Coop

by Michael Perry

  “Withit?”

  “Yah,” says Big Ed, his eyes twinkling. “Bread and whatever comes withit!”

  The talk is light, with no mention of the trouble, but when Jed lost Sarah, these two men were always showing up just now and then at the right time, and when they drive off it makes me feel better knowing they’ll be circling in the long days ahead. We go back to pulling posts. At one point we have to work around a telephone pole, and when I give it half a wrap of chain and raise a quizzical eyebrow in Jed’s direction, he tilts his head and grins. It is the blessing of dumb work done close to the earth—one gritty minute at a time, we move forward.

  When the last post is in the bucket, Jed says there are a few stacked out behind the shop, down where Big Mama the giant pig is living out her retirement. He’d rather not go down there, he says. The first time he fed the pig after Jake died, he found Jake’s little plastic grain scoop in the dirt. He figures that’s where the boy went, down to give the pig some feed like he loved to do, only this time he wandered on. I go down there myself then, and while I’m digging the posts from the weeds I’m thinking how for Jed and Leanne everything in sight has become a dreadful connotation. Months after my sister Rya died, Dad went to the basement for firewood, and looking up at the old defunct ductwork he broke into tears, remembering how Rya used to sit beside the heat register upstairs and they would call back and forth to each other.

  When I get back out to the yard, the pastor has arrived. All my usual reluctances are in place, but I have been watching this man, and he is doing good work. I shake his hand and leave grateful, knowing my brother is about to sit down and take counsel. As I drive away, I turn on the radio and learn the stock market has fallen 300 points, and very clearly I think, Whatever. The drive to Madison is long, and the hotel room when I get there seems a cube of unreality.

  It is a blasting hot day when I return home—the dried clay around the hog wallow is bleached white in the sun—and the dang pigs have destroyed their only source of shade. The hutch I put together several months ago is ripped to bits, flat as the secondhand particleboard I used to build it.

  I’m not sure why they chose today. Perhaps they were just bored, or perhaps overnight one of them gained the quarter pound necessary to collapse the wall during the afternoon butt-scratching session. I was working up in the yard when I heard the rending sound of the tarp being torn in two. When I got down there, the wall I had wired to the steel posts was still standing, but the other had collapsed. My first reaction was, Hey, I’m surprised it lasted this long. It was hardly built to code, and that’s what I get for roofing it with a blue plastic tarp. And pigs by nature root and push and bull against everything. It was bound to happen. But my equanimity got a little thin as I drew nearer the pen and realized: rather than running off to some neutral corner and staring back like some kid who swears it wasn’t him who broke the sugar bowl, the pigs were actively—no, joyfully—finishing the job. Cocklebur is gnawing on a section of two-by-four. As I approach, she takes it in her jaws and, with a toss of her head, flips it across the pen like a puppy flinging a chew toy. Wilbur is snuffling around the one collapsed wall, looking to find purchase for the rim of his snout. When he finally hooks it beneath a section of particleboard, he bulldozes forward to the sounds of more tarp tearing and screws being stripped from the wood. Wilbur circles around again and pokes his nose through the tear in the tarp, then his entire head. He stands there blinking for a minute, then plunges his body forward, the tarp ripping and popping loose from its staples. Not wanting to be left out, Cocklebur sprints around in a tight half circle and low-hurdles through the hole Wilbur has left.

  Worried they’ll cut themselves on exposed screws and also hoping to salvage as much of the material as I can, I climb in the pen and start trying to chuck remnants over the fence, but this only seems to excite the pigs more. They’re on a full-bore happy rampage now, gallivanting and woofing excitedly, standing on boards I’m trying to lift, gnawing on the tarp, and generally wreaking happy havoc. Every time I try to pick up a board, they run over and put their front hooves on it, or take bites at the wood so close I can feel their breath and get slobber on my fingers. Frustrated and not interested in feeding my digits to pigs, I ball up my fist and smack Cocklebur right on her wet snoot and she gives out a high-pitched grunt and jumps back a foot, but then comes boring right back in. By the time I get the last shred of the shelter thrown over the fence I’m tickled rather than upset. They are absolutely single-minded in their dedication to destroying what I had built, but they are just so playful about it all. Absolutely vandalous creatures, but gleeful in their depredations.

  I have another tarp in the shed, so I grab four bungee cords and suspend it above one corner of the pen so they’ve at least got shade, the knuckleheads. Even as I’m walking away Cocklebur is standing tippy-hoofed with her snout in the air, trying hard as she can to get a bite of the new tarp, but she is built far too low. The tarp is safe, and the fun is done.

  Jane and I are back in the office. She has had a fine nap, and Anneliese has taken advantage of the time to make a grocery run. Jane sucks her thumb and beams at the ceiling, which is nothing but white texture. I get down before her and we talk some. At first she can’t be troubled to unplug her thumb—she keeps her forefinger hooked over the bridge of her nose—but then she decides to talk, and her brow furrows and her gaze grows earnest, and she works her lips, but after all that it’s still just gack and hack. Then she starts bicycling and making spinach faces, which means the storm is gathering and the squarelip is not far behind. Hearing the van, I gather her up. Let’s go help Mom unload groceries, I say, and then I wonder when exactly it was I began calling my wife Mom.

  The day we buried Jake the funeral procession was winding through the country to the cemetery when a biplane appeared in the sky. High enough that it looked like a gorgeous yellow toy, but low enough that you could see the shine and polish of the fuselage, and the blue star painted on the underside of each wing. The plane was moving right to left, and crossed the road directly above the fire truck driving point. After proceeding a gracious distance, it rose slightly and banked a slow turn, then flattened out to cross again, this time left to right. And so it went for the next ten minutes and eight miles, the line of cars moving sedately down the road, the biplane tacking gracefully windward and lee. When we arrived at the cemetery the craft rose to circle in the distance. The engine noise receded to altitude.

  We were walking to the back of the black Suburban containing Jake’s casket when Jed squinted at the sky and nodded toward the plane. “What’s the plan?” he asked me. “Not sure,” I said. The biplane is owned by a friend of ours. John had given him a call. Jed looked square at me, and for a split second I saw the old reckless flash.

  “Well, I hope he gives ’er hell.”

  We drew out Jakey’s little casket and bore him to the grave.

  To the best of my recollection it has always been sunny when our family has convened at this tiny place. I don’t read the sunniness as any sort of sign, just note it. It was sunny when we buried my sister Rya after her heart and lungs finally failed her little soldier spirit at the age of six. I was a junior in high school then, bound in a few short weeks for a cattle ranch in Wyoming. It was sunny when we buried Eric, just ten years old and nine years older than the doctors predicted—which is not to fault the doctors, as they failed to factor in my mother. I was at loose ends in those days, out of college but trying to find my way. And it was sunny when we buried Sarah, just feet from where Jed is standing now, facing the only death possibly worse.

  The pastor gathered us in close. There would be a prayer, after which we would linger, leave the cemetery slowly, the children each with a flower. But first the pastor drew our attention back to the airplane, which had descended again and was approaching from the south on a line parallel to the cemetery fence. When the airplane drew even with us, well above the treetops and some two hundred yards to the east, the nose lifted and i
t began to climb a quarter circle until it was pointed straight up and then it continued on around, until it was upside down, the wheels at zenith. As the plane broke over to complete the loop, the engine stalled and went silent and remained so for a breathless pair of seconds, and then black smoke puffed from the cowling and we shortly heard the cough as the engine fired and caught and the craft carved a slow turn back to the south, nose pitched to take on altitude. There were smiles then, even laughter. Little dressed-up cousins pointing. A loop-the-loop. That was good, we thought. Imagine Jakey watching that.

  The biplane shrunk in the sky then, rising lazily away. Again the engine noise faded and we turned back to the grave, prepared to pray. But back in the distance the motor modulated up a half-pitch. We turned to look, and the sun flashed from the left wingtip as the opposite wingtip dipped, and now the plane was curling back toward us, dropping swiftly. The downward arc steepened to a plummet, and looked precipitous to the point of danger—surely he was falling too fast—but still the plane descended, drifting sideways until it was approaching over the farm buildings to the south and still dropping, now nearly straight at us, and just when you thought No, too low, the wings fixed themselves dead square to the earth and now the noise came on flat and furious, the plane over the corn tassel-top high and distorted behind a heat mirage, and the roar grew and grew and the plane blasted through the shimmer to bellow toward us terribly vivid now, flat-out thunder on a rope, and when it was nearly upon us a gloved fist shot from the cockpit in a rock-solid salute, and in that split second the plane twisted steeply up and left and up and left, the fist still high, and then the plane just rising up, and up, and silently up, and then nothing and with it our hearts into the white-hot sky.

  CHAPTER 9

  One summer evening when the other kids got to go swimming, I had to stay home in bed. There had been some infraction. I no longer recall the offense, but I can summon with absolute clarity the sand-crackle sound of car tires departing the driveway, the soft swell of acceleration, and the fade to distance. Staring at the ceiling from beneath one thin blanket, I felt starkly alone as the sun lowered and I imagined my siblings boisterously en route to Fish Lake, their beach towels slung brightly across the seats.

  Tonight Amy is living her own version of my past. The evening before Anneliese and I were married, we held a yard dance. A string band called Duck for the Oyster provided the music, and their caller Karen led us through the quadrilles and contras with such verve and simplicity that even an arrhythmic clomper such as I had a delightful time. We have attended several of their events since, and Amy especially loves them. This weekend they played up north, and it was our plan to attend as a family.

  This did not come to pass.

  A sweet girl, our Amy, but as with any developing child, there are low-level intransigencies, the cumulative effect being that the dictatorship must intervene. In the matter of gathering hay for the guinea pig, there was slumpage unabated; piano practice had become a weeping sit-down strike interspersed with spates of enervated tinkling; spelling lessons began to feel as if they were being conducted in a room stripped of everything but a chair and one naked lightbulb. Sensing that Anneliese was nearing the end of her rope (I pick up on this sort of thing, especially if she writes a note and tapes it to the toilet seat), I intervened with a series of expostulatory disquisitions blending themes of personal responsibility, the virtues of alacrity, respect for one’s elders, the long-term benefits of good posture at the piano bench, and a general review of all-American gumption. Once I actually harrumphed. I truly believed I was getting somewhere until—just as I was hitting my stride on the delayed gratification of hard work and a job well done—Amy looked up at me through her tears, stamped her foot, and howled, “But I only want to do the FUN stuff!”

  I found her logic impeccable and wished I could cut to commercial.

  Despite my one-man Chautauqua act, there was no improvement. Anneliese and I talked and agreed it was time to implement measurable standards backed by that euphemistic woodshed, consequences. A family meeting followed, the chore and school list was reviewed, and standards of performance were clearly set. We were not as forthcoming about the consequences, as it has been our experience that specific carrots generate short-term bounces evanescent as a last-minute campaign promise. What Amy couldn’t know was that a Duck for the Oyster dance was the prize behind Door One. If she didn’t hit the mark, she’d be staying home with me.

  The critical morning dawned with hope. You root for the kid, you know. How quickly as parents we discover that it really does hurt us more than them, and I dreaded the evening if she failed. By mid-afternoon it was clear she would fall short. Even with a gentle reminder here and there, she kept dawdling. When the time came and Anneliese began wordlessly packing Jane’s diaper bag, Amy sensed that something was up. “Where are we going?” she asked. “I’m going to a dance,” said Anneliese. “Oh!” said Amy quickly. “I’d better get my chores done, then!” Of course there was nowhere near enough time, and we broke the bad news.

  “But what am I going to do?”

  “You have to stay home,” said Anneliese quietly.

  A flood of tears. And then Amy wailed, “You mean I have to stay home with grumpy old Mike?”

  Anneliese had dinner with my family at the farm that night. She says my brothers couldn’t decide what tickled them more—the fact that Amy called me grumpy or old.

  To see the realization set in, to see her sweet hopeful face crumple, to hear the tears that followed as Anneliese drove away…ach, it rips the heart out of me. I leaned backward against the sink as she wept and wept at the kitchen table, and it felt like I had kicked a bunny. How many years before we knew what good or damage we had done? For a while I just let her roll, then I announced that it was time to eat. She kept breaking down as we got supper ready, but I slogged on. There were brief moments of lucid conversation interspersed with extended crying jags. As we ate, the ratio slowly reversed itself, but by the time the meal was over I was shot, and proposed we just put the chickens away and head for bed. As we snuggled in for the bedtime books, Amy said, “Tell me the story about when you couldn’t go swimming.”

  I had forgotten that I had told her the story previously. As part of one of my sermons, no doubt. And so I told it again, and we talked about why parents do what they do, and then I read her a book about a girl who loved the color pink and then I kissed her good night and in the morning it was another day.

  Today when I turn out the layers, the Speckled Sussex and the Barred Rock are slow to move. Rather than scooting away when I reach for them, they allow themselves to be caught. I can’t see anything visibly wrong with either one, so I just leave them in the pump house and go to the office. By mid-afternoon I notice that the Barred Rock has eased her way outside. She’s tentative and doesn’t rejoin the flock right away, but she’s clearly improved. The Speckled Sussex is right where I left her, motionless except when she blinks. I place a saucer of water right beside her and she dips her beak twice, but even that movement is desultory and shortly the other chickens swoop in and stomp all over the saucer. I have no idea what the problem is, and decide to treat it with a dose of wait-and-see.

  In the evening Anneliese’s mother babysits while Anneliese and I go out for our third anniversary. For the past two years we have celebrated in a small cabin beside Lake Superior. This year my schedule won’t allow it and the pigs and chickens make it harder to leave. We have a nice meal and then go for coffee in a strip mall. Every anniversary we review our vows, and as we go through them tonight, it isn’t the shoreside discussion in the pines overlooking Gitchigume with the waves breaking below, but at least we are face-to-face, talking about something other than diapers and chickens. (I have lately developed a persistent habit of steering all conversation toward the topics of coop ventilation, the effects of molt on the laying cycle, and personal poultry anecdotes. In honor of our love, Anneliese has placed a firm one-night moratorium on chicken stories.) Thi
s year as in the two years previous, the session splits pretty evenly between reminiscence (each line shakes loose happy snippets of memory) and the equivalent of a polite but firm visit mediated by an auditor representing the Department of Weights and Measures. It’s bracing to see your promises there in black and white: “I will treat you with reverence…”

  I wrote the word reverence into our vows in honor of the way my father has always treated my mother. Dad taught me that reverence wasn’t fawning, nor was it always delivered in hushed tones. I saw it in the goofy way he doffed his fur-lined Boris Yeltsin hat when he opened the van door for her on Sunday mornings; the way he quietly abstained when we kids teased her for not getting our jokes; the way he never failed to leave the dinner table without thanking her. And there was the reverence between them: lest we be deceived, on many occasions—together and separately—Mom and Dad made sure we understood that their marriage had rough patches and disagreements, but that they had long ago promised to work it out quietly behind closed doors. It didn’t hurt that they sometimes made sure to let us catch them kissing. Nothing off-putting, just a hug and peck in the kitchen or in the sheep barn during lambing. In this I believe they were extending their reverence to the children—letting us know that when we went to sleep it was in a house headed by parents joined at hip and heart.