Pow!

know if the udder was edible.

    The cattle merchants scrambled to their feet when they saw my father. They'd be wearing mirrored sunglasses even early in the morning, an eerie sight, though they smiled as a show of respect. He'd take me down off his shoulders, get down on his haunches ten feet or so from the merchants, take out a crumpled pack from which he'd remove a crooked, damp cigarette. The cattle merchants would take out their packets, and ten or more cigarettes would land on the ground by Father's feet. He'd gather them up and lay them back down neatly. ‘Lao Luo, you old fuckhead,’ one of the merchants would say, ‘smoke ’em. You don't think we're trying to buy your favours with a few paltry cigarettes, do you?’ Father would just smile and light his cheap smoke as the village butchers started showing up, in twos and threes, looking like they were fresh from a bath, though I could smell the scent of blood on their bodies (which goes to prove that blood—whether from cows or pigs—never washes off). The cattle, smelling the blood on the butchers, would huddle together, their eyes flashing with fear. Excrement would spurt from the bungholes of the young cows; the older ones looked composed, though I knew they were pretending—I could see the tails draw up under their rumps to keep from emptying their bowels and the tremble in their legs, like the ripples on a pond from a passing breeze. Peasants care deeply for their cows; to kill one, especially one advanced in years, has long been considered a crime against nature. A leprous woman in our village often ran over to the head of the village and wailed at the graveyard in the late-night stillness. Only one phrase, over and over: ‘Who among our ancestors killed a cow and left his sons and grandsons to suffer for it?’ Cows cry. Before that old milk cow that so troubled my father was slaughtered, it fell to its knees in front of the butcher and a torrent of tears spilt from its watery blue eyes. The hand holding the knife trembled as tales about cows flooded the butcher's mind. The knife slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground. Weak at the knees, he knelt in front of the cow, loud wails bursting from his lungs. That was the end of his butcher days; he became a specialist in raising dogs instead. When he was asked why he'd knelt in front of the cow and wailed, he'd answered: ‘I saw my dead mother in its eyes, and I thought it was her reincarnated soul.’ This one-time butcher's name was Huang Biao; and after he began raising dogs, he tended that cow the way a son would care for his ageing mother. When the fields were lush with edible grass, we'd see him leading the old cow over to the edge of the river to graze. Huang Biao walked along, followed by the cow, no tether needed. People heard him say: ‘Let's go down to the river, Mother, where there's lots of nice, fresh grass.’ And people heard him say: ‘Let's go home, Mother, it's getting dark. You don't see too well and I don't want you to eat anything poisonous.’ Huang Biao was a man of vision. People laughed when he began raising dogs. But after only a few years there were no more laughs. He bred local dogs with German wolfhounds who produced litters that were both fearless and smart, fine animals that made wonderful watchdogs, excellent at alerting their masters to trouble. They could smell from half a mile away the officials and journalists on their way to the village, coming to investigate trafficking in illegal meat. They'd bark up a din, warning the butchers in time to clean up the area and hide the incriminating evidence. A couple of newspaper reporters once came to the village posing as meat merchants, hoping to expose the illegal meat trade for which the place had become notorious. They went so far as to smear pig and cow blood on their coats to get past the butchers’ sharp eyes, but they could not fool the noses of Huang Biao's mixed-breed dogs, a dozen of which chased them from one end of the village to the other, nipping and biting at their heels until the men's IDs fell out of the crotches of their pants. The complicity of corrupt local officials was just the beginning—Huang Biao also played a major role in keeping the inspectors from finding evidence of illegal meat production in the village. He also bred food dogs, stupid animals that wagged their tails for anyone—owner or thief, it made no difference. With their simple minds and gentle dispositions, the food