Two Pigs
by Verlyn Klinkenborg

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Very soon, a farmer and his son will come to the farm to kill our two pigs. If that sentence bothers you, you should probably stop reading now — and you should probably also stop eating pork. The pigs weigh nearly 300 pounds apiece, and killing them is the reality of eating meat. I talk to the pigs whenever I’m in their pen, and ever since June I’ve been slowly taming them, getting them used to being scratched. There are two reasons. I truly love being with the pigs. And taming them means it will be that much easier for the farmer and his son to kill them swiftly, immediately. If I had no more foreknowledge of my death than these two pigs will have of theirs, I’d consider myself very lucky.

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The questions people ask make it sound as though I should be morally outraged at myself, as if it’s impossible to scratch the pigs behind the ears and still intend to kill them. If I belonged to a more coherent, traditional rural community — one that comes together for pig-butchering in the fall — I would get to celebrate this as a ritual and to experience the sudden abundance that a well-fed pig represents. It’s hard to feel this when the only ones present are a gruff farmer and his son, and my wife and me, who have been silenced by the solemnity of what we’re watching.

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Because we do watch. That’s part of the job. It’s how we come to understand what the meat itself means. And to me, the word “meat” is at the root of the contradictory feelings that pig-killing raises. You can add all the extra value you want — raising purebred pigs on pasture with organic grain, all of which we do — and yet somehow the fact that we are doing this for meat, some of which we keep, most of which we trade or sell, makes the whole thing sound like a bad bargain. And yet compared with the bargain most Americans make when they buy pork in the supermarket, this is beauty itself.

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Knowing that you’re doing something for the last time is a uniquely human fear. I thought that would be the hardest thing about having pigs. In fact, it’s not so hard, though it does remind me that humans have trouble thinking carefully about who knows what. One day soon I’ll step into the pen and give the pigs a thorough scratching, behind the ears, between the eyes, down the spine. Their tails will straighten with pleasure. It will be the last time. I will know it, and they simply won’t.

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