had imagined possible…but they grew used to it. Even Patches seemed to go out of her way to make the chickens comfortable, maintaining a respectable distance until the new arrivals grew accustomed to her presence.
Freddy had been right about one thing, the chickens grew—fast. Their intake of food astounded both men. Once, on impulse, Bubba dumped half the feedbag’s contents to see what the chickens would do. He need not have wondered—within an hour, the grain was disappeared.
As to what could go wrong…that too became obvious. But, not before the chickens were several weeks old. When the chicks started to grow into small chickens, Bubba commented he might not know much about poultry, but there seemed to be something peculiar about their appearance. Freddy remained unperturbed and assured Bubba he was being overly critical.
As the days progressed, even Freddy became worried. You did not have to be a chicken-expert to know the difference between the sexes. A regular customer who had been farming for 20 years confirmed their fears. What they had was not 100 chickens—but 100 roosters! Freddy and Bubba were dumbfounded. They simultaneously understood why the elderly farmer had rejected the shipment—about the only thing a hundred roosters were good for was taking care of 1000 chickens. You could eat them, but most people knew home grown roosters tended to prove mighty tough cooking.
As if sensing the change in attitude, Patches now treated the roosters as invaders. She started sitting at the fence, uttering a deep, low growl, waiting for one or more of the fowl to strut near. She would then launch herself against the chicken wire, snarling horribly. Freddy finally banned her to the office and closed the connecting door. Bubba thought-up the emergency plan.
They put an ad in the local newspaper advertising a free rooster with every fill-up. Still, it proved difficult to get rid of the things. Not every customer wanted to leave with a live rooster. A few even ventured to question Freddy and Bubba’s state of mind…and sanity. However, they did eventually manage to give away most of the critters. When Christmas came and went, only 15 remained. Soon, the number stabilized at 10.
Patches was again allowed into the shop—once she began ignoring the poultry. Occasionally, one of the roosters would flap upward to perch on the fence’s top rail, just four feet high. From this position, they felt the urge to issue an ear-splitting series of crowing squalls, as if inspired with the new altitude.
In answer, Freddy and Bubba cut forked branches from the hardwood trees behind the station, and using strips of rubber from old inner tubes, fashioned crude slingshots. Each time a rooster leapt to the top of the fence, Freddy or Bubba would draw down and bounce a small machine nut off the bird’s hindquarters. This proved very effective in modifying the roosters’ behavior—they learned a leap to the rail meant a sting of pain. The best course of action was to stay down on the floor where things were safe.
Of course Freddy and Bubba never meant to injure the birds, which did not seem to need much help in that department. Spur-of-the-moment cockfights constantly erupted now that the roosters were adults. The men broke up the conflicts using brooms kept near the pen for just such a purpose. Again the roosters learned quickly; realizing the brooms meant trouble and calmed their aggression.
One morning, the second day into a warming trend, when Bubba opened shop, Freddy arrived to discover something Bubba had over looked. Within the pen, one of the more battle-scarred roosters seemed to be staggering as though going one too many rounds with a tough opponent.
The boys did not need a fire, but it still smoldered from when they had started to let it burn down, some 30 hours earlier. As Freddy sat on the couch and Bubba got the coffee pot plugged in, the goofy-acting rooster slowly fixed his gaze on the top rail of the fence.
“He’s going to jump!” cried Freddy, reaching for his slingshot. He loaded and drew back as the rooster leapt for the rail. Freddy paused to aim, then launched his missile. But the unexpected happened—in mid-flight, the bird veered. When it came to roost on the rail, the nut struck the rooster square on the head. The unintended target staggered limply and fell back into the pen, the remaining roosters rushing over to stand above their fallen comrade. All were strangely quiet, as though understanding here was one who would arise no more—truly departed.
Freddy, to his credit, was sorry his shot had killed the rooster. He retrieved the corpse and examined it as though he could coax forth some response. In the end, he gave up and handled the deceased to Bubba, who wondered what the heck he was supposed to do with it. Deciding to dispose of the rooster later, Bubba tossed the bird into the ashes of the fireplace, never giving a second thought to the possible consequences.
An hour later, Edgar stopped by. It was ten o’clock and he had already completed his route and had the rest of the day off. He sat with Freddy and Bubba on the couch and accepted a cold one. They talked, then relaxed in one of those natural lulls where conversations tend to lag.
It was Edgar who first perceived something out of the ordinary. He squinted his eyes and sniffed the air experimentally. “Say boys, I smell chicken! Did you decide to cook up one of them roosters?”
As if on cue, the three men looked to the fireplace—the only heat source in the area. What had hours before been only thin, almost invisible threads of dying smoke now blossomed in thick streaming fogs of vapor. In the middle of it all lay the “dead” rooster.
“Bubba…what the hell?” cried Freddy, starting to rise from his seat. “Have you gone nuts? Them burning feathers are going to stink—“
He got no further. At that moment, the embers heating the rooster’s feathers flamed into new life. The fowl, laying in the center of the hearth, instantaneously burst into bright, furious flames. Freddy uttered a surprised cry and fell back onto the couch, beer sloshing upward from his dropped can.
The rooster chose this instant to reveal it was far from dead. The flaming bird leapt to its feet and crowed hideously. Edgar went pale as the rooster ran from the fireplace and made a beeline for the same couch where sat the three astonished men. The rooster hit them before they could even blink their eyes. The hysterical fowl was in their laps and over their heads in a split-second—a fiery meteor, out of control.
Freddy and Bubba both scrambled to their feet. “Holy Toledo!” yelled Freddy, moving for the brooms. “We’ve got to get that thing before it starts a fire in here! The whole place will burn down!”
Armed with the brooms, they chased the fleeing fireball, trying to swat it into submission. Since Freddy and Bubba had both downed a half-dozen brews apiece since coming to work, their movements were less than graceful. They tended to stumble into each other, and more than once managed to swat each other instead of the rooster. Despite the bizarre situation, they both were soon laughing uncontrollably.
Patches helped by frantically dashing around the garage--mostly in the opposite direction taken by the fowl--while yelping loudly and foaming at the mouth. She also managed to void her bladder over most of the floor during her flight of terror.
Edgar sat stock-still, stunned, trying to follow the entire spectacle—two grown men, giggling loudly, stumbling and swinging brooms at a flaming chicken hell-bent for leather.
Finally they managed to force the fireball into the office area. As Freddy confined the flaming creature, Bubba ran to open the outside door.
Freddy, in a surprisingly adroit maneuver, batted the rooster from behind the desk, and with a swift swing of the broom, launched the bird through the open doorway. Bubba stood well to one side, shielding his face from the flaming feathers left in the wake of the rocketing fowl.
It was later agreed upon by all that Vernon’s decision to visit the station at that moment was indeed unfortunate. He had just tapped off another batch of his popular corn whisky and after a few drinks, departed to share his shine with the boys down at the station.
He rounded the outside corner of the office and reached for the door when it was suddenly yanked from his hand. Looking up in surprise, he was greeted with a sight from hell, and in that
moment, time stopped. As massive doses of adrenalin were injected into his blood stream, Vernon, slack jawed and wide-eyed, beheld a sight he would carry to the grave.
Within the office, Freddy stood behind the desk, broom in hand, and looked to have just completed a mighty swing. Vernon wondered why Freddy looked so strange—his face displaying a confused mixture of emotions, fear not the least. And why did Bubba stand that way, hugging the office wall and covering his face as it to ward off invisible blows? Vernon mentally struggled with these strange images, but most of all, his thoughts were occupied with the impossible horror flying straight towards his face. Freddy’s aim in launching the blazing rooster, coupled with the particular place he happened to be standing, left Vernon directly in the path of the smoking missile.
He saved himself by falling backwards, arms wind-milling wildly. It seemed as though every part of his body, with the exception of his feet, had suddenly decided to be someplace else. Vernon cut loose, shrieking “Yah! Yah Yah!” as he fell. Bubba later commented on how he thought Vernon’s eyes would pop clean out his noggin when the blazing rooster missed his head by mere inches.
Miraculously, neither of the gallon jugs Vernon carried were broken. But he did wet his pants. For long minutes, he lay on the tarmac, staring upward in shock. He eventually responded after Freddy and Bubba carried him inside and poured a few sips of the shine past his lips. Several hours passed before Vernon felt steady enough to attempt the walk home.
They never found the rooster. It had hit the ground running, disappearing across the roadway within seconds. A drainage ditch with standing water lay on the far side of the road, and Bubba liked to think the bird made it that far.
When the last of the roosters had been given away, Freddy and Bubba tore down the pen and disposed of everything related to poultry. For weeks to come, Edgar cursed his bad luck at missing the last moments of the Vernon/flaming rooster encounter.
Vernon still occasionally came by the station to visit. But each time he did, he first looked in the front window to make sure nothing unusual, or dangerous, was occurring inside.
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The Flaming Chicken and other Tales Page 4