The Day No Pigs Would Die

It was winter and the snow in Idaho stays until April or longer. In town kids were watching cartoons and eating sugared cereals, the kind that are on tv commercials. And they probably got to take showers every day and talk back to their parents a little and had posters on their sheetrock walls.
I don't know why Dad didn't wake me, maybe it's because I was the sensitive one. But I recall hearing gun shots. And the first thing I remember seeing was a lot of red blood on the snow and Merlin Madsen holding his pistol point blank to the head of one of our four ,trusting, young pigs. He seemed a little reluctant like one of those people that will try anything if he just has an idea of how it works or what in the end needs to be accomplished. But he owned a gun and so offered to help my dad slaughter his pigs. He was the kind of guy who never wanted anything in return, just the benefit of feeling needed.
But he shot the pigs one by one and when I got there the pigs were flopping around and dying. Merlin had to shoot some of them twice or three times. I had on my Kmart winter work boots that were lined with yellow fuzz and probably an old U.S. Army jacket with the name "Waddell" on it from the early 70's. But I didn't feel cold that day.
I was incorporated without any notice and helped where I could, dragging bodies around, stepping in cold blood. The bodies were decapitated and the heads placed on 50 gallon barrels at the front of the driveway where the kids driving by in the school bus could see.
We transported the gutted bodies to the butcher down the road who organized them appropriately, taking his share and jumping town. And we had bacon and ham that didn't taste like it came from the store.