blood ties

to all the ardent americans who turned their gentle boys into closed-off “tough men” in the name of God

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i was twelve or thirteen when i witnessed a sow shot so we could dissect it for a homeschool anatomy experience (it was light on actual science).

a girl my age fainted when one of the dads cut the sow’s neck and its blood poured over the brown sun-burnt grass, four feet kicking the air in a slowing rhythm. it didn’t feel anything by then, the adults told us, since it had been shot through the brain stem.

Elijah was eight. he crouched in the bed of his father’s pickup truck. as the girl who fainted was carried away into the house, Eli’s father hissed harsh syllables at him that i couldn’t parse into words, and he climbed out, shaking, and came to the side of the sow, eyes wide and silent.

i don’t remember much else except the scent of burning hair and skin as we torched the pig and scraped at it to remove the hair; the belly opened up into soft, greyish-brown masses swimming in a smooth pool of blood, and i learned the inside of an animal is more securely attached than i expected, and we needed saws and shears and manpower to pull apart the body.

Eli’s tears stood brimming in his eyes but he did not let them fall as he buried his bare hands in blood and viscera. the other boys laughed as they uncurled small intestine, coiling around their arms like a long garter snake. we wanted the heart; i sawed through the rib-cage with a hacksaw, cracked open its skull to find the brain, which we threw to each other and laughed at how small it was.

Eli laughed, but not really, and i remembered when he stopped speaking for a day when he learned his friend had begun to raise rabbits for meat, starting from the palm-sized kits.

i had to strip out of my clothes in the garage when i got home; there were flecks of blood dried on my glasses, and my nails were scarlet in the cuticles. the water poured over my stained body and i thought of the rattling sound of a water stream hitting blue tarp, congealed jello-like blood, dark against the crisp golden grass.

it didn’t feel wrong then, and maybe it really wasn’t, but for some of us it was.

Eli didn’t eat that night, even though his mom had made barbecue sauce from scratch to pour over the pork.

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fathers place cold steel weapons into the hands of children, make them cover themselves in blood, pinch baby cheeks, and grip small chins between big thumbs, harshly forcing young clear eyes into the face of death.

sure, maybe it’s a “cultural thing”. well, your son told me when he knew you weren’t looking that he cried that night when he had to shoot that deer. i know he doesn’t tell you anything because he shouldn’t be saying anything anyway: you slapped him in the face and told him to “man up”. then he stopped talking and started throwing punches and gave up art for football and now all your boys are fighting each other in the parking lot, but you have no clue—what changed?

you have no idea why he’s such a troublemaker, but you’re so proud he can cover up the things he won’t let you see with a roadmap of scars across his body. he’s a man now, another red-blooded man who communicates through violence. look at him all grown up.

(you complain he never tells you anything.)

(you only take the blame when it’s too late.)

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to all the ardent americans who beat the tenderness out of their sons: blood is on your hands.