Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  He loves the room. Yet when he looks around it, he can’t help but wonder what others might think. It’s certainly weird. Maybe obsessively crazy. Wendy has respected his privacy and not asked to see it, not even after he told her he might do a bit of decorating. Nothing permanent, he’d said. But just the same the room is central to him. It’s where he lets his thoughts splay like plumes from the quill, where he consoles himself by making radiant feather constellations. In the evening, he sorts through piles of feathers, picking out the pearly ones, the sparkly ones, those that radiate warmth and contrast with the grey and black pin feathers he’s arranged into the black holes beside the white dwarfs and the luminous planets of love. All of it transports him away from his puny life. And away from a new misery that has struck him very hard.

  It hit so deep and with such precision, he had to sit up in bed the first time it happened to let it drain from his mind.

  Had his mother done more than just admonish him to keep his filthy private parts clean? Had she molested him?

  A moment of rubbing and jerking in a soapy bathtub came so clear to him he could even hear the rhythmic lapping of water on the side of the tub. It all fit with the courting, the sexual dancing in his bedroom, the jealous rages whenever he mentioned a girl. He feels sick every time he recalls it, but also, in some unfathomable twist, he begins to doubt it at the same time. Could it be true or is this just another creepy and weird obsession he’s adding to his list? When he thinks about it, like he is now, he wishes desperately he had a father, an uncle, a trusted neighbour, anyone — even Tom from the old days — he could ask. How had she really been when she was around him? Is this why he can’t get a proper erection? He tries to push the thought away, but can’t. He just sits there feeling sick and sorry for himself. Aware that he is in desperate need of some healing magic, he takes off his clothes, grabs a handful of the feathers heaped beside his bed, lies down and builds a nest around his poor broken apparatus. It helps. He can feel a dry warmth radiate from his balls.

  He lies on his back and mentally fills in the points of the star cluster above him to form a shapely maiden in a Southern Belle dress. Charity at the Shop-Mart, he thinks, her big breasts. His equipment stirs, pushes a few of the feathers aside. There’s lots of work to do to sort this out, he thinks. Too much to let this continue right now. So he wills himself to switch to more practical problems — like mink in the barn.

  Wendy, after he’d showed her the stack of heads, told him there was no easy way to deter a mink short of trapping it. To prove she was serious, she’d handed him a set of legholds.

  Really, Wendy? Those things look barbaric.

  And ripping the heads off our precious chickens and sucking out their blood is not?

  Please, Wendy. I promise I’ll check the barn three times a night and set the trap if so much as one more chicken goes missing.

  To honour his promise, he gets off the bed and puts on his jacket.

  It’s cold and clear outside. Ice has formed on the water dispensers and a skiff of snow covers the yard. He walks around the barn and is just about to head back in when he hears the sound of someone crying by the farmhouse. It’s Lucy, Joey’s girlfriend.

  Hi there, he calls out. Are you okay?

  Hi, the girl says, wiping a tear from the corner of her mouth.

  Henry has met her a couple of times passing through the yard, but this is the first time she hasn’t been with Joey. She is shivering and he doesn’t know what to say next. It’s none of his business why she’s crying, and not being very practised at consoling teenage girls, he asks, Want to help me with my mink patrol? It’s warmer inside the barn.

  Okay, she says. I could do that while I wait for Joey.

  Come on in here, then. You stand by the front door and I’m going to slam the back door really loud to see if it scares anything out of the barn. Let me know if you see something dark and slinky.

  Ew, sounds gross.

  It’s not, it’s only a small animal.

  Slamming the door is not part of his usual mink routine, so when he does it, several hundred chickens flap awake and fly off their roosting bars with one giant squawk. Only the docile Orpingtons have some semblance of calm. But then Lucy screams and even they hop from their bars and flutter into the middle of the barn.

  If he had slowed down enough to think about what he was doing he’d have remembered the sleeping chickens, all of them with highly susceptible ears and easily put off balance by anything vibrating their tiny cochlea. He might calm one chicken by petting it and covering its eyes, or in a pinch by holding it upside down, but what is he to do with hundreds of flapping chickens? All he can think is to make a cooing noise, and he sits in the middle of the barn making a sound as close to a mother hen as he can muster. The racket begins to lessen, but it’s taking a while, and he starts to feel like he’s going to sprout feathers himself. When he finally opens his eyes he’s happy to see most of the hens back on their bars and things pretty much back to normal. But where is Lucy? The barn door is still closed, so she hasn’t run outside. He pushes gently on the door to the Constellation Room and finds her sitting on the table, transfixed.

  What is this place? she asks.

  My meditation room, Henry answers.

  It’s wonderful. Heavenly, she says. It’s the first time since I left home I’ve felt really happy.

  Home? Where do you live?

  Here in Langley, but home was Yugoslavia. I miss my baba.

  What’s a baba?

  My grandmother.

  Lucy holds out the hot water bottle with the chicken cover on it that he knit over the weekend.

  What is this? she asks.

  It’s a meditation comforter, he says.

  The comforter is something he modelled after his new favourite hen, Flower. He’d interwoven it with a set of golden feathers just like hers.

  Really? How does it work?

  Sit on the side of the bed . . . er, well yes, it is my bed. Sorry, is this weird?

  No. Like I said, it’s heavenly in here.

  Okay, then it’s better to rest with your back against the mud wall and put the chicken bottle on your lap. Stare at the constellations until your thoughts drift to somewhere peaceful. I’ll go and finish up in the barn while you try it.

  A couple of nights later, just as Henry is finishing up his early evening mink patrol, Joey comes to stand at the barn door. He’s wearing his Grateful Dead Wonderland Jam-Band T-shirt. Ever since Henry recognized the logo, Joey has decided he is okay. Joey’s eager to hear as much about the 60s as Henry can remember. Henry plays it up, never really telling him he was only a kid and not a real hippie in the 60s.

  Hey man, I heard your room is pretty cool. Mind if I check it out?

  Okay.

  Henry pushes the door to the room open. A small golden feather flutters down from the new Ursa Major constellation he’s installed. As the feather approaches a candle burning beside the bed, it swirls back up toward the ceiling and catches on the edge of the Virgo constellation where it hangs like a golden nipple, almost at the spot where he imagines the virgin’s breast is.

  Wow, this place is cosmic, Joey says.

  He stands for a few moments looking, then flashes Henry a peace sign. Carry the beauty with you, man, he says as he departs.

  Next morning Henry is in the yard remembering what Joey said. He’s about to batten down the hatch on the rooster’s shed, and he’s feeling beautiful thoughts about the day. That is until a hawk circling the barn distracts him. Hawks and minks go after the same prey, he thinks, so he walks toward the barn to check. After he satisfies himself there are no mink in the area, he decides to let the hens out for a dust bath.

  What’s left of his good cheer turns to dismay as he watches the roosters, quick to detect the scent of fresh chicken, stampede from the shed he’s forgotten to finish battening. Some of the roosters hit on three or four different hens within seconds, and the poor hens, most of them virgins and none of them strong en
ough to fight off the sexual advances, just stoop to take the weight. Those not mounted sprint in circles, overturning feed pans, defecating everywhere, and flapping their useless clipped wings. Henry runs at a cluster, shrieking and corralling roosters away from chickens but, no matter how hard he runs or how loud he yells, the biggest rooster, the buckeye, will not be deterred. Eventually, he has to remove the cock’s talons from the feathers on a chicken’s neck and kick him toward the shed. The marauding frenzy is over in a matter of minutes, but it leaves him exhausted. He’s bent over sucking on a bleeding forefinger when Wendy, who’s been watching from the kitchen, comes out to make sure the shed is latched properly this time.

  I’m sorry, he says.

  Well, she says, we’re going to have a bunch of fertilized eggs and useless brooding chickens to go along with the ones the mink killed. How are we going to make the orders you and Chas have lined up for January?

  Let the fertilized eggs hatch? He can feel his nervous, stupid laugh coming. Something he hasn’t felt in quite a while.

  Hmphf hmphf hmphf, he snorts.

  The laughing stops only because the freshly scuffed dust has filled his nostrils and made it hard for him to breathe. He’s anxious, though. How else is he going to earn a salary if the farm can’t afford to keep running? He hates that he’s pissed Wendy off. He looks down at his feet hoping the barnyard muck will give him inspiration, but nothing comes clear except that he needs to buy a new pair of shoes, these are permanently stained with chicken shit.

  He looks up to see that Wendy’s mouth is pulled tight.

  What? What are you thinking about?

  You manning the incubator, she answers. Chicks in winter are not going to be easy. You’ll have to rotate the eggs at least three times a day.

  Show me the switch. I’ll turn it on.

  If this doesn’t work, you’re gonna have to make us eggnog with fertilized eggs. Pick the embryos off the side of each yolk, one by one.

  She demonstrates the minute movement with her fingers.

  Sorry I can’t help you with the mess, she says. I’ve got to drop a load of eggs off. See you after lunch.

  She walks toward her car then turns. Oh yeah, I gave notice on the Swift Farm’s contract yesterday effective January 1. So you guys better make this work.

  Inside the barn, Henry tries to compose himself. There’s too much to clean up after the maraud for him to be focusing on the new business. To begin with, he has to change the water in the dispensers. They’re full of feces dropped by the panicked chickens trying to escape the randy roosters. As he fills the watering can, his spirits begin to lift. Physical labour is good. By the time he’s filling the twelfth can, he’s even thinking cheery thoughts about eggnog — sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, his favourite flavours. As he dumps the dirty water from a dispenser behind the barn, he lights on an idea to host an eggnog party in the Constellation Room. It will be Christmas in a couple of weeks and Joey’s girlfriend, Lucy, called the room heavenly. He could invite Aristedes who could drive out with Chas; it would be fun to have him so long as he doesn’t talk about violating chickens. And if Aristedes comes that settles the rum question, there’d have to be rum for the eggnog.

  He picks up a watering can and is on his way out into the front yard to clean the feces from that dispenser, when he sees something — a dead chicken behind the stack of transport cases. At first he thinks one of the chickens has been killed by a rooster and dragged behind the case, but as rambunctious as they are, roosters don’t usually murder hens. With each step he sees another dead chicken, bodies piled up one on top of the other like a cord of firewood, the mink’s biggest stash yet. The closer he gets to the transport cases the sicker he feels. He yanks them away from the wall and is doing a dead count when a car pulls into the yard. Unbelievable timing. It’s Elaine.

  Hey, Henry, she calls.

  Hello, Elaine. Why are you here?

  Just a routine follow-up.

  What do you mean? There’s no such thing as a routine follow-up.

  Where’s Mrs. Lightstone?

  She’s gone to town. You should come back when she’s here. Call to make an appointment.

  Come on, you know better than that. I’ve got authority to come anytime onto a premise that sells commercially.

  Elaine walks toward the water dispenser, which is covered in poop, islands of feces floating in the liquid. She kicks at a mound of feathers in her path.

  What happened here?

  Bit of a barnyard scrap. I left the roosters’ shed open, that’s all.

  That’s all. I would have thought you knew better than that.

  I do.

  And the feces in water, is that something you know better about too?

  Of course . . . but you see some of the hens got excited. That’s not unusual.

  It’s not usual. It’s downright unsanitary. You know feces in water is one of the best ways to transmit avian flu.

  If there was any flu to transmit.

  Elaine walks toward the barn and he runs in front of her feeling a lot more like a chicken being chased by a rooster than he would like. He beats her to the door and stands in her way.

  What are you hiding?

  Nothing. You don’t have the owner’s permission to come in.

  Looks like reasonable cause for me to come in.

  He lets her push him aside. He knows she can cite him for obstruction, which is only going to make things worse. An Orpington pullet stands in the middle of the barn looking especially bedraggled; a great many of her tail feathers are missing and she’s suffered a small injury from her tryst with the rooster, a scarlet drop of blood hanging from her rump. Elaine bends down to inspect the chicken, makes a clucking noise with her mouth and a note on her chart, then, as if she is some sort of dead-hen-tracking dog, she marches straight for the corner where the headless chickens are stacked.

  What’s this, some of kind of ancient Langley ritual? Monument to the dearly departed?

  We had an issue with a mink.

  What are you doing about that?

  We have to set a trap, I guess.

  You guess? Dead corpses in the roosting box, feces in the water, extreme feather loss, untreated injuries due to gang rape — not sure how I’m going to write this one up.

  The Orpington comes to stand beside Henry. She looks up at him, and then as if commanded by him trots over to Elaine and plops chicken shit on her foot.

  Better add unruly chickens to your write-up, Henry says.

  Elaine does not reply. She takes a few photos then walks to her car. The Orpington trots beside her, drops into a hole in the dirt, and spins. A dervish of dust blows over Elaine like Saskatchewan farmland during a drought.

  Don’t think I don’t know your visit is no coincidence, Henry shouts after her. We terminated Swift’s contract, and your boyfriend is no doubt unhappy about that.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, she says, closing her car door.

  FOURTEEN

  Constellation Room

  IT’S THE LAST FRIDAY BEFORE Christmas, the day of his party, and bales of hay are set around the table in the centre of the Constellation Room. A large bowl of eggnog sits beside a bottle of Captain Morgan and beside that a plate of shortbread and butter tarts. Henry has lined up his gifts on the bed: a hot water bottle with a knit chicken cover for each guest — two orange, two white, two pepper — and one chocolate kiss for a special romance wish. He knitted one a night during the past week. The knitting itself didn’t take long, it was interlacing the feathers and affixing the knit heads that took time. Each bottle is freshly filled with hot water that should still be warm when he’s ready to give the presents; they’re under the blanket so the surprise will not be ruined.

  He paces the room waiting for the guests to arrive, anxious about throwing his first party. But, more than that, he’s incredibly ticked off with what’s stuffed into his pocket. Four sheets of paper burn a psychic hole into the side of his hip, to say nothing of the v
ery real blood on his thumb and forefinger that he acquired tearing out the staples Elaine had used to tack up the Notices of Disposal — kill orders — on the front and back doors of the barn and the roosters’ shed.

  She appeared in the barnyard just before five o’clock, pulled out her red staple gun, stapled up her greetings, and slipped away. The notices, issued under the federal Health of Animals Act, say: All the animals in the infected place, to wit the Lightstone Farm, are to be killed and disposed of within twenty-four hours from the date herein.

  Henry knows the definition of animal extends to even the fertilized eggs incubating this very moment behind the Constellation Room. He also knows it’s an offence to take down a notice issued under the Act. But he’s already seen a defect: Elaine in her rush forgot to date them; still, this is going to be a sticky one.

  He is tapping at his pocket when his first guests arrive. Lucy and her mother, awkward as new colts, stand in the doorway.

  I told you it was beautiful, Mom, Lucy says.

  Oh, Mr. Henry, Lucy’s mother says.

  Hello, my name is Henry, he says. He’s embarrassing himself. The mother already called him by name.

  My name is Vedrana, she says. So good to meet you, Star Man. You have made monument to the beginning of the universe.

  Thank you, he says.

  He hears Chas and Aristedes in the barn and motions to Lucy and Vedrana to help themselves to eggnog and goodies. In here, he calls.

  Chas is wearing his best houndstooth coat and Aristedes’ grizzly beard has been trimmed back to Pavarotti-sized whiskers encircling his mouth. Aristedes’ eyes look especially fierce and happy, and Chas seems even smaller and more delicate than usual. He’s tucked in nicely beside Aristedes, but they unlink arms as they approach. Henry is pleased Chas appears to have found a relationship with a real bear, although he hadn’t guessed Aristedes was the type.