Turnips in the yard

Reader beware. If you are expecting the seraphim to flap their wings solemnly throughout this piece, search elsewhere. This is not a theological work, no musing on how many of their numbers might fit on a pin head. Today, we simply speak of destiny.

I may wish for a different role in life. But alas, although the home phone seldom rings, when it does, I always answer with some hesitation. Are we marked at birth for the roles we will play in this life? Do the gods gather up a handful of archetypal or character dust and randomly start slinging it about — a little leadership landing there, a bit of maternal instinct here, the jovial, the innocent, the hero cast willy-nilly over the sleeping infants. Is that how it works, what it all comes down to in the end? An Angel of Death for this valley?

It pains me to make this public admission, but when an animal needs to be dispatched, I get the call. It is not a job I sought, yet it comes to me more often than I wish.

The neighbors with a mortally injured lamb who can’t bring themselves, literally, to pull the trigger? They call me. Dying deer on the side of the road, they call me. Pet chickens in the final stages, they call me, Brian the Neck Wringer. It can all get a bit depressing, this being the spine for, shall we call them, the timid. I’d much prefer that they get on with the job themselves. But they can’t, they won’t. They call. Like the day my muscle-bound neighbor followed his hog around a pen for half an hour, pistol in trembling hand, looking for just the right shot to put the pig down, but could never quite pull the trigger. I felt compelled to act. I went to the house, grabbed the 30-30, and, returning to the scene of indecisiveness, pushed past and killed the hog with a single shot.

If you are going to eat meat — hell, if you are going to drive a car — you are going to have blood on your hands. My attitude, perhaps, has more than a strong whiff of the judgmental. But it is justified, certainly. Soon after I first met Cindy, a neighbor’s Doberman got into her barnyard and savaged her sheep. After watching the neighbor hem and haw over killing the bloodied and dying animals, I reached for the 410 in his hands and did the deed myself. I hate to see an animal suffer or a hard decision postponed on account of spinelessness masquerading as compassion.

I hasten to say I’m not insensitive (right?). I chalk up my willingness to kill to a lifetime of gutting catfish caught on trotlines from the family pond, cleaning speckled trout and dolphinfish all night after a day of fishing on the gulf, butchering hundreds of chickens I’ve raised to put meat on the table. One carries out these unpleasantries if one eats. Or did, before the advent of mass man and consumerism distanced us from death. Allowed us to believe that it is better for the immigrant, the lower waged, the lower class to do our dirty work, butcher our meat, butcher our enemies. Washed our hands….

Oddly, and perhaps one reason Cindy and I have been together 35 years, she is called out for the opposite function. If the Angel of Mercy is needed, the phone also rings. When a mother goose got separated from her goslings at work, colleagues called Cindy to solve the problem. When a dog gets injured in the valley — bitten by a snake, shot by a neighbor, hit by a car — the call comes for Cindy. Where my toolbox contains an axe, rifle, and knife, hers includes clear-eyed compassion and skills honed over decades caring for animals in her charge.

Hers is the more rewarding role to play. People come up to her and give her hugs years later for helping nurse a beloved pet or farm animal back to health. I, on the other hand, get the careful nod, averted eyes. Wary, they seem, lest I discern a limp in their step and go for my shotgun.

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Reading this weekend: Sign Posts In A Strange Land (Percy). “the fruit of such mismatch is something to behold: Baptist governors and state legislators who loot the state with Catholic gaiety and Protestant industry.”