#Part 1 - Slaughtering Day...
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Monday, November 20th, 2023
Father says that being thankless is a sin–the worst sin, but I haven’t found much to be thankful for this past week and I’m trying really, really hard. I promise I have been and I’ve been praying too. Zygomar is usually the loudest so I started by invoking him–this all started in his name after all–and when that didn’t work I even prayed to the lesser gods Yogtroth, Trula and Vaneshka for help or guidance. For bravery, retribution or wisdom anything at all they might bless me with too, but I haven’t heard a single one of them since all of this started. I even lowered myself and called out to Vorgrath. I begged him to smite me for turning my back to him, to strike the old farmhouse with his bolts until it burned to the ground with all of us inside it. He wouldn’t even punish me for what I’ve done in defiance of his gift. I think maybe none of them can hear me now or we’ve fallen so far from their favor that they’ve all gone quiet–or if they are replying, I just can’t hear them anymore–not over the sound of everyone else whispering from the other side of the attic door.
The sound of Father’s murmurs at the cracks as he promises forgiveness for everything I’ve done and Mother’s quiet laments that I’ve turned my back on my family but if I just let them in it will all be alright again. Caleb, Josiah, Leah and the twins, Rebekah and Tabitha are all saying things out there in hushed voices too. Everything they say crushes me just a bit smaller and cracks away another small piece of my heart, but I still don’t let them come in. I can’t let them come in.
When they aren’t begging and pleading they’re just whispering my name in unison, all nine of their voices at once in a chilling sing-song way that sounds almost like a prayer: “Gabriel, Oh Gaaaaabriel, my Gabriel, oh Gabrieeel, sweet Gabriel”
Forever and ever, Amen.
It isn’t often that they stop whispering but when they do I hear the sound of their fingers most clearly. It’s a sound that’s always there and never seems to stop even when their voices grow quiet on the stairs. They’ve been trying to claw their way through the door since they found me hiding here last night. It’s thick, solid, wood but it’s over 100 years old and there’s no way to tell how long it might hold or how soon it might give out. I’m trying to hold onto hope that it’s sturdy enough to keep me safe, but I’m also 14, and that’s nearly a grown man so I’m being realistic too. Just like hope, it won’t last forever. It just can’t.
It’s locked and barred and I moved a heavy armoire that was stored and forgotten up here against it. It doesn’t matter what they whisper. They can try to scare me, to hurt me with harsh words, or promise me everything my heart desires; it’s all lies. All of it. I watched them all change one-by-one and I won’t be fooled.
I won’t open the door. I won’t let them through. The only truth I know is that they want to give my eyes the Midnight Stare too.
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Every Thanksgiving, the entire Thompson clan celebrates the harvest cycle. We gather together here on Thompson Heritage Ranch in Holybrook, Kansas to give thanks and we do it the same way that Father’s grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather always did for generations and generations. Our ranch has been passed down through the hands of countless Thompsons for more than 200 years and inheriting the land is a big responsibility. My brothers are both older, but neither Caleb nor Josiah were born with the mark and Father says the ranch can only be the birthright of the one born with the mark so that’s why the land and our traditions will one day be passed down to me. So, each year in November, until I come of age, take a wife and start a family of my own, every Thompson must return to the ranch where they were born to conduct the Feast of Eternal Abundance the way that their father’s father’s father’s and so on and so forth have always done. That meant that this week both Caleb and Josiah came home.
Josiah is 25 now and I was younger then but I can still remember when he finally came of age. Every farmer in town that had a daughter of eligible age came to the ranch with their girls dressed in their very best at their sides. He might be a Markless Thompson, but he was still a Thompson and also quite handsome so there were quite a few young women whose hand he might ask for in Holybrook–one of the girls was as old as 27!–but in the end he did what we all expected and chose Leah Marshall because not only was the dowry that came with her the largest (don’t ask because it’s uncouth to discuss such matters) but she was also the prettiest choice by far. He’s very busy now with the general store and a sizable home downtown as well, but he and his family still come to the ranch every Sunday for family supper, so we see him a lot.
When Caleb turned 19, he quickly announced that he meant to take the cloth, much to the dismay of those same farmers who had failed to marry their daughters off to Josiah the year before. He joined The Order of The Zygomarian Sect shortly after and lives a pious life on the grounds of the Temple of the Order on the opposite side of town from the ranch. Because of his vows, he is only permitted to return to the ranch to conduct rituals with us on High Feast Days so we only see him twice a year now. He doesn’t say much of his life at The Temple when he’s here, and although Mother speaks about how terribly she misses him often and to anyone who might listen, Father says he seems happy and fulfilled and that’s the best a Markless Thompson might hope to ask for.
My sisters Rebekah and Tabitha still live here on the ranch with us because Tabitha is just four years older than me and she won’t be betrothed until she turns 19 like Rebekah is now. When Rebekah turned 19 this spring she began courting Samuel Markson and she made me promise not to tell Father when I saw that he put bruises on her arms. I kept that promise, but she did not make me promise not to wish for him to die, so I did that too. I prayed to Yogtroth, the god of Vengeance and Retribution loudly and often whenever I found myself alone enough to do it without being overheard and after many nights of blood rights and several burnt offerings of crows I’d killed in the fields with my slingshot, Yogtroth whispered back. He did it in the quiet and endlessly echoing way that all the gods do when they whisper from the space between your ears. He told me that in return for my devotion Samuel would be punished for his sins and the very next morning he was trampled by a mule and died, maimed and broken in a muddy wagon wheel rut…so that courtship did not last long. I never told Rebekah it was because of me, but I think she suspected something because she asked my opinion of Jacob Hammond before she began courting him and she never asks my opinions about anything or anyone.
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Because I’m finally 14 this year, last Wednesday, Father takes me with him just before sunrise to the slaughtering barn to help with the sacrifices for the first time. I’ve been in the barn before of course for the Swineblood Rune Renewal many springs now and naturally I’ve always hated everything about this building since I’ve been allowed to come here. It’s far from the main house, on the edge of the ranch so it takes forever to get to and I hate that because Father refuses to use the modern machines that we use around the ranch to get there. He says if we take the tractor it might spoil the rituals and my feet always hurt by the time we’ve walked the mile out to it. We can’t have it any closer to the main house on account of how bad it smells inside–and the flies. Sometimes even the distance doesn’t matter if the wind gets to blowing just right and Mother will have to close up all the windows in the main house to keep out the stink. The grossest part about the slaughtering barn is how quickly you get used to the smell once you’re inside and how bad you smell after being in there all day. It takes several showers across several days to fully wash away.
“Alright Gabriel, The Feast of Eternal Abundance, and the sacrificial offering I’m about to teach you, is a great importance on the Zygomarian Calendar. He gots two important feast holidays–each lasts a week and you’ve been helping with the one in spring since you were 10, but you’ll be a man yourself soon, so you pay attention now and learn this–and learn it well–all of it.” Father says, pausing to study my face to be sure I’m taking this all in…
“Quit holding your nose. The more you ignore the smell, the less it’ll stink. Now, thanking Zygomar, our god of Fertility and The Harvest, for all the crops grown during growing season in all of Holybrook will fall to you one day. If you don’t do it right, the whole town is marked as thankless and it’s the worst sin to be thankless. Zygomar and Yogtroth’ll work together. Make the next year’s crops wither and die on their stalks and that’ll piss off everyone. Hasn’t happened since ‘42 and it ain’t happening this year neither so pay attention.” He scratches at a spot on his overweight belly and I know what he’s about to say next but I don’t roll my eyes even though I want to.
“You’re my son with The Mark. That makes you and this ritual important.” He lifts his shirt as he says this to show me the birthmark on the left side of his stomach. It’s an oval shaped patch of brown with a raised curving line of fine hairs that cross through its center. I don’t know why he does this whenever he mentions The Mark of Zygomar. I’ve seen his many times, in fact, most of the town has also seen his many times and I’ve seen my own as well. It’s unnecessary and for as long as I can remember, he has been constant and flagrant with his reminders to the many denizens of Holybrook about his importance. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll do the same when I’m older, and as I rub my right buttox to feel the rise of the line that curves across my own Thompson Mark through my jeans, and decide I’ll probably be more modest about such things.
“The autumn holiday is the more important and therefore the more complicated of the two, but it’s also more fun once everything is done.” Father says as we stand before our three largest steers in the small holding pens. They shift uncomfortably from foot to foot and whether that’s from the smell or from their own survival instincts I couldn’t say.
I think about the tedious Swineblood Rune Renewal in the spring and give the thought a shudder while glancing around at the large runes painted on the walls inside the barn. They don’t have to be perfect, and they mostly aren’t because the pig’s blood is smeary and tends to drip everywhere no matter how careful you are. Besides, nothing that’s been re-traced over and over again hundreds of times throughout our family’s history could look as perfect as it did the first or second or even the thirtieth time. It’s the act of renewal that’s important, not the result and although they fade quickly and considerably to ugly brown splotches as they dry, they must be redone each spring if we expect Zygomar to bless the rains and help the seeds sprout.
The protests of the steers increase as father covers their heads with the leather hoods that were sent over from the tanners this morning. They’re giving him plenty of trouble, constantly shifting away from him in objection, but finding there’s nowhere to go, and mooing nervously. After lacing the seams shut, he hands me a leather apron from the wall and takes one for himself. Then he makes his way over to the two sledgehammers that lean against the railing of the holding pens and hands me one of those as well. He hefts the second one over his shoulder, holding it in a ready position and I watch the head of it waver unsteadily from the steel’s considerable weight as he holds it aloft behind his back.
“You only have to do the last one. Watch me do the first two and after you’ve seen, you’ll do it next. Strike hard and strike true. I try to do it on the first swing or the noise this one’s gonna make’s gonna spook the other’uns…plus you don’t want ‘em to suffer much, just wanna get it done.” Father says this with his eyes fixed on the steer in the first pen the whole time.
Then he looks at me and adds: “It’s your first time and it ain’t going down on your first swing. I’ll tell ya that now, alright? These sumbitches are heavy and you’re probably gonna hesitate and that’s fine…”
“…but you’re a Thompson with The Mark so don’t you dare let me see you fuckin cry…”
And with that said, he swings.
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That’s really the hardest part of the whole ritual, before I even swung my hammer I said a quiet prayer to Vaneshka, god of Bravery and Strength, Protector of the Meek, so I wouldn’t cry and I didn’t…not until I was alone in my bedroom hours later where Father couldn’t see.
Since I’m sure you’re curious, I don’t know how many times I had to swing the sledgehammer because I lost count after seven. I wanted so badly for it to stop suffering that I kept swinging and swinging until my muscles burned and I was covered in a gory mix of blood and sweat and Father had to put his hand on my shoulder to stop me and tell me it was finished. He looks at me more proudly than I’d ever seen him look at me in his whole life and that makes me feel a sort of heat move through my whole body. Feeling warmth from that look is awkward because the killing part made me feel detached and cold and dead inside.
The next part is gross but Father lets me pick the music we play on the barn’s radio so I don’t mind slicing the steers open across their stomachs from groin to sternum with the gutting knife as much as I probably would have if he’d made us listen to his stuff while we did it.
“I know you thought it smelled bad in here before but this part just makes it worse so If you need to throw up from it, that’s fine, just run to the corner when you do. Getting puke in Zygomar’s entrails ain’t gonna ruin the ritual but it also ain’t gonna make you seem very thankful neither.” He says to me as he reaches his arm up past the elbow into one of the bovine stomachs. When he reaches back out he’s pulling a fistful of intestines in his massive hands and dumps them messily into one of a dozen waiting, empty buckets that he’s gathered haphazardly around the killing room floor.
Collecting the entrails in the buckets takes a long time but rendering the fat into tallow takes hours and hours longer.
“You’ve gotta cut the fat into small pieces. No bigger than an inch,” Father says as he hacks away at the beef flanks with a practiced art that he assures me will come to me with time. It’s arduous and messy work and there is blood everywhere in the barn. I guess there’s always blood everywhere in the barn actually, it’s just usually not so vibrant and red.
We take the fat to the rendering stove in the corner. Father lit the fire hours ago when we first got to the barn and now the coals are smoldering and the stove radiates with a low heat that’s filled the entire barn. The humidity in the barn is awful and it somehow gets ten times worse as we approach the big brick fireplace with its iron grill set into the bricks above the coals. On the grill is a massive cast iron pot that we dump the chunks of fat into and father shows me how he measures the water he adds from the bucket hanging from the nearby hand pump with a ladle until the amount is just right. Once the fat is simmering we go outside to sit on some logs at the side of the barn that have been in this spot long enough that they’re practically rotting away, back into the ground they came from.
Father tells me we have to stir the pot every twenty minutes or so and that we’ll be out here doing this well past sundown. He checks his watch noting that Mother will be along soon with some lemonade and sandwiches to serve us for a late lunch and there’ll be steak and potatoes for dinner. He tells me that once the fat renders down there’ll be some solid, crispy pieces we have to skim off the top of the liquid and I ask him how the crispy bits will taste, remembering how delicious the crispy bits of pork are from the top of the liquid when he renders the pig fat down into lard.
“The ones from the pigs are good, but the ones from the steers taste like earwax if you ask me.” He says. He tells me I can try it if I like when the tallow is ready to skim and I don’t remember having ever tasted earwax before so I stick my finger into one of my ears and then into my mouth and Father laughs long and hard at the face I make.
Overall, Slaughtering Day is a good day.
I didn’t know it would be the last good day.