DURING THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES THE YANKEES ATTACKED MY GRANDFATHER’S REGIMENT AT CROSS KEYS. It was wild. Yankee shouts, rebel yells, shells exploding, cannon firing, deadly musket rattle on the left and right, the horizon filled with writhing blue bodies trying to get to you with bayonets.
My grandfather fired, loaded, fired, loaded, fired, and – they were gone. The smoke quietly blew away. The wounded moaned. The dead lay everywhere. A hat raised on a ramrod was instantly torn by minie balls. They were over there. You didn’t stick your head up to look around.
The Yankee generals were proud. They wouldn’t send a trace flag to tend to their wounded and dead.
After a time the pigs came. They ate the bodies. They ate the badly wounded, too. At first, a shout or the sudden noise of a shot would melee them scatter. But only at first. They returned and ate until gorged. Nothing would make them stop.
Later, someone offered my great-grandfather some pork. My grandfather was revolted. He replied. “I’ll kill Yankees if I have to, but I’m not going to eat ’em!”
In our family we know better than to eat pig. When you eat pig you eat a scavenger. When you eat a scavenger you eat what that scavenger has eaten.
The Pig
Swine are to the animal world what the turkey buzzard is to the bird world. They do the job they were created to do. No rotten carcass, stinking offal, or rancid garbage remains where pigs root.
