Each of our actions occurs only once—there is no way back. Pleasures must be realised, hardships undertaken. We should be wary of ‘revisiting’ past experiences. Our actions have repercussions for both ourselves and for the world, but these should never hold us back from acting freely. It may be that these repercussions go unnoticed or have great meaning—it may be that we will never know.
A tale is told with the enthusiasm of youth—bright eyes, windmilling animations, jutting chin. It is an account of years ago—fifty—a different time, the time before change, when the world was still sealed in its golden cage, before Pandora’s doom, before the interference of the hubristic Prometheus. It was a time that had experienced no alteration and a time when its inhabitants expected none. What a time it was; a time that would remain forever unaltered, a moment in a life, a singular experience of being—bright, sunny—when no time presses, packaged for eternity, waiting only for the end of it all. We can hardly believe there was such a time, and yet it must have been.
The pig cooler was a large bath-shaped receptacle used for scolding a slaughtered pig and, after the victim’s demise and dismemberment, as a receptacle for salting its body so that it would last, hung in dark pantries, through the dim winter months of austerity and cold. The pig—the saviour of every family. The cooler—a treasured communal object the origin of which had been forgotten, the importance of which could never be underestimated.
And so the tale started.
‘It was me and Jimmy. A fantastic summer’s day—warm, butterflies, insects buzzing. We were so hot, just wearing old shorts and vests, nothing on our feet, chewing grass, whistling, holding our arms wide and soaring through the long grassed meadows, scattering the butterflies like flickering chaff.
In the stackyard of the farm, we found it—the pig cooler. It was years old. All the houses around used it in October, when the old pig killer came round and saw off all the porkers who had been living so well in their comfortable brick sties. Jimmy and me jumped into the cooler. We could lie down full length in it and not be seen.
They were cutting hay around the farm. Nobody was thinking of winter. The farmer himself came into the yard. We asked him outright if we could take the pig cooler down to the river. What a wonderful boat it would make, we said. He nodded. He didn’t care.
We pulled it across the long-grassed field. The butterflies opened up a path for us. We dropped it into the river. It splashed onto the water and we jumped aboard as it slipped out of its harbour and into the open sea beyond.
We pirated the day away, using long poles to propel ourselves down amongst the reeds. Jimmy ducked as a kingfisher flew like an iridescent rocket over our heads. We saw an otter and we were still there as the sun set.
We pulled the pig cooler back and left it where it had been found. We stroked it as we walked off into the night, unfed, exhausted, dirty and wet. It had been the best day of our lives. I can see it all now. I can smell it—every drop of it, every speck of it, every sound. I can see it all—breathe it all.
The autumn came—we did other things, we felt the chill of the morning dew, the pigs got fatter. We heard the old pig killer mentioned, not by name, only by title—like the Grim Reaper, his function was more important. He was named for his broad shoulders and taste for death. He was the ‘Pig Killer’—a savage devil who came with the dying light of the shortening days and brought screams, smells, blood and entrails, to the keenly expectant villagers. And when he left—wandering to his winter lair—the villagers feasted on what he had left behind, thankful they would not witness his merciless killing spree again until the fading autumn light of the following year.
So we went again to the stackyard. We pleaded with the busy farmer as he fought to orchestrate the fearful webbing bands that spun on the whirring pulleys of a frantic threshing machine. The air was full of choking dust from the battered ears of corn. “Yes! Yes!” he shouted above the din. His flustered, red-faced nod was enough.
We dragged the pig cooler again to the river. It had dried since our last adventure. There were no butterflies now and the grass was tacky and moist. The river was higher than before. We slipped in the mud as we slid down the greasy bank which before had provided such a safe launching place. Beneath the angry cawing of circling crows, we jumped into the pig cooler as it slipped quickly out into the muddy river.
Straightaway we knew everything was wrong. The dried out timber had shrunk and loosened against the steel banding that held it in place. Its earlier journey across the meadow, its previous day-long soaking, and the subsequent summer-long heat of the stackyard had all taken their toll. Its parched ribs opened. Water flowed into its hull. We grabbed its sides and within seconds it fell apart. It did not even have a carcass. Its bones went in all directions, floating away or sticking in the muddy sides of the treacherous bank.
The water was cold. We shivered as we struggled to recover the dismembered ribs. Jimmy reached to the bottom to grab the steel banding. My heart pounded as we gathered the staves together. It was a world of destruction—the broken body of our craft, the runes which foretold the repercussions of our actions.
Somehow, we got all the parts of the pig cooler back to the stackyard. We struggled to put it back together but nothing would stay in place. In the end, we rested the ribs of the one side against a dusty timber partition and wedged the steel retaining band between a milking pail and a heavy horse harness.
We ran from the stackyard, our minds filled, not with the glorious day that was now behind us, but with the darkness of the future and what it might hold.’
And so the tale ended and time began to press again. And the sentiment was drawn back with the melancholy sigh which accompanied the departure of the story teller.
‘If our lives could only be like that.’
With thanks to Rod Lock
