In nature chickens wander in crooked circles through their little villages, pace out their territory, climb up and down the trees at night, prance around each other in play, courtship, battle, while the lowliest chickens revolve on the outskirts, get picked off by predators. But their egg-manufacturing counterparts, their cousins locked in cages, do not loop like the rest of creation. They stand, push a step or two through their cell mates to sip some drops of water, their tender feet cutting into the steel.
Which of these chickens do humans most resemble: the ones roaming in ovals—a school yard, a campus, a neighborhood? Or the genetically modified monsters—wobbling inside our boxes, clutching our pieces of plastic and metal, mincing and crimping in our shoes, snapping at each other in tight spaces, poking our various machines that swivel or light up or open in simulation of activity, “amusement,” “exercise,” “work,” “love”?
Earth has fallen a long way in hundreds of millions of years as it swept in its glaciers, spewed out its lava, glistened and blued and whitened and greened, lifted its animals off their front feet, or brought them down from the branches, or sent them into the sky.
The earliest bird, the Archaeopteryx, appeared in ever more astounding variations through the long Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, only to diminish with the rest of the dinosaurs, but rise again in the Paleocene and on into the future.
The Gallus, the wild jungle fowl of the early Eocene, or “pre-chicken,” tore along the ground through the trees. The ice swelled and receded, and the Gallus split into species and subspecies, constellations of them spreading and splintering, until a mere nine thousand years ago, when a band of her descendants, Gallus gallus domesticus, began to travel the world with the great explorers looking for more than their world had to offer.
At last, around 1600 CE, T. Rex’s pretty little niece stepped off the boat onto the wet sand shores of North America.
THIRTEEN YEARS BEFORE Cleveland took the hen, Jonathan Jarman Jr. (24) met Annabelle Green (18) for the first time when he arrived at her father’s farm with his new invention.
He had a small-size demo in his trunk, along with two fifty-packs of glossy brochures—pending patent number printed inside each one, proving that his invention was not merely a variation on the cage design already used in England, but a substantially improved version for an American audience, an invention he hoped (here when farmers imitated him—harmless teasing when his family wasn’t present—would stick a forefinger into their collar and tug in a parody of nervousness) would change the face of egg farming in America.
Jonathan Jarman Jr., the only son of the Jarman Egg Farm family, was going from farm to farm peddling.
The word peddle raises the image of a man in a hat going door to door, but Jonathan knew that’s not how it was done in this industry. Farms held a million to twenty million birds each, looked and sounded like miniature militarized cities, the largest surrounded by biosecurity trucks and fences and checkpoints. No one was going to be driving up and asking for a glass of lemonade and the kindness of strangers at the door. No, he’d done it the right way, had followed his father’s advice. The right way was to hook yourself up to a research project, present your findings at egg conferences, shake hands with the farmers over a period of years—all of which Jonathan had done, while getting multiple degrees in design and engineering—then ask the farmers one by one if you can come over and show them what you want to do.
At first he had made the mistake of calling it a “sales pitch,” which made the farmers nervous. He said he wanted to show his demo and explain why the farmer—all egg farmers—should replace their conventional (a.k.a. “battery”) cages with the new “enriched” Jarman Star Cage Systems. But he’d had very, very little luck even getting appointments because of the unfortunate coincidence that there was no reason in the world for a farmer to change over to Jarman’s new enriched cage system. It was a huge hassle, required vast conversions that were stupidly expensive, tens of thousands of dollars per barn, and besides that, the farmers said, the hens were fine the way they were! Jonathan’s own father, Jarman Sr., hadn’t switched to his son’s design, citing these same facts. Besides, the farmers said, who knew when lawmakers persuaded by animal rights extremists would pass a law outlawing all cages, old and new and imagined, and force everyone to go cage free like communists? It made no sense to buy those fancy cages, so no one would let him come deliver his pitch.
Finally at his wife’s urging Farmer Jarman Sr. intervened. He talked his son into calling it a “consultation,” not a sales call—much more palatable. And he phoned all his farmer colleagues across the country and urged them to let his son give his presentation and write up his report, that’s all, the cost of which would be burdened mostly by Jarman Sr. himself. All right, the farmers said, if he put it that way, okay. They understood the father and his predicament, them all having children, and knowing how hard it was to raise farm kids these days. World was a different place. Ah well. What are you going to do? Probably Adam himself had this trouble. Jesus likely gave the Father a hard time. Aw, let the kid come and do his presentation, what’s the harm? The farmers would even pitch in a little, see to it that the Jarman son had a place to sleep and plenty of scrambled eggs and toast for a few days. They’d welcome him like family, cut him a small courtesy check for his final report. The farmer’s world had changed, all right, but common loyalty and neighborliness among farmer families still existed.
But just so it was clear: the farmers didn’t want to spend any actual time with the son, of course. They were busy, and in any case they didn’t want to hear from a child what they should do differently, especially if it would cost ridiculous amounts of money. That kid was something else again. The farmers had twelve or twenty or even thirty barns of a hundred and fifty thousand birds each to tend to. They were trying to ship four million eggs a day. Besides, they had their own troubles. What did Farmer Jarman Sr. think their kids were up to? Not exactly big helpers, mind you. Fine, if the kid wanted to come, but did the farmers have to sit and listen to him too?
Farmer Jarman had an idea: What if the farmers assigned Jonathan Jr. to give the presentations to the offspring of the farmers, many of them in the same age range, give or take? They could all lead one another around and consult and write reports and have meetings when the conference room wasn’t being used for company business. Similar to playdates, now that everyone was a little older and didn’t require the same level of supervision. Give them all something to do. Almost like a youth group, Bible study, science club. And who knew, some of them might get interested in the egg business. (None of them wanted anything to do with it and it was just sad.) Some might, the farmers suggested quietly, find suitable husbands and wives in this manner, since the dates the kids were bringing around were, to put it mildly, preposterous.
(The farmers couldn’t know at this point that the plan would backfire later, when these kids—having been schooled by Jonathan Jarman Jr., who over time would become a very convincing guy, to say nothing of Annabelle—would go on to run their fathers’ businesses into the ground with the changes they made once their fathers retired. They spawned an entire expensive movement toward enriched, then cage-free, then free-range systems, which swept the country as the younger farmers grew up and took over. Some of the sons and daughters left the business disgusted. Some became undercover investigators for Annabelle. Some, combining their conscience with their lifelong lust to be unlandlocked, took to the seas on pirate ships, chasing whalers and fisher boats, and the older farmers stood back aghast and blamed Farmer Jarman for it all.
But this was much later.)
So on that warm September afternoon when Farmer Robert Green Sr. came out to reception to welcome Jonathan Jarman Jr. as a favor to the Jarman family, both men—Jonathan Jr. and Farmer Green—were feeling optimistic: Jonathan because Happy Green Farm was small, only a million birds, and might be ready to grow, which could mean a new barn with his cages. Farmer Green because he had persuaded
his daughter, Annabelle, to take Jonathan Jr. around. Annabelle showed aggressively little interest in farming (though she showed more interest than Farmer Green’s only son, Robbie Jr., who initiated gagging sounds every time Farmer Green brought it up). Farmer Green wondered if Annabelle might become more interested if she had to spend time with a smart, good-looking man like Jonathan Jr., and he suspected that Jonathan would behave especially smart and good-looking around Annabelle, who at eighteen was becoming a beauty.
Father Farmer Green was not mistaken in his suspicions. On that September afternoon, when he brought out his lovely daughter (And behind door number three …!—he’d come of age with The Price Is Right rerunning in the background), he watched with satisfaction Jonathan Jr.’s face. Annabelle smiled shyly.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to it then,” said Farmer Green, rubbing his hands together. “I know you’ll come up with a fine plan for us.” He slapped Jonathan’s back and hurried them out, telling Jonathan to save receipts for meals.
Farmer Green did not consider the possibility that after a minute and a half in Annabelle’s presence, Jonathan would fall irreversibly in love with her and, inspired by her beauty, manage to speak heroically on behalf of the hens and explain over the next few days his plan for enriching their lives, speak with more eloquence than he ever had so far mustered. Jonathan Jr. convinced her—and himself—of chickens’ individual temperaments, of their desires and little-known sadnesses, their friendships, their surprising skill at conversation (all accurate, by the way). He got her to look at the hens in a new light, through the light of their love. Annabelle, who was already prone to tender thoughts about animals, including chickens, was awed by this older man and felt destined to love the chickens and him, to fight for their rights to enrichments. Jonathan managed to stretch the presentation process from three days to two weeks by adding several layers of evaluation, which he feverishly thought of late at night so as to be able to stay longer in the Green household. And after fifteen days, while on a visit to her grandfather’s original family egg farm, now defunct and abandoned (due to certain nearby contamination) and surrounded by forest and river (a romantic spot for two egg farmers’ children in love, despite the toxicity), Jonathan got Annabelle to promise to marry him. A week later he approached her father and formally, farmerly, asked for her hand.
That her father said yes seemed like a miracle to Annabelle and Jonathan, since she was only eighteen, but really it was a coup for the families. Both sets of parents were overjoyed and celebrated on the phone quietly (in fear that the youngsters might overhear their glee and repent their decision, since any idea parents approved of was probably no good). The parents were eager to join by marriage these two farms, cement these kids into the family business, and eventually leave both farms to two young adults who had become extremely interested in eggs (though they weren’t interested in eggs, but rather hens) and enthusiastic about improving the farms (at this point the families hadn’t paid a whole hell of a lot of attention to, had more or less forgotten, Jonathan’s cage design, which had grown more and more avant-garde in mere weeks). The future of both farms was secured.
The families made the happy couple wait six months to marry, for prudence’s sake—the kids had been dating only three weeks after all—and also because the two mothers wanted to plan the most imprudent, spectacular wedding in layer hen history. And that spring indeed the Jarman-Green wedding was a reckoning. The entire United Egg Producer membership was invited. Farmers flew in from every part of the country. Whole planes’ worth of commercial egg farmers, their wives, and children landed on the tarmac and rode limousines out to the farm. (These included the small but growing group of smart young-adult children, whom the older farmers would years later say were “brainwashed” by Jonathan, and also by Annabelle, an inspiring spokesperson for her husband’s design in those first years before she dismissed animal husbandry altogether and took off with some of the others in search of more radical strategies.)
The wedding was a smashing success.
Even Farmer Bristole came, representing the only large industrial egg farm in Maine (which would be raided six years later by the FBI after an undercover investigation led by Annabelle: Farmer Bristole would be charged with fourteen counts of animal cruelty, and his barns dubbed by Temple Grandin on CBS News “a filthy disgusting mess”).
Even Farmer Parlin was there (he would go bankrupt after footage from an undercover investigation led by Annabelle and her evil spawn went viral and all of Parlin’s major clients filed out the door, taking their business elsewhere, i.e., to other attendees of the wedding).
All these and many more arrived at Happy Green Family Farm on that spring afternoon, filled the local B&Bs, clapped and cried when the groom kissed the bride.
For about three years following the wedding, life could not have been better for the two lovebirds, the united Green and Jarman families agreed. The families waited with growing impatience for a baby to come of this marriage—though, they allowed, she was still a little young (nineteen, then twenty, then twenty-one)—and also with growing discomfort at the couple’s ideas, which were spreading across the egg farmers’ children like a broke yolk.
Then one day, the story goes, the son was seen driving through town, though the couple lived thirty minutes away. He was unshaven and grim-faced. He drove out to Happy Green Family Farm and pulled into the small lot. According to the administrative assistants watching out the window, he sat with his head on the steering wheel. He stayed like that for a good part of the afternoon, the sun moving across the sky, the farmhands stepping timidly around his car to their own. Finally Farmer Green came out. He got into the passenger seat. No one heard their conversation but it was clear the marriage had come to pieces.
Whatever Jonathan and Farmer Green decided between them that day was immediately revoked by the rest of the family. Both sides (for the families swiftly reverted to being sides, not a union) vehemently blamed the other.
According to her family she’d left him, and good riddance.
According to his he’d kicked her out because she was insane.
According to her family he’d driven her mad, what with his bizarre notions about chickens having confidants and dancing cotillions and doing math. He’d damaged her, perhaps permanently.
According to his family he’d had to wash his hands of a crazy wife, and he had been so heartbroken that he’d had to leave the egg business entirely and fall back on his graduate training. He went into the specifications of bottle design. More precisely, he oversaw certain design safety features in popular containers of gin, vodka, and wine coolers. He also did a line of Turkish rums.
(AS IT HAPPENS, he found out she was leaving the same day he found out he had cancer. I’m dying, he came home to tell her. But she was crying before he could speak. He could feel it coming, that she was going to leave him, though he had no idea why, had not understood her in months, and if he told her he was dying, it might change things between them, because that was how bad it had gotten—he had to hope for death to keep her around—but she said she had something to say before he could speak.
For a moment he thought she was going to say she’d joined the army, and he would tie her up and throw her in the closet. Then he thought she was going to say she’d found Jesus and was striking out on a mission. Then—God help him for this darling thought—that she’d changed her mind and wanted a baby.
Then he saw it: He didn’t know what she was going to say. He didn’t know her anymore at all.
This all took place in about three seconds because as soon as she said she had something to say, he said, “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it,” because he sensed one way or another she was going to say, “I’m leaving,” and if she didn’t say it, she couldn’t do it. How could you leave someone without telling them? His error. Of course the hardest part of leaving is telling the person. How did that not occur to him? And if she’d be quiet, maybe he could tell her about the cancer an
d then she couldn’t leave. How could you leave someone who was dying?
But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the cancer, because he couldn’t take it if that was why she stayed. So they sat in silence, she crying a little. The next day she was gone. He didn’t get the chance to tell her he might be dead before she came back.
As it happens, he wasn’t dying. It was a mistake. Who gets a false positive the day his wife—the only woman he’d ever loved, by the way—decides to leave?
So he was dying and she was gone. Then a few days later he wasn’t dying and she was gone. What a world.
“She’s mentally ill,” said his father.
“We’re all mentally ill,” said hers.)
JONATHAN JARMAN JR. stood in his kitchenette.
He was thinking, She is not doing this to me again, I won’t have it.
That humorless man named for an herb was outside his door with two more of them, knocking, and now calling out, “We know you’re in there, Jarman. We saw you from the lot.”
Jonathan already knew they’d seen him from the lot. When he got home from work, they’d been waiting, the three of them scrunched into an old car, their faces against the glass. He had seen them see him. And he knew they’d stayed there when he went out for a run—a run he took to make certain what he was seeing. And they were still there when he got back. Then he’d gone into his condo and stood in various spots around the rooms—the “kitchenette,” the “sun nook,” the “half bath,” his rooms castratingly adorable—wiping his face with a towel and thinking, I’m not allowing it, I can’t have it, until the knock came. He didn’t answer, just froze on the other side of the door, waiting and vowing.
He could hear through the door the women arguing in whispers.
“How smart is it to be doing this with a bunch of people who aren’t speaking to each other?”
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