The Great Grease Feast

Made in collaboration with Joshua Kopel

            It began as a way to save the world from itself. Or rather, to save the People of the World from their own self-destructive nature. For the People had grown sick verily—they were pale, bloated, hairless things covered with rashes, bags under their eyes, hardly an immune system left to speak of! They had forgotten the healing power of the sun. Worse, they had forgotten the healing power of Liquid Sunshine, as Raven called the oil distilled from fermented fish heads, which the Tlingit had depended upon to stay healthy throughout the long winters since the Beginning of Time. Or at least, since their beginning in the Course of Time.

He set to work building a rendering facility to provide this essential oil for his people. Perhaps if he fed the people the oil, they would become healthy again long enough to feed him! Raven worked hard for many nights until he finished his contraption: an old canoe perched high on a scaffolding of tree branches, filled to the brim with salmon heads rotting beneath the moon; a funnel draining the ooze into a tub of boiling water, separating the slimy bits from the fat; more chutes and channels, more fire, ever more pipes and gutters and basins; ladles for skimming; and then the oil rising golden in cedar boxes, glistening. 

Raven could wait no longer. He dunked his head into a box of the purest oil, still warm, and he stayed like that for many minutes. When he lifted his glistening head, the people gasped—for he looked so young! Raven preened as the oil dripped down his feathers. 

“May we have some?” the people asked. “We want to look young like you!”

Raven swayed slightly in the wind. He was drunk on the healing power of the oil.

“I’m not sure the quality is good enough yet,” Raven said. “I’d better check again.” And he dunked his head into the box of oil once more.

When he next emerged for a breath, he looked like a younger Raven still, and the people cried out. “Let us have the healing oil!” they cried.

“This is not about me,” Raven said, pulling over a pipe and aiming the stream of oil directly into his mouth. “It’s about your safety.” He settled himself back against a cedar tree and opened his beak. The famously fatty fermented salmon oil flowed down his gullet. His eyes rolled back in his head. And he mumbled, over and over, “Quality control, quality control. We must maintain the quality control...”