Steak - Mark Schatzker [117]
As Fleurance laid on fat, I found myself fantasizing about marbling, which made no sense, given that by now I had good reason not to believe in it. Angus Mackay’s Highland rib eye—a life-changing steak—was, at best, USDA Select, and yet it tasted better than the Matsusaka Special Beef, which was so marbled it would have scored off the USDA charts. Never in my life had I eaten a USDA Prime steak that I considered great.
A steak arrived via airmail that verified my marbling doubts. It was from Wisconsin, raised by a man named Tom Wrchota who volunteered for the Peace Corps in Costa Rica in the early 1970s and fell in love with the local grass-fed steak. He now raises a Scottish breed called Galloway, which, looks-wise, is somewhere between an Angus and a Highland and is reputed to produce loins with a fine speckling of fat. The loins Wrchota sent me—out of his personal stash and representing the leaner end of his range—did indeed have fine speckles, but there weren’t many of them. And yet, like Angus Mackay’s Highland beef, the steak broadcast a mahogany-like depth. It walked softly, but it carried a very big stick. Marbling, clearly, had nothing to do with flavor.
But a little marbling seemed like a good idea. The steak that tasted like old liver was as lean as a valentine heart. Ted Slanker’s swampwater steak was lean. And the sirloin I almost choked on was similarly without fat. If marbling indicated anything, it is this: you are eating a well-fed cow.
I found myself staring at Fleurance’s shoulder, following her spine as it ran down her neck and flattened out along her back. Beneath that brown fur, along both sides of that spine, were her rib eyes. I envisioned wispy little curls and streaks of fat. If she had let me get close enough, I would have massaged her, not that massaging has anything to do with marbling, of course. But could it hurt?
By late September, the sun was losing power. Leaves were turning red and yellow, and I began visualizing Fleurance’s death. This was as much a surprise to me as to anyone. I am, by nature, overly sensitive when it comes to the death of animals. In the summer of 1981, I was inconsolable when my father broke the news that a pet rock bass I’d been keeping in a puddle during a family fishing trip would have to be returned to the lake. At the age of eleven or thereabouts, my father shot a porcupine that could have blinded the dog with one of its quills, and tears again flowed. When a bird flies into a bay window, I will cradle its silenced body in my hands and be stricken by a melancholy that can last for days.
Turning Fleurance into meat, I expected, would be the occasion for another personal crisis. I dreaded it but stoically welcomed it, because I felt that as a meat eater, I could no longer shield myself from the death that is inherent in all meat. But now that Fleurance’s death was nearly at hand, my attitude was what management types call proactive. I didn’t want to kill Fleurance, exactly. I respected her. On some level, I loved her. But the fact that she was going to die did not upset me. Death, after all, is painless. It’s pain that’s painful. What I wanted was that Fleurance’s death be fast and pain free. This was for her sake, but also for the sake of my palate. Adrenaline and cortisol had to be kept to a minimum so that her muscles would remain as tender and juicy as possible.
I began imagining myself crouched on the crest of a hill overlooking Fleurance’s pasture with a cocked Remington 700 BDL .308 tucked into my shoulder. The crosshairs are centered just below Fleurance’s shoulder, in the vicinity of her lungs and heart—what Scottish hunters call “the engine room.” I pull the trigger, and before Fleurance has time to be frightened by the boom, a hot pain flashes through her midsection. She looks up, the world fades to black, and Fleurance is steak.
Anibal Pordomingo, of all people, told