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crew, was standing next to me, shooting from a crouch as the men washed and rinsed the pig’s upper body. Suddenly and without warning, one of the men stepped around and, with the beast’s nether regions regrettably all too apparent, plunged his bare hand up to the elbow in the pig’s rectum, then removed it, holding a fistful of steaming pig shit – which he flung, unceremoniously, to the ground with a loud splat before repeating the process.
         Global Alan, professional that he is, veteran of countless emergency-room documentaries, never flinched. He kept shooting. You never know, I guess, what footage you might just be required to have during the editing process, but I had a hard time imagining the ‘Pig-fisting’ scene on the Food Network.
         Alan just kept shooting as the man quickly cut a perianal moat, yanked out about a foot of intestine, and tied it into a dainty knot. Under his breath, Alan’s only comment was, ‘Oh yeah . . . that’s in the show.’ When I looked over at him, he tapped the side of his camera and added, ‘Video gold, baby, video gold . . . I smell Emmy!’
         ‘This is on cable,’ I pointed out.
         ‘An Ace, then,’ said Alan. ‘I want to thank the Academy  . . .’
         The pig was wheeled into the barn, his legs tied in a spread-eagle position, and the carcass was hung from an overhead crossbeam, to much grunting and exertion from the butchers. The animal’s belly was now split open from crotch to throat, his back, on both sides of the spine, cut and allowed to bleed out, and his still-steaming entrails pulled gently out of his abdomen and placed on a wide plywood board to be sorted. God help me, I assisted, stepping right in and putting my hands inside the warm cavity, pulling away heart, lungs, tripe, intestines, liver, and kidneys and letting them slide wetly onto the board.
         Have you ever seen Night of the Living Dead , the black-and-white original version? Remember the ghouls playing with freshly removed organs, dragging them eagerly into their mouths in a hideous orgy of slurping and moaning? That scene came very much to mind as we all sifted quickly through the animal’s guts, putting heart, liver, and the tenderloin aside for immediate use, reserving the large and small intestines for washing, separating out the tripe, kidneys, lungs – and bladder. Just as Armando had promised, the bladder was indeed inflated, tied at one end, and hung in the smokehouse to toughen up a bit.
         The intestines were taken to a large trough, where for the next few hours a woman in an apron washed them inside and out. Later, they’d be used for sausages. The now-clean, white body cavity was washed with red wine to inhibit bacterial growth and my victim left to hang there in the cold barn overnight, a pail below.
         It was time to eat.
         A tablecloth was laid over a small table in the barn, only a few feet from the recently departed, and men and women brought a snack for the hardworking butchers and their helpers. The chief assassin whipped out a battered squeeze box and began to play, singing in Portuguese. Vinho verde was poured. A frittata-like creation of egg, chorizo, and onions appeared. There was a bowl of cooked beans – like favas, but garbanzo-colored – which you had to slip out of their skins before popping them into your mouth. This was accompanied by a little grilled liver, olives, and sheep’s milk cheese. A select group of pig killers and relatives gathered round to eat, a slight rain falling outside the barn doors. The old man with the squeeze box, that drop of blood still on his forehead, began a melodic address, what could only be described as Portuguese barnyard rap, an homage to the pig. On such occasions, the words change to reflect the individual circumstances of each particular pig, celebrating its transformation from livestock to lunch, and challenging others present to join in with their own verses.