Manuel, The Butcher

Manuel the butcher stared through his jagged window of broken glass remembering the Spanish.
    His face was a mask of weary, solemn stillness. A quiet lying fury.    
    His silent words were the exaltations, evaluations, the expected surcharge, on an empty stomach, a tax for services rendered, reinforcements riding hard through the Basque valleys, listening for waves of German bombers over Guernica in 1936.     
    Beleaguered men held their own inside stone shepherd huts trapped in the desolate Pyrenees mountains spinning and standing grounded, surrounded by empty canteens, day old bread crusts, discarded family heirlooms, spent shell casings, their decomposing bodies relishing solitude.       
    He was required to remember old Fascist propaganda - the spreading of information.
    He is a fleischer, one who slaughters.   
In order to eat, to put food on the table, to provide for his family after peace was declared with celebrations of music, church services, wine, dancing, after burials he was forced by economics to slaughter his remaining beast of burden.

    This bull was his calling card, his vision, his hope, his dream and his identity in the village. Everything else was stolen by dictators, thieves and fascists. All he had was his dignity, integrity and self-respect.
    Time arrived short of sympathy, sentiment or condolences. He sharpened his short axe. Standing in the shade under the brutal Spanish sun he worked steel across a grindstone. Removing old edges. New edges on his blade. It was sharpened with passionate ambivalence.
    Laughter’s axe was ready.
    

    He walked into the center of the red clay ring surrounded by a white clapboard fence. The bull stood in the far corner. He approached the bull and held out his hands. They were young and lined with pulse rivers. The bull slowly emerged from the shade and Manuel collected the reins. Looking into the animal’s eyes he saw memory reflected in his soul.      
    He sighed, clapped his hands together twice, bowed to the bull, as a Shinto priest pays his respects to Bishamonten, the kami god of benevolent authority. He asked for forgiveness, for his act of fate, raised his laughing axe and brought it down hard and fast on the neck of the bull.    
    The bull froze and slumped, straining to escape the blade carving through old tough weathered skin, muscles, tendons, sinew, snapping final bones. Front legs folded, rear legs buckled. The carcass shuddered as a final breath exploded red dust.
    He clapped his hands again, severed the head and dragged the body to his shop. He cut it up and hung the severed head in his broken window. “For Sale.”    
    His wife served portions to family and neighbors. They consumed his life’s work, toasting his wisdom. Sharing is caring.
    I witnessed this.