If there's one thing I know, it's meat. Chicken, beef, lamb, veal: with my eyes closed I can tell you all about it. Even ham I could tell you a thing or two about, but not here. Please, please, don't even mention that word in my shop. What I do at home's my own business. Anyway, like I was saying, to me meat's not just meat, it's a living, breathing substance. I can never get it out of my mind that this was an animal first, with babies and parents, maybe even a human friend or two. The kashrut process of letting all the blood drain off, that really means something to me.

        I can take one look at a huge side of beef and know if that animal was well taken care of. It has to do with precisely where the fat is. And let me tell you, if the fat's not there, or in the wrong place, I won't have that carcass in my shop. There's too much fat, chances are the slaughterer didn't give a damn either. They tell you it felt no pain, a rabbi inspected it, but so what?

        I don't think any of us really understand what pain is. Or not someone else's, anyway. Human or animal.

        And that rabbi, what does he know? The rabbi of my parent's synagogue when I was growing up? Hated children, that's how much feeling he had. And I hear there are priests who are athiests. Religion today, I wouldn't give you two cents for it. Not the way most people use it. I grew up in the fifties, a nice Jewish family, trying hard to assimilate, right? I was bar mitzvahed, mainly because my grandfather was still alive then, but my sister? Grandpa was dead and she says she thanks God they didn't have her confirmed, that's how progressive my parents were. And they sent me to camp, see. Nice progressive camp. Among other things, there was this farm that was part of it, one of the most important experiences of the campers' summer was supposedly learning to work the farm, getting a real taste of farm life, so of course we also had to kill the chickens. Every camper got to kill at least one chicken. Chickens we'd teased and had names for. I felt that hen's big fat neck between my sweaty hands -- Gertrude, I killed Gertrude -- and I swore right then that I was going to do something about all that suffering. My parents expected I'd grow up to be a doctor or lawyer, at least an accountant, but no, here I am: Their Son the Butcher.

        Sounds better than their son the murderer, right?

        Besides, that's their son the kosher butcher.

        I know meat, and I know people. Or through meat I know people. I get to know them when they come in the shop, learn all about them by what sort of meat they buy, and when. Take this one woman. Comes in here maybe once a month, lunch time, asks for half a pound of ground sirloin. Or ground round; one time she asked which was leaner, and I told her ground round, so she's been mostly ordering that now. Watching her weight, I guess; not that she needs to. Like I said, it's always half a pound, and she always makes sure to ask me if it's just ground. I figured her at first for steak tartare. But then I began thinking -- it's lunch time, and half a pound, who would go to that much trouble for half a pound? No, she eats it raw, unseasoned, just raw, bet you ten to one. And lunch time, because she's eating dinner with friends, a lover maybe.

        And how do I know? Because we sell some ready-made foods as well. Antoinette, this French woman -- well, she's not really French but she lived in Paris and has a perfect accent -- comes in at four o'clock with foods she prepared at her place -- salads, roasts, soups. Nothing made with milk, of course. I give her a discount on the meat, plus the free space, and she helps draw the people in. And one time this half pound ground round woman came in and asked about ordering foods in advance. A lasagna. Antoinette makes this great lasagna using tofu instead of cheese. No, it might not have been lasagna, it might have been these sweet and sour meatballs that are absolutely wonderful. And this woman, she even showed up with her own casserole dish, wanted it to look homemade (another item to chalk up against steak tartare, it takes some real cooking knowledge to do it right).

        I've got the best quality meat in the neighborhood. People know that. It's almost a cliché, you want good meat, go to the kosher butcher. From up around Columbia they come down here for my meat. In cabs. I don't know why but sometimes, the Jews, they seem embarrassed they're not cooking it kosher. So they'll pretend they are. Mention how they've got to get home, soak, and salt this piece of brisket or it won't be ready in time. Put in their order for chicken every Friday.

        I've never figured out how chicken became a Sabbath tradition. Celebrating the Lord with all those broken necks. It makes me sick to my stomach, even now, forty years after that summer at camp, but I try not to think about it.

        And then Yom Kippur, oh-my-God! Out in Boro Park or Williamsburg and places like that. Not in Manhattan. Thank God not in Manhattan or I wouldn't stay in business here. Every year between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the really orthodox (and Hasids, including the yuppie Lubavitchers) go into the butcher shop, buy a live chicken (and live chickens are the dirtiest creatures around, I know that from the farm. I wouldn't want to buy meat that's been around live chickens). So these people buy a live chicken, get it twirled over their heads while they say a prayer, then it's killed in their stead. Sacrificed, I should say.

        Killed.

        Just being placed in an oven should be sacrifice enough. Though I heard somewhere the meat's donated to families that can't afford it, so there's at least some consolation.

        It must be fifteen years ago now, this guy came in for the first time. If he'd been here before I'd have remembered; he had that sort of appearance you don't forget. I took one look at his face, his light reddish-blonde hair, when was the last time you saw a Jew with light reddish-blonde, almost white, hair? I mean, now it's almost white, the past three years or so. But a red-haired Jewish man? Women dye. But anyway he picked up his Friday chicken, started picking up a chicken every Friday. Came in with his wife one time, then I understood. Her, I knew. Very religious. Not overly talkative, but pleasant. Came in wearing a suit so I knew she was on her way home from work, and let me tell you she didn't look like someone's receptionist. Usually women like her, smart women, career women, only begin getting religion once they have children, trying to give the kids a religious base they can use or abandon later. Better than being confirmed, let me tell you.

        Little by little, week by week, I found out more. Like that she didn't have children, which I'd already suspected. And that he'd converted when he married her. He wasn't all that different from the rest of us. Grew up Methodist but it never meant anything to him. Loved her so learned to love Judaism instead of, maybe, rediscovering the church or getting involved with Hari Krishna. (I'm not that religious myself, by the way. Keep the shop open on Saturdays except in the summer. It doesn't seem to hurt my business any. At least no one's complained).

        I was pretty sure his acting Jewish and all was just to humor her. But I guess that's part of what love is. Or marriage, anyway. The ones that last. Nowadays, so few do. My sister's, for instance. Two kids caught in the middle, they're the ones you feel sorry for.

        You wouldn't believe how many people these days come in and specifically request a kosher chicken, like all my chickens aren't kosher, then they want me to quarter it. I know right off they're not Jewish. Or not kosher, anyway. One broken bone and it's treyf. Kosher chicken, Frum chicken, is boiled or roasted. Boiled mostly, then maybe taken out and roasted for a short time near the end, to get it nice and brown, after the juices have filled up the pot. Throw in a few carrots, cut up some celery and onions, and there's chicken soup enough for the rest of the weekend.

        If you've let the meat lie around for 72 hours, that's when Torah says you should broil it, and over an open fire. Get those really hot flames, to kill any diseases it might have picked up lying there. Me, I'd just throw it out.

        I've got customers that want only chicken breasts.

        Another customer of mine, real princess. Went straight from high school to college to marriage. Then as a newlywed always ate out. Never so much as lit an oven until she had her first child. Know why she comes to me? She comes to me because the first month she was cooking she went into some store and asked for a quartered chicken. Gets it home, lays it out in a broiling pan, puts it in to cook, then suddenly realized there were five pieces there. Got so nauseous she couldn't stay in that kitchen. Picked it up and just threw it down the compactor, pan and all. Then bundled up the kid and they went out to dinner. Always buys her chickens from me now. Trusts I'd never do that to her. Of course I wouldn't. Besides, you wouldn't believe the number of people who come in here wanting gizzards.

        Anyway, back to this customer I was talking about. The reddish-blonde. Nice guy, once you got to know him. He also started buying beef and lamb from me. Never veal, though. One time I was finishing up trimming a veal roast for the customer ahead of him, beautiful piece of meat, and offered him a similar roast, but he declined. He said he always felt sorry for those little guys.

        I liked him better then. A few weeks later he came in when there were no other customers and I told him about killing Gertrude.

        Every time his wife came in I asked how he was doing. Every time he came in I asked about his wife. Didn't really want to ask, though. Not about her. Not over the past four or five years. Many's the time I had to run to the door and get it open for her. It's not that heavy a door but she had trouble managing it. I knew she was growing weak, left a bit more fat on the meat in the hopes she'd eat it. God, she got thin. Her bones were all gnarled up. And her voice was distorted, many's the time I had to ask her to repeat her order, and then listen real close. There were times when I couldn't make it out the second time either, but those times I'd try to guess what she wanted based on other things she'd bought. If she bought lamb yesterday, there's a good bet she didn't want it again today, that sort of thing. And of course chicken every Friday.

        Palsy, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, brain damage... for all I knew she could have had polio, except probably not because it kept getting worse. I didn't want to pry. Frankly, she looked like my worst fears. For months, after that time in camp, I had nightmares that I was going to die like those chickens, my neck twisted, the rest of the body misshapen.

        You keep wishing the good people, the clean hardworking people, the people who take care with their food whether for God or not, you keep wishing these people will be spared the physical hardships. Or I kept wishing.

        More and more it was her husband coming in. And more and more, he'd come in at three or four o'clock. When most men are working. I never would have asked on my own, but we got talking and I found out he's started working from home. Didn't feel comfortable leaving his wife alone.

        I was going to tell him we could arrange to deliver, but then I thought better of it. Frankly, he looked like he could use the break.

        Every so often, I'd drop my price a bit for him. Weigh up a chicken or a brisket as just a bit less. Not that he ever asked for charity, I just felt good saving him a little.

        He never said his wife was getting sicker. He didn't have to. And I saw her once, crossing Broadway; she was riding on this little yellow motorized cart with a basket on the front to carry things in. She didn't see me and I decided not to say hello or anything. What would I say?

        All I could think was: I wonder if she pours water over each hand twice before and after eating? Three times on Shabbes? Or do they forego bread on week nights to make for less washing?

        A few years ago now, friends told my wife and me this story about a couple they'd met at some convention or other. This woman was apparently sick, I don't know from what, maybe cancer or leukemia. Anyway, they were sitting with them and another couple, and they get talking about work and hobbies. Someone turned to this woman and asked her what she did. She responded "make dinner."

        People tell me stories like that all the time. I'm a butcher. I sell meat, so I get stories about eating, stories about cooking. The point is, though, that we don't usually stop to think about how much work goes into simply making dinner. Not until we're sick and can't do it. Sometimes even a bad bout with the flu makes people realize, except once they're healthy for a month or two, they forget.

        Don't get me started on people's intolerance. All I wanted to say was I saw her driving this little cart, and knew right then he was doing the cooking. He wasn't like some people, didn't try to pretend he knew it all. More than once he asked me a question -- how long should he cook this, how long can he leave something salted, could it still be kosher if people liked beef rare (he had people coming for dinner who had expressly said they only liked it rare, her family, I think; he said he never got along well with her sister). I talked him into a chicken that time, and I'd do the same thing again, even knowing what I know now. It's just safer with chicken.

        But to think I sold him that chicken. The last thing she ate. Unless you want to count those pills they mashed up in juice or honey or whatever it was.

        Look, a guy has to stay in business. And people have to eat. If I thought for a second that every husband I sold a chicken was going to help his wife...

        I don't want to think about it.

        There's one woman used to come in all the time for about two months. A little too much makeup. Not only did she not look like somebody who'd keep kosher, she didn't look like someone who'd buy the best meat. More the Sloan's type. Or Dead Apple if there were one in this neighborhood, which thank God there's not. The Upper West Side's become trendy now, we've got a D'agostino's and a Food Emporium within two blocks of my shop, plus of course there's Zabar's. So this woman and I got talking and it turned out her father had a stroke and her mother's staying with her for the time being and she wasn't exactly overjoyed. It's not like she told me she didn't like having her mother around all the time, but she didn't have to, I picked it up immediately in the tone of her voice. Mother not in great shape either, not well enough to cook at least. Used a walker even to get around the apartment. Turns out the mother always kept kosher. She said okay, come stay with me. I know you keep kosher and you know I don't, but let's make a deal: I'll buy from the kosher butcher, then cook like I always do. She kept coming back all the time, so I suppose the mother was amenable to that. Then after six or eight weeks, all of a sudden I don't see her anymore. I guess the mother must have gone home. Or to a nursing home. Hebrew Home for the Aged, up in Riverdale, that's where I tell some of my customers I'd like to go. If it ever came to that. Nice place, beautiful grounds. They even have separate apartments for people who are well enough. Couples move there. One of my on-again off-again customers told me her father met his second wife there.

        Fridays, I might sell thirty, forty chickens. Is it my job to ask what they're going to do with them? Eat, I assume. Cook and eat. Some kosher, some not. There's more and more kosher lately. I've been in this location for 23 years, and in the past decade I've watched a dozen synagogues spring up between here and 97th St., some on different floors of the same building. I look out the window of this shop on Saturday morning and see whole families, little boys wearing yamalkas, women in their black or brown dresses, men with their tallit hanging out beneath their suit jackets, walking to or from services.

        Usually it doesn't bother me who I'm selling to. So long as they have the money. A few people I even let run up tabs and pay me the end of the month. It just makes the time go quicker when I talk with some of them, try and guess things about the others. Basically, I'm a people person. I won't speak first, except to take an order or whatever, but once they start a conversation I enjoy the dialogue.

        Handing over what people will eat, sometimes giving advice as to the preparation, it's almost family.

        I remember that chicken I sold him. Plumper than he usually buys. I had to go in the back to get it for him special, nothing I had in the case was good enough.

        People die all the time. You read in the paper about people being murdered or committing suicide. How many eat chicken for their final meal? Probably more than we realize. I'm just thinking about this now, but my wife's grandmother, fifteen years ago now, she had chicken. She wasn't supposed to eat chicken, or any other protein, and she knew it. The doctors said her liver couldn't process it. But did she listen? Of course not. Ate some chicken over at a friend's house, felt since the friend had gone to all the trouble of cooking she couldn't refuse. The next morning she was in a coma. On intravenous. It took a month for her to die, a month in and out of the coma, but the final thing she ate, her last solid food, was chicken. Maybe even a kosher chicken.

        So what do we do? Blame the chicken?

        If I believed that I wouldn't be in this business.

        I keep thinking back to those birds swirled above your head. That's what I should have sold him. Have him say the prayer, or have him bring her in so they can both say the prayer, then slaughter that bird myself. As much as I'd hate to wring that neck, if I thought it could take away her worries, maybe make her think twice, who knows?

        Take Nicole Simpson, all the media hype that's getting -- anyone think to ask what she ate for dinner? We even know what restaurant she ate in, but it's like what she chose to eat was unimportant.

        There's a butcher over on the East Side, friend of mine, who closes for three weeks every August. Takes his family on vacation. I wish to hell now I'd closed for a week or two in July. Not that this wouldn't have happened anyway. But he would have had to buy that chicken elsewhere. And I just might have felt better about it.

        I had the most beautiful piece of brisket in the world. I almost tried to sell him that instead, when the first two chickens weren't good enough. Red meat's heavier, it coats the stomach better. Maybe those pills...

        Eat, drink, and rejoice, for tomorrow we die! That's what the goyim say. Even Jews like my parents. But whenever I get talking to someone about it -- and that happens a lot in this shop -- I remind them how it's put in Torah: Eat, drink, and rejoice obeying God's commandments -- and live!

        Live. Just live. Don't ask any questions.

        My wife says I talk too much. How about that -- a woman telling a man he talks too much? First few years we were married, she helped in the shop sometimes. She took people's orders okay, but I could sense her cringe if they said more than good morning or good afternoon.

        It's not idle talk. I'm really interested in people. There are six authors who shop here regularly, one bass player, four psychiatrists, two antique dealers, an actress on some soap opera, I forget which... the list could go on and on. I think of those restaurants, like Stage Deli, where they put autographed pictures of their patrons on the walls. But this shop's too small for that.

        Look. I sell somebody a chicken. A dead chicken. A chicken that was dead before it was carried through my door. A chicken that, I swear on my father's pension, felt no pain at its death. Does that make me an accomplice? Does a car salesman have a nervous breakdown because one of the cars he sells might be involved in an accident? Are you kidding -- he looks at it as an opportunity for more business, that's what he does.

        I should have known, though. I should have asked why chicken in the middle of the week. And the best chicken in town yet. Maybe he'd have at least hinted. But my wife's grandmother, do you think she asked? She ate what they put in front of her. I've had my fill of asking. You don't want to know, don't ask. Don't listen to the news. And don't read the papers.