Pig Roast – circa 2010

The long awaited pig roast unfolds, not exactly as scripted, but deliriously lovely in almost every way.  What was not anticipated includes my sister’s and nephew’s early arrival, without whom this roast absolutely could not have happened, not given the fact that a butterflied 160 pound pig presents some real problem in the realm of physics, fire, and balancing.  Unanticipated also was the amount of time it took for me and some of the greatest minds of my generation to fashion a wire cage strong enough to hold the pig in place, and the amount of heavy grade wire I’d have to cut to fasten the top and bottom of said cage, and the number of nicks and cuts I have all over my hands, and the burns on my fingertips, and the pain in muscles I don’t usually use, in my hands and fingers, my back, and parts of my mind. 
Most of all, although I anticipated all manner “disaster,” from rainy weather, to no one showing up, to the pig being undercooked no matter how long I cooked it, to the pig falling apart, or falling into dirt, or getting up and flying off on big Pegasus wings, none of these events unfolded, although three surprises awaited me. 
One was being left alone all day with the pig while all of the other humans entertained themselves in other ways.  Just me and the pig hanging out on a glorious fall morning and afternoon.  Hour after hour unable or unwilling to depart her side, to abandon my watch and my responsibility for this pig, my pig, and this gathering, watching the fire, tending the fire.
Then there was my forgetting, or not knowing, or not anticipating how much immense pleasure it would give me to share this adventure and this pig with Sam, and how his very presence excites and inspires me and puts a big smile on my face, and that we were able to share in this experience.
And third, though not least, what happens when you’re cooking a pig a solid three feet above the coals, and you are humming your cook-it-slowly-thoroughly-and-long mantra, and quite unthinkingly, while straightening up the yard, raking, and collecting down branches, all within sight of said pig, you take a small fallen oak tree branch that has lots of dry brown leaves still attached and in an idle offhanded way throw said branch on the low flame high heat coals, whereupon said leaves foreseeably burst into flames and said flames reach up to the downside backside hide of the hog, which until that moment has been steadily dripping 100 percent pork fat oil onto the hissing coals, when the actual flame from the burning leaves reaches the skin of the pig, and the entire pig is almost instantly engulfed in flames, a horrific sight.  And as I stand there transfixed, thinking the flames will burn themselves out, in fact they do not, and rather than die they contribute to a napalm-like fire of immense and seemingly tragic proportions, the entire pig encased in flame, feeding the fires with its dripping fat, dripping so much fat the entire skin of the pig is encased in a big oil rig fire, a runaway well that cannot be capped, and even when I remove the heat and flame source beneath the pig, the skin continues its burning in a vigorous, wind whipped independent fire, my entire pig quite literally entirely engulfed in flame, which, after a time I come to realize is not going to go out of its own volition without first consuming the entire pig, and I have to secure the garden hose and seriously spray the pig in an act of firefighter daring do, while simultaneously beating down the grass fire that has started all around the grill racing toward the shed. And thus it goes, my morning and afternoon alone with a lovely enough mammal who was alive and breathing the fresh free air two short days ago, and then had her throat cut, and was eviscerated, who drove home in the front seat of my car wearing a hat and a seatbelt so I could use the fast lane and came to rest three feet over a very very hot fire, and was transformed from living flesh and bone and organs that worked and lived, into meat cooking over a fire, and then into the very humans who consumed her, and honored her, and remember her in ways few of her kind are remembered,  once alive and now a part of me.