Sunday, Bloody Sunday

It was an early Sunday morning in southern New Mexico some years back. I sat and sharpened a knife in the doorway of my primitive wooden shelter. The neighboring rancher's peacocks had left me presents in the dirt. Long and lovely iridescent feathers. Every night they perched in the Chinese Elm that shaded my humble abode. And every morning there were one or two feathers. I considered them gifts. Today, I would go over to this neighbor's place and help him slaughter two sheep. In return, he would give me the hides to tan. I watched two cocks go at one another, feathers flying. pecking, clawing, the feather's on their neck ruffled, stirring up the dust in their frenzied attack on one another. One will live, the other will die. That's the way it was in their world. I studied the edge on my blade. Turned it to and fro. in the morning sun. There should be no light reflecting from the edge. Just as with a razor. That was what I was going for. The edge I would need today was a razor's edge. It's a fragile edge, one that could not hold up to carving into a tough wood like mesquite. It would break. I needed only a surgical edge that could cut the membrane between the flesh and the hide. That was my job today. And the tool needed to be right for the task.

It is a merciless thing to kill an animal. But I eat animals. And I figure, if you don't have the stomach to kill a beast, or observe it's death, perhaps, you should be a vegetarian. I walked past the dying cock, and bent down and twisted its neck. No reason for an animal to suffer more than necessary.

Ramon, and his young son Carlos were already there when I arrived. I admired Ramon. He was gritty. Small in stature, but all browned skin, scars, bone, and muscle. The quintessential picture of a life of hard labor that no artist could ever capture. He had two holsters on his belt. One held his knife. The other, a long gray well-oiled whetstone. I felt very much the rank amateur 'gringo' in his presence. But I showed him my knife and he studied it, and smiled, and nodded in looking at it.

Ramon stepped up to the hog-tied sheep and pulled back on its head. The silence of the lambs, took on another meaning, as he slit the animal's throat. There was no sound. The animal just laid there and died, its blood spilling out onto the primitive table's edge, and from there onto the ground. I looked down at it, some of it splattering my boots. All of it curdling on the hot silty ground before it could be absorbed. It was my turn now to brandish the knife. This is what it takes to bring meat to the table. To put a sheepskin on the floor of my shack.