Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  Norman greets them with a friendly wave and announces, Specials today are mango sticky rice and coconut-banana pie.

  What part of that is health food? Chas asks.

  All of it! Norman grins. My specialty is smiling faces. Chas rewards him with a smile, and Norman laughs again. See, I told ya, all of me is good for the smile.

  Henry’s relieved to see Elaine is not in the deli, though he’s pretty sure it’s Bob sitting in a Swift Farm truck parked outside the door.

  It’s health food, Chas says as he drops two slices of coconut-banana pie on the table.

  They eat the pie in silence, then Henry starts to talk about his idea to market free-range eggs and chickens for Wendy in Kitsilano. Cut the middleman out, he says. He’s a real jerk named Bob. His dad is the owner of Swift Farms. Brutal what they do to their chickens. It’s a battery-cage operation.

  If you say so, Chas says.

  As they exit the deli, Henry jabs his thumb in the direction of the Swift Farm truck. That’s Bob, the bigwig’s son.

  Creep, Chas says. You see the colour of his eyes? Never trust a guy whose eyes are gunpowder grey.

  They drive out to the farm and, even though Henry is early, Wendy is in a panic again about getting eggs collected. She comes running out of the house before Chas has time to turn the car off.

  Thank God you’re here. The Swift pickup is moved back an hour, they say they never adjusted for daylight savings. I don’t know, does this make sense? The chickens don’t adjust. Oh hello, she says to Chas.

  This is Chas, my roommate, Henry says.

  Follow me, both of you, she says. We can use an extra hand scooping.

  As they walk toward the barn Chas whispers, I don’t think you should have said we’re roommates.

  What do you mean?

  Chas pirouettes. My friend, you are naïve. She knows a good gay couple when she sees one.

  Do you think?

  I know.

  Hurry up you guys, Wendy says. Chas, you work this row and Henry the other side. I’ll get the lamps going. She hands them each a big wicker basket and runs to the ultraviolet table.

  Chas sings, Tisket a tasket, a green and yellow basket.

  Stop it, Chas. Henry is suddenly nervous. As if he’s responsible for the social networking of this clutch of unlikely people working to scoop eggs. He wants to make light of everything, like Chas does, have fun with it, but it seems so serious and beyond him.

  He is thinking about the rest of the words to the basket rhyme I sent a letter to my love when his hand hits a chicken that refuses to move off her egg. Scram, he says. The hen pecks at him. He tries to pick her up but she steps sideways and pecks again. He’s surprised when she moves that there’s no egg under her, and he notices she’s holding her body in an awkward shuddering position. He checks her eyes. She looks healthy. But she shudders again, this time as if she’s trying to give birth to the egg, but can’t.

  Wendy, come check this hen out, he calls. I think she’s egg-bound.

  She sticks her head in under the roosting bar. Yeah, she’s got an egg stuck.

  Now what? he asks.

  You’re the doctor, she chides. She hands him a container of Preparation H cream.

  Doctor Love, Chas chimes from behind. This is getting interesting! His eyes light up.

  Lubricate up to your knuckles, gently reach in and pull the egg out, Wendy says. She talks as if this is all very matter of fact.

  It’s not until Henry is in up close enough to the chicken’s rump to sniff her eggy odour that he realizes he is about to put his fingers into a vagina. The Preparation H burns a little and for a second he loses all sensation in his index and middle finger. But what else can he do but pull his fingers together and plunge them in? He’s ready to feel sick, but instead it’s soothing and moist inside the chicken. Like going into a warm cave. He can feel the egg and his fingers just naturally form around it. His body knows what to do even if his mind is misfiring. The rhythmic contractions of the chicken as she helps to expel the egg tap into some primordial part of his brain. It’s okay.

  Careful not to break it, Wendy says. You’ll have to pick out all the pieces if you do.

  No problem, Chas says, he’s got it.

  The chicken lets out a loud cluck and a triumphant Henry holds up the egg.

  He looks carefully at the hen. She’s pretty, a docile buff Orpington, with profuse and soft feathers the colour of orange marmalade. She ruffles right down to her leg feathers in appreciation that the ordeal is over then stands on the walkway looking for all the world like a yellow zinnia in full bloom.

  Little Flower, Henry says.

  A tisket a tasket, Chas sings.

  They walk out of the barn toward Joey who’s down on his haunches looking under the Mustang. He straightens up.

  Nice pony car, he says. Yours, man? He looks at Henry for the first time as if he might be a real person.

  No, it’s his. This is Chas.

  Joey runs his hand along the fender. Real beauty. How much does a car like this cost?

  Depends, Chas says. This one’s in good shape so almost the same price as new. Maybe ten grand.

  Wow. Ever think of selling it?

  All the time, Chas says. Just can’t bring myself to do it.

  Never mind that, Wendy says. What are you doing home, Joey?

  The teachers are threatening job action so the grade twelves walked out in sympathy, he says.

  Very altruistic of you, Wendy says.

  Whatever. Gotta get going over to Lucy’s. See ya’all later.

  Joey hops on the bicycle he’s propped by the back door and takes off.

  When Chas departs, Henry and Wendy stand alone in the yard.

  Who’s Lucy? Henry asks.

  One of several girlfriends, Wendy answers, though Lucy seems to be the main squeeze right now — that boy learned a few too many tricks from his father.

  Hope you don’t mind, I brought a few things. Henry picks up his overnight bag. My car’s in no shape. Chas will be back to get me on Friday.

  Are you a couple? she asks.

  No. No way.

  Just wondered.

  Later that night in the mud room, the words just wondered resonate in Henry’s head. He’s trying to put himself into the meditative trance that helps with that neural mistake — his brain. Flower is with him this time. She is comfortable, and loose thoughts of rhythmic pulses of warm water float in his mind, all vaguely sexual and he’s not pushing any of it out of his head. Thinking of Wendy, he is half-aroused in what he assumes is a normal-male-ascending-into-full-erection state, when he hears an odd scratching on the other side of the wall. He thinks at first it’s mice at the feed station, but the sound is too loud. Then he hears a couple of the chickens cluck.

  He walks out of the room and into the main barn. Something bigger than a mouse slinks in the corner. He follows the slither and catches sight of the back end of a mink disappearing into the gloom. On the floor behind it lies a chicken’s head.

  Henry stamps his foot and hopes the yell scares the mink enough to send it flying out whatever hole it slid in through. Then he notices one of the doors to the barn has been left open a crack. He watches the mink slip out before walking to the door to look across the yard. The light is still on in Wendy’s bedroom.

  He can’t help but notice the curtains are not drawn. He’s semi-erect and the notion of Wendy on her bed brings him to further attention. He slows his pace, not wanting to appear menacing, and stops when he is close enough to notice the veins in the dried leaves on the tangle of clematis outside her window. Through the veil of leaves he sees she is naked on her bed. He’s now fully erect outside the window of a nude woman, perhaps not the best time to ask about a mink. A pickup truck blasts along the road, rips the night open. Then there is only the moonlit field, the veins in the clematis and space enough for Alice’s voice to creep in.

  You’re disgusting, Henry. A Peeping Tom.

  Back off, Henry says
to the night as he walks across the yard toward the barn. He means it, his mother is in no way right about what’s going on.

  When he opens the mud-room door he finds an upset Flower. She has dropped a few feathers while he’s been gone. He scoops them up and showers them over himself. It feels like progress that he’s able to sustain his erection and maintain a strong thought of Wendy, her nipples erect — or were they? What does it matter? He can imagine they were if he wants. He takes off his clothes and lies down on his mud-slab bed, drawing himself up into a handful of feathers.

  Thank you, he says when it’s all over, his hand languid at his side, a bright-orange feather stuck with semen to the side of his leg.

  Early next morning, Henry collects eggs for the Swift pickup, and then, because he has time, he picks out a number of luminous feathers from the nesting box. He runs his hand over the plume on the top of the head of one of the fancy breed chickens. Her head flicks from side to side like a makeup brush. That’s when he gets the idea. He takes one of the plume feathers and sticks it to the mud wall using a dab of albumen from a broken egg. At first the individual barbs mat around the edge of the shaft and the feather doesn’t look good, but later when he brings in another handful, the egg white is dried and the quill sticks to the wall. The barbs splay yet the down floats free. It’s an interesting effect.

  By the final night of the workweek, the mink has not returned and he has created his first installation. He dims the light in the mud room and allows his eyes to adjust. Yes, he says as he looks at Orion’s Belt in formation. The longer he lies on his bed, the more the room swirls with beauty.

  So, did you get laid? Chas asks.

  Henry sits uncomfortable in the passenger seat. They’re driving back to Kitsilano and Chas is full of chatter. Henry doesn’t want trouble, doesn’t even want to think about answering. He’s tempted instead to tell Chas about the beautiful room he’s been building, but decides to wait and show it when it’s finished. He simply says, It was a good week.

  When they come to Macdonald, Chas keeps driving along Broadway and stops at the Greek grocery and deli down near Alma Street.

  Are we having souvlaki for dinner? Henry asks.

  Could be, Chas says. Let’s go.

  In the shop, a large Greek man about thirty-five years old with a bushy black beard nods in greeting from behind the deli counter.

  Chas holds his hand out in Henry’s direction and says as confidently as he might if he were presenting a prize rooster, Aristedes, meet Henry from Lightstone Poultry. Henry has confirmed he’ll be able to supply you organic roasters and free-range eggs beginning this January.

  Chas keeps on talking about all kinds of crazy things — how much the price of grape leaves has gone up, whether Aristedes has any fresh souvlaki, whether he’s going to buy a ski pass up Grouse Mountain, whether he thinks the Canucks are going to win the Stanley Cup. And after Chas and Aristedes exhaust everything they know about hockey, they drift into stories about wild nights of drinking retsina and eating raw chicken livers with their hands. Henry knows it’s intentional, meant to keep him from opening his mouth, exclaiming he can’t promise any free range orders, and he is set to interject, when Aristedes addresses him with a highly charged appreciation of life.

  I love chicken so much I could fuck it, he says. You bring me good kill, Henry, and I make you the best spanakopita in town.

  Aristedes presses on them a dozen dolmathes, a slab of saganaki, and two bottles of retsina from the back, before he walks Chas and Henry to the door.

  Good eating and sexing on the weekend, he shouts as they walk down the sidewalk.

  What was that about? Henry asks.

  I told you you wouldn’t be sorry I came back, Chas says. I’ve already lined up five other outlets in Kitsilano, all of them ready to start receiving free-range products in January. And there’s lots more in Vancouver still to tap.

  Back home Chas sets about frying up the saganaki, and setting out the dolmathes.

  Henry pushes open the door to his mother’s room and is upset to see how much it looks as if Alice is still here. The makeup table is set up again with her bottles, jars and brushes — Chas must have kept that box of cosmetics — and other than Chas’ silk robe hanging on the back of the door, and his rosewood trouser press in the corner, the room looks like it always has.

  He returns to the kitchen where Chas has poured two glasses of retsina, and set the bottle on the counter. Henry sits at his regular spot and Chas takes Alice’s seat and holds out his glass in a toast.

  Despite his better inclination, Henry toasts Chas and takes a sip of the wine. He screws his face up and coughs it back out. Why do you drink this?

  It’s cheap and sorts of goes with a debauched evening, Chas says.

  We’re not going down that road.

  Ahhh! Why not?

  Henry’s mind starts to spin. He had nothing in mind when he said going down that road, nothing except the social awkwardness of sitting across the table from a man who is now his tenant, a man who used to be Jim’s lover, and is not going to be his lover. But still that man is smiling like he thinks he’s going to get lucky.

  Henry picks up a piece of saganaki from the fry pan. It’s a warm gooey cheese that hangs limp and flaccid from the end of his fingers. He moves it quickly toward his mouth, too late for Chas’ warning that it will be hot. He burns his lip, but is glad of the distraction.

  Ouch, Chas says. Want an ice cube?

  No, it’s okay.

  Henry stuffs a dolmathes into his mouth to keep it occupied.

  You’re a real stoic aren’t you, Henry? Chas says.

  I am?

  Sure, you had that whack-nut for a mom and you never complained.

  She wasn’t a whack-nut.

  You know she was off.

  So what?

  Well you were kind of slow to defend yourself against her, and then she went and died, and well you needed somebody to . . . You know, we would have moved out years before . . . Jim wanted to . . .

  To what?

  Well, it’s tough being raised by a crazy. I had one semi-sane parent at least. Don’t get me wrong, Alice tried her best. Just the same, I know how easy it is to get hung up on your own thoughts when you’ve had a weird start.

  Yeah, it was weird sometimes.

  It occurs to him this is the first time anyone has ever really hinted at what he sometimes suspected, that he needed protecting, needed to have a mirror held up by someone on the outside, someone who was sane. So far the only mirror held up was as foggy and distorted as a funhouse mirror.

  Chas stands up to get himself another glass of retsina. He slugs back the white liquid. Rat’s piss, he says.

  That’s when things stir, or perhaps not so much stir as move involuntarily in Henry’s underwear, just the smallest bit, certainly not so much a commotion or an arousal, in fact so slight that even while it’s happening, he has to wonder, Is it really or is that just a fold in my underpants? And is my subconscious mind on Wendy, or Jamie Lee? Yes, even Jamie Lee, or maybe, no, maybe it is rat’s piss that sets me off, even rat’s piss would be okay.

  All in all no matter how trivial, how insignificant the little jump in his anatomy, he is not listening to Chas anymore.

  Don’t you agree? Chas says.

  No. I mean yes. I mean maybe.

  Are you listening?

  Trying to, what were you saying?

  I was saying don’t let your obsessions get the better of you. Obsessions can become a habit.

  I’ll remember that.

  Keep fleet-footed. One step ahead of your thoughts, Chas adds.

  Henry wishes he had been listening. This sounds like good advice, but he doesn’t want a rewind on any part of what has just happened.

  Later that night, after Chas has finished the bottle of retsina, Henry’s glass included, and they are in the TV room watching reruns of the A-Team, Henry pulls out a bag of wool from his mother’s craft cabinet, looking for something to
do with his hands, occupy his mind, keep one step ahead of his thoughts.

  I just love this, Chas says. He points to the shelf where the dead mariachis are displayed. Can you teach me to knit a dead Mr. T?

  Okay. Sit across from me so you can mimic what I do with the needles.

  This is the way his mother taught him. He uses the memory of her lessons to keep one step ahead, to remind himself not to think too much about the position the two of them are in, legs splayed, facing each other like lovers, dicks practically touching — make sure you work through the loop not the bumpy part when you form a stitch. Only problem is that dicks practically touching is exactly where his thoughts devolve no matter what lesson snippets he conjures to block them. Added to that is his mother’s high-pitched scream, now in the room with them — teach him how to knit and that’s all, don’t let him touch your anus.

  Chas picks up casting-on quickly and except for a couple of dropped stitches does well with garter stitch, but he has difficulty with purling.

  Pay attention, Chas. You insert the needle over top for the purl.

  Henry regrets his word choice. Inserting over top sounds lewd. He does a quick mental pant check and is relieved he is unmoved by the suggestion of insertion, but right away he wonders why he’s even thinking that. Internally he repeats the advice keep one step ahead of your thoughts, but is struck by its duplicity. The advice itself is a thought. Everything is starting to feel as painful as a knitting needle under his fingernail, and he lets out an audible sigh.

  Sshhh, Chas says wagging his finger at the TV. This is the part where T crushes the crystal skull.

  Henry uses this interruption as an excuse to shift his position, so his knees are no longer glancing off Chas’ like shy lovers. He is almost giddy to find his dong feels as flaccid, and not nearly as hot, as the saganaki he dropped earlier into the fry pan.

  He wills himself asleep quickly that night so he doesn’t have time to start obsessing about whether he might be gay as well as crazy.

  THIRTEEN

  Mink Patrol

  HENRY SITS IN THE CONSTELLATION Room — that’s what he officially calls it now — and thinks about the pile of headless chickens he found stacked behind the nesting box that morning. He thought he’d solved the problem after he plugged the holes in the foundation and began bolting the barn doors at night, but in fact he’d locked the mink in the night before. Beside the stack there was a smaller messier heap of heads that looked like they belonged in a voodoo priest’s tool box. What would a head look like here in the Constellation Room? Not good, he decides.