Sometime around noon he starts for home. He doesn’t follow the creek back, but takes the high fields. In the mud and melting snow he sees the tracks of deer and rabbits and crows and feral cats. He sees big dog-like tracks that—unlike the unruly meandering tracks a real dog makes—are perfectly spaced in a straight line. Coyote tracks, that’s what they are.
He’s going to talk to Rhea about his idea right after lunch. Maybe tomorrow, after supper.
Twenty-one
Rhea Cassowary is supposed to be working on her report on Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer who got himself into big trouble with the pope for suggesting that the earth was not the center of the universe. Instead she is reading about the weird ancient Chinese practice of binding girls’ feet. Strips of cloth were wrapped so tightly around their feet, that their arches broke, leaving them crippled for life. Apparently rich Chinese men found their wincing and hobbling sexually stimulating.
She’s had this problem before: starting out to learn what she’s been assigned to learn, then getting lost in the pages of her encyclopedias and learning other stuff. Just last week when her father told her to read about the French impressionists, she ended up learning about a black cowboy named Deadwood Dick.
Rhea puts down her encyclopedia when she hears the gravel in the driveway crackle. It’s 3:30. She bounces off the bed and slides to the window. Yes, that crackle belongs to Joon Faldstool, who passed his driver’s test on the first try, and today is driving to work completely by himself. She watches Joon park the rusted, pea-green AMC Gremlin his father helped him buy. She watches him get out and stretch. He’s staring straight at her window. She sees his quick timid wave and wonders if he can see her, or whether he’s just hoping she’s there. She waves back.
The days are getting longer now that spring’s beginning. That makes it harder for Joon to sneak to the chicken coop after he’s finished with his manure shoveling. Some days he makes it, some days his father, or Rhea’s father, or both fathers, are too close by for him to try. She knows that tonight he will try to sneak to the coop no matter what. He will want to show her his driver’s license.
Rhea hurriedly reads about Galileo. Scribbles some notes to prove she’s been working hard on her report. Holy cow! The pope threatened him with torture if he didn’t change his mind. Before going down to supper she takes off her bathrobe and puts on a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of fat-man’s overalls. A girl with feathers can only dream about jeans and tee shirts, about walking shorts and sleeveless blouses, about backless prom dresses or wedding dresses. A girl with feathers has to be satisfied with bathrobes and baggy sweatshirts and fat-man’s overalls.
Strangely, Rhea’s father doesn’t mention her Galileo report during supper at all. He is eating his ravioli in silence, making eye contact with no one, sipping his ginger ale slowly, nibbling at his bread like a rabbit. Donna isn’t saying anything either. Donna isn’t even sneezing. Something is up.
Rhea takes a long drink of milk, then says, “Galileo invented the telescope,” she says.
Her father awakens from his trance. “After supper—after the dishes—we’re going to talk about something important.”
Rhea swallows the rubbery pillow of pasta in her mouth after only a few chews. “I have to feed my chickens first,” she says.
“Not tonight,” her father says.
When the last fork and spoon are dried and put away, the dish towel hung over the back of a chair to dry, Rhea shuffles, heart beating fast, into the living room. Her father is in his chair, hands tucked in his pants. Donna is in her oak rocker, Kleenex box in her lap. The television is off. There are any number of things this important talk could be about. It could be about her schooling. It could be about Joon Faldstool sneaking to the coop. It could be about her feathers, some new medicine or operation to make her normal. It could be about Donna or her father having some fatal disease. Cancer, like her mother had.
Rhea sits on the end of the sofa. She carefully folds her legs under her bottom, so her feathers don’t bend. She hears her father say this:
“Well, pumpkin seed, we have some big decisions to make. About the farm. About how to keep it. You know why I specialized in chickens. We’ve fought enough about it, haven’t we? Even though you and I disagree on this, I think you understand that modern farming is just like any other business. That you have to specialize. The days of a few cows and some pigs and a little of this and a little of that are long gone. And I decided to specialize in chickens and eggs. And I hope you can understand that. And respect that. Because I respect your opinions. You know I do. I love you. Donna loves you. Everybody loves you. You’re special to us. We’re not at all ashamed of you.
“The thing is—we’re very lucky to have had this farm all these years. Every generation has had to sacrifice. Life is about sacrifice. And family. I wanted to be an art teacher. I would have been a good one. Then dad died and mom remarried and my responsibilities changed. Understand what I’m saying, pumpkin seed?
“So I couldn’t let my dad down. Or my granddad Alfred. Or old Henry or any of them. They didn’t go through all the crap they did—all the work and sacrifice—just so I could be an art teacher. Somebody had to run the farm. And that somebody had to be me. And I had to find a way to make the farm work. Pay the taxes and put food on the table. I couldn’t worry about teaching other people to think creatively. I had to think creatively myself. Eggs sounded like a good idea.
“And eggs is a good idea. But right now, things are really crazy in the economy. The fat’s being squeezed out. Some egg producers aren’t going to survive. They’re going to lose their farms and they’re going to—God knows what they’re going to do—but I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to make it.
“So it’s time to think creatively again. Time for each member of this family to think about what we can do. What special gifts do we have? How can we use those gifts?
“And you, pumpkin seed, you have a very special gift. For some reason you’ve got feathers. Nobody knows why you’ve got them or how you got them. But you’ve got them.”
Rhea watches the tears run down the sides of her father’s nose and curl around his nostrils and tumble over his quivering lips. She watches his quivering fingers splayed over his quivering knees.
“The thing is,” her father says, “you may be the only hope this family has. Every month we have payments to make to the bank. We have taxes and utilities, feed bills and salaries. And we’re being sued over the manure—I haven’t told you about that yet—but it’s going to get messy.
“But this is going to be your decision, pumpkin seed. We’re not going to force you into anything. I didn’t have to come back to the farm. Dan wanted to stay in the Navy. That was okay. Your Gammy Betz moved to Columbus. That was okay, too. So you have to think about what the farm means to you.”
It’s three days before Rhea feels like reading to her chickens again. At supper her father and Donna talk about the weather and how the meatballs taste. They do not ask Rhea what her decision is going to be. It’s as if they never had that important talk in the living room.
After the dishes are washed, Rhea heads for the chicken coop with her book and flashlight. The chickens huddle around her. Blinking and clucking, occasionally going after a louse wiggling beneath their feathers, they listen as she tells them about the birds’ journey to find the Simorgh, their king.
“‘Before we reach our goal,’ the Hoopoe said,
‘The journey’s seven valleys lie ahead;
How far this is the world has never learned,
For no one who has gone there has returned.’”
Rhea is just beginning to tell her chickens the names of the seven valleys when Joon Faldstool slips inside the coop. She smiles at him, with her eyes. She feels the skin beneath the feathers on her face warm. “The first valley they enter is the Valley of the Quest,” she tells her chickens.
“When you begin in the Valley of the Quest
Misfortunes wi
ll deprive you of all rest
Each moment some new trouble terrifies,
And parrots there are panic-stricken flies.”
Rhea reads until she sees that both Joon and her chickens are restless. She tucks the book in her coat pocket. “Walk?” she asks him.
It’s still not completely dark outside. But it is cloudy enough for them to sneak down the fields toward the creek and the woods without worrying about being spotted. “I passed my driver’s test,” Joon says with as much nonchalance as he can muster.
“I saw you drive in. You didn’t hit anything.”
Joon’s ears redden. “Of course I didn’t hit anything.”
Rhea giggles and, without thinking, slips her arms around his arm.
Three Fish Creek is high. The bank is slippery. They lean against the hollow trunk of a huge old maple that has fallen. “I kept looking for you in the coop,” Joon says. “I figured either you got sick of reading to your chickens, or you got sick of me.”
Rhea has a smart-alecky answer ready—Don’t be silly, I never get sick of reading to my chickens—but she’s too sad for a smart-alecky answer. She takes off her knit cap, exposing her entire head of feathers. “I’ve been busy thinking.”
Joon has never seen her entire head before. The feathers on the top are as delicate as the feathers on her face. Her ears, like her nose, are bare and pinky-white, and small. “Thinking about what?”
She tells him about the farm’s problems, about the bills, and the debts, and the lawsuit by the Maple Creek Homeowners’ Association. “What if your father said you were the only person who could save your family from going bankrupt?” she asks.
“I’d know we were in huge trouble.”
Rhea slaps him hard on the arm to let him know she’s being serious. “What if the only way to save your family was to spend the summer going from one county fair to another, charging people to look at your big ears—would you do that?”
“Who would pay money to look at my ears?”
“What if instead of having big ears you were covered with feathers? Would—”
“Your father’s making you do that?”
“He’s not making me. He just says it’s the best way for us to make a lot of money quick. To save the farm.”
“You’re not some two-headed calf, Rhea.”
“That’s the point. People pay to see two-headed calves. Think how many would pay to see a girl with feathers.”
“I wouldn’t,” Joon assures her.
“Yes you would,” Rhea says. “I would, too.”
“No way.”
“It would only be for the summer,” says Rhea. “Dad says we could make a lot of money. And as soon as egg prices go up I can stop.”
Joon is standing in front of her now, stroking her feathery checks with one hand, dabbing the tears from his eyes with the palm of the other. “I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this!”
“I’ve already decided to do it.”
“You’d let people gawk at you like that?”
“If I wasn’t hiding in the house all day, people would be gawking at me already.”
“But you wouldn’t be charging them. That just seems—”
“If I’m going to live any kind of normal life, I have to get used to people gawking.”
Joon is marching back and forth in front of Rhea now, his boots digging an angry ditch in the thawing ground. “I wouldn’t do it. No way.”
“You had the courage to take your driver’s test.”
“Being a freak in a sideshow is a little different than taking your driver’s test.”
“Courage is courage.”
“Humiliation is humiliation.”
“Shoveling chicken poop isn’t humiliating?”
“Not if nobody’s watching.”
As Joon marches by in his ever-deepening ditch, Rhea grabs his arm and pulls him toward her. “It’s all a matter of attitude. If I don’t consider myself a freak, other people won’t either. If I don’t pity myself others won’t.”
Joon takes her hands and holds them against his chest. “That all sounds great. But that’s not the way people really are. You’ve been hidden away. You can sit up in your room and daydream about how good and fair people are. Take it from a freak who’s been out there. People are turds.”
It’s completely dark now. They walk back to the chicken coop. They don’t say much more to each other.
Rhea goes to bed early, a quarter to ten. Her body wants to sleep. Her mind does not. And so she wraps her blanket around her and twists into a ball, like a chick awaiting birth inside a warm egg. Her mind flickers like a broken lamp:
She thinks about the book Dr. Pirooz Aram gave her.… those poor birds following that Hoopoe through those seven dangerous valleys … Valley of the Quest … Valley of Love … Valley of Insight into Misery … Valley of Detachment and Serenity … Valley of Unity … Valley of Awe … Valley of Poverty and Nothingness …
She thinks about the Leghorns … ripped from their cages in the black of night … Miss Lucky Pants getting away …
She thinks about the giants from Seville … Captain Martin VanBuren Bates … Anna Swan … rubbing elbows with presidents and kings … falling through the floor while dancing … Dr. Pirooz calling her a swan …
She thinks about her father … wanting to teach art … his own father dropping dead … going deep in debt building those layer houses … asking her to display herself like a fancy hen … to save the family farm … like he tried to save it.…
Twenty-two
Calvin Cassowary doesn’t want to get out of bed. It’s been a week since Rhea agreed to his plan for saving the family farm. At first her consent relieved him. Made him proud. Confident things were going to work out fine. Now he’s not so sure. Relief is turning into anxiety. Pride into shame. Confidence into uncertainty.
“Get up already,” Donna says, poking his chest with her elbow. “It’s a good idea.”
Calvin digs out a handful of Kleenex from the box under the bed table and hands them to his wife. He gets out of bed and puts on the old, knee-ripped Wrangler jeans he laid out the night before. Puts on the old paint-speckled shirt that had been his father’s. Squeaks downstairs to make coffee.
When the coffee’s made he pours himself half a cup and puts the rest in a Thermos. He slides his sketch pad under his arm, fishes out three thick-leaded carpenter’s pencils from the junk drawer by the refrigerator, goes out on the porch, where he stands slowly sipping his coffee, hoping that the chilly morning air will scour his doubt.
He goes to the old cow barn. Slides the doors open, as far as they will go, to let as much sunlight in as possible. The barn has been empty for nearly fifteen years, but the smell of cow lingers. The sight of his father and grandfather pitching bales of hay into the high lofts lingers, too.
This morning’s work will be easy.
He rips the six new canvases from their plastic bags, then, after driving spikes into the walls, twelve feet off the floor, exactly twelve feet apart, hangs them like medieval tapestries.
The canvases are gray. They need to be white. He pries open the five-gallon tub of paint he bought at Bittinger’s Hardware in Wooster, the same day he bought the canvases, and with a brush as wide as his hand, starts painting. When one side of the six canvases are painted he turns them over and paints the backs. He goes in for lunch.
“Finished yet?” asks Rhea.
“Just getting started, pumpkin seed,” he answers. Donna has made grilled cheese sandwiches. He remembers that when Jeanie made grilled cheese sandwiches, she made them with thick slices of real American cheese. Donna uses thin, pale slices of fake cheese, individually wrapped in plastic.
In the afternoon Calvin starts sketching.
That day he hiked up Three Fish Creek to the marsh, he’d drawn Rhea’s county fair exhibit from every angle, sketching the words and pictures that would be on every panel of canvas. The six canvases will form an outer wall around a small sta
ge in the middle. This is where Rhea will sit, queen-like, in a golden chair, surrounded with arrangements of silk roses and daisies. She’ll be protected from the sun and rain by a canopy, painted white with golden stripes. Silver bunting will drip from the canopy, swirl down the corner posts like frozen lightning.
Rhea will look beautiful sitting there. Music will be tinkling in the background. Exotic Middle Eastern music maybe. Maybe the haunting music made by wooden Incan flutes. Maybe an Appalachian dulcimer gently plinking Pachabel’s Canon in D Major. Donna had Pachabel played at their wedding. Everybody loves Pachabel. Even crusty old farmers at county fairs love Pachabel.
Calvin begins to sketch the first canvas. This one will be all lettering. Old-fashioned circusy letters. They will say:
RHEA THE FEATHER GIRL
AMERICA’S TEEN-AGED DOVE
COVERED HEAD TO TOE WITH REAL FEATHERS
Calvin hasn’t used his fingers for anything but writing checks for fifteen years. They still have their natural talent, but they are stiff and uncertain and won’t move his pencil an inch until so ordered by his equally stiff, equally uncertain brain. “Damn!’ Calvin hisses again and again as his lines on the canvas fall short of the perfect lines in his head.
It is midafternoon before the letters are drawn exactly as he wants them. He wants to fill them with paint right away. But he knows Jimmy Faldstool needs help in the layer houses. Rhea’s schoolwork needs grading, too.
In the morning Calvin can’t wait to get out of bed. To make his Thermos of coffee. Fill in the letters on that first canvas. He does not paint the letters flat, like the letters on old Alfred’s FRESH EGGS sign. He gives them depth and roundness. They appear to float on the white canvas. He stands back and, in awe of his own work, says, “Damn!”
He starts the next canvas. It will read:
SHE’S AMAZING!
SHE’S REAL!
SHE’S BEAUTIFUL!
Donna Cassowary always has too much work to do. Cook. Clean. Shop. Manage the books. Manage her MCS, her multiple chemical sensitivities. Now she has to sew Rhea’s Feather Girl costume. Calvin wants it finished by the first of next week, so he can paint Rhea’s portrait on his canvases.
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