Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bill Schubart, a regular commentator for Vermont Public Radio and a member of the board, and former president, of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the umbrella organization for VTDigger.org. This piece is from his “The Lamoille Stories II.”
[D]avid remembers when he was 11 and he was left in Eugénie’s care for the afternoon while Alain took Helen, Paul, and Juliette to Burlington to buy new school clothes at the outlet store. Eugénie is baking bread. In a large, dark brown ceramic bowl, she kneads a dark dough. She adds a cup of raisins and over-ripe banana pieces and begins kneading again. David is used to seeing her gnarled hands work white dough, then set it out to rise by the stove, knead it once more before shaping it into loaves, pat the loaves into her black sheet metal bread pans, and slide them into a hot oven.
David asks about the color of the loaves. Eugénie explains that this is the day her brother-in-law, Benoit, will come to kill and butcher her three pigs and that the loaves are for the pigs. Confused, David asks why she bakes bread for pigs that are going to die. “All in good time,” she answers.
Less than an hour later, Eugénie removes the hot loaves from her gas oven and the room fills with the rich smell of hot molasses. The three loaves cool for a bit on a rack and then she removes them from their pans, setting them side-by-side so they just fill an enamel refrigerator bin. From below her kitchen sink she takes an unopened quart of Nova Scotia screech, a cheap dark rum named for the behavior it induces among those who drink it to excess. She pours the entire bottle onto the three loaves and leaves them to soak up the brown fluid.
Uncle Ben arrives with his truck after lunch and sets up an old cast-iron enamel bathtub on four cinder blocks in the backyard. Underneath he builds a roaring fire of dry pine branches, adding hardwood logs when the fire is going. With a hose from the tap on the side of the house, he fills the tub with water. He hangs a come-along from the garage doorway, lays a maple slab the size of a coffee table across two sawhorses, and arranges a selection of wood-handled knives.
David watches in astonishment as each sow snuffles up her loaf in less than a minute and then, after looking at each other to make sure there are no leftovers to tussle over, lies down in the mud to savor and digest her treat.
After coffee and doughnuts inside, Eugénie and David bring the three loaves out to the pigpen behind the house. The three eager Berkshires are hungry and Eugénie hands each sow a dripping loaf of her freshly baked molasses bread. David watches in astonishment as each sow snuffles up her loaf in less than a minute and then, after looking at each other to make sure there are no leftovers to tussle over, lies down in the mud to savor and digest her treat. Several minutes later, the three pigs are drooling in the mud and snoring peacefully.
Uncle Ben is soon joined by his son Bruno who is carrying a Remington .30-06 deer rifle. With a nod from Eugénie, who looks away and crosses herself, Bruno lodges two bullets above the snout and between the closed eyes of each sleeping pig. The gunfire does not wake them.
When the pigs cease their twitching and their hind legs quit mimicking an escape, Uncle Ben and Bruno wrestle one of the 250-pound sows over to the water bubbling gently in the bathtub and flop her in, displacing considerable water. After a few minutes of scalding, the men drag the carcass to the come-along, slipping its large hook through the heel tendons and cranking the pig up high enough to scrape the bristles and begin butchering. The first incision is across the neck and the dark blood spurts out into a stainless steel milking bucket. The blood will be saved to make Eugénie’s signature boudin noir. Benoit makes another incision from the anus to the neck and scoops out and severs the internal organs, and drops them into another milking bucket for later sorting. Bruno saws the open carcass in half and lays the halves on the maple slab while his father begins with the largest knife to cut it into quarters.
The laborious process is repeated twice and it’s dinnertime before the last quarter is wrapped and tied up in butcher paper and loaded onto the truck.
David’s father and mother stop by on their way home to pick him up, sparing a few minutes for conversation with Eugénie, Benoit, and Bruno before heading home.
