Chapter 23- Schultzy and The Pig - Part One
The only time Schultzy’s tail is down is when he is very, very sick.
From the moment we bought the block, we talked about doing a pig on the spit. The timing had to be right: cold, due to the amount of time spent standing next to the fire, but not freezing cold, and no wind, because of the bush fire danger and general unpleasantness of squinting and breathing in smoke for hours. Rounding up enough dinner guests to do it justice wasn’t an issue – if you cook it, they will come. We’d borrowed a rotisserie from a friend who’d had great success with spit roasting a lamb at a party – although he did say he got sick of people asking him, ‘Is it done yet?’ all night. We’d never used the rotisserie before, and with my failed camp oven experiment in mind, I decided to do some online research.
Attaching the pig to the skewer seemed to be the trickiest part. One video showed a man with a pig on a bench in front of him, skewer and rotisserie to the side. In a very serious and slightly patronising voice, he explained how important it was to secure the cavity with wire onto the skewer so that the pig would rotate properly and not just slip around the rod. Very important. But when it came time to do that part, the video jumped forward, and voila, all of a sudden, the pig was all skewered up and the guy wouldn’t look at the camera. Very suspicious. Another video showed two guys (seemed to be a guy thing) trying to attach the pig to the skewer and getting a bit testy with each other when the pig kept slipping around the rod.
This wasn’t good. I had a vision of Smash and I arguing over the best way to do it and mangling it, or dropping the whole pig in the dirt, or worse, cooking it for three hours then having it fall off the skewer into the coals. Smash rang his favourite butcher in Rosalie for counselling and was advised to drop off the skewer when we were ready to order – they would attach the pig, nice and tight – problem solved.
Finally, the perfect weather was predicted for a Saturday evening in June, so we let everyone know, ordered a 10-kilogram female pig and handed over the skewer to Billy’s at Rosalie. On Friday, I packed up the Nissan, leaving an empty space for our dinner guest, and Smash left work early to pick her up on his way home. On arrival, he was beaming, rubbing his hands together, talking non-stop about coleslaw, crackling and coals. The skewered pig was an awkward shape, we realised, and one we would need to keep cold until the following evening. A few ideas were floated, each getting increasingly complicated and entailing lasting damage to our Esky.
At this point, I wondered aloud why we hadn’t just ordered the pig from a Stanthorpe butcher and picked it up on the Saturday. Smash was affronted by the very idea; he has a Special Relationship with his butcher in Rosalie. After visiting, he comes home with a skip in his step, babbling, ‘Billy said this, Billy said that…Billy made me buy $200 worth of meat’. So no, we wouldn’t be cheating on Billy. We ended up putting the pig in a heavy-duty garbage bag with the skewer poking out either end, gaffer taped within an inch of its life. Then we put that bag in another bag with four bags of ice and suspended the whole cocoon over one of the plastic tubs left over from the festival days that used to be full of ice and band drink riders. There was a bit of masking tape still stuck to the side of this tub with the band name, Flaming Lips, written in felt pen, which seemed appropriate, although I’m not sure if pigs have lips. Smash was sure they do.
‘Yeah. That’s where that saying, “Putting lipstick on a pig” comes from.
‘Isn’t that one of those things like ‘Polishing a turd’, as in, you can’t do it?’ I asked.
‘But the turd is still there and so are the lips. Just means there’s no point putting lipstick on them.’
‘Mm. I’m pretty sure they don’t have lips.’
‘Yeah, nah, they do.’
Then, while we were bickering over this, and trying to widen the allowed space for the pig parcel in the back of the Nissan, Schultzy vomited.
He’d been to the vet the day before with an intestinal blockage. He has a bad habit of eating pretty much anything that takes his fancy: bush turkey feet, concrete, rotting mango seeds from under our tree. He’s never needed surgery thankfully, but he’s had a hose up his bum more times than he or I care to remember. For this particular blockage we’d had him to the vet twice to be flushed out, prodded and probed by whoever had the thinnest fingers at the vet surgery. Finally, something had come out – a tomato sized hairball, (Roma, not Cherry, according to our vet), and we’d thought that was the end of it.
Now, here he was, vomiting and tail down - not a good sign. Even when Schultzy is being harshly berated for some naughtiness his tail is always up, sometimes wagging - the only time it goes down is when he is sick, or frightened. With the pig all loaded up and everything else packed, we decided to still get going, hoping he was just recovering from his recent harrowing experience at the vet, but in the car on the way down, he threw up again and made some awful smells, then lay down on his side, drooling. So, at the Stanthorpe turnoff, instead of heading west to Nundubbermere, we veered left into town.
We’d never been to the Stanthorpe vet clinic; it’s very different to our vet in Brisbane – very large and clean, and there’s a lot of equipment for testing blood, X-ray and ultrasound machines. The vet seemed to think the situation was quite serious and wanted to keep him overnight, do a raft of tests, put him on a drip. I didn’t like leaving him there, but it seemed the only solution given the flushing out with a hose and poking with fingers method hadn’t been very successful to date. We said our sad goodbyes to Schultzy, who gave us his most mournful, penetrating stare, then we continued out to the block with Goose, who was giving me her own penetrating stare because dinner time was only two hours away.
We arrived at the front gate minus our usual high spirits. There was no ‘We’re… Going… to Bonny Doon’ sing-along, no excited scramble to get out of the car to unlock the gate, no Schultzy barking at nothing and running along in front of the car, no screeching to a halt because Schultzy had stopped suddenly in front of the tyre to smell something, no Schultzy racing the last 100 metres to the shed so he could be the first one there, wagging his tail to greet us. We pulled up; Goose tumbled out of the car, headed straight to the dog bowls and stood there, looking between me and the bowl, me and the bowl, me and the bowl. I fed her early, then went to help Smash unpack the car, which is when I remembered the pig.
The party was scheduled for the next night and had slipped in importance (in my mind at least) with Schultzy being so ill. Smash assured me everything would be fine – something he does a lot, but thankfully didn’t add: ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’
We put the pig in the yet to be connected, green cast iron bath, packed more ice around her and a board on top to stop any wildlife or Goose getting curious. By the time the car and trailer were unpacked, the sun had disappeared behind the western hill. We talked about going up to watch the last of the sunset but decided to just make dinner and watch a movie. The mood was low. At about 8PM I went up the hill to check if there was any word from the vet. She’d left a message saying Schultzy had jettisoned ‘some dark matter’ two metres across the surgery floor and onto the cupboards. I had a vision of an alien invader being released into the Stanthorpe Vet Clinic, now at large on the Granite Belt. The vet also added that she’d taken two extra lots of X-rays that hadn’t shown up anything worrying (other than an increased vet bill). He was exhausted and sleeping soundly but if anything changed overnight, she’d ring us. We explained about not having reception at the block and left Ray and Cec’s number as an emergency contact.
We missed him that night. For a small dog, he takes up a lot of space. He’s also very affectionate and companionable, and I realised how much physical contact I have with him, and how much I talk to him, casual chatter about what’s going on. ‘You know, Schultz, I think I’m going to use dry mustard instead of Dijon for this dressing…’ The sort of chat I imagine I’ll really get into when I go senile. Goose didn’t respond to my conversation, and she didn’t seem to miss Schultz; she spread herself out over both dog beds in front of the fire and went to sleep.
We went to bed early too; it had been an emotional day – a roller coaster ride of excitement about the pig, worry for Schultz.
Goose combining both beds in Schultzy’s absence.
