Page 191 of What We Bury

Milo is standing at a stainless-steel table the size of a twin mattress, wearing a white coat two sizes too big and safety goggles pushed up on his forehead like ski goggles on a frat boy. He’s gesturing wildly with a boning knife, and there’s a smear of something across his chest that I’m choosing not to identify.

Sage is next to him. Also in a white coat. Also in goggles—hers actually over her eyes, because she’s the only person in this building with any goddamn sense. She’s got a knife of her own, and she’s leaning over what I now realize is a pig carcass, split clean down the middle and pinned open like a biology textbook.

Standing across from them both, arms folded, is a guy I’ve never met. He’s in his fifties, built like a retired linebacker, with a beard that could house a family of birds and forearms that suggest he’s been breaking down animals since before I was born.

“Micah!” Milo spots me and lifts the boning knife in greeting.

“Blade down,” the bearded man says without looking over.

Milo lowers it immediately. Sage still flinches. The bearded man doesn’t.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask, because someone has to.

“Knife skills workshop.” Milo beams. “Sage, tell him about the knife skills workshop.”

Sage looks up at me. There’s blood on her cheek, and her goggles are slightly fogged, and she looks like she’s having the time of her life. “Milo’s friend Hank is teaching us how to break down a carcass. Hank says professionals can do it in under fifteen minutes, and Milo has decided that means we’re aiming for it by lunch.”

“Current record is eleven,” Hank says, voice like gravel. “But that’s with thirty years of practice. You two are looking at closer to forty-five.”

“We’ll get there,” Milo says with the confidence of a man who has never once accurately estimated how long something would take.

I look at the pig. I look at Sage. I look at Milo, who is now using his knife to point at different sections of the carcass like a weather forecaster mapping a cold front.

“And this is . . . training?” I ask.

“This isbrillianttraining.” Milo taps the blade against the table. “Sage wants to learn to use a knife properly, and I figured why start small?”

“Most people start with an onion,” I say.

“Most people are boring.” Milo winks at Sage. “She’s not boring.”

“Clearly,” I say, but it’s hard not to catch Sage’s enthusiasm. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair tied back in a messy bun, stray wisps stuck to her forehead with sweat. She’s gripping the knife like it’s an extension of her own hand.

“You want in, Micah?” Milo leans forward, grinning, his finger gliding through a pink marbling of fat along the spread ribs.

“There’s enough pig for everyone.” Hank gives me a quick chin up. “Plenty in the walk-in. If you’re not afraid of a littlemess. Either way, shut the door. I’m not paying to cool the whole street.”

I shut the door.

Hank tosses me a white coat from a hook and a pair of goggles still in their plastic wrapper. I shrug into both while he turns back to the table and pulls the carcass toward him with the casual ease of someone straightening a tablecloth.

“All right. We left off at the shoulder.” He picks up a massive cleaver and points it at the joint where the front leg meets the body. “This right here is your money cut. You separate this clean, you’ve got two pieces you can work with. You hack at it, you’ve got a mess and bone fragments in your blade.”

He demonstrates. One precise strike, then a twist of the wrist, and the shoulder separates with a sound like tearing wet cardboard. Sage inhales sharply. Milo leans in closer.

“See the joint?” Hank rotates the separated piece so we can see the exposed socket. “You’re not cutting through bone. You’re cuttingaroundit. Finding the seam. Every joint has one—nature’s own dotted line. Your job is to find it.”

“Like anything,” Milo says. “Find the seam. Apply pressure.Watch it come apart.”

Hank gives him a look that says he knows exactly what Milo does with this knowledge and has decided it’s none of his business. “Your turn, sweetheart.” He nods at Sage. “Other shoulder. Same thing.”

Sage adjusts her grip on the knife, and I watch her face change. The amusement drains out and something else replaces it—focus, sharp and clean. She studies the joint for a beat, fingers pressing into the flesh to find the gap, and then she cuts.

It’s not clean. It takes her three strokes instead of one, and she has to use both hands to twist the joint free. But she finds the seam. She follows it. When the shoulder comes away, she holds it up with an expression that’s half pride and half something Irecognize from the beach, from the night we watched her carving into a hanging dead man.

She likes this.

Not the gore, exactly. The competence. The way her hands learn what to do with a blade when no one is dragging the choice out of her.