Letters from Nikolaevsk

Annitta

12-13-98 AM -- Matushka P.'s First Kill (Part I)

Hi, from the most exciting snow covered village in the hills of Alaska.

Nikolaevsk is a unique village full of interesting people who do not know that they are interesting. One of the residents, whose name is being withheld for obvious reasons, related the following story. Oh, the title Matushka is one of honor and is for the wives of priests only.

This family is new to this community having arrived from Greece. They had purchased their small home via the internet after her hubby was sprung from the monks... ah, that's another story. After moving here, the most wonderful and gentle Matushka P. decided to help the family out by raising chickens. This is her story... in her own words.

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Today I have accomplished the impossible: I have relieved my Archpriest hubby of the dilemna of having to pay a village boy to slaughter the first of those mean roosters in our henhouse. We had been given twelve straight-run chicks in the fall of last year by a dear friend who is a theologian and writer in the Russian Synod (thank you, George!).

Our friend had given us this gift when our chicken house burnt down last year with about one hundred chicks and turkey poults in it. We were all devastated here. We also ate a LOT of salmon this last year as a consequence. Food is VERY expensive in Alaska unless you catch it or it is given to you.

On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, I was treated to a wonderful Bar B'Q sauced Loin of Mystery Meat given by a friend from Nanwalek Village. It was delicious in spite of my protestations. We are often given fish, but meat is so expensive. We really don't eat much. Last year a physician told us to up the protein intake for our son so we try to do fish and meat some now. More than when we were virtually xerophagic in our lifestyle some years ago.

This week hubby goes off again tommorrow for the cycle of village visits. I was pondering out loud, "Hmmmm honey do you think I should go into town again for supper? I forgot to buy the chicken for supper."

He grinned at me with great compassion on his homely Scots face and said, "Matushka, isn't it time we harvested our own chicken? We have three or four roosters we are going to have to isolate unless we want them to tear the hens to pieces?"

Uh-oh. The time had come, the walrus said...

I knew I had been had. Always, I talked to my husband about the dream of living in a country place where I could raise a big garden and harvest our own eggs and chickens. "Harvest" always meant you pay someone to make MY chickens look like the ones at Safeway and Carrs or Eagles Supermarkets. They would take them in the dead of night and return them the next day neatly wrapped in shrink wrap or failing that at least in unstained butcher paper. But now....

To fence me in still further, I had been investigating the issues of the priests of the Orthodox Church as being barred from the "shedding of blood" as a long and unbroken, more or less, tradition. It was hard enough as an old Roman Catholic girl to be living with a priest, but I had long held to the pride that the priest I lived with had never killed anything. It was always me.

It was even me driving the car that hit that dog. I had had a small consolation in that, on that dark wet rainy night in Kodiak long ago when the beautiful old and blind lab lumbered in front of the car right after a turn in the road.

So, I had a long history of valiantly championing his purity of undefiled priestly status. No amorous wanton looks from Wednesday through Monday. Not for this matushka. So, with my own petard sharp and ready, I had academically agreed to my place as a real frontierswoman.

I had also been reminding him that I could do the harvesting if I just had the right tools.

Okay, Truth: I RARELY am in the chicken house. It is the domain of my kids and hubby. I must say that I did a good job of shoveling manure however when the first big thaw hit this year. But rabbits aside that is all I have to do with the fowl house.

He gave me that lopsided Scots grin this morning and said, "Photini, here are your tools", presenting me with a dull hatchet and a very sharp butcher knife.

Oh my, I thought, hoisted on my own petard as they say!!!

Do I spend the money to make the fifty to sixty mile round trip into town from the village to buy a 7 dollar chicken or do I take the hatchet and. . .

But, I had also been making frugality noises -- and everyone knew I had only nineteen cents in the checking account. I could bounce a check, I thought -- this has happened before. Humiliation over ...

"Relax, dear, its very easy." He was taking obvious joy in being mentor. He sailed into a graphic lecture.

"Honey you just take the bird by its legs (LETHAL LEGS -- THE ONES THAT WERE TRYING TO SHRED MY SCARF EVEN WHILE IT LAY ON ME HEAD), lay its head (O, YES, THE HEAD WITH ITS HOOKED BEAK THAT HAD GNASHED THE KNEE OF OUR ONLY SON) over a stump (he points at a stump of the right size) and WHACK, you chop off its head at the top of the neck."

He paused to give me a chance to breathe, but no more time than that. "Then you take that galvanized bucket (he is pointing again at a clean galvanized bucket which I did not even know we owned) and having filled it with boiling hot water you dip the bled chicken (BLED???? past tense??? how does a chicken with its head lopped off get BLED??? I am visualizing morgue equipment or worse, a vampire's skill -- please spare me that) into it for fifteen seconds or so. "

Breathe again. I am scrambling for dignity. He is nonchalant.

"Then you take the critter and dip it in cold water (he points at another bucket I had never for the life of me seen before) and you shake it off and pull off ALL the feathers.... quickly.... When most are pulled out you cut off the neck at the breast bone and open up the l'il fellas chest and then you quickly (he is brandishing the knife which suddenly looks very large and very sharp glinting in the Alaska sun) open up the vent (VENT???? this is a euphemism for the only aperature south of the beak!!!!) and run your hand in and gut it. GUT IT????? Run my hand in a still warm chicken and GUT it? What does gut mean? Aren't there lethal chicken droppings in there? Don't I have open wounds?

I am breathing quickly and feeling like I am going to faint. But he is puffed up with power, and I gather my shredded dignities to meself and begin to look composed. This is good, dear, but not today. Let's do this Thursday.

"Thursday, I'm heading to the villages tomorrow -- won't be back until Saturday. You can do this by yourself?" No, definitely not. I don't think I can handle the feet and the heads at the same time -- I resent both ends of this rooster.

Well, I have to pick the kids up from open gym. But he is grinning from ear to ear. I know it. He's won. I am transparent.

I hate my mellow grinning spouse (I sinned, I own it, it is TRUE!) for his composure and my angst.

But I have to negotiate some, here. I agree, I have to kill it. But it is clear you can do something, because I really do have to go get the kids and ...

He smiles. Sure dear...

This may be manageable. I lay it all out:

"YOU put your hand in there and gut it, I will have already "shed its blood", that is something you can do right?"

"Oh yeah sure, no problem, at home in the Sierras back when I was a kid we'd do fifteen Rhode Island Reds and fifteen Cornish Cross at a time. Kind of simple once you get the hang of it. Anyhow Photini where do you think you get chicken necks, hearts, gizzards and livers from anyhow?"

"Safeway," I shot out.

OH MY.........Oh my . . . .

Remember being a kid and starting to race your 'lil red wagon' (or worse, have strapped lethal wheels to the soles of your shoes down Santa Clara road on one of its steep hills in Oakland full of traffic) down a hill that turns out to be MUCH steeper than it EVER looked?

I understood flashbacks.

"Well, you know Matushka, I really appreciate your help with the chickens. How will Moses ever learn to harvest (THAT WORD AGAIN, but I'm beginning to just roll my eyes) chickens and rabbits if we don't show him how? Right? (I nod blankly) And you do want to look experienced when you show him how? Right?" (Oh, that's right -- I'm his mother -- I'm supposed to lead somehow. I sigh and nod with resignation.)

"It's just you and me, honey -- I'll talk you through it." (I wonder what kind of complicity is allowed in this murderous act -- I'm looking at him, but I also don't want him to go away -- he needs to help. We are joined in this act somehow -- he is just legally, technically immune from prosecution.)

"And this is private -- so, if you scream and cry, and weep for days, it'll still be just between you and me. After about your sixth kill, you'll be fine." (Oh, that's right -- this will not be my last. I am expected to be the career criminal here.)

"WE", I said, "won't show him," gathering some status out of the role, "I will show him. But NOT today. Let's just do this quietly somewhere where Dmitri and Fieena and Daniel and Luba (our neighbors) won't have to be tempted to pull out their binonculars and watch."

My little red wagon is beginning to move down the hill.....Oh My!

Now let's be honest... I am quickly taking inventory...Is there an errand in the village I HAVE to run? Do I have any thing in the oven... no forget that... Does the engine on the car need rebuilding? Doesn't Hubby have to do seven or eight hours of paperwork?????? Aren't I sick with influenza or heart disease or paralysis or anthing? O, I want a Mars Bar with Almonds. A case. Gospody Pomiluy!

Hubby looks a bit crestfallen and says gently, "Look, honey we don't have to do this." I am hopeful, the man has a heart. "Yes, remember I was going to go down and Dawn was going to give me lessons."

"That's right. We can wait. We can just let these roosters roam free... of course the eagles may get them, but look they would like all the greens in the yard and if some of the neighbors down the road and around the bend don't take a fancy to them maybe we can enjoy their crowing? It is a marvelous noise in the morning. Then we wouldn't have to feed them either. Don't worry about it. I don't want you to something that would make you uncomfortable. Maybe this part of farm life isn't for you."

I had been listening raptly, but at the last sentence, my hackles went up. These words: "...dont worry.... uncomfortable.... maybe this part of farm life isn't for you.... Oh my, these are fighting words. And then I looked upon his revoltingly insincere face. It wasn't going to be. No parole. No reprieve. Today. This is it.

He tries lamentably to humor me, "You know for hundreds of years your ancestors harvested chickens (THAT WORD AGAIN) and ate them fresh...but you're a long way from the islands and used to take out like the rest of us."

"huh?"

I am now IN NEED OF DEFENDING MY ETHNIC HONOUR. But I didn't want to go there, either. These same ancestors supposedly also used those warm chicken innards for other purposes, too. That was them, this was me...

Might as well kill his joy, shorten his rapture. Just cut the mustard and do it.

"Okay, Father, lets HARVEST the rooster. But not here (beyond the back step) let's go out in the middle of the yard by that stump over there", I point to the center of the back of our yard a place in full view of everyone.

"But" he replies, " I thought you might want to do this somewhere less obvious?"

"Hey look, I am going to HARVEST a chicken, to feed our family, what is there to be ashamed of?"

He grins that grin again and says in a level deadpan voice, "Sure, honey whatever you'd like". My little red Radio Flyer wagon has just taken off from the hight crest of the now VERY steep hill.

My body in this moment desperately, I mean from the toes, craves Chocolate.....

I am wondering if there is a prayer for the "harvesting" of chickens.

later...

[ To Be Continued..... ]

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Bless,

annitta

from downtown beautiful Nikolaevsk