Cluckster is a tough old bird with a big mouth and a serious aggressive streak. I can’t tell you how many times she’s sauntered up the stairs to the front door, forced our portly and particularly aromatic dog Pete from the floor mat in front of it, and settled in. It would be one thing if she did this quietly. But no. Cluckster earned her name for her nonstop, crazy-making clucking. Every morning she awakens clucking at a level neither of our roosters9 ever reached, every night she passes out clucking at the exact same deranged decibel, and one day, maybe soon, she’ll pass away . . . a casualty of her uncontrollable clucking.
Or maybe Hemingway will simply try to shoot her. Again.
The first summer we had her, when she was just a puny pullet, her clucking reached the crescendo of one of those freaky PETA protesters during Fashion Week. It was a hundred degrees outside, and two hundred inside, thanks to a flash thunderstorm that lasted five minutes and left us without power for three days, and we were all pretty hairy from the heat. We took our lunch and picnicked on the porch. The scent of eau de Black Angus wafting in the warm breeze was pretty bad, but not so bad that it made us bonkers. But this, of course, is where McCorkindales and Clucksters part company.
As soon as we sat down, Cluckster showed up. She lunged at the boys’ burgers and attempted to swipe the lemon slice from Hemingway’s iced tea. He shooed her away and she made for the fern hanging above my head. Alas, chickens really can’t fly. But they can fall, and when they do, they stick their landing. Which Cluckster did—in my scalp.
I went from zero to bun-free burger flying in less than a second. “Get it off! Get it off!” I screamed, tearing across the porch. Maybe I thought a good stiff breeze would dislodge the damn bird, but I was wrong. That hen hung on, digging her claws into my new, sophisticated “‘do.” 10
“I can’t help you if you won’t hold still!” Poor Hemingway. I was racing back and forth, swiping at my head, and howling like the epidural didn’t last long enough.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I’m bleeding!” Sure enough, there was blood trickling down my temple. And Cluckster? She had her claws in my cranium and was squawking at a level typically used to drive dictators11 insane.
“Susan, you’ve got to stop moving!” Hemingway hollered.
“Yeah, Mom, come on!” cried Cuy. “Stop, drop, and roll!”
What the fuck, I’m on fire, too?
Something had to be done. So Casey did it. As I flew past for about the four hundredth time, he grabbed me by the waist and stopped me just long enough for Hemingway to clock Cluckster. She fell to the porch floor with a spectacularly satisfying thwap! and for one brief moment, we all breathed.
Okay, the McMen breathed. I bled.
Was she down for the count? Knocked senseless for even a second? Are you kidding? The Energizer Bunny’s got nothing on this banty. Cluckster was back on her fetid feet Marshall Faulk fast, and this time she made a mad dash for our big dog, Grundy.
Now, if you know anything about chickens, you know that going on the attack is not the norm. Sure, we’ve all heard reports of Perdue roasters flinging themselves at the feet of unsuspecting supermarket shoppers, but really, such foul play among fowl is rare. But Cluckster charged, and Grundy charged off, and Hemingway turned to me and said, “Susan, I’ve gotta put that pullet down.”
We interrupt this family lunch for a little gunfire. Now, there’s a side I never served in suburbia.
A minute later, my honey returned with his rifle. He loaded it, took aim, and fired. It’s tough to hit a moving target, and Cluckster was still in hot pursuit of our pup, so the first shot missed. As did the second. And the third.
By then I’d stopped bleeding, started breathing, and served the boys seconds. Frankly, it was like being in the stands at a sporting event; we kept an eye on Team Hemingway, cheered, and hit the concession stand—I mean kitchen—for more burgers and beer. Kidding, of course. The boys can’t drink till cocktail hour. None of that “it’s five o’clock somewhere” crap for my kids.
Of course, that rule doesn’t apply to Hemingway, for whom I made a nice, tall Tennessee Snow Cone.12 Sure, I could have brought him a Bud, but as those of you married to former marine sharpshooters know, when they’re outmaneuvered by the bad guys or, God forbid, a bird, only the hard stuff will suffice.
Speaking of that damn beast, she’s back, and she’s disemboweling her favorite window box. Which happens to be one of the ones I just replanted. The balls on that bird!
“Cluckster! Knock it off! Scat!” I scream, charging out the front door. But oh, no. Not only does that painfully loud pullet stay put, she flicks potting soil in my face. And then a pansy. A pansy! A pansy that I just planted! I’m stunned, so I do what anyone having it out with a hen13 would do: I whip the pansy right back at her. And the root-ball? Bonks her right between the eyes.
In an instant, Cluckster’s flopped to the floor, dead. My marine couldn’t kill her with a .22, but I off her with an annual.14
You know, I’m starting to get why people love gardening.
Chapter Two
STAYING ABREAST IN THE BOONIES
Recently I discovered several baby bottles as big as traffic cones, and huge, naughty-looking nipples lined up on my kitchen counter. Did it freak me out? Make me worry my honey had developed a fascination with Pamela Anderson, the St. Pauli Girl or, God forbid, the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog? Nope. It actually gave me hope that maybe Hemingway is finally on board with my having a few “improvements” made.
And then I wondered whether his expectations and mine weren’t just a little different in the mammary maximization department.
In reality, this stuff’s for the baby bulls he and Cuyler are bottle-feeding. There are four of them. Three are Holstein dairy calves my sweeties bought for a song at the local livestock exchange. Why were the oversize infants, who tip the scales at just under a hundred pounds at three days old, so cheap? Because they’re boys, and you can’t get milk from a male.15 I think they cost us about twenty-eight dollars a pop; a female goes for more than two hundred.
The fourth was Cuy’s gift from the Easter Bunny. You should’ve seen the size of that basket.
To digress for just a moment, the fact of the matter is that Easter on the farm is almost one hundred and eighty degrees different from Easter in the suburbs. For starters, we don’t color eggs, ’cause they fall out of the hens in every hue under heaven. And we don’t buy yellow Peeps because, frankly, we’ve got the real deal, and my kids can’t stand anything with the consistency of marshmallows.
Except manure. And that they’ve been known to throw at each other.
We don’t even load up on candy and celebrate the resurrection with a good sugar rush. Although I can see how sweets might have played a part in bringing Christ back from the dead; chocolate does it for me every day around three o’clock.
No, here in the hinterland, this holiest of days is just another opportunity to stock up on livestock.
Like I said, this past Easter, my younger son got Charlie, a Charolais bull.16 The rangy, dirty blond beast joined Ky,17 Eli,18 and Fido,19 the aforementioned trio of Holstein dairy calves, on Holy Saturday,20 and when they’re not sucking down more “milk”21 than any human newborn’s ever consumed, they’re busy getting sick.
It’s not enough that all of us have had the stomach flu; the baby bulls have had it, too.
To be accurate, they’ve actually had something called “the scours,” which is farm speak for Old McDonald’s revenge, which is further farm speak for Montezuma’s revenge, which is really just regular old diarrhea.
Delightful.
You know it’s bad when you’re out shoe shopping and stocking up on footwear quite possibly fashioned from one of the bulls’ family members, and your husband calls and asks that you pop into the Marshall Pharmacy for some Pepto-Bismol. And Kaopectate. And a rectal thermometer.
Hey, just don’t ask me to play Dr. Doolittle, darlin’.
They’re all better now
, thanks to Hemingway,22 and at this writing are probably closer to a hundred and thirty pounds each. In a few weeks they’ll be off the bottle, freed from the barn, and encouraged to hang with the heifers. A heifer, for the uninitiated, is a cow that hasn’t had a calf.
But that’s just because she hasn’t met the right Ky.23
Chapter Three
RUNAROUND SUE
Here’s the deal. I typically sleep a full eight hours every night. But these days, almost since the moment I made the decision to “fake it till I make it” in the farm-love department, I’ve really been stressed. Did I volunteer to
“band” the baby bulls?24 Scrub in during calving season? Physically examine the heifers to confirm we’d have a calving season? Oh, God, no. First of all, yuck. Second of all, my fear of failure is even worse than my fear of giving a pelvic exam to anything I might one day make for dinner. No, I asked to handle something I’m familiar with, something within my comfort zone, something much, much closer to home. Something, in fact, that actually involves homes.
I offered to play real estate agent and find renters for the three empty tenant houses on our property.
In hindsight, not only should I have offered to band the baby bulls; I should have donated my ponytail holders to the task.
Finding renters is much easier said than done, and, since I haven’t yet done it, I can’t sleep. I lie there, eyes closed tight, praying Bugs Bunny will bonk me in the head with a sledgehammer. All I want is sleep. But all I can do is think, overthink, and rethink my overthinking. This would be wonderful if I were Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk. But I’m me. And I assure you society is not getting anything remotely as remarkable as a theory of relativity or a cure for polio from this poor excuse for a farm girl.
I mean, maybe I can come up with a shot that’ll stop the Crocs plague in its tacky tracks, but that’s about it. Hmm. Now that I think about it, that wouldn’t be a bad way to spend my sleepless nights. And it might net me a Nobel. Particularly if I pair it with a patch that stops women over age eight from wearing white stockings and velvet jumpers, and a pill that triggers cramps in any woman who can’t quite kick bib overalls on her own.
But I digress.
You’d think that since I can’t sleep at night I’d be comatose all day. But you’d be wrong. I have the frantic energy and attention span of a Concerta-deprived third grader.25 One moment I’m a maid, cleaning each house top to bottom. The next, I’m a marketing director, making my pitch on craigslist, my blog, and my Facebook profile. I tweet. I text. I e-mail my entire address book.
And several of my sweet friends from New Jersey respond. They’d love to come live on the farm, but the commute would kill them.
With panic fueling my every waking moment, I thought it might be interesting to log my lunacy. If nothing else, it’s good for a laugh, and it could help Hemingway secure me a spot in a decent psych ward someday . . . soon.
Ready for a look at how today went down? Yeah, me neither.
4:45 a.m. . . .
Remove yummy-smelling meat loaf from oven. Throw tantrum upon sudden recollection of Hem’s position on meal swaps: breakfast for dinner, yay; dinner for breakfast, nay. Ingrate!
5:00 a.m. . . .
Reread piece I penned yesterday. Ouch. Wonder if writing sober is really the best method for me.
5:47 a.m. . . .
Yikes! Three minutes late awakening Casey for the school bus. Hurry up and get dressed, big guy. There’s no way I’m making the thirty-minute trek to the high school. Sure, I can make it in fifteen if we take the Mustang, but I don’t like driving with the top down in the dark. And top-down is the only way my six-foot-four son can fit in the car. Otherwise, it’s like trying to wedge Yao Ming into a Matchbox.
6:05 a.m. . . .
Watch in horror as firstborn breakfasts on cold pizza and Hawaiian Punch. And to think, he could’ve had meat loaf.
6:21 a.m. . . .
Eldest off to catch bus, elderly off to exercise. Gotta stay in shape to show houses. You know, on the off chance anyone ever asks to see them.
7:26 a.m. . . .
Shower. Dress. Drag anxious, antischool fourth grader from bed . . . but only with the promise of a Fender guitar. Fourteen-hundred-dollar Fender guitar he’s been on me about for months. I know it’s quite the carrot, but the kid misses too much school. And I miss having impulse control.
7:27 a.m. . . .
Wake Hemingway. Encourage OT! Second job! Dillingerstyle crime spree! After all, someone has to pay for my foolishness.
8:45 a.m. . . .
Deposit Fender-mad little man at school. Leave basket of Hem’s homegrown tomatoes for teachers. Pray Vitamin A–packed produce equals A-packed report card.
8:48 a. m. . . .
Ponder my growing propensity for bribery. Decide to feel guilty after both boys graduate. From med school.
9:00 a.m. . . .
Kick the goats out of the chicken coop and the bulls out of the goat pen. Rack tiny blond brain on subject of livestock “intermingling.” Legal? Illegal? If they crossbreed, I call . . . ?
9:15 a.m. . . .
Go to garden. Cut flowers. Battle big, scary bugs intent on making a home in my hair. Scream Psycho-style while racing to shower, stripping naked, and running scalding water on my scalp.
9:45 a.m. . . .
Throw now-wilted flowers in vase.
9:48 a.m. . . .
Pull on fresh jeans and a T-shirt. Momentary pause in endorphin freak-out gives fear free reign. Chest tightens. Throat closes. Must. Find. Distraction. It’s almost ten a.m. Do you know where the margarita mix is?
9:50 a.m. . . .
Check e-mail. Note usual morning onslaught of J.Crew and Victoria’s Secret sales announcements, Staples coupons, and DailyCandy newsletters, but nothing from prospective renters. Curse craigslist, Facebook, Twitter. All the usual social media suspects.
9:53 a.m. . . .
Hit “refresh.” Nothing from Craig or his cohorts, but look! A link to the wine country catalog! Save under “self-medication” and promptly suffer major panic attack.
9:59 a.m. . . .
Are you there, Ativan?26 It’s me, Susan.
10:32 a.m. . . .
Awaken to find myself, big surprise, on sofa and suffering from slight case of Ativan-induced dementia. Noise on porch propels me to door. It’s the damn goats, and it looks like they’re playing hockey with a groundhog. But wait. It’s not a groundhog. It’s a ham. A fourteen-pound Smithfield Ham. Talk about mystery meat, not to mention a really weird “Good Luck Faking the Farm Love!” gift.27
10:45 a.m. . . .
Log on to Ask Jeeves for ham baking and glazing tips. OMG! The butler’s been fired. Who knew? Ask Ask instead.
10:47 a.m. . . .
Ohhh. Brown-sugar-and-pineapple-juice glaze sounds like heaven. And like it’s bound for my butt.
11:00 a.m. . . .
Slide ham into oven, fatty side up. Vow from this point forward to always walk backward in a bathing suit.
11:02 a.m. . . .
Return to laptop, appetite suppressed for the foreseeable future. Check e-mail. Nothing. Reread descriptions I posted on craigslist. Hmmm. Houses sound pretty, but there’s no proof. Need pictures! Crap. Can’t take any till somebody cleans the damn things. Somebody, huh?
11:03 a.m. . . .
My God, there’s a big M on my chest!
11:15 a.m. . . .
Cleaning supplies, vacuum, and trash bags in tow, I race from one house to the next. I wash fingerprints off walls, scrub toilets, and wipe down ceiling fans nobody’s touched since man first broke wind (because you know it was a man). I wash the floors, scour the sinks, and disinfect the refrigerators, the whole time thinking, Universe, I’m ready. Bring on the renters!
2:15 p.m. . . .
Check e-mail. The universe has yet to respond.
2:16 p.m. . . .
Break for chat with agent. Promise first fifty pages of new book by next month. Because n
o, I don’t have enough on my plate. The fourteen-pound ham not included.
2:17 p.m. . . .
Jesus, Mary, and Jamie (Oliver, of course; he’s cute and he can cook)! The ham!
2:20 p.m. . . .
Note to self: You cannot flip a Hindenburg-size slab of pork using two plastic soup spoons.
2:25 p.m. . . .
Do you think the five-second rule applies to food dropped on the floor of a farmhouse kitchen? Guess it depends how recently I scrubbed off the chicken, goat, and cow poop Hem and the boys track in on their boots.
2:27 p.m. . . .
Note to self: Always use oven mitts when washing scalding-hot ham.
2:28 p.m. . . .
Slide feces-free ham back into oven.
2:35 p.m. . . .
Practice deep breathing and calming techniques fabulous shrink showed me in desperate attempt to stave off second panic attack. And Ativan overdose.
2:56 p.m. . . .
Make mine Manolos. There’s a big fat birthday check in the mail from my dad! Is it seven months late, or five months early? That, I couldn’t tell you. But I can tell you those seven-hundred-and-forty-five-dollar leopard-print stilettos on the Neiman Marcus Web site are so going to be mine.
500 Acres and No Place to Hide Page 2