The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [179]
I could sense Angelo a step or two behind me, preparing to take his shot the second I took mine. We were both down on one knee. I braced the rifle against my shoulder and lined up my sight. I felt calmer and clearer than I expected to; at least, when I looked down the barrel of the rifle it didn’t appear to be wagging uncontrollably. I took aim at the shoulder of the grayish pig, aligning the site’s U and I with the top of the animal’s front leg, and then inched down a shade, hoping to correct for the fact that at the rifle range my shots had all landed several inches high. I held my breath, resisted a sudden urge to clamp my eyes shut, and gently squeezed.
The crystal stillness of the scene and the moment in time now exploded into a thousand shards of sense. The pigs erupted in panic, moving every which way at once like black bumper cars, and then the blam! of Angelo’s shot directly behind made me jump. One pig was down; another seemed to stagger. I pumped my gun to fire again but the adrenaline was surging now and I was shaking so violently that my finger accidentally pressed the trigger before I could lower my gun; the shot went wild, skying far over the heads of the rioting pigs. Something like the fog of war now descended on the scene, and I’m uncertain exactly what happened next, but I believe Angelo fired a second time. I collected myself just enough to pump and fire one more poorly aimed round before the pigs dispersed, most of them tumbling down the steep embankment to our left.
We ran forward to the downed animal, a very large grayish sow beached on her side across the dirt road; a glossy marble of blood bubbled directly beneath her ear. The pig thrashed briefly, attempting to lift her head, then gave it up. Death was quickly overtaking her, and I was relieved she wouldn’t need a second shot. We ran past her, looking for the others. Angelo said he thought he had grazed another one, and I climbed down the embankment looking for it, but very quickly the going got treacherously steep and Angelo called me back up to the road to see what I’d done.
Angelo clapped me on the back and congratulated me extravagantly. “Your first pig! Look at the size of it. And with a perfect shot, right in the head. You did it!” Did I do it? Was that really my shot? I thought my first shot had dropped the pig but already that moment was blurred irretrievably, and when I saw what a clean shot it was I suddenly had my doubts. Yet Angelo was adamant—he had fired at a different pig, a black one. “No, this is your pig, Michael, you killed it, there’s no doubt in my mind.” Our hunting story was taking form, the fluid confusion of the moment rapidly hardening into something sturdier and sharper than it really was. “What a great shot,” Angelo continued. “You got yourself a big one. That’s some very nice prosciutti!”
Meat I was not yet quite ready to see. What I saw was a dead wild animal, its head lying on the dirt in a widening circle of blood. I kneeled down and pressed the palm of my hand against the pig’s belly above the nipples and felt beneath the dusty, bristly skin her warmth, but no heartbeat. My emotions were as surging and confused as the knot of panicked pigs had been on this spot just a moment before. The first to surface was this powerful upwelling of pride: I had actually done this thing I’d set out to do, had successfully shot a pig. I felt a flood of relief, too, that the deed was done, thank God, and didn’t need to be done again. And then there