Halloween Hogs and Clown Face

   

  Eva was coming back to town to collect her deer from my freezer.  I texted the general manager at the Preserve to book a hog hunt for that Monday: Halloween.

    I called him a day prior to the hunt asking if I could use the rifle range.

    “Come on down, son!  You still hunting hogs with me tomorrow?”

    “Yes sir!  Is there a certain time I need to get there?”

    “Any time is fine.  Just head out to the stand.  I should have a guy out there to put corn down.  If there’s not corn out there by 7:30AM, CALL ME and I’ll send a guy!”

    I had long craved a hog hunt.  When I was younger, my family and I visited my cousin in Orlando, Florida and I looked forward to returning for a visit and heading south from there to hunt boar with hounds in the swamps.  I bombarded the guide services with questions for the next few years, lusting after that hunting trip.  But I never went.  I moved to Ohio, I grew older, I moved to Kentucky then back to West Virginia.  I never could find the time or the money to go.  I never lost that goal, though.

   When I moved to South Carolina at nineteen, I finally had the opportunity to pursue my dream.  I didn’t have dogs and I could never train my cat to sniff out a solid boar.  So I followed the tracks and the rooting and the wallows, but hogs have a wide range and I could never track them down.  Now that dream piggy was in my sights with the quick ding of a text message.  And I wasn’t sure how I felt about all that.  

    Eva arrived around 12:00PM, just slung open the door and walked right in.

    We hugged.

    “Want a cider?” I asked.  I was on my third.  “It’s ALMOST noon.”

    “No!” She replied.  “I have standards!”

    “About drinking before noon?”

    “No!  About cider!”

    “But…but…it’s Southern cider, straight from the Blue Ridge of North Cackalacky!”

    “I don’t care.”

    I showed her the charcuterie board I prepared with two different types of smoked sausages, cheeses, olives, pickles, artisan bread, and an assortment of mustards.

    “I’m not hungry.”

    Well fine, fuck it then.

    “Let’s go outside.  It’s nice out.” She said.

    “The cat hair done got you all hot and bothered, huh?”

    “I just took a Benadryl.  I’ve got about twenty minutes before it kicks in.”

    We sat on the front porch and I vaped.  Shockingly Eva pulled out an Elfbar and took a few hits.

    “I fucking hate you.” she said.

    “Ahhhhh…you couldn’t resist the vape!”

    “Now I’ve got to quit…again.”

    “Let’s go shooting!” I said.

    “I’m down.”

    “As soon as I finish my drink.”

    “So…I’m driving?” she asked.

    “Yup!”

    It’s always better to sight your rifle in with a buzz, that way the nervous shock of the kick doesn’t make you flinch.  A 30-06 with 150 grain bullets packs a bit of a punch.  I missed a buck three full times a week prior, so I needed to take that rifle back to the range and regain my confidence.  The scope was off.  At least that was the story I told around the campfire.  I needed it to kill pigs.  This was the only firearm I hadn’t spent good money on when I was a fancy rich lad.  It was your baseline Savage package with a cheap scope included.  The only 30-06 I could find at the time, it was the only weapon I bought that year I didn’t spend a grand or more on.  But I had broken it in with three deer, so at least until recently it had been reliable.  

    After swallowing the last of my cider we piled the rifles into Eva’s SUV.  I wore a shirt she made for the grand hunting weekend a few weeks prior.  “Deer and Beer is Why I’m Here!” the back read.  Cider and hogs were on my mind, but Hell…close enough.  

    As we drove down the road, I confided my misgivings about the hog hunt.

    “I messaged Dawson.” I said to Eva, taking a long drag from my vape.  “I told him ‘it’s how I always pictured my hog hunt: behind a high-fence with a porta-john adjacent to the stand, and a guy putting corn down for me.’  When I was younger I did a history project on ‘canned-hunts” and look at me now!  But it’s part of my membership.  I reckon it still eats the same whether it’s behind a fence or not.”

    Eva didn’t seem to care either way about my moral dilemma.  She was just excited to shoot guns that evening and hunt the next morning.  At the range I was up first with my 30-06.  The first shot was high.  I adjusted the sights but I was all over the place.  I realized I had two problems then.  First, my rifle was certainly off; the other was that I had developed a negative trait over the course of six huntless years of not firing a weapon—a trait that I was immediately broken of when I shot my first high-powered rifle at eleven years old.  I was flinching in anticipation of the shot.  The cider hadn’t helped.  With the added firepower of an extra 50 grains of lead more than I was previously accustomed to using a .243 for almost the entirety of my 24 year deer hunting career (save for the past two years), I noticed I jerked each time I pulled the trigger.  

    The next few shots I took deliberate care not to be anxious for the recoil.  With each passing shot, the bullets began to group and I could properly zero in the sight until I hit the bullseye each time.  I was both satisfied and disappointed in myself.  I was once a great hunter and crack shot.  In my twenties, I shot deer between the eyes because I didn’t want to follow a blood trail.  But now I was like a city-slicker holding a rifle for the first time.  How much of me had I lost over the years?  How much would come back?  Who was I anymore?  Here I was teaching Eva how to hunt and shoot and I had forgotten the very basics.

    Eva shot my .243 with successful groupings.  She even pulled out her rifle, also a .243, that I bought for her for Christmas the previous year.  Mounting the scope back in March, I was a bit tipsy and had lost one of the clamp screws, which she had not replaced.  I advised her against sighting in the weapon without the screw in place.  “You’d just have to sight it in again.” I affirmed.  Satisfied with our evening’s shoot, we returned back to my house and a roast from her deer slow-cooking in the crockpot for venison carnitas.

    “I fucked up.” I admitted.

    “How so?”

    “The bags aren’t labeled.  I thought I was pulling out a shoulder roast to thaw earlier but it turned out to be a sirloin tip.  I don’t know how this is going to turn out.”

    “Is a sirloin tip bad?”

    “It’s a lean cut.  So it won’t fall apart like a shoulder or a chuck.  I cut it into slices so hopefully the broth and the heat will make it more tender.”

    “I’m just happy we’re having tacos.”

    She was easy enough to please.  After six hours the meal was ready—street tacos with elote corn.  Eva fixed three tacos.  I fixed one.  I had been picking at the charcuterie board all evening.  

    “How are they?” I asked.

    “A little chewy, but good!  The corn is my favorite.”

    “It’s easy to make.” I added.

    “I can’t make this at my house.  I would eat too much.”

    The rest of the evening we drank Coors Banquet and watched Scooby Doo, like grown-ass adults.  And like grown-ass adults on the edge of middle-age, bedtime rolled around about 8:00PM.  Our jobs made us early rises and early sleepers.  What shadows we were of our former selves.  Shortly after we first met 15 years prior, Dawson and I walked from our dorms to Eva’s apartment shirtless, wearing flags as capes, and too drunk to drive, somewhere around 2:30AM.  We needed someone sober to drive us out for a late-night fast-food binge.  Lucky for us, Eva was still awake.  But those days were long behind us.  We were content with the simplicity of childhood cartoons, mediocre beer, and eight hours of sleep.

    The alarm clock went off at 4:30AM.  I hit snooze.  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!  I hit snooze again.  And again.  Around thirty minutes later I received a text message.  “Wake the fuck up!”  I did as instructed…after snoozing for one more round.  Eva was ready, as usual.  I still had to shower and stop by the gas station for energy drinks and water.  Somehow we made it though.  The sky was still dark and full of stars when I edged my truck up alongside the hog stand.

    The stand was a tall, spacious wooden box maybe twelve feet off the ground and on the line with the high-fence.  Well, it wasn’t so much “high” fence but about five feet tall and buried at the base.  But it still felt strange to not even be in the same enclosure as my prey.  I had this overwhelming feeling of shooting animals in a petting zoo, but I assured myself this was not quite the case.  On our hunting trip a year prior, we drove passed the enclosure and saw some hogs.  When they spotted us, they ran.  These weren’t tame, pen-raised hogs bred to be shot.  These were the descendants of wild hogs trapped on the property and placed in the enclosure to breed.  They could not escape, certainly.  And this was definitely not “hunting.”  But they were still wild animals.  Or so I apologized as such to the better nature in me.

    We sat in the truck for a while and talked.  I didn’t see the point in climbing into the stand and sitting in the dark for an hour.  The sky was beautiful as the twilight bled into the darkness and the stars faded and the dim rays of the rising sun crested onto the horizon.  I finished my energy drink.  We waited in the truck and dipped while listening to the Meateater podcast.  This wasn’t hunting, I told myself.  I used to drive miles down backcountry roads to some secluded spot I had found on a sleepless night eating Adderall and studying maps.  The hunting was hard.  Miles walked through briars and up and down ravines; most of the time with little luck.  But when I did get that deer, I felt like I earned it.  I felt connected to nature.  Now I felt like a weekend warrior and reminded of the Dead Kennedy’s album “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death.”  I never knew a stand so luxurious.  I felt disconnected from the one thing in life I treasured most and held sacred: the hunt.

    We climbed the stairs into the stand.  We had two comfortable computer chairs to sit in, windows with sliding glass, and a clear view of a large corn pile 75 yards to our front I could barely see in the dim light.  Eva sat to my left while I took the seat to the right.

    “I’m wearing the panties I killed my deer in.” she whispered.

    “So it’s good luck, huh?” I replied.

    We scanned the distance as a thin fog rose off the morning swamp.  Such comfort.  I couldn’t imagine someone actually paying $450-$650 for this “hunt.”  It was just included in my membership.  This was not hunting.  I leaned back in my chair as if I were at my computer, taking a break from writing.  I tossed out my dip and replaced it with a fresh pouch.  Eva leaned her head against the ledge and fell fast asleep.  I kept watch.  After about an hour I saw something dark brown or dark black race across the road, just behind the corn.  At first I thought it was a deer, but I couldn’t imagine deer being in here.  I couldn’t imagine them jumping that fence.  It must have been a boar, I told myself.  I tapped Eva on the arm.

    “Saw one!” I whispered.

    Her eyes grew wide and she started looking around.  She never saw it.  While she slept I snapped a picture of her and messaged Dawson.  “Saw one,” I wrote.  “Eva never did.  Haha.”

    “Did I snore?” She asked.

    “No.”

    We watched for a while but there was nothing moving anymore.  Pulling out our phones, we reverted to being millennials.  Eva played some game.  I checked my email, Facebook, checked the weather, and read the news.  Suddenly the air erupted with the numerous honks of migrating geese, so close I felt if I walked outside the door I could snatch one from the air with my hand.  Eva and I looked at each other.  We could hear dogs barking off in the distance.  Suddenly my Apple watch tapped me.  A text from Eva.

    “I’m just sitting here thinking how happy I am and that my only real drama is if some guy is running dogs too close to the stand scaring away the game.  Our lives are simple and I don’t want it any other way.”

    I nodded in agreement.

    A part of me ignored the canned-hunt aspect and focused on what hunting had always meant for me when I was a kid: spending time with people I loved and cared about.  Camaraderie.  In my twenties I hunted by myself for the most part, but as a kid I always had my grandfather, my uncle, and my cousin.  Only my cousin was left.  And he lived in West Virginia.  We hadn’t hunted together in twenty years, save for the time in 2020 when he took me on a coyote hunt the night before my uncle’s funeral.  Sharing something that meant so much to me felt good.  I was reminded of Eva’s first deer.  Her first duck.  Her first quail.  She was me at eleven.  I was my uncle, my grandfather.  Maybe I was leading her in the wrong direction, but she was having a good time.  

    I read the sign on the wall.

    “THIS HUNT IS GUARANTEED OPPORTUNITY, NOT GUARANTEED KILL.  ONCE YOU SHOOT, THAT IS YOUR OPPORTUNITY.  CALL xxx-xxx-xxxx ONCE YOU’VE SHOT AND STAY IN THE STAND.  IF THE HOG RUNS, MARK THE LOCATION AND WHICH DIRECTION IT RAN.  MAKE SURE YOUR TARGET IS CLEAR WHEN YOU SHOOT, YOU DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO PAY FOR TWO.”

    A speck of black raced across the road.  I tapped Eva again. 

    “There’s one.” I said.

    I could no longer see it.  Or even what it was.  I just assumed it was a piggy.

    “Oh!” she whispered.  “I see it!  It’s small!”

    “I can’t see it.” I whispered after a few minutes.  “Is it still there?”

    “Do you want to sit over here?” she asked.

    We switched seats and now I had a clear 100+ yard view long behind the corn pile.  Raising my rifle and resting it on the ledge of the stand, I peered through the scope.  I caught the head and neck of a small doe off in the distance, just below a short tree.  There were deer in here after all.

    “Do you see the deer?” I asked.

    “How the fuck am I going to see the deer when I’m sitting over HERE now!?”

    I kept my rifle at the ready.  Anxious, I began to shake.  Eva noticed.  I get real excited.  I’m pretty sure I have an undiagnosed panic disorder.

    About ten minutes later something brown ran across the road.  I could finally see it: a small boar.  Then out of the woods poured dozens of hogs.  Sows and boars, piglets.  I waited until they eased up to the corn pile.  I was uncertain of my shooting abilities and uncertain with my rifle.  A good-sized sow hit the corn with the brown boar.  She was black with a faint pale strip on her leg.  I pushed off the safety.  I placed the crosshairs just behind the front shoulder and steadied my breath.  I squeezed the trigger and didn’t flinch.  I was relearning something about myself, about who I was as a person.  I was losing something of myself, gaining, and losing in a vicious cycle.  The rifle erupted and down dropped the hog.  She kicked and tried to run while on her side.  She was done.  I was no longer a hunter, but I could shoot again.  I shot an animal on a canned-hunt.  But I didn’t want a trophy.  I wanted a 150-pound sow to cook and eat.  There was still a part of me there, beneath the immoral act I just committed.  But what was left of my soul?

    The other hogs scattered into the thick brush.  I was shaking.  It only took 4.5 hours and I didn’t feel like I had earned it.  But the rush of seeing an animal and putting it down excited me.  I felt bad and good, a speedball of emotions.  I couldn’t wait to make sausage and smoke a ham.  Eva was ecstatic.  She high-fived me.  “Good job!”  She took pictures as I studied the hog through my scope.  She had stopped moving.  My shot was good.  I regained my confidence as a marksman.  But my next move made me feel lesser of a sportsman.  I called the property manager.

    “I got a hog.” I told him.

    “How big was it?” He asked.

    “Decent size.”

    “I mean two, three hundred pounds?”

    “Less than two hundred.” I replied.

    “A good eating size then, huh?  Good!  We had a guy in here last week.  Shot one 45 pounds!  I was like Bo!  Why’d you do that!?”

    “Yeah.  She’s a good eating size.”

    “I’ll send a guy down there to unlock the gate.  You going to take it to a processor?”

    “I was hoping your guy would be here to skin it and quarter it and I can take it home to do the rest.  I just don’t have a place at my house to hang it.”

    “My guy’s off today.  I know a place just south of Florence.  They do a good job.”

    I reluctantly agreed.  I was fully capable of skinning my own hog, I just lacked the facilities.  I was a ten year veteran of the butcher business.  I could quarter a hog in just a few minutes.  This was another thing that weighed on my soul.  Skinning and butchering was always part of the hunt, an unspoken tradition after the shot.  It was another thing that connected you to your kill, to the experience, to nature and the food-chain, the order of things.  But that was gone now.  I felt disconnected from the sow, from the experience, from everything but my responsibility for taking a life.

    The outward part of me feigned excitement.  After all, I had just fulfilled a lifelong dream.  But it was not how I wanted it to go down.  It was like a guy losing his virginity to his high school sweetheart on prom night only to climax to the realization he had always secretly been gay.  Or like blacking out while talking to a girl you’re in love with and them reminding you the next day of all the sweet things you said and you just wish you could remember.  In both situations, you’re not fully present.  There’s a part of you that’s not into it, not there; you’re outside yourself like a phantom looking down on your body as you go through the motions, a part of you that doesn’t recognize or recollect the path you walked on to get to this point.  I was lost and my gut churned.

    Eva and I waited for the “guy” to come down and open the gate.  I drove my truck down to the hog and we lifted it up and threw it in the bed.  The right shoulder was separated from the body as if a skilled butcher had taken a boning blade and severed the scapula so that it dangled there from a few pieces of skin.  Maybe the 30-06 was too much?  In any case, that’s all there was to it.  Truck to stand.  Stand to truck.  No connection.  Outside the gate, I posed and Eva took a “grip and grin” with my phone.  Only I didn’t smile.  I never smile in pictures.  I closed the tailgate as blood dripped onto my bumper and I felt the odd sensation of driving down the road with people thinking I was a serial killer.

    I punched in the directions to the processor into my phone.

    “We’re going on a road trip.” I told Eva.

    “It’s ok.  I’m down.”

    “Make a right on Moree Road.” Siri demanded.

    We stopped at Family Dollar for more energy drinks and a gallon of water to rinse off my bumper.  Then it was back on our trek passed Florence.  

    “So I got this girl hired at work.  She used to work for me.” I confessed to Eva.  “I’m not sure how it’s going to go.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “These guys were like ‘she’s going to have to learn to work within the dynamic of a male-run department.’  I was thinking Jesus-fucking-Christ!  When I ran a market I had men and women, black, white, hispanic, asian.  I just don’t want her to feel out of place with all the jokes and stuff.”

    “Girls are worse than men!” Eva bellowed.

    “You think so?”

    “I was out at a party and I asked if anyone knew what ‘clown-face’ was and one guy threw up.  Do you know what that is?”

    “Clown face?  No.”

    “It’s where you go down on a girl on her period.  You come up and the bottom half of your face is just covered in blood.” she said, motioning to her chin.  “You come up looking like a clown.”

    “Oh, yeah.  I’ve been there.  I just didn’t know it was called that.”  I laughed.

    “Sometimes, you just gotta get the job done, boy!”

    We laughed.  

    “The best thing is when she tells you she’s over her period and she’s not and you’ve got blood on your face so you come up and give her a big kiss.”

    Eva laughed.

    “See what I mean!?  She’ll be alright.”

    “Yeah, I guess.  It’s not my responsibility to look after people anymore.”

    “You’re damn right.”

    We arrived at a very lively, busy processing facility.  Trucks lined up out front and about eight butchers sat on benches outside the building decked in blue protective gear.  Inside was a cute girl with dark hair answering phones and tending to customers.  I noticed a ring on her finger.  While she helped the customer in front of us, I browsed the pricing sheet.  $2.00/lb. for hog processing.  Goddamn, I thought, this is robbery!  I could go to my old company and BUY a hog for $1.89/lb. that came cleaned and butterflied.  I was literally providing the hog, but it seemed as though they expected me to BUY the meat BACK from them for their service.  I didn’t know what to do so I figured I would just go with the flow.

    “Y’all dropping off?” the cute girl asked.

    “Yes.”

    “Buck or doe?”

    “Hog.”

    She took my information and asked for a $50 deposit.

    “Just skin, hang, and quarter it.” I told her.  “I’ll do the rest at home.” 

     Eva and I walked back outside and a worker helped me carry the hog from my truck into the processing room.  That’s all I saw of her—through the scope, the back of the truck, and in the room.  No connection whatsoever.  I felt empty, like I had taken a life but given her death no meaning.  I would eat her, sure.  But there was no ceremony, no earned comfort, no satisfaction, or contentment.  Just a sense of remorse.  I was now no better than the rich fucks at the Preserve, giving little of me to the “hunt” but demanding the ultimate sacrifice from my quarry.  Just a weekend warrior now.  How far had I fallen from my twenties?  Could I ever make amends in the eyes of Mother Nature and the all-seeing eyes of my ancestor staring down from beyond the stars?  Would they forgive me?  Would they forever judge me?  Was I lost as I was in my youth staring down a rolled dollar bill at a line of white powder?

    “She was cute.” I said.

    “Yes she was.  I thought about walking out and letting you do your thing but then I saw the ring.  Then I saw her Sperry boots.  She’s high-maintenance.”

    “I noticed that too.  I was looking.  High-maintenance is not my thing.”

    “I know it’s not.”

    We hit interstate 95.  “Why did Siri take me down the interstate?” I fussed aloud.

    “Goddamn it,” I whined.  “It’s after noon and I’m sober on my day off.”

    “You’re really bad.” Eva added.

    “How so?”

    “The first night of the hunting trip I had to carry you to bed.”

    “I don’t usually drink like that.  It was the peanut butter and jelly shots.  I didn’t have shot glasses so I poured too much.”

    “THEY WERE TERRIBLE!” Eva screamed.

    “They were really good the last time I had them.  She poured the shots, so I think there was more cranberry juice than peanut butter whiskey in them.  I remember them being good.  We also had actual shot glasses and not me guesstimating in wine glasses after I was already a few beers deep.”

    “I’m never trusting your recommendations again!”

    “Yeah. Yeah.  Whatever.  I have to pee.”

    “Me too.”

    “I’m not stopping at any of these redneck gas stations around here.”

    “How about that really racist place?” Eva suggested as we passed yet another terrible sign advertising the place.

    “South of the Border?  Sure!  I’ve always passed but never stopped.”

    We looked out of place walking in decked from head-to-toe in full camo stepping out of a truck that had blood flooding down from beneath the tailgate and coating the bumper and license plate in thick crimson streaks.

    We walked in and there were three Mexican teenagers examining the souvenirs and laughing hysterically at the stereotyped images of Mexican culture.  How does this place still exist in 2022?  I wondered.

    Entering the joint was easy enough but the directions out were perplexing.  Traffic cones and signs blocked exits and corralled us to, Hell, I didn’t know where they were taking us.  Maybe they planned to lead us to a narrow passage where a guy in an Osha yellow helmet awaited us with a bolt-gun.  I didn’t want to take the chance so we escaped through a door with an angry sign reading “NOT AN EXIT!”  We did it!  I thought.  We survived!

    “We’re stopping by the liquor store before we go home.” I told Eva.

    “Ok, that’s fine.  We need to stop and get ice for the deer, too.”

    We made our stops and made it back home around 1:30PM, having left that morning about 5:30AM.  I filled her coolers with roasts, backstrap, and burger.  She let me keep a few rolls of burger, then I came across the tenderloins.

    “Do you know what to do with a tenderloin?” I asked.

    “No.”

    “I’m keeping them then.”

    We hugged and Eva pointed her car south to the low country of South Carolina, the adopted home of 87% of Ohio’s population: Charleston.  I went inside and opened up a mini-bottle of tequila, shot it home, and sat in my chair in the living room and contemplated my existence.  How could I differentiate myself from the rich fuckers at the preserve?  The “hunters” in their nice, comfy stands who never touch blood or get dirt under their neatly-trimmed, manicured nails?  I at least had blood on my boots.  I asked for my hog quartered, not processed.  I would take home the four parts and break them down with a handsaw and a blade.  I would make sausage and brine and smoke a ham.  The respect the hog deserved in hunting that I could not provide, maybe I could give her in the care and attention to butchering and processing and cooking?  

    The hog couldn’t give a fuck.  She would much rather be alive.  The “willing sacrifice” is much discussed by Joseph Cambell in his work on myths.  But I want the hog to mean something in the grand scheme of things besides just some canned-hunt for a trophy.  I did not take a trophy.  I took something to eat.  I understand that the hog won’t care how she is cooked.  But this is for me.  For me to have the respect for her life.  I want her to be utilized down to every gram of meat.  

    Death gives birth to life.  Existence is cyclical in nature.  The death of one thing fertilizes the birth of another.  The hog will feed me, and I will do her justice.  None of this backwoods fry in bacon grease.  We will have sausage—sweet Italian, chorizo, hatch chili.  I will smoke a ham for Thanksgiving as I sit home alone with my cat and watch the holiday pass.  I will give her meaning by making her more than a mud-covered swine.  Something other than to be scorned and discarded as a pest.  I will make her a culinary art.  And take the finality of death and make her immortal by feeding the living.  We are all born to die.  Give her the arena, the gladiators, the emperor.  God, she was delicious.  I pick her up tomorrow.  Hopefully I can do right by my canned-hunt. Give her the meaning in death by cooking that I couldn’t give her on the hunt.