Cleaving (5 page)

"Don't gotta be so delicate with. It's pork! You can't screw it up!" Tom cackles again. He's got a nasal voice, always amused,
his words accented into a slight New Yawkese. He looks and sounds like a Muppets character. "Chop, chop!"

But I'm rather mesmerized by the slow, easy peel. Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this
inevitable falling apart. It's actually rather moving, though I know better than to try to explain why aloud. It's sad, but
a relief as well, to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces
instead of bloody shreds.

And off comes the top round. This will later be sliced into cutlets for the case, to be fried into schnitzel or rolled up
into stuffed involtini. But for now it'll be bagged and put into the front cooler until the case needs to be refilled.

"And that's it. The rest goes into the grind. Just sausage."

A white plastic bin on the cutting table is piled high with pig meat, roughly sliced into big strips. Juan has come over to
stuff the meat into big clear plastic Cryovac bags. He's a short, barrel-chested guy I guess to be a little younger than I
am. I'm instantly attracted to his smile, though I've not yet gotten to talk much with him, just a hello after Josh introduced
him this morning as "the only guy with any brains in the whole place. That's including me."

"I like your hat," he says to me now.

"Thanks!" I find myself blushing with pleasure. It
is
a good hat.

Tom has by now broken down almost all of the pile; he's leaving one more round for me to practice on, while he moves on to
shoulders. He speaks quickly. "Pull out the aitchbone, that round one there."

"H bone? H as in hip?" For the bowl of bone protruding from the fat end of the round, with its hole in the middle, clearly
has to be some part of the pelvis bone. It looks like something that--if picked clean of flesh and left out on the desert floor
for a month or two--Georgia O'Keeffe would paint, as the bright New Mexico sky gleamed through its smooth white curve.

"Nah. Aitch. A-I-T-C-H."

"What does that mean?"

Tom shrugs his loose cartoonish shoulders. "Dunno. Homework for you, eh?"

So I pull it out as Tom shows me, with the help of a meat hook. With the big knob end of the drumstick facing me, I scoop
out the divot of flesh from the middle of the hole, then come behind the bone to scrape meat free from the top edge. Then
I can work the tip of the meat hook over that edge, then back and through the central hole. The hook is a C-shaped curve of
steel about the size of my curled thumb and forefinger, with a viciously sharp point on one end and an orange plastic grip
on the other. I hold it as if it were a bicycle handle, the base of the hook emerging from between my index and middle fingers.
With it I can get a sure grasp on the bone, and a means to turn gravity to my advantage.

(Funny, about meat hooks. I've had the phrase
meat hooks
in my vocabulary for as long as I can remember, accompanied by the vision of a broad-chested, letter-jacketed thug pawing
at a comely bobby-soxer. And I never gave the origin of the word any thought; I think I was picturing fleshy, too-big mitt-hands.
Actually, using this meat hook, a sharp, small, thin tool that fits so coolly and easily in the palm, provokes a tiny, almost
imperceptible shift of perspective. Meat hooks aren't like "meat hooks" at all. They're much more effective and terrifying.
I find myself wondering idly if the first fifties coed to utter the phrase "Get your meat hooks
off
me!" was a butcher's daughter.)

As I pull down on the orange handle now, the bone gets looser. I help it along, scraping, sawing through the sinews marrying
it to the rounded edge of the thigh bone. As more of the bone loosens, the rest of it comes away easily, until by the end
I'm hardly using the knife, just yanking down and toward me with the hook.

"We keep the bones?"

"Keep the bones!
Always keep bones!
" Tom bellows. (In addition to working and instructing here at Fleisher's, Tom teaches butchery at the Culinary Institute
of America in nearby Hyde Park and has therefore developed his comically stentorian delivery.)

"Shut the fuck up!"
Josh bellows right back. (Not sure where Josh developed his stentorian delivery, but he sure as hell has.)

"Josh, would you stop yelling?"
This from Jessica, Josh's tiny wife, ensconced in her office, working over invoices.
"The store is fucking
open!"

I like this place.

After the aitchbone is out (that's going to keep bothering me, what the hell kind of word is
aitch
anyway?), it really is pretty simple. There are two connected bones remaining in the hunk of meat, each of them shaped like
a Flintstones sort of thing, what Pebbles would have stuck through her hair (bigger, of course). I stab down through the meat
at the top edge, where the evident shiny white end of one of these bones sticks out, and I slice down along its top, to the
next joint, until I've exposed its entire length. Then I get in there, the fingers of my right hand sunk deep in the meat
crevice I've just made, peering inside, while with my left hand, my cutting hand, I scrape down along both sides of the bone
and down under. The meat is cold from its time in the cooler; every once in a while I take my hands out and shake them around,
blow into my cupped palms.

"Careful there," says Tom. "Get numb, you could lose a finger without feeling it. And we have a hell of a time moving finger
sausage." (Tom thinks he's pretty funny.)

I gradually reveal the bones, peel them out, and all that's left is a messy mound of pig flesh, probably fifteen pounds of
it. This I just carelessly cut into large chunks with my scimitar--rolling my eyes a little, inwardly, when Tom hands me the
hugely impressive knife, one of his own personal collection, and tells me what it's called. Between the scimitars and the
scabbards and the chain-mail gloves, it sometimes seems like the butchery industry was created by a bunch of testosterone-poisoned
D&D nerds. More meat for sausage.

"All done."

"Good. There's the next one for you."

So I attack the second one. It's gratifying how much more quickly it goes than the first did; I do love me a steep learning
curve. Tom is finished up and heading out, off to teach his evening class, and so now I'm alone at the table, mostly, except
when Aaron passes on his way from the front counter, which he's working today, to the kitchen, where he's monitoring roast
beef in the oven, slowly bubbling beef stock on the stove. "How's it coming, Jules?" he calls out with extravagant good cheer.
"Can I call you Jules?"

"I answer to pretty much anything."

He throws some arched eyebrows my way. "Anything, huh? I'll have to think on that."

Aaron is a CIA grad--CIA culinary school, not exploding-cigars-and-covert-arms-deals CIA--and about my age, with close-cropped
dark hair, startling blue eyes, and almost palpable enthusiasms. I barely know him, but I have known a few CIA grads in my
time, and he has the vibe. Boyishly eager, impressed with himself. Sort of like a Harvard grad without all the money. I like
him, but he's a little intimidating. I try not to let him see it. I throw some eyebrow action right back at him. "Do that."
I don't even know what we're talking about, it's just random innuendo, locker talk without a subject matter.

I'm almost through with my round when Josh strides up from the back with a whole side of pork--eighty pounds of pig--slung casually
over his shoulder. Without a word he rolls the thing onto the table. He takes his knife from the metal scabbard chained around
his waist with a pink bicycle lock. "Yo, Uncle Sweet Tits!" he calls to Aaron, who's in the kitchen stirring around some chicken
bones roasting in the oven. "I'm gonna kick your ass now." Jesse, the tall, thin, beaky kid who works the front of the shop--he's
quiet, a reader of
Harper's
and
Wired,
who is teased mercilessly for drinking green tea--leans up against the case to watch. He evidently knows what's coming. Josh
points with his knife to the clock on the wall, like Babe Ruth pointing his bat at the center-field bleachers at Wrigley Field.
And sets to work.

Pulls off the kidney and kidney fat with a single yank. Gets in and quickly carves out the tenderloin nestled in under the
spine, tosses it to the table. With thick but quick fingers, he counts five ribs down from the shoulder. Works his knife tip
intricately between those two vertebrae, then, once they're separated, slices the shoulder away from the loin with one sweeping
pistol-grip cut, straight down to the table. Picks up the butcher saw, like a hacksaw writ large, and with three swipes cuts
across the ribs a couple of inches out from the triangular column of meat that runs along the rib cage's outer curve, against
the backbone. Once he's through the bone, he puts down the saw, picks up his knife, and runs it along the saw cut he's just
made, down to the table, curving up closer to the spine as he gets past the ribs, toward the hip joint, separating the belly
from the loin. Then pulls the carcass to the edge of the table so that the rear leg is hanging off, leans hard with one thick
forearm on the loin that rests on the table, while pushing suddenly, heavily, on the hoof with his other arm, really putting
some serious pressure into it. A mighty
crack!
And the hip joint is opened up. One more raking slice through to wood and the round is off the loin, swinging floorward,
held tight in Josh's big muff of a hand.

He slams the ham to the table with a meaty smack, staring at the clock. "Hey, pussy!" he yells. "One twenty-five!"

("We have
customers,
goddammit!" Jessica calls, not really expecting to be heeded.)

Aaron sticks his head out from the kitchen. "Fuck you. Really?"

"Booop!" Making an eloquent upward gesture, low down, middle finger extended. "Right up your rectum."

Aaron shakes his head, as a timer alarm goes off from somewhere over the stove. "Okay, man. I'm coming for you." He jabs the
greasy end of a meat thermometer in Josh's direction. "I'm comin'. Don't mess with Chocolate Thunder." (Aaron and Josh, cochairs
of the Nickname Committee, seem to disagree on Aaron's moniker.)

Jessica walks by on her way to the back of the shop in her padded orange vest and jeans, her frizzy hair twisted up on top
of her head. She rolls her eyes in my direction as she passes, muttering "Jesus
Christ,
" with equal parts exasperation and affection.

I
really
like this place.

I go back into the remains of my pork round... and immediately send the tip of my knife skittering across the meaty flesh of
my thumb. It doesn't so much hurt as startle me; I yank my hand out of the meat with a little whispered "shit!"

Josh turns to me with mild eyes. "You lose a finger, genius?"

It's a tiny thing. Blood, though, welling up through the smooth translucent smile of the sideways slice. "It's nothing."

Jessica calling from the back, "Oh, yes, please let's have the unpaid, uninsured apprentice cut off a digit on her first day."

"It's nothing."

"Lemme see." He roughly grabs my hand, peers at it. "Dude, that's
nothing!
"

"That's what I said."

"C'mon." He leads me to the back of the kitchen, where there's a shoebox full of first-aid supplies on a shelf over the big
metal restaurant sink. "Rinse that out real good," he says as he rummages through the box. When I've finished washing and
drying my hand--blood is still running in more-than-expected amounts--he dabs me with a drop from a dark green vial.
OREGANO OIL
, it says.

"What kind of hippie crap is that?" It is a testament to Josh's ability to put people at ease that a good girl like me is
flipping shit to the boss before the first day is out.

"Beats Neosporin all to shit." He wraps a Band-Aid around the cut. "You put a glove on that. Don't want you bleeding all over
my meat."

I
SPEND
the rest of the day helping out as I can, learning the ins and outs of boning pork shoulders, even breaking down my first
side. (It, of course, takes me considerably more than one minute, twenty-five seconds.) I make sure to complain aloud about
the glove I now have to wear: "Now I know why men hate condoms." I say it not just because it's true--I'm surprised at how
that thin layer of latex between my skin and the meat makes me feel clumsier, less sure--but also, of course, because I want
the guys to know I'm one of them, as obscene as they are. My cut keeps bleeding for a surprisingly long time, soaking through
two Band-Aids and filling the fingers of two gloves before it finally stops. I'm obscurely proud of this.

Later, as we're cleaning up at the end of the day, I learn how to operate the great creaking Cryovac machine that vacuum-packs
boned-out meat for the cooler until it's ready to be trimmed for the case or taken back to Juan. As the shop's sausage maker,
he has his own little kingdom in the back dedicated to the work. I clean the cutting table with a metal scraper and wipe it
with a towel soaked in a bleach solution before spreading on a thick layer of coarse sea salt, rubbing it into the cracks
in the table. By seven thirty, my apron is in the dirty clothes bin, my leather hat is hanging from a hook in the bathroom,
and I'm on my way out the door, a bag in hand full of meat Josh wouldn't let me pay for.

("Oh, come on. You can't give me this." "Fuck you. You worked for ten and a half hours for no pay." "But you're doing me the
favor here. You're teaching me. I
suck
at this." "If you don't put that credit card away, I'm going to stick it up your butt.")

As I'm headed for the door, Aaron calls out to ask if I want to kick back with a beer before I leave.

"Nah, I got to get back."

Aaron is cracking open a bottle of his own, some dark local brew. "To the city? Man."

I shrug. "It'll be fine. Not so far."