Barn 8

by Deb Olin Unferth

  “I told myself, Hey, I’ve had worse assignments, maybe not dumber, but this isn’t as bad as it gets. It’s not nearly as bad as standing down a drug addict or breaking up a wife fight. World can get ugly.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and, no, I never had to shoot to kill. You won’t see me in the papers.

  “So we drove toward the trucks. We weren’t in a hurry. They weren’t going anywhere. The forest at the border of the contaminated area unrolled along the horizon. We pulled up, three cars’ worth of us. We didn’t bother with sirens, but our lights circled forlornly. I opened my door. The trucks were empty. I heard clucks some way off but I didn’t see any chickens. I don’t know what I heard anymore after the morning we’d had.

  “I ran my keys along the metal sides of the truck as we passed. Clack, clack, clack.

  “‘Do we know how many are in there?’ I said.

  “Brad shrugged. ‘Could be thousands.’

  “‘Not chickens. Fuck’s sake,’ I said.

  “We gathered in front of the trucks. Fred got out a bullhorn and stood there with his feet planted. ‘All right,’ he called. ‘Who ordered an omelet?’ He lowered the horn and bent over laughing. That went on for a while. We heard clucking in the distance, and then a couple of chickens came strolling around the corner, heads bobbing. I thought again what I’d been thinking all morning: what a pain in the ass.

  “I’d never been on that side of the contamination line. You? Once when I was in grade school the science class a year ahead of mine rode through on a school bus without stopping but some parents objected and it never happened again. If the place had been easier to get to, more of us might have wandered in to see if we’d come out as werewolves. But by the time we could drive we had girls on our minds and I had a stepfather to fight with. Even with a car it was an hour and a half away.

  “I don’t know what I expected it to look like—burnt out like napalm Vietnam movies? My father was a vet. But it looked like nothing. The trees and grasses on one side of the fence looked as boring as on the other. They say it’s sunk into the earth and air, invisible. A few lungfuls won’t grow you a fifth limb, but don’t touch anything. I didn’t like being there even an hour. ‘Man, this is one creepy place,’ I said. ‘Come on, Fred.’

  “Then Brad said, ‘Whoa, there’s one on the roof,’ and I thought he meant a chicken but I squinted and there was a woman, hands on her hips, her dress rippling like a goddamn superhero. Like her plan was to hold us off from taking her chickens. I was like, Lady, you think I’m going to have a face-off over who gets the chickens? I got kids at home. You take the chickens.

  “Hey, I’ll have another. Thanks.

  “These animal extremists, I’m telling you, they are something else. You ever see the videos they put on YouTube? They look truly scary running through the dark, carrying crowbars and chain saws. Machetes. Ski masks over their faces. They’re scaling fences and kicking open doors and bashing in equipment. All this, and then at the end they reach into a cage that they just violently pounded the lock off of, and they pick up a little bunny or a puppy and cradle it, pet it between the ears with a thick black glove, give it a kiss through the ski mask. They have got to be criminally insane. I can’t think of any other explanation.

  “You know, I’ve had worse assignments—you get dose deaths, you get kids that a dad broke their collarbone. You sign on for it all. From my angle, the sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t see it that well, but I did see her go down.”

  ALL THAT NIGHT only a single human was injured, and she wasn’t injured that night but the next day, after all the trucks had been found, and investigators were in handcuffs all over the state and some beyond the state’s borders, and most of the hens were melting at the church in accordance with God’s plan, and Rob Jr. had his head in one hand and with the other was holding his phone to his ear, shouting, while pacing outside the tiny police station of Al, Iowa, and would let up only when someone tapped his shoulder and wore that grim Annabelle expression that all his adult life told him to stop whatever he was doing.

  Meanwhile, Jonathan Jarman Jr. was on the highway, going one mile under the speed limit (professionals all), heading back to Joy and the two little girls.

  And Dill was waving the final few chickens from the barn, sweeping them out with his hands and feet, collecting the ones in the corners and letting them flap from his arms out back, and watching them head across the field for the forest like baby turtles head for water when they push out of the sand. He wasn’t paying attention to where Annabelle was because he knew his job and did it well.

  Zee had been pulled over and arrested with the others in the truck. He was jostled into the station, lined up along the wall with a hundred more like him (the four cells were filled to capacity). He found himself seated next to that girl, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He thought, My God, my elbow is touching the woman I’ll spend my life with, though I’ll have to wait until I get out of prison to talk her into it.

  He exhaled slowly. Please let me get this right, he prayed. He smiled at her in what he hoped was a winning way. “Fucking Annabelle,” he said. “This has to be her worst idea yet.”

  The beautiful girl scowled.

  SURPRISINGLY, none of the investigators went to prison, only the auditors. This was partly due to a team of defense lawyers assigned to the investigators pro bono by the Humane Society of the United States, and partly due to the fact that the Green family had no intention of sending the only daughter in the family to prison—only men as far as the eye could see across the various cousins and uncles, except for Annabelle (and of course the newest addition, Robbie’s chickadee)—especially since Annabelle was in a coma and might never wake. But they had to press charges against someone. They needed the insurance money. They had loan payments, contracts, employee paychecks due.

  Robbie’s incompetent cousin, Jack, took charge. He gathered the dazed family into the hospital cafeteria late that night after Annabelle’s fall through the rotting roof, and devised a plan that somehow worked. The family refused to press charges against the investigators, claiming after the fact that the evacuation was “services rendered” and that it had been their very own Happy Green Family Farm idea. They insisted they had planned to retire the farm, since Farmer Green Sr. could no longer run it and farming had changed beyond all recognition, didn’t contain the attractions it once had and couldn’t be profitable without five times the hens they’d had. A tiny farm like theirs couldn’t compete. They had asked the investigators to empty the barns, they said, and bring the hens to the sanctuaries. Only the investigator who had set fire to the oldest barn had acted against their wishes, and violated fire code and state regulations besides. Dill, whom they’d always hated and blamed for Annabelle’s radicalism, was the arsonist, they claimed, and they wanted to press charges. In addition Happy Green Family Farm sued the Al, Iowa, Police Department for a dozen allegations from wrongful injury to illegal destruction of property in the seizing and impounding and destroying of nine hundred thousand units of company property. Indeed they did eventually receive a sizable settlement for God’s melted birds, due in part to a video Jack put together of the hundreds of thousands of chickens, dead and piled on the church’s blacktop. The town’s prosecutor was left scrambling for charges to bring against the investigators and wound up with watery ones like resisting arrest, driving a category D vehicle without a proper license, or littering. Most got probation, community service, and fines. For months teams of current and former investigators and sanctuary workers could be seen along the roadsides, picking up garbage and putting it into gray plastic bags, or on their hands and knees weeding the woody public land on the median strip, or painting lines in the parking lot in front of the courthouse. Only Dill was charged with arson, for which he spent twenty-nine days in jail awaiting a hearing, after which the charges were dropped: the mismatched fingerprints on the gas can and equipment shed, his long public record of nonviolence and animal protection, t
he many witness statements, and his excellent attorney all helped. Luckily for the Green family the insurance did not require a conviction for payment, only a charge.

  Cleveland and Janey did not fare as well. Their employer confiscated Cleveland’s company BlackBerry, discovered the photos and videos of the past several months, brought every charge they could think of against them—violation of the ag-gag law, breaking and entering, burglary, false representation. Janey received a five-year sentence, out after two, and Cleveland ten years, out after four and a half.

  WHAT ELSE WAS EXPECTED OF HIM? he’d like to know.

  He’d shown up in court in his suit and tie. He’d worn a suit and tie to the prison every Sunday, and let that punk have Saturday. He wore a suit to each parole visit—he’d insisted on accompanying her. There were an awful lot of suits and ties involved in all this. He wore a suit to meet the punk’s family, and a brand-new one to her wedding, and another to the bank when he cosigned on the mortgage. He wore one to the hospital when she was giving birth, and one to the funeral. He’d done it, he’d been a father, not that he got any credit.

  Now after all that, they were right back where they started, she shut up in her room like a fifteen-year-old. And she wouldn’t eat the food he set out for her. Not even her old favorites.

  Okay, he shouldn’t have put out the chicken. That was on him. He’d set it down in front of her door in its takeout container, along with a diet pop—truly used to be what she liked—knocked, and went down the hall to the sofa. He leaned back, could see the box and drink sitting on the floor. He saw the door open a little and the items disappear. About a minute later he heard the door slam open, saw the box fly out of the room and hit the wall.

  Well, goddamn it! How was he supposed to know what she ate? And why did she have to throw it at the wall?

  Was he going to have to clean up every goddamn mess her mother left behind? He never asked to be a father. She’d come looking for him and hadn’t given him one minute’s peace. “You have to eat!” he yelled. No answer. He called Cleveland and left a message. “She’s starving to death, for all you care!” He stormed down the hallway, stood outside her room. “Now I’ve had about enough of this, young lady. You come out here and clean this up!”

  “Go to hell!” she screamed back.

  He was so mad he stomped all over the chicken.

  He swore all the way to the supermarket. He picked out potato chips, pretzels, and miniature carrots in a bag. He swore all the way back to the apartment. He stepped gingerly around the smashed chicken, placed the paper bag by her door. He put down one of his jugs of water, too, so the goddamn girl wouldn’t die. He knocked. Nothing. “Aren’t you going to see what I brought?”

  “Go away!” she screamed.

  “There’s carrots!” he bellowed. He stomped down the hallway and banged himself onto the sofa. When he leaned back, the bag and jug were gone. A little while later he brought a trash bag and sponge over and cleaned up the mess.

  A couple days later her husband showed up and he thought he was saved but then the worthless crazy-haired hoodlum joined her in her room, coming out only to pee and stand for a minute gangly-armed in the hallway.

  Now he would feed them both. Cleveland said Taco Bell, which happened to be fourteen miles away, but fine. He would manage.

  “I’M SAYING IT, JANEY.”

  Janey had her hands over her face.

  “It’s been three months.”

  “Don’t,” said Janey.

  It wasn’t Zee or her father who eventually talked her out of the bedroom. For all Zee’s mooning and her father’s shouting it was Cleveland who impatiently spoke common sense. “I’m saying it. You’ll have another one.” Cleveland pulled Janey’s hands away from her face. “The heart lives on whether you want it to or not.”

  Janey didn’t remember her mother ever saying that, but she knew from hard experience that it was true. So she cried in rage and sorrow but she left the room at last. And Cleveland was right. They named her Olive.

  Olive had quite a collection of people raising her—an odd grouping of former investigators, her tías, Zee’s six sisters, and their families, and Janey’s grumpy father.

  But Cleveland took charge of Olive every Wednesday afternoon, first playing with her on the floor, later picking her up after school. Cleveland bravely took her to do the things Olive wanted to do, even the ones Cleveland didn’t like. They identified insects on cropland, played chess at the homeless shelter, busked the town streets with her violin (the proceeds went to AR organizations). She did get Olive to make a papier-mâché replica of the solar system and they turned the garage into a universe of star systems and comets.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time your grandmother and I formed a band?” Cleveland would say. “I played the triangle …” Janey would listen from her office.

  “Stand up straight, Olive,” Janey heard her say. “We do not foment revolution by slouching.”

  Janey had not lived the life of the girl in New York. She had chosen to go to Iowa, chosen to stay, chosen to follow Cleveland into the barns, to join Zee after prison, to come out of the dark bedroom and into the light, to try, try again. She had authored her life. There was a better life than the one she lost and it was the one where she chooses.

  BUT THERE WOULD BE MORE GRIEFS for Janey, there always are. One day, when her father was old, she and Zee would take him to Florida. Olive would be away at college. His Alzheimer’s would be fairly advanced by then, more so than when Janey had booked the trip two months before. She’d imagined him sitting on sand in the sunshine, waves dashing by, him ducking and complaining as Janey ran up from the water and shook drops on him, laughing. Instead, every unfamiliar sensation brought him discomfort and fear. He couldn’t recall anything she said, even five minutes later. He wouldn’t come out of his room except to eat.

  The last day of the trip found them waiting at the airport. Her giant father was rigid with panic, not knowing where he was or with whom, not knowing how he’d get home, and Janey’s pain was so great, she couldn’t look at him. It was Zee who, as usual, was so good with him. Zee sat beside him and repeated over and over in a low voice near her father’s ear, “We’re on a holiday in Florida. Your daughter is with us. We’re going home, waiting for the plane. The flight information is right there on that screen. Flight 632, see it? Departing at eleven fifteen. We’ve got forty minutes to board,” while her father’s cloudy eyes fixed on the screen. Each time his lips began to move and sounds to emerge, Zee would quiet him with the mantra once again. “We’re on a holiday. We’ve had a wonderful time. Your daughter is here. See, you can read the flight information right there, flight 632 …” Janey bit her lip because, despite what she had predicted her first night in her father’s home, she had learned how to love him.

  Bonnie K—, Iowa State Park Ranger

  Some died. You’d walk through the forest and see white puffs lying on the ground, like pillows turned inside out. A pile under a tree. A bundle in the bushes. They’d all gotten on top of one another and smothered. But then I’d see a whole group poking up a path, pecking at the roots, and another dozen gathered under a tree, tossing dirt around. Frankly, I was surprised so many of them were still alive.

  But if you think about it, the little ladies are underrated. These hens have been bred through so many generations—a sort of sped-up evolution—that they’ve become genetically strange and powerful animals, designed to live through rather bizarre trials. I read about it all online. They have to be able to just stand there in those cages for months and months, their lungs filling with dander. They have to be able to take the onslaught of massive doses of inoculations, to endure sensory overloads and deprivations, clown-car crowding, the vicious pecks of their cell mates. They have to be resistant to disease. They have to tolerate violence, noise, panic, and not drop dead of heart stress (as many do, apparently). These birds are practically radioactive, if you understand what I mean. Superbirds in some respects.
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  So yeah, I knew they were there. I saw them alive and dead out my window. But I didn’t do a thing. I told no one they were here, I ignored them. I lied.

  I figured, on the one hand, you’ve got their lack of practice at finding food. They had that going against them. On the other, you’ve got that they’ve been bred to fast through those low-calorie molts. If they could smell, they’d find the river that twists through here, banks of bugs, gushing water.

  On the first hand, you’ve got their lack of practice at fleeing predators. Chickens are oblong balls of feather and flesh, waterlogged-looking compared to most birds. Can barely climb or fight, can fly only a few feet. Are best at walking or flapping uselessly, windmilling on the ground. But, going for them, you’ve got that this forest was overhunted for so long, an army of gunmen tramping through, dropping any warm- or cold-blooded creature in its tracks, that, save for an occasional squirrel and a smattering of swallows, these trees were shaken empty of animals decades ago. Besides, you’d be surprised how fast instincts kick in. They were hopping short awkward flights into the trees within days. They were sleeping in the branches.

  Yeah, I’d say it was a closer call than you might at first guess. I was curious about how it would play out.

  Against them, you’ve got humans. No animal stands a chance against us. We’ll kill anything alive, right where it’s standing, wherever and whatever it is, and we’ll have plenty of excuses for it.

  Against them, you’ve got that any rangers coming through here, not to mention calm citizens taking their state park constitutionals, were going to notice tens of thousands of chickens. Humans are a damn unobservant, cross-eyed crew, but that many hens were not going to slip by.

  But, in their favor, you’ve got the fine coincidence that this state park’s boundary happened to run up against a forty-square-mile region that, due to a certain chemical waste incident, was declared uninhabitable three decades ago, cordoned off for the next thousand years. And even though this patch of forest itself supposedly fell outside the contaminated region (whether it did or didn’t is a matter of debate), no one wanted to buy it or even get near it, which is how it became a state park, and how I wound up here and understood with a grim finality that my supervisors despised me. To see a visitor here was rare.