Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  He turns the flashlight back on and weaves toward the row of chickens. The small brown hen has her head tucked into her neck. She opens a bleary eye as he nears and pops her head up. He laughs at her featherless neck. You look so ugly, he says. The hen closes her eyes. He can’t help laughing again. This time all the hens pop their heads up. Twelve blinking eyes atop featherless necks stare.

  All of you look ugly, he laughs, but the hens look sorrowful. To make amends he begins to give them names. The small brown hen he names Chocolate Kiss. Down the line, Sunshine, Beauty, Lacy, and the mostly white one, Angel. Before he can name the final hen, she hops off the table and walks up to his shoe. She has a large red wattle and comb, and the same wrinkly red skin around her shining eyes. Her feathers are black and white, and a few new pinfeathers are beginning to poke out of her neck. He gives this one the name Pepper. He picks Pepper up and feels her sturdy rib cage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this chicken. He sets her down and she gives her head a toss. She’s winking at him. She’s happy. He leaves the mash on the floor and the chickens rush toward it. They like his recipe.

  After his own dinner, he checks on the chickens again. When he opens the door a puff of warmish air hits his face, but it isn’t quite warm enough, so he turns the fan heater up. He sits in the corner of the dark room by the line of sleeping hens. In time his eyes adjust, and he begins to see more feathers stuck to the walls and ceiling. He can see constellations. It’s sort of creepy, but nice at the same time.

  Later, while he sits in front of the TV watching a replay of an old Anne Murray special, the freshness of her face reminding him of the widow and the gentle hairs on her yellow scarf, he is aware that his mind is in a new place, it’s in what he would call an unfocused attention mode. He decides to let it drift. It’s liberating to do this. He wonders if it’s because for the first time in his life he’s alone in the house, just him and the chickens, no scary sad mother, no brooding Jim, no confusing Chas.

  His mental wandering keeps hitting on angora, and eventually he wants to feel some for himself so he decides to see if there is any among Alice’s knitting supplies. Despite his new freedom he does try to confine his thoughts to the widow and angora. He doesn’t want his mind to wander to the subject of his mother. But as soon as he pulls open the cupboard door, out spill her Day of the Dead figures. Mariachis in sombreros. A dead dog. A dead man holding a dead woman’s hand, both of them wearing scarves. Before his thoughts go too deep into why she would knit dead things, he reminds himself that she isn’t the only one to knit skeletons. There’s a fish skeleton and a skull at the Shop-Mart in Idaho. Charity knits those things, and Charity seems pretty cool. Maybe Alice wasn’t as crazy as he thought. Besides, the dead don’t look so menacing anymore. He sets the mariachis on top of the cupboard, arranging them so the one with the trumpet is the leader. Then he looks for the bags of wool, but finds no angora, only mohair. He uses it to cast a few stitches onto a pair of No. 9 needles. At first, he’s not sure what he’s making, he’s just knitting, but then it comes to him — why not tiny scarves for the chickens? While Anne and Glen Campbell sing “Bring Back the Love”, he knits a black and white striped scarf for Pepper. Then while Anne sings “Snowbird”, he finishes a white mohair scarf for Angel.

  When all the scarves are finished it’s late. He switches off the TV and slips out the front door down into the constellation room to give the hens their scarves. He steps in the pan of water trying to make his way in the dark. He spots Angel first, her white feathers glowing ever so slightly. He ties the white mohair scarf loosely around her featherless neck, and she sinks her head into it. He saves Pepper for last as he isn’t sure she needs a scarf. But she makes such a happy chirp when he brings her scarf near, he ties it around her neck anyway.

  Four days later, he has used up all the ants and is nearly out of soybeans and fish, but he believes the hens have grown enough stubble to suggest feathers and that allows him to take their scarves off — all, that is, except for Chocolate Kiss. Her neck is still naked, and the others have been pecking at the bare skin on her rump. He needs to separate her, to give her a chance to heal. He puts her into the transport crate and pulls the crate close to the fan heater.

  As he stands looking at her, he realizes that for four days now, up until that very moment, he’s not allowed himself to worry. He hasn’t picked up the phone when it rings, hasn’t answered the doorbell when it chimes, nor opened the mail stuffed through the mail slot; he has not even bothered to call Chief to confirm he’s been fired, or to tell him he’s quit. Barely even thought about his mother, except a little on the night when he knit the scarves, and most of all, he’s not thought about his limp and numb penis, or his tendency to obsess about it. Instead, he’s cradled the hens whenever he felt like it, and he’s thought about the widow, and a little now and again about Charity, her invitation to come back to Idaho.

  He knows he will have to return the chickens soon and goes upstairs to make up their mash. When he brings it down, he tells the hens, Do not brood my lovelies — here’s your lunch.

  The five free hens in the room move toward the food. Pepper takes the lead, her head and neck outstretching the others by half a hen’s length. But when he opens the crate for Chocolate Kiss, he finds her in a strange huddle. One yellow chicken foot is splayed unnaturally behind her. He looks farther into the crate and sees that her head and scarf are entangled in the fan of the heater. He screams. Pepper hops away from the mash and into the crate. She starts to peck at the yellow foot. Henry has to move quickly to prevent Pepper from pecking at any of the open sores on Chocolate Kiss’ body.

  You’re an idiot, Henry, he yells as he takes the limp brown body out of the crate. The scarf burns and unravels as he pulls it away from the heater.

  Despite it being a cool November day, sweat pours down Henry’s back as he walks up the Fourth Avenue hill carrying the crate and five hens. He opens the Subaru’s yellow hatch and sets the crate inside. Not until he’s behind the steering wheel does he realize there are several tickets on the windshield. He pulls away from the curb anyway, the car veers and makes the grating noise, and he doesn’t care. By the time he’s on the highway all but one of the tickets has flown from the windshield and he is talking to himself. He’s trying to work out how, without a job and with a suite that smells like chicken manure, he’s going to pay the debt he owes for the KLUK transmission tower.

  You are a very stupid man, Henry, not to have seen where this behaviour was leading. You must make amends.

  He’s talking to himself like his mother did; and he can’t seem to stop her words from flooding his mind. His hand instinctively goes to the radio to find something light to drown out the talk, but when he turns it on there is nothing but static. Then he remembers the fragile electrical, snaps the radio off and slaps himself in the forehead.

  He starts to sing, trying to calm himself. The chickens appear to be listening and begin to make happy hen sounds. He sings “Snowbird” and is doing pretty well with it until he comes to the part about the broken heart. Then it’s all he can do to stop from veering the car off the road and flying it across the field and up into the sky.

  He is very soon weeping so hard he’s afraid he’ll crash the car and kill the chickens. They’ve gone quiet again and he hears himself apologizing to them.

  Sorry, my little hens — don’t brood. Brooding only brings grief and anger.

  The last of the parking tickets flies from the window as he’s driving down the concession toward Lightstone’s farm. Tears stream down his face, he doesn’t have any friends and he killed Chocolate Kiss whose poor body is still lying in the basement on top of a pile of discarded Bear Growls.

  He pulls into the widow’s yard and sits behind the steering wheel, completely exhausted. He doesn’t trust that he won’t cry again, so to distract himself he goes to the back of the car, takes Pepper out of the crate, brings her into the front seat and settles her on his lap. He waits for a line of peace, and
although that doesn’t come, the heat of her body and her steady breathing does begin to calm him. He’s nearly ready to open his eyes when a tapping at his car window rouses him.

  The widow Wendy is smiling at him.

  Henry winds the window down and holds the hen out.

  How do you like Pepper’s new look? he asks.

  The widow continues to smile.

  He wonders if she’s still clouded with grief, perhaps on automatic-pilot-smile.

  I gave your hens names, he says. This is Pepper.

  Pepper looks really healthy. Thank you.

  Check out the others, he says.

  He’s choked knowing she’ll see one hen is missing, but decides to address it straight up.

  Your little brown hen had a mishap. She didn’t make it, but all the rest have new hairdos.

  He waits while the widow walks down the side of the car and peers through the back window.

  They look lovely, she says. What have you been feeding them?

  Secret ingredients from a Chinese herbalist.

  Really?

  He steps from the car with Pepper in his arms, but his legs feel wobbly. He’s not sure whether it’s because of the frightening drive, or because he’s nervous being around the widow. He can feel his ears turning red and his face is hot, but his palms are not sweaty, and he is in no way close to making his chortling embarrassed hyena laugh.

  Come and see the other chickens in the barn, Wendy says. They look better too, and the barn is cleaned up.

  He and the widow step inside the barn. He’s surprised to see the entire flock still there. He’d been so certain Elaine would issue a kill order.

  What happened? he asks.

  That lady last week. She seemed to pay attention to what you said. She ran tests and you were right, they were only malnourished. I bought better meal. She points to a sack propped up beside the feeder.

  Well I’m glad for that, he says. Glad I didn’t lose my job for nothing.

  Really? You lost your job? They need more guys like you.

  Not sure they’d ever admit that.

  Well I could use a good breeder. Any interest? Can’t pay much, but . . .

  Oh thank you, ma’am, for the offer. It’s not the money, it’s just . . . I don’t consider myself a breeder.

  The widow is still smiling away, and the angora hairs on her scarf quiver in the wave of heat coming from the barn.

  Henry sets Pepper down on the floor of the barn. She runs toward her old roost making quite a show of tail feathers.

  Somebody’s happy to be home, he says.

  ELEVEN

  Bear Growls

  THERE’S A SPRING IN HENRY’S step as he walks toward his front porch. The Subaru was shaky but at least it made it back to Vancouver from Langley. And it was nice to visit Wendy. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him again.

  He can see a note tacked to the front door. Instinctively, he looks over his shoulder across to Mrs. Krumpskey’s house. When the curtains in her living room quiver in that Mrs. Krumpskey way, he knows it’s not going to be good. He takes the note down. It’s a triplicate copy of an Animal Control notice from the City of Vancouver issued by the Coordinated Bylaw Enforcement Inspector. It’s signed by illegible scrawl and beside the scrawl there is a number he can call. He spins on his heel fast enough to catch Mrs. Krumpskey’s moon face at her window and, in a gesture of self-preservation, he waves. Her curtain flutters closed. Life is a series of reversals, he thinks.

  He pushes through his front door and steps on the small avalanche of mail that has accumulated over the last week. A Visa envelope sits on top. He scoops everything up and adds it to the pile of manila envelopes in the kitchen, where he spends an inordinate amount of time examining a white rock from his mother’s cactus plant, rolling the rock back and forth on the table and holding it up to the window. It glows almost clear around the edges — like Alice used to when she was sitting at her vanity — and like her, the middle is dark and dense. He sets the rock down, gives it a final roll and opens the Visa bill. It’s the first one he’s received, so he thinks perhaps he’s reading it incorrectly. But after checking several times there’s no doubt the total amount he owes is $693.00. He hears Charity at the Shop-Mart telling him Canadian quarters are wooden nickels, but this seems a severe exchange rate for the money even if it’s only good for firewood. Then he sees it. The mechanic has put through the extra charge for staying late at $500, not $50, and once the conversion on the dollar is factored in the total is nearly $700. There’s a phone number he can call if he has questions or concerns, both of which he has, but he’s not sure how Visa can help.

  His throat is parched and he needs to get himself a drink of water before he can tackle another envelope. At the sink, cold water running over his hand, he thinks there must have been some sort of mistake. The mechanic was like a friend, he wouldn’t intentionally overcharge him. When he sits back down, he looks at the bill again. There’s no way from the information on it to find the mechanic, no phone number, no address, not even a real name for the business. The bill just says Autobody 510013493, Idaho.

  He decides to move on and picks up the next letter. This one can’t be good either; it’s from the North Idaho Court Registry. He twirls his glass of water a few times before opening. Inside is another triplicate document titled Court Appearance and Bail Bond. He’s getting good at reading these things now. This time he zeros right in on the amount. One transmission tower: $8,500 USD — with exchange this means he owes KLUK radio station over $10,000 for the property damage. How can it cost so much to fix a transmission tower? Surely there’s been a mistake here too. He keeps reading and sees that unless payment is received by December 31, 1990, he’s to appear in court on January 4, 1991, at which time he’s to be prepared to surrender himself into custody. Again, there’s a phone number he can call if he has questions.

  He has questions all right, but instead he picks up the phone and dials Wendy.

  About that offer. Like I said, I’m no breeder, but I do know chickens some.

  That’s okay, I can’t pay much so you can learn on the job.

  I can start Monday morning.

  Good. See you then.

  He puts the phone back in its cradle and is about to stand up — the pile of mail too distressing — when he sees a postcard poking from the stack. He pulls it out. On the front is a knitted object that reminds him of the codpiece he learned about when studying Shakespeare in English class. He flips the card over. It’s an invitation to come to a Holiday Knit Show at Charity’s Mobile Gallery where hundreds of knit objects, including the ever-popular knit muffwarmer, will be on sale: this year in new leopard and zebra designs. Under the printed portion of the invitation Charity has handwritten: Henry — Come on down and see us before Christmas, or if not come on . . . the rest is a smudge of ink. This time there is no phone number. He turns the card over and he can see now that the object on the front is knit in a leopard motif that looks more like a bikini bottom than a codpiece. He doesn’t want to sit and think right then about Charity in her tight southern belle bodice wearing a leopard muffwarmer. He’s in a no-touching-self phase. Besides, he has a dead chicken in the basement.

  He finds a snow shovel and a small trowel in the garden shed, uses the trowel to make a hole in the nearly frozen ground under the back porch, then scrapes out a bigger space using the shovel. When he lays Chocolate Kiss in the shallow cavity she is nearly the same colour as the earth. He covers her body with the loose dirt and puts one of the patio stones Chas left behind over the grave. He doesn’t want neighbourhood dogs to dig her up. He hangs his head for a few moments. It hardly feels adequate but it’s better than putting her out with the trash.

  Over the weekend he has a good look at the Rand McNally Atlas. He figures a route to the Lightstone farm that won’t take him onto Highway 1, even though it will be an hour out of his way, through Port Coquitlam and over the Fraser River on the Albion ferry. But until he can afford to have t
he Subaru fixed, he just can’t see himself on any road that will force him to go over forty kilometres an hour.

  The first morning, Henry arrives twenty-five minutes late even though he thought he’d left in plenty of time to make a stop for coffee at the deli in Langley that boasts the intriguing combination of Hawaiian Health Food & Ice Cream. The Subaru practically collapses in Wendy’s drive and blue smoke billows out the tailpipe when he turns off the ignition. Wendy comes out in the wind and rain to meet him. She doesn’t seem to mind he’s late. She smiles the widest smile he’s seen yet and ushers him toward the farmhouse, an old but substantial storey-and-a-half white stucco building with dark wood trim. The door they’re headed for is partially obscured by spindly cedar shrubs that look like they’ve been rubbed down by deer. Wendy appears to be sympathizing when he explains he had a four-sailing wait at the ferry.

  Oh that ferry, so unpredictable. Where were you coming from?

  Kitsilano.

  Kitsilano, in Vancouver?

  Yes.

  He’s not surprised she’s confused by his answer; his route by ferry is very odd. But he doesn’t want to get into the saga of the veering, shaking, belching car, so he lets it hang.

  Come on in, she says, pushing open the kitchen door.

  He feels like he’s walked onto the set for Happy Days, as if Richie and the Cunninghams are going to arrive any minute to tape a show. The table is a linen-grey Formica with four raspberry-coloured, vinyl-and-aluminum chairs. The floor is black-and-white-checkered tile and, even while he is thinking of the Fonz, a good-looking black-haired teenage boy slides into the room.