Off Main Street Read online

  Usually we waited with Dad in the car—uneasily, I remember—but at least once I followed Mom inside. I remember shadows, more dogs, a cousin in the corner, a disassembled engine on the kitchen table. I remember Henry ushering us in, solicitous and polite, but always with a bit of the mad scientist’s assistant about him. The nursing arrangement ended in late summer, Henry’s mother died shortly thereafter, and I don’t recall ever seeing Henry again. For three decades the dogs and trees and old cars distilled themselves into a handful of images—a moon-soaked hillbilly gothic.

  I walked up that driveway again last month, this time in full volunteer firefighter’s gear. The day before, Henry, in his eighties now, had called some neighbors, said he was having trouble with his furnace. Later, someone saw smoke, and called the fire department. When they arrived, and fought their way inside, they found Henry on the floor. It looked like he might have gone back in to unchain one of his gang of dogs. Whatever the case, he lay dead, two dogs draped over his body as if to shield him from the flames. I was gone the day of the fire, but when it reignited the next day, I was part of the small crew that returned.

  Oftentimes the only way to completely extinguish an extensive fire is to pull the structure apart, and so after we chopped and sprayed and sweated most of the morning, a backhoe was called in. Slowly and implacably the articulated steel arm drew and quartered the house, and as each scoop swung past, we soaked it down.

  In dying, the old house gave up a lot of history. Beneath the shabby, weatherbeaten exterior, patched and teetering with trash, were signs of a grander time: a hand-turned pilaster, the remnants of a parlor. Deeper still, the original body of the house was a bulwark of hand-squared and fitted logs. And tumbling from scoop after scoop of sodden ashes, signs of something even more surprising: the skeleton of a banjo, the pleated bellows of an accordion, the shell of a mandolin, bits of a Victrola. And records. Stacks of them, thick and vintage, some melted, some expanded and separated into layers, others apparently pristine. I knew Henry had been a mechanic, knew he had mowed cemeteries, but I had never heard anything about the music.

  “Oh yeah,” said one of the firemen, “he gave lessons in the old days.” Later that week someone stopped in the implement store where my brother works and allowed as how Henry could “play anything with strings.” I looked up Henry’s closest surviving relative. He told me Henry’s heroes were Mac and Bob, the two blind singers who were a mainstay on WLS through 1950, and whose “When the Roses Bloom Again” was a hit in 1926. He also favored the work of Lulu Belle & Scotty, the husband-and-wife team on the WLS National Barn Dance from 1934 to 1958. A local man who still picks bluegrass and country gospel for church groups and nursing home residents told me how Henry taught him licks as a child: “He’d give you fundamentals, get that metronome going. He had a down-to-earth style.”

  Right before we rolled the hose up and headed home that afternoon, a Grandpa Jones album tumbled out atop a pile of ash and old bedsprings. Louis “Grandpa” Jones died three days later.

  In 1929, at the age of sixteen, Louis Marshall Jones billed himself as “the Young Singer of Old Songs.” Talk about hip—sixty years prior to alternative country, Jones was already doing the retro thing. At the age of twenty-two, his cohost on a morning radio show accused him of being slow and grouchy; of acting like a grandpa. The name stuck, and with the addition of high-topped boots, fake mustache, wire-rimmed spectacles and bright suspenders, so did the schtick.

  Singing and frailing on his banjo, Jones worked the radio show circuit, formed a gospel quartet with Merle Travis in the ’40s, and made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry in 1946. He had a handful of hits, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978. Most of my generation came to know him through Hee Haw, of course, and he remained with the show until its end in 1992.

  While most performers cling to their youth, Grandpa eased into old age like he’d been waiting for it all his life. He gave his last performance at the Opry in January of 1998; he died February 19 at age eighty-four. When I heard, I thought of that album on the ash pile, and those banjo skeletons. It struck me as coincidence more than karma, but it did set me to thinking about these two lives lived over the same eight decades: Grandpa carving out a career that sustained him but didn’t consume him, Henry living his idiosyncratic loner’s life, refusing the company of anyone but his dogs, the indignity of his position outshone by the dignity of his choice.

  Beyond the Hee Haw clowning, beyond the reclusive old man with his dogs and beached Packards, were two men who found joy in the same pure sounds, whose fingers could coax living history from the strings. For a few days, I despaired over Henry’s lost recordings and instruments. But the more I pondered it, the more I found a kind of holiness in the idea of all that music just rising into the air, leaving nothing to be picked over by mortals. If I despair anything, I despair that for thirty years I lived within a short Rambler ride of a man who could teach mountain music, but in the end, with the old days eclipsed by noise, had no takers.

  1998

  Saving the Kidneys

  The first thing you notice is the momentum. The slaughter trailer resembles a rolling derrick, all steel and cable, and as you hurtle through the swampland in the cab of the battered brown pickup to which it is hitched, the trailer feels as if it is pushing more than being pulled, its impatient weight nudging at your back even as you try to outrun it. Mack Most pushes the truck hard. The engine maintains a steady roar, the heavy tires growl and whine, changing key to the tune of the road. He brakes for corners only when it seems the entire rumbling conglomeration must surely launch itself deep into the bracken. The brakes grate, the truck shudders, the turn is rounded and the accelerator flattened once again; the tattered brown truck flaps its wooden side racks, gathers its resources and surges out of the curve. As soon as the speed levels off, the slaughter trailer resumes its nudging.

  Most looks over. “Vacation day today!” He grins, wide open. His pale blue eyes are direct, unwavering even when they sparkle, which is often. “I’m takin’ off to go to the Cities this afternoon.” Later I will learn that the afternoon trip to Minneapolis is for a doctor’s appointment. Most’s six-year-old daughter is in chronic renal failure; her one kidney, taken from Mack’s older brother, who is also a butcher, is working, but there is trouble ahead.

  “Vacation day, Sunday, it don’t matter. I’ve been on Christmas. I butchered one one hour after my daughter was born,” Most chuckles, his grin undimmed. “Boss called me at the hospital. Wife wasn’t too happy, but I told her, ‘Hey, most guys go to the bar!’” He cocks both eyebrows, and the grin becomes knowing.

  Most was fourteen when he first began work at the meat market. “I started as a cleanup boy, and worked my way up the ladder. By the time I was sixteen I was on the kill floor.” He still works full-time at the shop; the traveling butcher role is a private enterprise. “The guy who started the mobile slaughter unit moved to Texas, so I took over,” Most says, leaning into a curve, glancing briefly at the road ahead. Now he is on call twenty-four hours a day, ready to respond to farmers hoping to salvage a down or injured animal. Not all of his customers approach him in an emergency; a certain number of his visits are scheduled. “Some folks feel better about having their animal killed where it lived,” says Most. There is no trace of irony in his voice.

  Most’s part-time assistant, George, sits between Most and me. Mostly he is silent. When he does speak, it is mostly in the form of colorful interjection. “Biggest animal we ever did?” says Most, “eleven-seventy-five, dressed out. White-faced steer.”

  George stirs. “And that’s without the heart, tongue and liver.”

  We are at the crossroads of a small northern town, surrounded by pines. A butcher from a neighboring town is to meet us here, lead us to a farm where two hogs wait. Mack pulls into the parking lot of a shuttered drive-in diner. It is hard to imagine rolled-down windows and corn dogs this morning; as the engine dies, the heat in the cab s
eeps away almost audibly. It is 7:30 a.m., and the sun has been up a while, but the temperature is locked at an intractable fifteen degrees below zero.

  “A warm winter, you’ll see more emergency calls,” says Most. He is leaning forward, tapping the wheel, looking west down the highway, impatient for the butcher. “It gets warm, they turn the cows out, then it freezes up and they slip and fall. Get a lot of broken legs, split pelvics. There he is.” He twists the ignition. The butcher waves, and we pull in behind him.

  The farm is far from town, a small set of isolated buildings hunkered against the cold. As we round the turn at the end of a long drive, a cat goes stock-still in mid-step, stares for a split second, then reverses itself, flashing out of sight behind a grain bin. Mack sizes up the layout, choosing an approach that will allow him access to the barn, but there is more to it. “Gotta think about how you’re going to get back out,” he says. “It’d be nice if all you had to do was shoot it and stick it, but y’ never know. Might have to drag it around three corners.”

  George is grinning. “We had to hook one on the barn cleaner chain once.”

  “There, that’ll work,” says Most. “No power lines.” The truck stops, the engine is switched off, and he is already gone, rifle tucked under his arm. In a clean pen, a pig grunts inquisitively as we enter the barn. The pig is on its feet when Most opens the gate, and the whap! of the shot is immediate. There is no talk, no prelude. The pig drops without a sound and Most is upon it, lancing the jugular with a short, swift stab. The blood rolls out, and Most moves to the next pen, where the process is repeated.

  George has followed with two oversized bale hooks. He gives one to Most and the two men snag a pig each, inserting the hook through the underside of the jaw, in the same way a fisherman baits a hook with a minnow. The pigs are slid from the pen, down the manger, and into the yard. Most positions the trailer boom and grabs a knife. As he bends to the upended pig and begins to remove its forefeet, he addresses the butcher. “Went bowlin’ for the fire department last night.” He circles each leg with the knife, then grasps the hoof. With a twist of his wrist, he snaps the foot free, tossing it aside. “Bowled a 256 the first game, ended up with a 591.” He hasn’t looked up. He slits the pig’s skin down the midline from chin to groin, then runs the knife inward from each leg, angling in to the midline cut. He has stopped speaking now, pausing only to slap his flat, curved knife across the sharpener. In the wind, the metallic scraping sounds as if it is coming from a culvert.

  I have ducked behind the corner of the garage, looking for relief from the gusts that sweep up through the barnyard from a bowl-like depression where the pasture unrolls to the distant wood. The morning weatherman warned of dangerous windchills in the minus-thirty degree range. It is all that and more. I have three pens, which I rotate through my front pants pocket, deep beneath my coveralls. A fresh pen lasts for six medium-sized words. Most continues to dissect the pig. He is barehanded.

  George picks up the four feet, throws them in a barrel at the front of the trailer. Pulling a knife from a bucket, he cuts out the pig’s tongue. He hefts it, then it joins the feet.

  Most straightens. He inserts his bloody hands in a pair of stained fluorescent-orange gloves before picking up a large, electric meat saw. “Don’t wanna touch metal,” he says, grinning again. With a quick dip of the saw, he bisects the sternum. “Take ’er up, George!”

  The winch chatters and complains, but the hog rises, hoisted by its hocks. When it is chest high, Most reaches into the abdomen and pulls out reams of pale white intestines. “This is the best part of the job.” He grins. “Hands’re warm!” On the ground, the blood freezes so quickly little of it seeps into the snow. It is a dusky, purplish red; in the wind, our stiff faces assume the same hue.

  When the pig is cleanly eviscerated, Mack again dons his gloves and hoists the saw. It has frozen, and he works it back and forth until it breaks free. Beginning at the tail, he halves the pig, drawing the saw downward, stopping just short of the nose. Now Mack, George and the butcher wrestle the V’d pig into a large plastic bag that balloons and crackles in the wind. As they heave the pig toward the butcher’s truck, the men are thrown off balance. The hooks have frozen in the hocks. The boom is lowered, and with much grunting, the hooks are twisted free. The pig disappears into the truck bed.

  The second pig goes even more quickly. George helps by kneeing the hide away from the suspended body. I notice the kidneys remain in each pig. “I pop ’em and leave ’em in the carcass,” says Mack. “Gotta leave ’em for the state inspector.” The kidneys are used to gauge the general health of the animal; scarring or other abnormalities indicate an underlying problem, and the meat may be condemned. In some cases, the twin organs are so visibly damaged that Most condemns the animal on the spot. Farmers losing a hog this way have been known to curse him roundly; of course, they do not realize how well Most understands the price of bad kidneys.

  Soon we are back on the road. Our second appointment, a single hog, is thirty miles away. I express surprise at the speed of the butchering process compared to time spent on the road. “Hogs, we’ve done five an hour,” says Most. I ask him about the process of killing an animal. “I’d rather shoot a pig with ’em lookin’ at me,” he says. Again, there is no irony in his voice. “Sometimes if you shoot ’em behind the ear, the bullet goes all the way through and ricochets around the barn.” Indeed, at our next appointment, the bullet left the pig’s skull and dented the gate.

  Whereas the first farm we visited was neat and spare, the second was cluttered and largely in disrepair. The wind hurled itself unchecked through gaping holes in the haymow. In the yard it whipped and twisted through a maze of pallet stacks, discarded truck parts and outdated speedboats. We found the pig easily, but the farmer refused to have it shot in the barn. “He doesn’t want blood in there,” said Mack. “It can get the other pigs to attack each other.” Three feet outside the barn door, the pig blinks and snuffles in the light, and turns toward Most. Whap.

  Most has killed thousands of animals. He has no specific number, just “thousands.” Yet, skinning another steaming pig, he hardly personifies death, clad as he is in a faded orange snowsuit, one leg of which is held together by copious twists of silver duct tape. Contrary to the popular perception of the burly butcher, Most is a slight man. His hands are scarred and thickened enough to reflect his profession, but his gold wedding band fits loosely over a small ring finger. Even a dark ski mask fails to lend an air of the sinister. Except when he is in the teeth of the wind, the mask is pushed up from his face, piled atop his head in loose rolls, a lackadaisical turban.

  On the way home, the turban is riding high, and Most is in a storytelling mood. “Wanna hear a myth?” He grins for the fortieth time that day. “I knew an old farmer could predict the winter by the spleen of a hog. You fold the spleen in half. That’s halfway through winter. Then you measure the width and the thickness from there. This winter was supposed to be warm in the middle, then get cold with a lot of precipitation.” It is exactly the kind of winter we have had.

  “Have I ever shot the wrong animal? Yes. Farmer said, ‘That’s the one…I think.’ By the time he said ‘I think’ it was too late.” His grin grows wider, and he shoots a sidelong glance. “Don’t say: ‘I think’!

  “Sometimes this is like a rodeo. I been chased. Two weeks ago, one of Scooter Shystacker’s longhorns, she was tempermental—that’s why they had her done—come after me. Run her horns along that gate like a kid with a stick. She came after me and I jumped up in the truck and shot her.”

  “Sheep now, in the slaughterhouse, we use electrocution,” he continues. George perks up. “’Member that time I shocked one, and four of ’em dropped?”

  “I’ve done C-sections,” says Mack. “In a cow, you’ve got two minutes. I like to get ’em out in about forty-five seconds. You’ve got to tie the umbilical cord off and cut it, and then slit the cow’s throat. It’s kind of a good thing to bring one in the world after al
l the ones I’ve taken out.”

  As we near town, talk turns to Most’s daughter. “She’s six years old and weighs thirty pounds,” he says. “Her kidneys were all full of scar tissue.” He gives a detailed report of the surgeries she has undergone, the medications she must take daily to maintain her fragile state. “She’s died on us twice,” he says. “One time at home. I gave her CPR. It’s a day-to-day thing.”

  It’s still only 11:00 a.m. when we turn off Main Street and back the trailer behind the shop. Most disappears inside as I gather my things. As I step to the door to thank him, it swings open with a rush, and he strides into the cold sunlight. “Got another one!” he says. “Over by New Richmond!”

  It is a fair distance to New Richmond. I ask if there will be time to do this and still make the two-hour drive to the hospital in Minneapolis. He answers over his shoulder, on the move. “I think I can make it!”

  Of course, he is grinning.

  1999

  P.S. In 2004, Mack’s daughter received another kidney (her first came from Bob the One-Eyed Beagle, last seen singing karaoke in the last chapter of Population 485). As of this writing she was doing well. Mack still works as a traveling butcher, but has retired the slaughter trailer in favor of a truck formerly used by a commercial weighing company. The portable scale apparatus included a steel beam that protrudes from the rear of the truck. It’s perfect for hoisting carcasses.