Don't Make Friends with Chickens

Chapter 16

Each day sounded like the last because farms run on a schedule. This time, when the mean ol’ rooster crowed, it really was morning, and the mourning doves were cooing outside my window. The house was already alive long before the sun rose because Granddaddy’s animals and fields were always waiting for him.

Before I left my already-too-warm covers, I listened to the pulse of the day. The slam of the screen door meant the men had already finished breakfast. I didn’t like going into the kitchen until they left because Granddaddy and Mark never talked at breakfast, and I wanted Maggie all to myself. The running water from the kitchen tap meant she was washing their dishes.

As I pulled on my clothes, I heard Granddaddy reach the barn. First came his familiar “Yaw! Yaw!” Then the cows answered him with a choir of bawls.

On the way to the kitchen, even though I could smell bacon waiting, I always stopped at the window first. I found everything exactly where it should be, just like the day before. Everyone on the farm knew where they belonged. I was still trying to find my place. I watched the dog, Old Sam, pad right beside Granddaddy, ready to nip at a hoof or two. He was a working dog, just like Lady. Although he didn’t play with me, I thought he had the sweetest brown eyes. He kept my Granddaddy company and warned him about snakes. The big yellow tomcats, as Maggie called them, were worn out from a long night of mousing and stretched out in the warm morning sun. Only their tails moved, waving lazily and giving an occasional thump. The cats had eyes the same color as their gold fur and pink noses. They purred and wove through my legs, but they didn’t like me to touch them. They were the most frustrating cats because I wanted so badly to pet them. Maggie said they weren’t pets. She called them feral, a word I’d never heard before.

Maggie knew I was waiting for the boys to leave, and my eggs were always ready by the time I came into the kitchen. I sat down at the table where a tall glass of cold milk waited for me. She didn’t use plastic glasses, so the milk stayed colder than it did at home, and the heavy glass felt cool in my hands when I lifted it to my lips.

Half of my orange still rested on the juicer. The fresh juice tasted so much better than Mother’s Tang. Maggie slid into her chair, setting both our plates on the table. She quickly chopped up the yolks of her eggs with the side of her fork, sprinkled on what seemed like a mountain of salt and pepper, then began her breakfast the same way every morning, dipping warm, buttered toast into the eggs.

She savored these few moments off her feet, taking small bites as she read aloud from her Reader’s Digest. Then, as she did every morning, she rattled off her to-do list for the day as if I needed to approve it. I nodded, raised my eyebrows at all the work ahead, and didn’t have to wonder long before hearing my assignment.

That morning, Maggie handed me a new chore. After breakfast, she tucked a basket lined with an old kitchen towel into the crook of my arm and pressed a bag of chicken feed into my hand. “Throw the feed first,” she said. “Once they hop off the nests, gather their eggs.” As she spoke, she plopped a sunbonnet on my head so I looked like a little prairie girl. I hated it.

I raced toward the coop with my basket and bag of feed, full of purpose. The chicken girls deserved a little show, so I twirled my best pirouette and scattered the feed as a fairy might. In my mind, they’d come running to watch me as they bobbed their heads and clucked around the scattered grain. To make sure I hadn’t missed any eggs, I still had to nudge a few stubborn hens who refused to leave their nests. I nestled the still-warm eggs into my basket and congratulated the ladies on a job well done.

For the first time, I had a chore all my own. I felt useful.

When I reached the porch, my basket of eggs swinging at my side, I was so proud you’d have thought I’d laid them myself. Maggie opened the screen door and took the basket from me. Breakfast was over, and Maggie was back to work. She didn’t have time to talk or read. She told me to go play until she called me for dinner—which, in the country, meant lunch.

Play was the word she used, but I understood what she meant. Stay out of everyone’s way. That included not asking questions and, above all, not getting hurt. Sometimes she’d add, “If you come back, there better be blood involved.” Other days she found different words, but they all meant the same thing.

Some days my loneliness hit harder than others. I missed my baby dolls, my books, and my records, but mostly I missed the people who had always shared them with me. Nobody rode bikes here. The driveway was nothing more than two dirt ruts stretching half a mile before they reached the pavement. After lunch, I often walked one of those ruts to the mailbox. When I came back, I leaned against the sun-warmed house and looked out at the empty yard. Maggie always told me to stay busy and use my imagination. I imagined I was Jeannie, but no amount of blinking ever made air-conditioning appear.

By afternoon, the grasshoppers and cicadas had begun their chorus. I considered my afternoon options. The day before, Mark had stayed at the house with me. He found a magnifying glass and spent the afternoon looking for things to burn. We hated ants, so he spent most of his time hunting the big red harvester ants. I didn’t think burning things was nearly as much fun after he turned the tiny circle of light on me and laughed as it burned my skin. Then he set a gum wrapper on fire. Maggie said he’d taken it too far, so today he had been sent back to the fields with Granddaddy.

I decided my afternoon plan was to return to the henhouse and play chicken. At least it offered some shade. I began clucking and crouching low, scratching at the dirt and bobbing my head before I even lifted the latch to enter. Before long, I was completely absorbed in my role. I was sure it had worked. In my mind, the hens had accepted me as one of their own. Inside the coop, rows of wooden nesting boxes lined one wall, each one filled with straw. Earlier that morning, I had stolen the ladies’ eggs like a thief. Now I was a hen. The sun filtered through the open doorway, catching the dust I’d stirred up with all my scratching. I sat down in a nest closest to the floor, wiggled my bottom into the straw, and settled carefully onto the eggs. I felt right at home. Copying the chickens, I blinked my eyes hard and clucked right along with the hens until I felt a strange little nudge beneath my bottom.

I knew it. I wasn’t just speaking chicken anymore. I was hatching an egg.

Another nudge.

I sat for just a second longer in complete astonishment. Then I jumped off the nest and spun around, expecting to see a tiny pink beak peeking through a cracked shell.

Instead, I found myself face-to-face with the biggest snake I’d ever seen. Its jaws stretched impossibly wide around one of my eggs. I watched the egg slowly disappear down the snake’s throat.

A scream I didn’t know I could make tore out of me, and I ran straight for the house. Before I reached the carport, Maggie was already running toward me. She must have figured there was finally blood.

All I could squeak out was, “Snake... chicken!”

She rushed past me like Wonder Woman, never breaking her stride as she grabbed an axe from the tree stump and marched straight to the henhouse.

Seconds later, she walked back out without a word. Her pink dress, scattered with dainty yellow flowers, made a strange picture beside the axe in one hand and the headless snake dangling from the other.

She let me return to the kitchen with her. As she worked, she explained that this was why we didn’t make friends with the animals on the farm. Then she asked if I knew why none of the animals had names.

I shook my head.

“Because it’s easier to eat them when they’re on your supper plate.”

I wasn’t convinced I would ever enjoy fried chicken quite the same. Just to be safe, I went right back outside and named every cat I could find. Big Head, Crazy Eye, and No Tail were my favorites.