Veggie-share purslane, mache, mustard greens, raw cashews like the nougat inside a
Snickers bar, just-picked lettuce tossed with lemon juice, olive oil. Ok, but where’s
dinner? She laughs telling me this vignette, how during her vegan-workshop month, next
to the black bean and sweet potato croquettes, the grated beet and carrot slaw, the
avocado goddess dressing on his plate, he would quietly place a square of grilled steak, a
hockey puck of chicken, pan fried with salt and pepper, no rub, no marinade, how he
sawed through the short and long-twitch muscle that glistened on his plate, and the sinew
in his forearms would fire, how she would touch the veins showing through.
Snow that seems to have no starting point, no end, she’s like a magnet to the flannel-
sheeted bed, raw almond butter, the depths of sweetness dripping from a spoon, goat
cheese, $20 bottles of wine, a daughter. Out the door he goes to plow his parents’ long
driveway, he brings back bricks of venison for the freezer, labeled in his mother’s looped
handwriting, ribs, saddle, shank. She was cutting energy bars into squares, she tells me,
when he filled the freezer with dead animals. She shrugs, he’s a carnivore, we’ll save
money. Deer head mounted in the living room glares at me where I sleep on the couch,
glassy. From where comes her perfect acceptance? A prayer she’s never shared? The
gray-smudged winter sky?
She sends a text, sold the Blazer for a rototiller, a chainsaw and $250. Gotta love
Vermont! Happy happy happy happy, she’s happy, even when she’s not. He scoops a mug
of buttercrunch Ben & Jerry’s. And right down the road, all those bucolic cows.
Meat & Co.