A Butcher's Boy

by Barton Bauer

"I killed my father. I did not know it then, but I know it now." Thus begins Bart Bauer's memoir and his struggle to come to terms with a decision made in 1994 that hastened his father's death. The 80-year-old author looks back over his growing-up years as the son of a small-town butcher. "I was a willing assistant to my father. Just about every day, we killed something to meet the needs of our customers. We slaughtered cattle in a one-room, unheated slaughterhouse. In winter, wearing blood-encrusted coveralls, we kept our hands warm handling steaming entrails. In summer, we worked bare-chested when scalding hogs." He recalls his father's passion for hunting fox and raccoon. And his dad's love for his dogs-and the tragedy that nearly occurred when a neighbor shot one of his beloved dogs. Now an old man, the author struggles with the mystery of death, thinks about the deaths of family members and how they died, and speculates on how he will die, questioning the existence of a hereafter.