Barn 8

by Deb Olin Unferth

  “Barns going up all over the world. The disease is spreading.”

  “My last investigation, they built two more. All I can do is drive by and spit.”

  “My case was dismissed in court. Judge said that chickens don’t have standing.”

  “I’m through with those fucking shmucks at the LA office with their fancy office and their fancy clothes and their fancy food.”

  “Their self-congratulating books with giant pictures of themselves on the covers.”

  “Their fucking celebrity fund-raisers.”

  “Their vacations to India.”

  “Nonprofit, my ass.”

  “Making money off of our work.”

  “Annabelle has always been old-style liberation.”

  “No half measures. No compromise.”

  “Until she quit.”

  “She didn’t quit. She dug in.”

  “Free or die.”

  Then one said, “I’m doing it.” He got up, marked the pad with an X. He was playing it smooth but he had to be hoping another would hop up and say, “I’ll go with you,” be the number two. Alone you’re a stranger in a sandwich board. Two, you’ve got a waltz. Four, you have a band. He walked to the door. “Wait,” said another, “I’m coming.” The rest looked after them, jealous. They’d been beaten to being first. They’d meant to go all along, right? Others went. They Xed the pad and left singly or in groups of three. Some had obviously known each other for years and performed elaborate celebratory high fives and rushed out like they were headed to the game. Some were solemn, making their mark and slouching out cool.

  The hour passed and the barn emptied, until there were only two of them still in the room. A woman on the right and a man on the left. They sat staring hard at the wide plank floor, which had the sort of arrangement of lines and right angles that instills comfort in all humanity to the exact level it craves. That must be what it does or else we wouldn’t see that pattern everywhere we look. The human obsession with the rectangle. Anything ninety degrees will do but a nice clean rectangle, that’s all we hope for in life: to be surrounded by them, to count them, to divide our belongings up in them, to give them to our grandchildren, to be lowered into one when we die.

  This here is a bad idea, the man on the left, Zee, thought.

  But he’d encountered so many bad ideas in his life. His entire existence could be attributed to a series of bad choices, often, like this one, not his own. But he’d gotten away. Had left, had a job for a moving company in Chicago, a girlfriend (sort of), an actual lease. He was shakily impersonating a regular person and no one could imagine how hard that was. But each day it felt a breath more real, because it was real, or almost, getting close. He shouldn’t have come here. But he’d come not for Annabelle, but for Dill, whom he didn’t want to let down.

  And he believed in it, all of it.

  If he could just keep out of prison.

  “Annabelle’s got a hell of a shitty idea this time,” he said aloud to the woman on the right. He got up, drew a Z, and walked out. The woman on the right was the only one in there.

  That final person, the auditor Janey, took off her ski mask, frowning: It wasn’t Annabelle’s shitty idea. It was her shitty idea.

  But the frown didn’t last. A slow warmth reached from her stomach for her limbs. It was happening or could very well happen, they just might really do this. She closed her eyes and let the vision sweep over her: the birds lifting around her, the cages clattering to the ground like nests falling from trees, her mother’s voice amid the sound of flapping wings. She opened her eyes and left the barn.

  IT WOULD BE EASY TO ASSUME Dev was off feeling resolved and free in Egypt, after all Dill had put him through. But that’s not what was happening.

  Dev, however many thousand miles away (6,489), was washing his hands at the end of a long hallway, eighteen stories above the hot ground. He’d read that hand-washing “increases resolve,” so each time he felt the urge to write Dill he hopped up from his desk, padded down the hallway of Pan Egypt Intervest to a sink of pale stone. Indeed, as Dill imagined, Dev had been raised by first-generation immigrants in a subdivision duplex with a square of grass out front. Dev had inherited the house and the barn and the fields that came with them from a great-uncle who had taken a shine to the boy. The uncle had been the first to leave India and come to America, had lived in that house for twenty-six years, the “roommate” of a small organic farmer. He’d helped his niece and her husband settle in America, knew Dev from the day he was born, knew what Dev was before Dev himself knew, and, recalling what his own life had been (it was a different time), he left the boy the house, barn, land, the whole situation.

  And Dev had inherited Dill and all that came with that situation because he had been out of his mind with love, willing to do the extraordinary, put up with the extraordinary. He was dying to put up with the extraordinary Dill. But he was young then, and he’d grown up in those seven years. He was tired of having to calm the wilds around him—and he wasn’t referring to the land, which was easy compared to Dill. But now, eighteen stories over Egypt (sure, send the brown guy—of course they couldn’t tell the difference between Egypt and India), a new kind of nervousness was entering his heart. Who was he without Dill? He hurried back down the hallway to rinse his hands once more.

  If he could have seen his front yard two days later, he would have been enraged afresh and discovered that rage is far better for resolve than water.

  JONATHAN JARMAN JR. had come up with a plan for 303 investigators. If 303 didn’t show up, it could not be done. The night before the evacuation he’d explained this to Dill, Annabelle, and the auditors. He had a stack of 303 sheets of printed instructions, each a unique assignment with its own itinerary, barn, task, getaway plan, and so on. They had asked for a plan for under 300, but the numbers and spreadsheets were all right here. Working their hardest, 303, Jonathan said, or none at all. Until Dill finally said, “Oh fucking shut up already.”

  Jonathan’s hand rested on the sheets. Two fingers lifted and lowered in an impatient tap. All right, just so long as they understood. It was 303 or he was out.

  In truth they could use a few dozen more, and he had them printed, fifty extra, arranged in order of urgency, and slid into a separate envelope, just in case these people surprised him, which they would not—but if they did, he’d be ready.

  It was Friday night, late. His body had held the shape of a skeptical grimace all day. He stretched out on the sofa. He took out his phone to text Joy (because of course he brought his phone in) but then he looked up and Annabelle was there. Her hand was on his, and his hand was on her long slim body, which he hadn’t held in so long. He pulled her in. His songbird, his tiger, his runaway bride.

  When he woke, Annabelle curled under his arm, the investigators had already begun to arrive.

  THEY BEGAN SHOWING UP at dawn, though Dill had told them ten o’clock. Dill was the only one awake.

  Annabelle and Jonathan were asleep on the sofa, Janey on the banker’s bed. Cleveland had gone home with plans to be back by eight, her marriage exerting its gravitational pull. Dill slept fitfully in an easy chair and got up in the predawn dark. He pulled on his jacket, let out the dogs, and walked to the barn through a mosaic of retreating shadows and rosy air to feed the chickens. Then he sat on the porch, the same porch Janey had approached with her box of hens only six weeks before. The yard was that many weeks greener now, the air that much warmer, the light coming on earlier, brighter. He squinted at the sunrise over the earth’s remarkable, unremarkable spring. May in America.

  Even if no one shows up, he thought, it’s going to be a beautiful day.

  A car turned onto the driveway.

  Cleveland’s husband stirred in his sleep on the other side of town, sensed weight, the body of his wife beside him—ah, so she had come home—and fell back into cloudy underwater silence.

  Jonathan was dreaming of Annabelle—how could he reach her through all those seagulls swir
ling around?—though she was beside him.

  An old brown dragster, dinky down at the end of the drive but growing as it approached. Dill shielded his eyes, too cool to stand. But as soon as he saw who it was, he leapt to his feet. The car rolled up and stopped sideways in front of the house, a prehistoric slab, inefficient and scaly. The door heaved open.

  “Zee, my man.” Dill grabbed him.

  Three other warriors slumped out.

  “I brought an extra.” Zee grinned.

  The car woke Janey. She went out blinking, her beautiful hair tangled. Zee saw her and sucked in his breath.

  Janey’s father had spent the night in front of reruns of cop shows. He knew Janey was up to something but he didn’t know what. She hadn’t come home—not so unusual—but she’d left the evening before without a love look on her face but one of determination. So what was going on? “I want to see this Mr. No One,” he growled when she headed for the door. She had laughed.

  He worried she was into drugs. Maybe the guy she’d gotten into had gotten her into them? Or was she pregnant? Was she off to get an abortion?

  Not a day passed that he didn’t think her mother would be doing a better job. Damn that woman for dying. He glared at the TV. Blam blam. Should he go out looking for her? He summoned her mother in his mind. Kid’s almost twenty-one, he pleaded. Shouldn’t he let her take care of herself? All right, all right, he promised. When she gets home, I’ll have a talk with her. I’ll say, “Whatever’s going on, I’m there for you.” (I’ll kill the bastard, I’ll wrap a cord around his neck.)

  Of course he had it all wrong. Anyway he would have been wasting his words: Janey wouldn’t have listened no matter what she was into. And she knew he was there for her.

  More cars. Blues and grays and reds budding at the end of the drive and blooming as they drove up. Investigators getting out, stretching. “Long fucking ride! We drove all night.” Dill greeting them with complicated handshakes, calling out affectionate insults. Annabelle rose from the sofa and went out waving, combing her hair with her fingers. Let’s get this started, her face said.

  Jonathan woke, fuzzy, seagulls flying to the corners of his mind. Annabelle was getting up. “Hey, where are you going?” He yawned, then remembered. Good lord, they weren’t going to have to actually do this, were they? Was she kidding? He heard shouts.

  This was exactly why he had not protested the divorce.

  By the time Cleveland slipped out of the house, the field looked like it was moving.

  At nine Cleveland’s husband woke. Where’d she go now, on a Saturday morning? Had he dreamed her beside him? Where had she been for weeks now? Had he missed something? Were they fighting? He’d think she’d at least leave a note so a man knew where his goddamn estranged wife was.

  Joy, at that hour, was in an aisle of soaps and cereals. She was wheeling both girls and a package of trash bags. The girls were shouting the word help for some reason, in unison, like a chant. She stopped to check her phone. Had heard nothing from him in two days now.

  Janey was panicking. She was supposed to be directing cars but the investigators paid no attention. They bounded in like gazelles, left their cars where they liked. Cleveland hadn’t arrived yet. Where was she? At last she saw Cleveland’s car coming up the drive and she hurried over. Cleveland got out, spread her arms to the crowd. “Let this be a lesson, Janey, about what two women can do.”

  Had her mother said that?

  Cleveland looked her over. “Where’s your uniform?”

  Janey grinned.

  The hens had been up for hours by then. At Happy Green Family Farm the cage lights clicked on at 4:00 a.m. The hens were just standing there. Some of them were laying eggs. Some were caught in the wire and dying. Some were already dead.

  By ten a procession of pickups and sedans and motorcycles filled the drive, were pulling onto the grass in haphazard lines. Dozens of people piled out and the place was rolling with people—jeaned, jacketed, young and old, hefting backpacks, dragging buds, hugging, hooting. A regular circus, a Dead concert. Somebody had a boom box and a handful of investigators were dancing, more joining in.

  Dill was trying to keep his business face on, but couldn’t help the pounding grin that kept bursting out. He worked through the crowd, allowed himself a moment to greet a few people, but wait, was that a fucking baby? He stopped dancing. Don’t tell him that was a baby. He squeezed over. Fucking Penelope brought a baby. He could see Jarman up on the porch above them with a deep scowl, counting with a clicker each person. A few investigators had gotten into the chicken coop and were, what, trying to pick up the chickens? Come on. Then Dill’s peripheral vision called to him and he pivoted to see, no, a wheelchair? How was that going to work? Some investigators were chanting, “Dill, Dill, Dill, look at us, look at us, look!” Bunch of kindergartners. They were dancing the bus stop, an old joke. What the hell: he rolled his shoulders, did a little step-to-the-side-step-back-clap, because, hey, the investigators had come and they’d brought their craziest closest friends from the animal shelters, from protests, pulled them out of their basement apartments or communes or group homes. They were committed, eager, vegan to a man. (In fact Cleveland and Jonathan were the only nonvegans present. Janey had been vegan for four strong days now.) Under a tree, there was Annabelle, poised, chatting, a long dress wrapped around her, hair down her back, her hands lifted to kiss faces.

  Dill could see Jarman up on the porch, counting with the clicker. He tried to read Jarman’s face—how many so far? Dill moved a little closer. How many? He felt a chill of uncertainty: Jarman’s face was the look of joy drained. Were there not enough people? Dill had stopped counting cars and cars ago. Jarman looked afraid, there was no denying it. Dill handed back the baby to Penelope (how had he wound up holding it?) and pushed through the people, ran up the porch steps.

  “Well, our plan is fucked,” Jarman was saying irritably. “We’ll need to redo the whole thing. I designed it for 303 people. I said 303.”

  “How many more do we need?”

  “You’re blocking me. Move. There’s another car.”

  “Jarman, what do we got?”

  “With those three,” he clicked, “421.”

  Dill repeated it. “Four hundred and …” For a moment he didn’t understand, then he did.

  WHY DID THEY COME? Adventure, of course, but there were other reasons. Some, like Zee, came for Dill. For all Dill’s faults (many), the guy was loyal. No one could say he wasn’t there for his crew, including any dogs or birds or other animals that somehow or other wound up on his porch. The investigators knew this. So did Annabelle, Jonathan, Dev, even the damn dogs, which is perhaps why so many stood by him for so long. Loyalty is hard to come by and should get its due.

  More came for Annabelle, had known her all this time. Some had known her since she was a child, had attended her wedding with their parents, had walked off their families’ farms when she did, had followed her through the years—habit, addiction, or faith—until she disappeared, and even then they understood why. They knew she wasn’t a fool. And Dill was sharp when he stayed off the drugs—he was off at the moment, clearly. Also they were comforted by the presence of Jonathan. He wouldn’t be doing this if it couldn’t be done. Impossible as it seemed, he’d come up with the numbers and judged them sound.

  But most of all they came for the animals, of course. They’d become activists at age four when they learned the chicken in the soup was the same species they saw on farm day, pushed away their bowls, gone vegan on the spot. Or in high school, when they’d seen a clip of Thanksgiving turkeys hung alive on the line. Or they’d had dogs. Zee had had a brother who’d died, expanding Zee’s respect for all lives, including first the ones on his plate, then the ones in his bomber jacket, then the ones making hives in the walls, until he vowed not to harm any at all.

  However it happened, their experiences in the barns had strengthened their convictions. They’d spent twelve-hour days placing the baby-soft beaks of chick
s into hot-iron guillotines, searing off the tips, while the chicks struggled and their faces smoked.

  Hens. Sweet little puffs. The solid adventure of saving them: Who didn’t want to be part of it? Who wouldn’t? The time had come to say no more.

  THE OPPOSITION.

  Here they are, barricaded in their concrete barns. They’re dug in, ready—though they don’t know what or who is coming. They wait behind ramparts of drying excrement, behind fans six feet high. The farm people, the few left on the prairie, the holdout humans.

  Here’s the barn manager. See him zipping up his jacket by the silos, piloting his golf cart. He’s got tools and communication devices clipped to his belt like a captain on Star Trek. He swaggers, snaps something in his mouth. He shouts over the machinery in English and Spanish.

  See the egg runners, the ones who fix the belts, the ones who do the daily hen inspection. Five or six of them step out of their jumpsuits, leaving early because it’s Saturday. (An occasional investigator hides among them but not today, as they’re all busy elsewhere.)

  The truckers, the mechanics. The pop and depop crew. None of those are here today, or most days. This little pack off in the shadows is the rodent control squad—you can smell their poison but you rarely see their persons, only their markings: their hand-writing, their traps, their baits, their bombs. You see evidence of their failures.

  These are the desk people, a few to a farm. See them work their control system keyboards. Set against vinyl-partition backdrops, they lean forward on pressure-adjustable chairs. They wear uniforms of beige blouses, beige sweaters, beige hair. Their faces are beigeing with age, but do not doubt their strength. Their holiday earrings swing. Their pens bloom from a cup. They have pinned up behind them messages from God. On the sill sits the kind of plant that never dies. Only one of them is here today, the Saturday of the evacuation, and she’ll be going home shortly. She presses a button and says it will be just a moment.