The Alchemy of Life, Death and Beer

By Gary Catt –

I haven’t made a springtime visit to the Alleghenyville (PA) graveyard for some time now. I don’t even recall the church attached to it. What’s more, I don’t have a clue to who is buried there.

But every spring my thoughts turn back to visits made to the rural graveyard with a close friend who lived across the road from the church.

The route to the graveyard took us between the churchyard and a property with an outdoor pen housing a pair of very large pigs apparently raised for butchering. It was a late spring day when we first made the walk up the hill. Sprays of untended forsythia ranged across the hillside – a perennial bouquet making it look like someone remembered the dead entombed in the hillside so very long ago.

We’d each carried with us a cold beer. We sat, our backs against a couple of long-neglected monuments to people long dead, and shared a blunt as we watched a distant hillside swallow the spring sun.

She spoke. “So silent here.”

I nodded.

So we sat, quiet, saying nothing just watching the disappearing light. The onset of evening was majestical but cold and soon we were driven down the hill toward the welcoming lights of her home.

As we passed the pigpen, the animals snorted at us, unsure if we presented a threat coming out of the darkness. We made peace by offering the pigs the dregs of our beer, which they heartily enjoyed, drinking from upturned bottles.

We decided to make the pigs part of our ritual route to meditation in the graveyard’s highlands. We’d bring extra beers for them. Clever beasts the pigs. They soon recognized us from a distance and would kick up one helluva fuss until we poked a bottle of beer for each of them through the fence webbing. We were extortion victims. If we didn’t bring beer for the pigs, they’d thrash around in their pen and make a ruckus. Because we didn’t necessarily want to explain our relationship with the pigs to their owner, we surrendered.

The pigs — to their credit — exhibited no desire to overdo it. One beer each left them docile — satisfied. We experimented with light beer, dark beer, imports, domestics. It didn’t matter to the pigs. They chugged down one, 12 ounce bottle of beer each. We howled.

One day in early fall they were gone. The pen was gone. The area was raked clean.

My friend and I exchanged glances.

“I miss the pigs,” she said.

“Me too,” I replied.

We continued the trek to the hilltop, parked ourselves in the usual spot to watch the setting sun, and drank a toast to the pigs and transience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feature image borrowed from http://pubinthepaddocktas.com.au/