The Old Ways

The Old Ways

When I got home from school,
the calf was already hanging
by its tendons from
an old single-tree hitch.
My father held a Budweiser in one hand,
a butcher knife in the other.
He tossed my backpack to the side,
like things were about to happen.

I tried to nod on cue as he explained
the hanging job, the right way
to cut the meat.
He talked about the good old days
when he was a boy,
how they made shoes out of the hide
and wasted nothing

And I watched, brother;
I drank in every drop
of blood, sweat, and BS he threw out.
I painted my father‘s sure hands
somewhere permanent inside me,
the way his knife slid through
the calf’s flesh
like it was smoke.

And when he passed the blade to me,
I did my best not to chew the meat
up too badly.
He nodded, acting satisfied
as I worried the hide off the thing,
glancing at him to call me off
before I made a mess of it.
After a while, he stepped up
and slid its coat off.
I stepped back, sweaty.

Then I ran to get the water hose
and cleared the guts off the grass
after he’d finished. I tried to stand
in the same top-heavy lean as my father
and admire an afternoon’s work,
like a man would.

He walked over to the cooler,
got out a Budweiser
and handed it to me,
like I was finally his son.
I pulled the tab and metal tongue out
and drank it down.

When we went inside–
my father shining like a knife blade–
I went into the bathroom,
locked the door
and puked it all out.


C.D. Bledsoe

Posted over on his site, Murder Your Darlings
Cortney commented:
(Originally appeared in Apalachee Review)

Notes: Another workshop poem from Miller William's class. I wasn't actually coming from school when this happened, but I thought it was a nice juxtaposition. Also, beer was never a hard thing to acquire around my father.