Cluck

by Lenore Rowntree

  We’re going over to Dirty Annie’s, Chas says.

  Aristedes points toward the door. Dirty Annie’s, he repeats.

  What about Wendy? Henry asks, ready to follow them anywhere.

  Aristedes laughs. I think she enjoys the music. Yes?

  Wendy waves and mouths the words, See you later.

  Come on. Let’s skedaddle, Chas says. Charity is coming, soon as she’s finished schmoozing.

  The red-tiled floor at Dirty Annie’s is sticky with spilled beer. The smell of french fries and a griddle that needs its grease pan changed wafts out of the kitchen. The bar is crowded with men drinking beer, shouting to be heard over one another and a sound system that screeches Creedence Clearwater’s “Bad Moon Rising”. Two big men at the end of the bar, one of them wearing a trucker’s cap, turn to watch Henry, Chas, and Aristedes settle in the only free booth. A tired-looking waitress comes over.

  Ginger ale, says Henry.

  Millers. Chas signals to himself and Aristedes.

  But when Charity and Jamie Lee walk through the door, Aristedes stands and whistles the waitress back.

  A dozen ouzo, he says. On fire! he adds.

  I dunno if we have that, the waitress says.

  You do, my friend, Aristedes says as he hands her twenty dollars. On fire, pretty lady.

  Charity wants to sit on the inside of the booth so she squeezes past Henry, and when Jamie Lee perches on a chair at the end, his head pounds. He can’t believe he’s wedged between Charity and Jamie Lee.

  The waitress, flushed and harried, carries a tray of flaming drinks toward their table. All the men at the bar are laughing and yelling, but there’s a silence above the heads of the two big fellows watching. Aristedes takes one of the flaming drinks and stands to toast Charity.

  Opa! To our new friend, the artist, Charity.

  Aristedes downs his drink in one go and takes another.

  Everybody now. Opa!

  Henry picks up a drink, but he hesitates too long and the flame singes his moustache, and the air fills with the acrid smell of burnt hair.

  Oh, the stink. You must do it again, my friend, Aristedes shouts. Opa!

  Practically the whole bar is watching now, so Henry picks up a second glass and downs it. The ouzo is surprisingly sweet and warms his gut. He feels emboldened, almost confident enough to talk to Jamie Lee, who is cooing something about the smell of burnt moustache and making a little so-la every now and again. Very pretty, very musical, a little so-la right out of the middle of the doe-rae-me scale. Would it be okay to break out in a full doe a deer, a female deer? But his lip stings and he’s not really quite ready yet, so he sips on one of the cold beers from the tray the waitress brings to follow the ouzo. He holds the chilled glass to his lip between mouthfuls and listens to the cross-chatter between Charity and Jamie Lee. He keeps hearing the name Billy Wray mixed in with so-la. Maybe Billy Wray is coming to join them. Then he hears Charity say, I told you — you shouldn’a married him so quick.

  By the end of a second beer, his lip is feeling better and he’s quietly singing doe a deer, while he listens and learns that Billy Wray has another wife, or maybe two, and he’s moved back to a place called Plentiful, where he wants Jamie Lee to join him. Aristedes picks up on the tune and begins to sing aloud. He would probably have carried on with the full score from the Sound of Music if the mean-looking guy in the trucker’s cap hadn’t come over and told him to shut the fuck up.

  There is another beer in front of Henry and while he sips he’s aware he’s beginning to ramble on to Charity about sex, about getting laid, about not getting laid, never getting laid, but in fact desperately wanting to get laid. He hears himself tell her, It’s so complicated to get everything going in the right direction. She says, You know, baby, it’s really not that hard, you just do it. She leans into him, her bosom propped by her southern belle bodice directly below his face, her freckles beckoning. Their two heads are so close for a moment that he thinks, We’re kissing. They aren’t really, he’s just feeling a thrill like they might. Her thigh keeps pressing into his and seems to follow him whenever he moves. She even says, This is sexy, all of us crammed in here, isn’t it? He feels his hand creep up over the edge of the table toward the vee in her cleavage where the cinched bodice threatens to pop a nipple. But Charity has a boyfriend and he shouldn’t, so to divert himself he looks over at Jamie Lee. My God, he has never been so revved in his life. His body shivers when he takes a sip of beer, any beer, whoever’s beer is handy.

  You’re cute, Henry, Charity says. Then she leans over and really does give him a kiss.

  After a third, or perhaps it’s a fourth beer, his state of mind is a little less focused on his nether region, on anything, so he is able to ask Jamie Lee to give him one of her radio pitches. He waits to hear if she can do it without making the so-la sound.

  Hey there, she sings, it’s country time here at Dirty Annie’s where I’m sitting with two premiere artists. And I don’t mean country-western singers, folks. No, they ain’t that, but one of them’s a chicken farmer who makes beautiful stuff with feathers. And he’s hurtin’ and flirtin’ with me, sittin’ right across from me grinnin’. And we’ll get right back to him soon enough, but first let’s hear a little of Canada’s Good Brothers singing their number-one hit, “Doin’ the Wrong Things Right!”

  Jamie Lee’s purring mouth makes Aristedes go again, and he breaks into “If I Were a Rich Man” and everybody at the table joins in. As for Henry, beer and excitement have suddenly overtaken him with the urgent need to pee, and he pushes his way out of the booth and starts to laugh when he realizes how unsteady he is. The room tilts as he pushes on the saloon-style doors into the washroom.

  Inside there’s only one stall, locked, so he walks up to an empty urinal and tugs at his pants. His fly is stuck, the zipper won’t budge. He looks down to see a fringe of orange and white feathers poking out between the teeth. He threw in an extra handful that morning, for what reason he can’t remember, but at least he understands now why the men at the bar were laughing. He gives a good hard yank on the zipper and a cascade of orange and white feathers falls to the floor.

  After he’s finished peeing, he stands for a moment, unsteady on his feet, and picks one last feather off the shaft of his party favour. A hand grabs his shoulder.

  I knew you were all fucking fags, a voice says behind him.

  A blue-jeaned leg and boot come flying through the air up onto the tap of the urinal. The tap flushes. Once. Twice. Water gushes down the drain. Henry has a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. The boot comes off the tap and a hand presses on his shoulder and hauls him down onto his knees, then flat onto his back. The guy with the trucker’s cap plants the boot on his shoulder and pins him to the floor. Henry tries to lift his head but it gets shoved back down. Hard. Then two sets of hands drag him across the black and white ceramic tiles, through the spilled urine, the muddy melted snow, and shreds of sodden toilet paper. His butt, still black and blue and sore from his fall down the steps, seems to be the fulcrum. His pants and underwear get shoved farther and farther down his legs with every tile.

  He likes it in the ass. Did you catch a sight?

  Yeah, all the colours of the YMCA.

  Fucking fudge packer.

  The door to the washroom is kicked open and Henry is dragged across a hallway and smashed against an emergency exit. It’s bracing cold outside. He is picked up, hauled a distance across the yard and heaved into a frozen mud puddle. The weight of his body, butt first, cracks the skiff of ice. His butt is too sore to feel cold, but his shoulders and back react to the freezing water seeping under his sweater. There are three of them now staring down at him, all of them faceless, the light from the parking lot making eerie halos around their heads. Dark angels come for a feeding, fingernails like razor blades. Cut the head from the snake. Trucker cap raises his arms above his head, clasps his hands together like a ball peen hammer for the final blow. Henry does not defend himself. At leas
t he won’t have to off himself, these pricks will do it for him.

  But there is a merciful one in the circle. He stops the doubled hands and forces Henry’s mouth open with a pickled egg.

  Feel like a cock to you?

  The guy with the cap starts to retch. He stumbles a distance over to the wall where he begins to vomit. Henry can see the puke steaming under the light. He’s grateful for it because it distracts the men and for a time he can hear them over by the back door of the building, two of them laughing, while the trucker continues to spit.

  Eventually the night is silent.

  Henry is too confused to get up, stays on his back and stares at the sky. The longer he looks, the more he sees. Stars begin to bloom in the lingering waves of violence. It’s fascinating. He tries to process what has just happened, but the harder he thinks the more difficult it is to weave any sense from it. As soon as the stars start to align in a way that might speak to him, a new wave passes through and shuffles everything. Eventually, a cloud drifts across the sky like a curtain in a theatre and he descends into disappointment. It is so much easier to sink than to float. His face is wet. It can’t be tears, he thinks, I don’t have the energy to cry.

  He comes apart the same way he was put together. Fumbling. He tries to spell the word for what it is he wants to feel, but he doesn’t know the feeling, so how can he spell it? He knows he’s disappointed, but what is that feeling he’s itching to have? How can a person want something they’ve never had and don’t understand? He is so disappointed he can’t even name the feeling he needs to find. He thinks he’ll just give up.

  I didn’t teach you to give up. The words float above his head.

  He is so incensed his mother would come to him now and say such a thing, he spits the pickled egg out of his mouth to yell. Shit! You did! All you ever did was teach me to give up. Sometimes I think you were waiting for me to go mad . . . fucking clucking mad.

  Henry waits in the silence for his mother to answer. When nothing further comes, he begins to think silence might be the answer. So he pushes on silence. He’ll grow a shell around himself, live in complete silence. Yes. He’s ready to go with safety in silence, when a female voice off to the side presents the option of him not giving up.

  So you’re having trouble getting laid?

  Henry looks in the direction of the voice and sees the old-fashioned lace-up boots, the crinoline on a southern belle dress, a halo of good light surrounding a bouffant of ginger hair.

  It’s really not that complicated, she says. Getting laid is easier, say, than sticking your dick in that mud hole you’re lying in.

  Huh?

  Actually you look even cuter out here, she says. Roll on out of that puddle.

  As soon as he moves onto a patch of dry grass, she stands over his face, brings her body down. He can see she has no underwear on. When she is near, he can smell her. She smells different than he was expecting, less like an egg and more like a green apple after you peel it, sweet but tart. She lowers herself and he nuzzles her with his nose, then with his tongue and she makes a little sound like a puppy having a dream. She pivots and uses her mouth to warm him up. Henry does not know whether it is the contrast between the warmth of her mouth and the cold of the night, or just the sheer energy of everything, but he surrenders to her and doesn’t allow himself to think. At last, she sits on top of him. She seems expert at what she’s doing, and soon he arches and is unashamed for long enough to let her . . . He tries not to be noisy about it, but he can’t help but call out at the end, Joy, fucking joy!

  After he’s quiet, she asks, You okay?

  Yeah.

  See? It didn’t fall off. Lust is easy. I’ll leave you to pull yourself together?

  That’d be good.

  This is just between you and me, she says. Nobody else needs to know.

  Especially Peter, right?

  No, not especially him. He probably photographed the whole thing, but then that’s him.

  Henry listens to her boots crunching through the snow toward Dirty Annie’s back door. He’s not upset that Peter may have photographed them, it’s sort of exciting. Makes him want to go again, but he knows this has already been inappropriate enough. The clouds have parted and he watches the stars instead. This time he doesn’t want to tear them down, they’re peaceful, easy to look at. Stars shooting, planets blinking, the whole galaxy shifting. Light years in front of him. Then, whether it’s a hallucination or not, he can’t say, but he’s certain he sees a constellation of a mother hen with a chick. It’s as if new stars have been thrown up in the sky as a reminder to the people of the world to be good to one another. He watches the vision for a time and begins to grid it, mind map it, until it’s not just that he has memorized how it looks, he’s memorized how to build it. And he knows he will. He will knit a massive chicken cozy, big enough to cover his mother’s house. A place where attention needs to be brought and things need to heal. The smell of Shalimar floats through the air.

  That’s a good idea, Henry. Let go of broken things.

  SEVENTEEN

  On Fire

  ON THE WAY HOME FROM Idaho, in the back seat of the Mustang, Henry develops a kind of certainty that going forward he will be able to use his equipment as intended. How to use it is no longer the question, the question is simply with whom? At this point no one is excluded. He squirms with pleasure when he thinks about virtually every person he knows, even though he is displacing balls of wool each time he changes position. Every inch in the car is crammed with yarn from Charity’s extra stash. She and Peter drove it over to the hotel that morning with promises to get started knitting squares and send them to Canada to add to the house cozy. Charity christened Henry Canada’s first knit reactor and reminded him it is an honour to be an artist. Henry isn’t so sure, but acknowledges he is sort of thrilled to be starting this project in tandem with the new chicken business.

  By the time the Mustang pulls into Wendy’s yard, everyone is glad to get out of the car. It’s been a lot of driving under cramped and hungover conditions. Joey is even happy to see them.

  Too much chick tending, he says.

  And not the kind of chicks you want. Right? Aristedes jokes.

  Right on, Joey answers.

  Henry, Chas, and Aristedes leave Wendy and Joey with hoots and hollers, and promises to get the chicken business going in earnest the next day.

  Back in Kitsilano, it takes the three of them half an hour to unload the wool from the car. When they’re done, most of the floor in the TV room is covered with yarn. Aristedes picks up a large ball of orange wool and a couple of knitting needles. I’ll practise with my sister, he says, She can knit the balls off a pompom toque.

  What does that mean? Henry asks.

  Get out of here, Chas says, kissing Aristedes goodbye.

  Henry watches and decides kissing is important, but he could not kiss either one of them. This is useful. He is limiting his candidates.

  The three of them work well together in chickens. The urban professionals in Vancouver can’t get enough of the free-range products. Projections by the end of February are so good, Wendy feels confident rebuffing the ridiculously low offer made by Swift Farms, made even more ridiculous when Chief calls Henry the day after the offer is presented to ask whether he’ll be a witness if Elaine presses forward with her action for wrongful dismissal.

  The first thing Henry spends money on is getting the Subaru fixed, so he can move back home and use it as a delivery van. But there’s not enough money to make his banker happy, and he has to attend a foreclosure hearing at the beginning of March to find out how long he will be able to stay in the house.

  The judge, a woman this time, looks bored with the proceeding, although a little surprised that Henry showed up. She gives him, and the twelve other mortgagors who did not bother to show, until the end of August to redeem their mortgages, otherwise their properties will be sold.

  Good to have a deadline, Henry thinks. Time enough to get the cozy
finished.

  Henry and Chas spend long evenings in front of the TV knitting. Squares come in weekly from Charity and Wendy, some even from Joey and Peter, and after a month of Chas nagging Aristedes to get started, he brings in two cartons of squares made by his sister together with instructions to crochet them together into afghan-sized pieces so that when the chicken is dismantled, blankets can be made and donated to the poor.

  I told you she could knit balls around you, Aristedes says.

  I still don’t know what you mean by that, Henry says.

  Some evenings Henry and Chas talk about Alice while they knit. It’s as if Henry’s orgasm in the mud puddle released a geyser in him and he is able to talk like never before. Eventually he works up to asking Chas whether he thinks it possible his mother could have done something to him.

  I have no one else to ask, Henry says. You’re the only person I know who knew her.

  Well, that would be wicked bad if it happened. But even if it did, you gotta move on. Are you sure it isn’t some kind of false memory?

  What?

  Something you make up to help you cope, Chas answers. Maybe it’s easier to believe your mother was messed up sexually than to believe she was mentally ill.

  This kind of conversation proves healthy for the knit project; their curiosity in the subject keeps Henry and Chas in their chairs with needles flying. So much so that by the last Saturday in April, they are ready to begin erecting the cozy. They start by laying the chicken breast on the lawn. The squares are arranged to overlap like feathers and the chicken looks a bit like the hen Chocolate Kiss who’d died tangled in the heater, although mottled with white like Angel had been. From the roof, Henry hoists the breast panel over the porch and up the front wall. It goes up easily and he ties it down around the edges of the eavestrough and gutter drains. The plan is to get all four sides up before stitching them together. He is at the side of the house securing the second panel when Mrs. Krumpskey shouts from the curb.