Slaughterhouse Fay


I saw a man walking a pig down Market St. today. The distinctive gate of Mr. pig and his gentle "groink" barely audible above the traffic, bought forth a series of memories from my childhood...

If you follow Indiana state highway 14 several miles west from the house I grew up in, the subdivisions give way to singular ranch houses and farm fields. Eventually you will cross highway 9 and just beyond there is a long dirt drive that used to lead to Fay and Edna White's farm (the land has since been sold).

I was around ten years old when my parents left me with the Whites while they enjoyed a long deserved vacation alone....the following are fragments of memories from that time

Fay, minus one ear (lost to a corn picker), big as a barn with massive hands, was a gentle man with a musical voice he rarely used. I don't remember anything he said, just the sound. Fay was kind and warm like a well built fire and was always on his way to do something like all farmers. You saw him in passing, usually carrying something.

I was awakened before dawn to eat the biggest breakfast I have ever seen. Edna, large and sweet as cream, Must have been up for some time preparing eggs, sausages, corn cakes, hashbrowns and toast in enormous portions. We stuffed ourselves, washed it all down with cold, fresh juice and made for Fay's 18 wheeler sitting dirty next to the barn in sticky tire waked mud...already loaded with hogs...who made sounds and smelled ripe and ready for delivery.

My excitement faded as the great hulking beast belched black smoke and we lurched and bounced to the highway, the roar of the engine scouring my ears. There would be no radio...just gear after gear, light after light, no talking...just highway and the empty expanse of fields and barns and clumps of trees.

Still painfully full we stopped for doughnuts. Fay placed an assorted dozen on the dashboard and wolfed them down in between shifts. I ate one somehow and started thinking about our cargo. Do they know what awaits them. Obviously they don't, but what if they could? Maybe they'd stage a daring escape attempt while being offloaded...perhaps concentrated ankle biting and sheer numbers could overwhelm us.

We made our way into Ohio and unfamiliar landscapes. The road began winding and hills appeared. I was sinking into a kind of hysterical boredom not uncommon in childhood when trapped in an adult time frame without the ability to be preoccupied or to escape. Each second, every bump in the road that caused the cab to bounce wildly, was pure torture.

Suddenly we turned off the road into a large yard half filled with other big rigs. There was a run down looking house stuffed with big men in flannel shirts. We settled in for the biggest hamburgers I have ever seen and wide cut fries and apple pie. I wanted to stay, to avoid the rotten endless torture of the road.

By early afternoon we arrived at a small whitewashed building where our cargo would be slaughtered. I had almost forgotten about them and their fate, consumed by boredom and anger at my captivity.

And what about them? I suddenly felt that I was just like a goddamn pig...I was carted around by adults, told what to do by adults, forced to stand in line at school, allowed outside into a large field for small portions of each school day.....my pals and I....like talking farm animals.....

I had always hated the regimentation of school....and for the first time it occurred to me that being controlled by others, being controlled by other people's clocks and whims.....might not end when I was finished with school.....I was sour as hell, feeling the distance from home and the strange automation of the world that becomes invisible....just "the way things are".

I watched the piggies trot down a dirty wooden ramp through a greasy flap to awaiting knives and felt ill...not out of pity for them...but pity for us.

Fay seem relieved. He joked with a man behind a sliding window, signed some things and returned to the truck with a large white package.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Dinner", he said.

Back at the farm we gorged on pork steaks and then retired to the TV room to watch the Waltons. Having been pounded into exhaustion by the suspensionless rig and the days caloric intake, I sprawled out on the floor, grateful for the television's static numbness.

I kept dozing and lost track of the story line. As John Boy learned some bitter life lesson, I looked up at big Fay to see tears streaming down his face.

He sniffled into a hanky and said "Mother it's time for bed".