pulled the jaws open. The upper incisors were chewed flat. Its cheek muscles twitched in his bloody hairless face.

He laid the rest of Number 6 on a gurney. He had cut off the lower legs as well as the head. He made a neat slice down the middle of the chest with the curved knife and carefully pulled back the hide as he slid the knife between the skin and the muscles. Before long, Number 6 was bare.

He spread the stumps of Number 6’s back legs and hooked them to a steel bar. He raised the bar. Number 6 hung there like an enormous turkey on a cross.

The man plunged his straight knife into the abdomen. The muscles on what used to be Number 6’s haunches twitched. He snipped some tissue and the entrails fell to the ground. With his knife he made two hand holds in the largest stomach, and dragged it all over to where we were standing.

“That’s the liver, and the heart. Here are the lungs,” he said flopping down two pink lumps marked by white tracery. The bladder was still half full of urine. He cut into the gall bladder and green bile spilled out. “It’s kind of sweet and sour.” He dipped his little finger in the bile and touched it to his tongue. “It’s a kind of seasoning.” While he pulled out a large saw to cut the carcass in half, we stretched out the small intestine. When we cut into the large intestine, thick green liquid fizzed up.

The air smelled of manure, drying blood, an aroma of death on the cold morning air. “Think of what it must have smelled like when Solomon slaughtered thousands of bulls for a feast.” My daughter was still holding her nose. She had the look of one ready to turn vegetarian. Bread and wine were just the thing as far as she was concerned.

On the drive home, we saw a small herd of elk running together through a harvested field. I thought of Number 6, muscles twitching, no longer alive but not yet dead.

“Well, that’s all finished,” I said. “What do you want for breakfast?”