Asado — Tyler Reese
short story ☆
short story ☆
After the Impact, only the most fertile soil on Earth could sustain agriculture fit for human consumption. Our family, the Carneros, had lived at our farmhouse in the Argentinian Pampas for generations. My grandfather owned a brand of farm products that was one of the most famous in the country, especially the beef, which could be found in every grocery store within Buenos Aires. We were one of the lucky ones when global society started to collapse, and our lives increasingly became more off-the-grid.
The fallout from the Impact had poisoned the soil, so it only took a few months for our livestock to become completely decimated; our family now relied on our own crops and the canned food we could scrounge up. My grandparents had to learn how to detoxify the plants after we harvested them, which would involve soaking them in heavy doses of salt water and vinegar, then boiling the heck out of them. They also began to capture crickets and beetles and throw them into separate buckets, which were neatly organized in one of the corners of the greenhouse. They’d breed quickly. We could live off crickets and beetles if we wanted to.
It was an unpleasant time.
After a particularly bad harvest, my father went out hunting in some of the hills near the farm; the area was once famous for its hiking trails. But instead of coming back with some deer or rabbit, he came back with a dead man in his arms. He had a bullet in his stomach, and he seemed to have died that day; my father said he had found him this way, and we wanted to believe him. Besides, our family was too hungry. It was decided that we were going to have asado that night.
The body was put on a hook in the slaughterhouse for the rest of the blood to be let out. My father helped my grandfather gut the torso so the organs could be pulled out, and many were wrapped to be cooked for later, like the liver, kidneys, and intestines. (We couldn’t bear to throw away what we knew could feed us.) Once the body was successfully dried, the limbs were quartered and then cut into even smaller pieces so they could be put on top of the parrilla.
My mother tried to keep me and my siblings occupied while they worked, but I was able to slip away for a few seconds and catch a glimpse of my grandfather outside as he flipped one of the arms and seasoned the other side of it. He paused for a moment, staring at the parrilla like an old lover he hadn’t seen for years, then silently chuckled to himself as he flipped one of the thighs, and I was pulled back into the house by my mother. Argentinians take their barbecue very seriously, and my grandfather is the best asador my family has ever known. I believe, at that moment, he had just remembered his passion, and he didn’t know how to feel about it.
My mother brought me back to the kitchen where my siblings and I were starting to cook the side dishes. We had our typical bread, soybeans, and corn, but my mother insisted that we should prepare some others for tonight’s meal. We sliced tomatoes and onions for a salad, while my mother seasoned the provoleta with oregano, then promptly brought it out to my father for him to grill. We roasted some vegetables on top of the stove—it almost masked the smoke coming from outside—and mixed some chimichurri, both red and green. My grandmother stood in the corner, tossing the boiled potatoes with olive oil and the herbs we still had, finally being used. My mother probably believed that with enough of this food, we wouldn’t need to eat the asado.
She was trying to normalize the situation as much as possible, but we could still smell the meat grilling outside.
By the end of the day, all the food was prepared. The asado was arranged nicely in the center of the table, with enough serving forks so anyone could grab their own cuts. We said a prayer before we began, a long one, and everybody had to participate. When we gave the sign of the cross, and opened our eyes, not a single person moved. We looked around at one another but we avoided eyes, absolutely afraid. We let the silence hold us hostage, the guilt surrounding the table, the hunger we felt as a pain that, maybe, we deserved.
My father stared at the asado. I’m not sure how else I could describe his face other than recalling a memory in which my family and I gathered around the television to see him cook on Master Chef, and he had brought his bife de chorizo up to Gordon Ramsay for him to judge. His face had contorted in the same way, a mix of nervousness and optimism, like standing over a glass bridge that is cracked and having no idea if you can take another step forward, even if you are so close to the end. That was my father at this moment.
Everybody watched my grandfather as he reached over to stab the asado with the serving fork and heaped some of it onto his plate. He cut a small piece of it with his knife. The inside was still bloody, but he always liked his meat that way. He dipped the piece in red chimichurri, and we heard the fork scrape against his ancient teeth as he put the asado in his mouth and started to chew. My father looked away for a second, only to look right back. My grandfather stared ahead, letting the juices of the meat wash over his tongue.
He nodded in approval and began to cut a second piece for himself. We silently followed his example, each taking a piece from the pile. I grabbed my own piece and bit into the tender meat.
Tyler Reese is a recent graduate from the University of Southern California, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English. His favorite activities outside of writing are video gaming, hiking, spending time with his girlfriend, and diving into novels, (currently reading The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune). More of his writing can be found on his online portfolio: https://sites.google.com/view/tyler-reese
