“I think we should get married,” Calvin says the night before Christmas Eve as they lay naked and spent in her apartment.
She takes a corner of the sheet and wipes a dribble of cold sperm off her leg. “I think so, too.”
The artist in Calvin tells him that he will never love Donna Digamy the way he still loves Jeanie Marabout. But a man needs a woman, and a farmer needs a wife, and hi-o-the derrio and e-i-e-i-o, and what the hell, the sex is so good, and she’s getting that associate’s degree in accounting, and she can handle the books while he handles the Leghorns. And Rhea does need a mom.
The only downside to Donna Digamy, as far as Calvin Cassowary can see, is her constant sniffing and sneezing. The first time he saw her, when she came with Marilyn Dickcissel for brown eggs, he figured it was a winter cold. But she still had it two weeks later when she came for brown eggs by herself. “That’s some cold,” he said then. And she said, “I wish it was a cold. It’s all that dog hair and the shampoo Marilyn uses.”
And so Calvin found out about her allergies. Dog hair and shampoo weren’t the only things that made Donna Digamy sniff and sneeze: Cats did. Perfumes did. Dry-cleaning fluid did. The feces of dust mites did. Even chicken feathers did. “I’m afraid I’m allergic to life,” she sneezed and coughed to Calvin one May day when they went walking and got too close to a blooming lilac.
On Christmas Eve Calvin takes Donna to J.W. Dangle’s Jewelry in Wooster to buy a diamond. He hadn’t given Jeanie a diamond. How could an art major afford a diamond? What he could do was make a ring. It came out magnificently. Three delicate bands of braided silver. Now it’s in the box of Jeanie’s stuff he plans to give Rhea someday.
“I can only spend a thousand bucks,” he tells Donna before going into Dangle’s.
She dabs her nose with her handkerchief and smiles understandingly. She has already seen the books and knows how tight things are on the farm. Inside she picks out an $880 ring. The jeweler’s aftershave makes her sneeze.
Once they’re married—they’ve agreed on a June wedding—Calvin will take her to an allergist. He’s already checked his policy and his health insurance will cover eighty percent of the office calls and all of the prescriptions.
“We’re going to have a good life together,” he tells Donna as they trot through the icy rain to the car. In the middle of the town square there’s a Christmas tree covered with white lights and huge red bows.
She kisses his cheek as they trot, her smile assuring him that a good life will be good enough.
And so the winter passes and the spring passes and the day of their wedding comes. It is a grand Roman Catholic wedding in a grand Roman Catholic church in an old Cleveland neighborhood. Donna Digamy’s Catholic relatives are unabashedly ebullient, as if en masse they’ve died and gone to Heaven. Calvin Cassowary’s Protestant relatives are reserved and nervous, as if they’ve landed unexpectedly in that place Catholics call Purgatory. While the organist prepares them for the sacrament ahead, Calvin’s relatives try to name the garishly painted statues ringing the walls. “Is that supposed to be Joseph or John the Baptist?” Calvin’s aunt from Penfield whispers.
“Beats me,” his uncle whispers back.
The ceremony finally begins. From the length of the bulletin, it looks like it’s going to be a long ceremony, with lots of strange things that never take place in a Protestant wedding. Donna’s relatives know exactly when to cross themselves and exactly when to kneel. Calvin’s relatives, of course, know they mustn’t cross themselves. But the kneeling? What about all this kneeling? And now they’re going to celebrate communion? Right in the middle of a wedding? “What are the Methodist rules on this?” Calvin’s aunt from Beebetown wonders.
When Donna puts a bouquet of flowers at the feet of the Virgin Mary’s statue, Calvin’s aunt from Walnut Creek clutches her fake pearls, as if witnessing a Satanic ritual involving goats and naked children.
Yes, this big, splashy and incredibly long Catholic wedding is tough on the Cassowary clan. No matter how hard they try to relax and enjoy the experience, they just can’t stop feeling guilty. Feeling like they’re betraying the Reformation. Feeling like an angry God is going to send a semi crashing into them on the long drive home.
Weddings are a time for feelings.
For his part, Calvin feels surprisingly free of the guilt he figured he’d feel. He feels Jeanie’s presence, telling him it’s okay for him to remarry, as long as he doesn’t confuse his earthly love for this new woman with his eternal love for her. As long as he’s certain this new woman will be a good mother for their Rhea.
Donna feels the inside of her nose tingling, possibly from the priest’s cologne, possibly from her own eyeliner.
Calvin’s mother, who gave her body to Ben Betz so soon after first husband Donald’s death, feels the sweat on her neck as the priest reads from First Corinthians: The body is not for immorality; it is for the Lord.
Donna’s mother feels relief that her daughter made it to the altar before the sperm of some man wiggled into one of her eggs. She’s been worrying about that since Donna was fifteen, and went to Homecoming with Robby Kolicki, who was a good-looking boy but dumb as a post.
Rhea can’t see very much of the ceremony over the back of the pew. But she can see the giant Jesus looking down from his cross. She can see from the expression on his face that he does not like being frozen for all eternity in that contorted position. She can see that Jesus feels like tearing his arms and legs free; that he feels like going up to Heaven; that he feels like curling up in Jeanie Cassowary’s lap and having her read Green Eggs and Ham to him.
The last place on earth Norman Marek wants to be today is at a business wedding. Still he can’t help but feel a certain amount of satisfaction. This Donna Digamy seems to be a bright, determined young woman, not hampered by the dreamy idealism that plagued Jeanie. And that associate’s degree in accounting she’s getting. Big, big asset. Best of all, there’ll be someone to ride herd on Rhea. So all in all, everything’s copacetic.
Calvin and Donna will be leaving for the Poconos tonight. They’ve reserved a sexy honeymoon cottage with a heart-shaped waterbed and a bathtub in the shape of a champagne glass. But before they can leave for the airport, Calvin has to take Rhea to the cemetery in Tuttwyler to eat wild strawberries with Jeanie.
That single plant of Bob Gallinipper’s has multiplied into a dozen or more.
“Daddy married Donna Digamy,” Rhea tells her mother. She’s only eaten three little berries so far, but already her fingertips are stained red and there’s a dribble of pink juice down the front of the lacy dress she wore to the wedding.
“I already told her,” Calvin says.
“Did she say it was okay?” Rhea wonders.
“Of course she said it was okay.”
Rhea counts the unripe berries on the vines, then says, “Maybe momma’s got remarried, too. Maybe she married Jesus.”
Calvin cries for six minutes, then says, “When Donna and I get back I’ll erect a little fence around the berries—a little white picket fence, I’ve seen them at the garden center—so the caretakers can’t mow them over. Good idea, huh pumpkin seed?”
PART II
“These signs of martyrdom did not arouse horror in the minds of those who looked upon them, but they gave his body much beauty and grace, just as little black stones do when they are set in white pavement.”
Brother Thomas of Caleno
First Life of St. Francis, c. 1230
Eleven
Blackbutt looks down from the top perch. Dawn is sprinkling through the cob-webbed windows. The big rooster rises on his golden legs and flaps the dust out of his wings. He stretches his neck into a long and impressive S and lets go with his first crow of the new day: RRRrrrRRRrrrRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr!
His hens bruck-buck-buck and go back to sleep.
His brother, Mr. Shakyshiver, wedged between the last two old hens on the bottom perch, offers a timid and submissive rrRrr.
&nbs
p; Blackbutt has been The Rooster for three years now, since old Captain Bates died of bumblefoot. Now Blackbutt can crow as loud and as early as he wants. Now Blackbutt can ride the hens.
And there are quite a few hens to ride these days. Three times now the girl named Rhea has slipped up and allowed one of the hens to hatch a new brood. Three times now there has been a noisy and frightening scene in the backyard, Rhea’s father threatening to get a hatchet and cut off their heads, Rhea crying and promising it will never happen again. But after a year or so of tranquillity Rhea lets it happen again.
And so now there are plenty of hens for Blackbutt to ride, some of them slender and white like a Leghorn, some of them plump and brown like a Buff Orpington, some with exotic black tail feathers like Captain Bates and the legendary Maximo Gomez.
Before Captain Bates died, Blackbutt’s life was as miserable as his brother’s still is. No hen-riding whatsoever. Humiliation at every turn. Anytime Captain Bates felt like yanking a feather out of his behind he had to stand there and take it. But then the old captain got the bumblefoot, and one night while trying to hop up to his usual roost on the high perch, he slipped and fell head first into the water crock. And now Blackbutt is The Rooster. And dawn is sprinkling across the floor. RRRrrrRRRrrrRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Blackbutt is impatient. He wants this day to get under way. It’s finally spring, after all. The chicken coop door is swung wide open. He can lead his flock anywhere on the Cassowary farm he wants—into the overgrown gardens, down the gravel driveway, across the wide lawns. He and his flock can be the birds of the jungle they were meant to be. If only the others would wake up. RRRrrrRRRrrrRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr!
It was a long winter. The sunlight straining through the coop’s cob-webbed windows had kept them alive, but not particularly warm. Every day the air had grow dustier. Every day he’d found more mites and lice under his feathers. Every day the manure had piled higher and every day the cracked corn Rhea brought them tasted worse. Yes, it was a very long winter. Three of the old Buff Orpingtons dropped over dead. Even one of his own sisters died—the one Rhea had named Half Pint back when they were chicks living in that happy cardboard box in the old cow barn. But now! Spring! RRRrrrRRRrrrRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Finally the hens start jumping off their perches, making their way toward the open door. Blackbutt waits until they are all outside then hops down the empty perches until he is standing next to his trembling brother. He pecks him hard on the toe and then trots out.
The air is still gray and hazy. The ground is soaked with dew. Blackbutt leads his hens into the abandoned asparagus garden just south of the coop. The hens jump into the high weeds and spread out, feasting on worms and grubs and scattered seeds. Then there is a horrifying Gauk-bwauk! The weeds start thrashing.
Blackbutt charges in. His hens are flying out. Everyone of them wild-eyed and gauk-bwauking.
Blackbutt expects the worse and finds it. A long-snouted creature that looks a lot like the Cassowary’s dog has one of his three remaining sisters, the one named Nancy, pinned under its front paws. The creature is yanking out Nancy’s beautiful feathers in bunches.
Blackbutt wants to flee. But he’s The Rooster. So he clucks defiantly, Y’auk-auk-auk-auk Y’auk-aul-auk-auk, and struts on his muscular drumsticks, displays his hackles—his impressive Spanish neck feathers—and demands that the creature lets Nancy go.
But the creature keeps yanking feathers.
So Blackbutt attacks.
Biscuit is on the porch smelling the manure on his master’s rubber boots when he hears the gauk-bwauking. He leaps to the lawn and barks his way to the chicken coop. Frenzied hens flee past him. His snout sucks in a foreign scent. Understanding his duty to the farm, he lunges into the weeds. He finds himself face to face with a creature not unlike himself. Its face is stuck with blood and feathers, yet it is not a menacing or unfriendly face. It is a timid face. Biscuit is not sure what to do. This creature is doing something he understands very well. Eating.
However, this creature also is doing something that’s absolutely prohibited on the Cassowary farm. Eating chickens. So Biscuit spreads his front legs and lowers his ears and barks: Not permitted! Not permitted!
But the creature keeps eating. Either it is ignorant of the rules or too hungry to care. Biscuit can sympathize with both possibilities. He, too, is often ignorant of the rules. He, too, is often too hungry to care. Still, if he’s learned anything from his human masters, it’s that neither ignorance nor instinctual behavior are acceptable excuses. So he opens his farm-dog smile and displays the wolf teeth hidden inside. He attacks, chasing off the skittish creature with nothing more than the earnestness of his bark.
Twenty minutes before the school bus comes, Rhea goes out to feed her chickens. Biscuit goes to the coop with her, and shows her the chewed and bloody bodies of Nancy and Blackbutt in the overgrown garden.
Rhea is twelve now. She has been feeding the little flock of chickens for six years. Twice every day she throws a scoop of cracked corn in their direction and makes sure they have water and that the calcium dish is always full, so their eggshells will be good and hard. When she sees Blackbutt and Nancy, she curls up on the wet ground and cries, and claws at the feathers growing between her tiny Hershey Kiss breasts.
Biscuit licks her face until she gets up. Makes sure she finds her way back to the house. Donna and her father are sitting in the breakfast nook. He’s drinking coffee. She’s drinking ice water. “Something killed two of my chickens,” Rhea says. Her dress is as wet as her eyes.
Donna’s nose started to plug up and tickle the second Rhea came into the kitchen. “Go change that dress before the bus comes,” she says.
As soon as Rhea is on the bus, Calvin Cassowary finds Jimmy Faldstool and goes to the chicken coop. Biscuit shows them the bodies in the garden. “You’re lucky it only got the two,” Jimmy says.
“Somebody’s dog you think?” Calvin asks. Biscuit is standing next to him, brown eyes full of worry.
“I’m thinking coyote,” Jimmy says. He uses the cowboy pronunciation, kigh-oat.
Calvin pronounces it the non-cowboy way. “Coyote?
“Dog or coyote. Either way you got a chicken eater.”
“Think I should call the dog warden?”
“Good gravy, I would.”
So that’s what Calvin Cassowary does, calls county dog warden Wally Barghest, who spends twenty minutes examining the chicken carcasses and the footprints in the dirt before offering his expertise. “That old pup of yours wouldn’t do anything like this, would he?” He points straight at Biscuit.
Calvin scratches Biscuit’s ears. “This guy wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
Wally Barghest reaches out and pats Biscuit’s wet nose. “Then I’d say more than likely it was a coyote.” Like Jimmy Faldstool, he says it the cowboy way. “They’ve been migrating east last ten years or so. They got big trouble with them in the southern part of the state. Chewing up sheep and hogs pretty bad down there. So I wouldn’t be surprised. Those layer houses of yours throw quite a tempting stink. You’re lucky it ain’t happened before now.”
The easiest thing would be to have Jimmy throw the carcasses into the dumpster with the dead hens from the layer houses. Dozens go in the dumpster every day. But these are Rhea’s chickens. They have names. A piece of her heart. And Rhea has a piece of Calvin’s heart. He leaves Blackbutt and Nancy in the garden until Rhea gets home from school. Covers them with empty feed bags so nothing chews them up worse than they already are.
Blackbutt and Nancy are buried on the slope south of the old cow barn. For generations the Cassowarys have been burying their dogs and cats here. Captain Bates and Half Pint are buried here, too.
Calvin watches his daughter dig the hole. “That’s deep enough,” he says.
Rhea puts one of the feed bags in the hole, spreading it out like a blanket at the beach. She puts Blackbutt in first, then Nancy. She makes sure their floppy heads are touching. She places the other feed bag on top o
f them and tucks it in. She doesn’t shovel the dirt over them, but uses her hands, gently hiding them from the cruel world, handful by handful by handful. The tears she fought off all day at school bubble in her eyes.
“We’re going to have to keep your chickens in the chicken yard from now on,” her father tells her.
Rhea doesn’t answer. She’s thinking about the first year she entered Blackbutt in the Wyssock County Fair. She was sure he’d win a blue ribbon. He was so big and fancy. But he didn’t win a blue ribbon, not even a red or white ribbon. The judge—a woman with a very wide hind end—said it was because he was a mongrel, part Leghorn, part Black Spanish, part who knows what. “Honey,” she said, “there’s only two things you can do with a rooster like this—roast him or fry him.” The next year Rhea entered him again, hoping there might be a different judge. But it was the same woman with the same wide hind end and the same reason for not giving Blackbutt a ribbon. “You going to be the judge next year?” Rhea asked her.
“Honey,” the woman said, “I’m the judge every year.” So the next year, she was ready. While the woman was standing in front of Blackbutt’s cage shaking her head, Rhea crept up behind her and pinned the BEST OF SHOW ribbon she stole from the hog barn on the back of her enormous pants.
So now while tears bubble in her eyes, Rhea is able to laugh. As they walk back toward the house, they see Mr. Shakyshiver confidently riding one of the young hens. “He’s the boss now,” her father says.
After supper, Calvin calls Rick Van Varken. If a coyote is stalking their chickens, Rick’s piglets could be in danger, too.
“I’m glad you called,” Rick Van Varken says. “I need to talk to you about something. You and Donna want to come over for some pie and ice cream?”
Fresh Eggs Page 7