Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [89]
Skip drank as if tasting good wine, tentative, thoughtful. His eyes closed as he drank.
The hog’s dying went on.
“Knock its head in, for God’s sake!” John Copper said.
“You knock its head in,” growled Simon.
“I will,” said John, but by the time he’d groped his way forward and shakily lifted the axe, the hog was gone.
Wilson had a few sips then set about his work. “It’s not the best knife for the job,” he said.
The cup came round again.
The blood was already changing colour, thickening like a roux. My body twitched with joy. I’d never been hungry like this. Wilson cut the hog’s legs and head off, slit the hairy, black back and put his big, meaty hands in under the flaps. He pulled, and two great blankets of hide came away with a tearing sound. Dag hung them up on the sails for the sea to salt.
“Here, we’ll make a fire here,” Rainey said.
“Jump to, Skip and John, get all this cleared up,” said the captain.
They were baling blood. Sea blood, salt blood. Skip’s eyes were wide and his lower lip drooled from its centre. The chitterlings were in a bucket, plump and shiny, grey and pink. They smelled like shit. The liver was a wing, deltaed with fat. A soft balloon of a thing, the bladder, delicately patterned. Wilson tied its end off and squirted piss to wash blood from the boat. We cleaned up and made a fire on the top of Joe Harper’s toolbox, up out of the wet, with wood from the ship. We’d been drying it in the sun but it was still damp. Wilson had managed against all odds to keep a supply of dry matches. God knows where he kept them. Up his arse probably, Tim said. Who cared? So long as they lit a fire. Now that we were doing something and had drunk, we were cheerful. Saliva returned to our mouths, thick and claggy. Dan whistled.
We kept the flames ticking along with a few bits of rag.
“What are you doing, boys?” said Dan, elbowing us aside. “Don’t you know how to light a fire? Useful knowledge, boys, useful knowledge. Just watch me.”
They passed over from the other boat a shoulder, a leg, some ribs. We stuck them with knives and tools and held them in the fire, and the juices ran down and made the flames spit and fed the fire. We cooked everything as well as we could, but we couldn’t wait long enough. The smell was driving us mad. They’d started their own fire over there now and stuck the hog’s head, eyeless, on a stick over it. The sun was beginning to go down, and our fires were warm and lovely and made homely trails of smoke rise up above our boats. Among our sails hung wonderful hides, marbled pink and white with flesh and fat.
The ears cooked in no time. Wilson cut them off.
“Who gets these?” he asked.
“Cut them in half and let the lads have them,” the captain replied. That was Skip and John and me and Tim. Skip cried when he got his. Sat there chewing with a runny nose. My God, hog’s ear is food for gods. It’s tough, you can suck and chew and gnaw and it lasts for ages. Next came the tail, Simon got that, then the feet, and when at last I got my teeth into a real ham, it was pink in the middle and eating it hurt. Agony in the pits of my cheeks, sharper than the sting of salt in the sores erupting like volcanoes on my legs. We ate the lot, guts and all, apart from the hides and some strips of pork hung up to dry. It was glorious. The captain said we could have an extra ration of water, just for tonight, to celebrate the killing of the pig and our tenth day in the boats.
“We have done splendidly,” he said, his ringing tone restored. “Splendidly!”
We have food enough. We have water for a good time yet, we have our spirits and we are sure of our salvation in God’s hands.
He led us in a small prayer of thanksgiving.
We were at peace like big cats after feeding. There was a moon. The ocean was beautiful. Simon played his fiddle. We sang “The Black Ball Line,” “Santy Anno,” “Lowlands Low.” Yan sang something from his country and Dag sang something from his. John sang the filthiest version I ever heard of “My God How the Money Rolls In.” And we sang “Blood Red Roses,