No Surrender Soldier (10 page)

In a fit of sleep, I finally dozed off.

Tatan woke me early. Tata and Nana had already left for work. Nana left refried rice with Spam in the refrigerator for breakfast.

“No stalling,” Tatan said.

I didn’t feel like rifling through the drawer for stove knobs so I ate congealed Spam and cold rice.

“Tatan, I’m not sure this is a good idea. I never helped slaughter before.”

“Help? Help! Why, you won’t be helping me slaughter.”

“I won’t?”

“Nada, not one bit.”

“Really?”

“Really. I gonna teach you to do the whole t’ing yourself. Except where I got to help string him up,” Tatan said. “Now, get going, boy. Time’s a-wasting.”

I pitched the rest of my breakfast in the trashcan. I put on gym shoes and dragged my feet out the door, letting it slam.

A wet and muddy Bobo scratched my legs.

It had rained so much all the holes brimmed with water. The sun blazed a yellow halo over blue skies.

“Yep, a good day for slaughtering.” Tatan took a deep breath, then ambled on over to the tool shed as if he was out for a Sunday stroll after Mass. He stopped and raised his eyebrows as if to say,
You coming?

For once, I wished I was at school instead. I slumped my shoulders, kicked the ground, and shuffled to the tool shed. Bobo drooped his tail between his legs. Tata not only hadn’t replaced the broken lock, he had removed the lock on the curing shed as if giving his blessing to sacrifice Simon.

In the tool shed, Tatan waited with his arms folded across his belly as big as a watermelon. He had stripped his outer shirt down to his muscle-man T-shirt. Only his muscles had gotten flabby. I dug my hands into the pockets of my jean shorts.

We glared at each other. Neither of us budged. Bobo curled up on the dirt floor.

“Haven’t got all day, boy. Get the tools.”

I balled my fists and sunk them deeper into my pockets.

“Fetch the knife, stone, ropes, matches, propane torch…” Tatan named a list of tools as if he were dictating a grocery list.

I didn’t know which knife Tatan meant so I picked up several, along with the whetstone and buckets.

Tatan reached to a top shelf high above his head. Hidden behind an oil can and a rusty bait bucket, he pulled out a gun. “You want to shoot or slit?”

I gave him the
atan baba
, evil eye.

“Fine,” Tatan said. “I shoot. You slit. Next time we swap.”

“Next time! Man, I can’t wait ’til Sammy comes home.”

“How you know next time won’t be you and Sammy doing this together like two men?”

Men. Did I hear Tatan right? I didn’t say nothing. Instead I dumped the supplies in buckets and carried them to the yard.

Tatan shut Bobo in the tool shed. “For his own good.” Bobo scratched at the door.

Tatan threw dry sticks and charcoal under a huge black cast-iron cauldron propped above the fire pit. I lit the match and fire shot up under the vat filled with rainwater. When blue flames licked the cauldron, we walked over to Simon’s pen.

I sat on the wooden fence and listened to Tatan as he explained how I should sidle up on Simon’s back, real friendly like. “Don’t spook him.” Then, holding the knife in my stronger hand, slip my arm around his neck and bear my weight down as if I’m practically riding him bareback. “Keep your arm slung low and your head high, ’cause I aim to shoot him through the head, ear to eye. You got that?”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. “What if you miss and shoot me instead?”

Tatan jabbed a knife in the air. “Trust me.” He made a slicing motion to make his point.

I studied the ground as if looking for answers. Crap. Tata’s at work. Sammy’s flying over some Vietnamese jungle. Did I have a choice but to help? No. I’d have to trust him. Tatan’s
manamko
. I’d have to be a man, like Sammy told me to be, no matter how I felt about Simon. There was no more hiding like a little boy.

“Ready?”

No way would I ever be ready, not for this.

“Do it.”

I slid down off the fence and into the pen. I clutched a sharp long knife in my hand so tight it shook.

“Call him,” Tatan whispered.

“Here piggy, piggy, piggy. Here piggy,” I called hesitantly.

Simon grunted in the dirt, routing for buried morsels of food.

“Here piggy, piggy…”

“Boy. You can do better than that,” Tatan growled. “Time to kill the beast.”

I wished he’d quit calling me boy. Did Tatan think I was Sammy or Tony? I cleared my throat, spit on the ground. “My name’s Kiko.”

“Kill the beast,” Tatan growled again, like he was totally focused on the pig, and the pig alone.

I charged after Simon and sang out, “Sou-EE. Sou-EE.”

Startled, my pig broke through a downed fence slat I had put off repairing. I chased him into the yard, calling, “Sou-EE. Sou-EE.”

I got close enough and grabbed his tail. He squealed and twisted in a circle. I leaped at Simon and belly-flopped into one of Tatan’s foxholes.

Tatan roared with laughter. “You muddier than the hog ever was.”

“Very funny. Ha. Ha.” I climbed out of the hole, sopping wet. “I could’ve hurt myself, ’specially holding this knife.” I checked myself out to make sure I wasn’t bleeding anywhere. “Look, I ruined my only gym shoes.”

“They wash.” Tatan’s chest heaved up and down again from chuckling.

Bobo barked from inside the shed.

“This is all a big joke to you, isn’t it?” I’d show Tatan not to laugh at me. I planted both feet firmly on the ground. I placed my hands—one holding the knife blade down—on bent knees.

“Here piggy, piggy, piggy,” I called softly. I chanted louder, “Sou-EE. Sou-EE.”

My pig wandered over to the side of the shed and snorted. Bobo yapped non-stop. Yellow-tipped paws peeked out from underneath as he tried to dig his way out.

I bolted up and hollered, disgusted. “For the love of Pete… Simon!”

When I called his name he trotted over to me, expecting to be fed. I stroked Simon’s back. He nuzzled my hand, smelling for corn or an apple core. I massaged behind Simon’s ears. I slipped up behind my pig, melded my body on top, and embraced his neck. He smelled earthy, of mud and mildew and potato peels.

Tatan grabbed my hair and yanked my head back.
Bang!

Judas! For a split second I thought he’d shot me. But I must still be alive, my heart was drumming on my chest. Instead the bullet had entered behind Simon’s left ear and exited through his right eye.

Simon dropped to the ground. His body writhed in spasms. Tatan straddled the pig and grabbed his front feet to keep them from kicking me.

I could tell from Tatan’s red face he was yelling, but his voice sounded dull and muffled because the gunshot had deafened my hearing.

Watching Simon convulsing, I just wanted to put him out of his misery. I felt for the tip of the breastbone like Tatan had told me to do. I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes and stabbed the blade below Simon’s jaw. I opened my eyes and watched myself thrust the knife upward as if someone else were killing my pig, not me.

“Spill his blood!” Tatan ordered.

No blood. Not deep enough.

I plunged the blade in until the handle sunk in Simon’s fatted chest. I ripped the knife upward. Warm, maroon blood gushed once I severed the main artery. I looked down at my own blood-drenched body and vomited.

“Wash off later,” Tatan said. “Get the cart.”

I wanted to be done with it. Maybe go wash in the river deep in the boonies. Get away from there. I wheeled a wooden pull-cart from behind the house. Back when our family farmed the land, a
carabao
—water buffalo—pulled the cart.

Tatan was right, no way he could lift this two hundred-pound pig onto the cart. It did take two men. After Tatan and I grunted and pulled and lifted the pig into the cart, I picked up the handle and hoisted the wooden beams across my shoulders. As if I were a beast of burden, I hauled dead Simon over to a tree.

In the Ifil tree near the boonies hung a block and tackle dangling from a sturdy branch. Tatan tossed me a thick rope. “String him up.”

I threaded the rope through the come-along. I tied one end of the rope around Simon’s back legs. I jumped, choked up on the other rope, lifted my knees waist-high, and swung my body down full force like a bell-ringer in a church tower.

I was too lightweight.

Tatan stretched up, clasped my hands in his, and together we yanked the rope down and pulled the pig up. I secured the rope around the trunk of the tree. Tatan doubled the knot.

Tatan set buckets underneath the pig. He pointed to its anus. “Cut here. Not too deep… Stinks.”

Yeah, right, as if I could stink any worse than I already did with blood and vomit on me.

I stabbed the knife point in little up-and-down incisions around the butt hole. When I freed the rectal canal Tatan reached in and worked feces back toward the intestine with his hands. He was explaining the whole time what he was doing. “Here, tie this off,” he said when he finished.

“What with?” I asked.

“String.”

“I didn’t get any. It wasn’t on your list.”

“Have you no sense? Get somet’ing to tie it off. Be quick about it!”

I hated when he talked to me like a stupid little boy. I searched in the cart, on the ground, and around the tree. No string.

Flies buzzed Tatan’s hands as he held the smelly mess. “Hurry up!”

I looked at the underbrush at the jungle’s edge. My thoughts drifted as I spied plumeria and hibiscus. Oh, to have my nose buried in those flowers. I took off toward the hibiscus shrub.

“Where’s your head, boy!” Tatan shouted. “Don’t leave me stranded.”

I brought back bark from the hibiscus that I’d shredded into jutelike string. “Look, Tatan, pago thread.”

I wasn’t for sure, but I thought Tatan muttered, “Good t’inking,” which would’ve been high praise from him. I tied the butt hole with the string I’d made, careful not to get any stink on me.

“What next?”

“That.” Tatan pointed to the pig’s penis.

Ouch. Poor Simon.

“Good t’ing he’s dead, eh?” Tatan tried to chuckle, but it came out more as one low grunt.

“Yeah, heh, good t’ing.”

Tatan pointed to where I needed to insert the blade. First I cut through the skin and fatty tissue on each side of the penis, then underneath the penis along the middle of the pig’s belly.

“Now pull his, you know, ding dong, and that other flap of skin up between his legs and
schliitt
.” Tatan made a slicing motion with his finger.

I winced, then cut off Simon’s penis.

“Okay. You done good. Now, get the bigger butcher knife. You gonna crack the breast bone.”

I couldn’t believe I was really doing this. I fetched a butcher knife out of a bucket. I set my bloodied knife in the tree. I thrust the butcher knife in the neck opening where I had slit Simon’s throat, and with hard upward thrusts I jerked the blade from neck to pelvis.

Tatan shoveled buckets under the pig as it spilled its guts.

“Not too deep,” he warned, “or you burst the…” Tatan skipped back.

Oh no, I punctured the bladder! I jumped back. Crap. Too late. Urine sloshed out, the first cleansing fluid to wash away Simon’s blood from my hands. “Grr-ross.” I slung the pee from my hands, then wiped them on weeds. I gasped in short breaths through my mouth, trying not to smell myself.

“Ha. Ha… Ha. Ha,” Tatan laughed. “Happened to me a lot when I first butchered.”

It was pretty funny, thinking about Tatan as a young boy learning how to slaughter his first pig and being initiated with urine. So I found myself kind of snorting a laugh or two.

“How old were you?” I asked.

“What?”

“How old? When you killed your first pig?”

Tatan thought a moment. “Twelve. No, that Sammy. Maybe I six.”

“Six!”

“Yeah, it was our turn for fiesta. My tata decided it was time I learned. ’Course I was too small for lifting. And he too embarrassed for me to touch the, you know…”

“Ding dong?”

Tatan’s face turned as red as his bandana. “You talk too much. Besides, we stink plenty bad. Let’s finish the beast.”

I was glad he was having a good day, a clear day in his mind. Maybe he was getting better, eh? I’d be sure and tell Nana, give her hope. She needed something to cheer her up, always worrying about Tatan and Sammy.

Together, we finished gutting our pig. Tatan moved the buckets and I positioned the wagon under the pig. Tatan cut the rope. My knees buckled as I shouldered the pig alone until Tatan joined me in easing the pig down into the wagon.

I pulled the wagon in front, and Tatan pushed from behind. We eased the pig into the cauldron of scalding water. Tatan tossed limes in the water; I scattered ashes. Tatan showed me how to pull at the hair to test when it was ready for slipping. What a pain in the butt. I never knew pigs had so much hair. Once we stripped hair off the front legs, we pulled the pig out and immersed his rear end into the hot water.

We scraped that pig bald.

“There, ain’t he a t’ing of beauty?” Tatan remarked after we strung up our pig in the curing shed.

“He sure is.” And I meant it. I admired the clean carcass from his curly tail down to the tips of his cloven hoofs, swaying on a rope from the rafters. Hanging upside down, Simon’s flesh stretched out, his underside almost looked polished with his ribs gleaming. His ears were intact, except for a small bullet hole behind one ear that was barely visible with the blood washed off. Simon’s eyes… I shut his eyelids. Simon’s round snout was undisturbed.

And his mouth, gaping, ready to place a Rome Beauty apple in when he would be served on the fiesta banquet table.

“He sure is a beaut.” I swallowed to get past the lump in my own throat.

“How’d it feel to do a man’s job?”

I picked up a rag and wiped blood off my arms and hands. Is this what separated men from boys? Slaughtering the sacrificial pig? Like some ancient tribal ritual? Slitting throats and spilling blood?

“Before fiesta,” Tatan said, “we come back and scrape maggots off him.”

I decided right then and there I would never name another animal.