skin

“Here it is.” Chaz unrolled the white and brown goatskin, rock salt clattered to the ground.

“Wow. So what do we do with it?”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Basically, we’re gonna stretch it out in this frame and scrape the fat and meat off of it. I brought a dull hatchet, but claw hammers work well, too. Just be careful not to gouge the skin, though.”

And that’s what we did. We cut holes into the extremities and tied the skin as tightly as we could to the crossbars of the crude wooden frame. It stretched over the open space like a misshapen trampoline with a strong but dubious spring. Here and there along the mostly white skin were stringy chunks of white tissue and easier to spot pink shreds. Chaz explained that this hide was better prepared than the last two he was given.

“Can you believe people are just giving me skins now? I asked for one deer skin and now everybody who kills something on this island is giving me its hide. You should’ve seen the last one. I gouged it up pretty bad; it had a lot of meat left on it and I didn’t know for sure how to get it off.”

We clutched at the white strands and pulled. I took out my pocket knife to coax larger slivers free while Chaz worked with the hatchet. Eventually we met in the middle, having cleared off the fat from the leg and shoulder regions. A thin pinkish band of meat covered the skin where it met the ribs. We found purchase at the edges and pulled with our bare fingers, slick with grease until the flesh came away in one sheet. I remembered doing something like this once, long ago, with a deer. But then, I was helping to remove the skin from the body, not remnants from the hide. A simple slip of the knife blade against the clear membrane was all it took to release the pliable hide from the carcass. This was decidedly more difficult—there was next to nothing for our slimy fingers to grasp and the fat wasn’t giving up without a fight. But after an hour, we cleaned off most of the extraneous tissue just as a light rain began to fall.

I biked home in the drizzle, wondering what Chaz would do with three animal hides. I think he’s still scratching his head over it, too. Hell, we came here to build houses.