The Chicken Dance

by Jacques Couvillon

  I told her, “They’re nice,” and then my mother walked back into the kitchen and I went into my room. I sat on my bed and stared out at the chicken yard for a few minutes so I could calm down. I realized that the only way I could find out what Mr. Munson wanted was to tell my mother that he called and then try to listen to her when she called him back. So I took a few deep breaths and then walked into the living room where my mother was watching television.

  “Mr. Munson called,” I said.

  She looked at me and her eyes got big, and then it looked like her face turned as white as her shirt. She blinked and then asked, “What did he want?”

  I told her, “He just wants you to call him,” and she stood up and asked, “Is that all he said?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “He left a number for you.”

  My mother moved her feet back and forth real quick like she was dancing and then asked, “Where’s the number?”

  I pointed and said, “It’s on a piece of paper by the phone.”

  My mother walked real fast to the phone and picked up the piece of paper and started dialing the number. She stopped dialing and hung up the phone and then told me, “Listen, I need to make a very private and important phone call, so I need you to get out of the house right now.”

  I said, “Yes, ma’am,” and walked out the front door without saying anything else. Then I had an idea and walked around to the side door that went into the kitchen. I opened it slowly, walked in, slid into the pantry, and then pushed the door open a little. That’s when I heard my mother shout, “It’s me! Mr. Munson called.”

  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then she said, “I don’t know. He just left a number for us to call.”

  Although I didn’t know for sure, I had a feeling she was talking to my father. Whoever it was, she read Mr. Munson’s telephone number to them, and then she was quiet for a few seconds, and then she asked, “What? I don’t know. He just told me that Mr. Munson called. I doubt seriously that he told him what it was about.”

  My mother told the person on the other line to call her as soon as he or she found out what Mr. Munson wanted, and then she hung up the phone. I stayed in the pantry since I had a feeling that the person she’d told to call her back would call in a few minutes. I was right, because about five minutes later the phone rang and I heard my mother ask, “What did he say?” and then something about not believing something and, “Oh my god! Tomorrow?” and then she said, “Okay, I’ll start packing.”

  My mother hung up the phone and then yelled, “Don!”

  I walked out of the pantry and then out the kitchen door and ran around to the front of the house and through the front door and said, “Yes, ma’am?”

  My mother looked at me for a couple of seconds, and then said, “Your father and I are going to New Orleans tomorrow. You’re going to be staying with a babysitter.”

  I smiled because I thought they were going to New Orleans to pick up Stanley and my mother asked, “Why are you smiling?”

  “Um,” I said. “Because I like going to the babysitter.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, and then walked out of the living room.

  I went out to the chicken yard and started collecting eggs and asked Stanley if Mr. Munson had found him. He told me, “Yes, and I’m going to be back home either tomorrow or the next day and we’re going to share your bedroom and go to school together and everyone is going to be jealous of us because we’re twins.”

  I couldn’t believe that in a couple of days my brother, Stanley, would be helping me collect the eggs for real and not just in my imagination. I pictured us sitting on the sofa together eating our TV dinners side by side, while my mother and father asked us how our day was. I was about to imagine what our birthday parties would be like and if there’d be Chinese clowns, when I heard a car in our driveway.

  I looked in our front yard, and I saw my father get out of his car and almost run toward the house. I figured he was going to tell my mother about Stanley, so I went into the house through the kitchen door and got in the pantry again, just in time to hear my mother say, “So tell me what he said.”

  My father told her, “He said he thinks he may have found her, but he wants us to come and see for ourselves.”

  “Where?” my mother asked. “Where did he see her?”

  “I told you on the phone, he didn’t want to tell me. He wanted to wait until we met him in person.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” my mother said, “Why couldn’t he have just told you? Why does he have to be that way?”

  “I don’t know, Janice!” my father said real loud, and my mother yelled back at him, “Don’t snap at me!”

  I thought that they were going to start fighting, but then I heard my father say, “I’m sorry. It’s just kind of hard to believe that it’s true, and I’m scared we’re going to be let down.”

  “I don’t know, Dick,” my mother said. “I think this could be it. I think we’ve finally found her.”

  “There’s another thing,” my father said. “Mr. Munson wants us to bring him. He said it might keep her from running.”

  My mother asked, “Are you serious? I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” my father answered. “I think we should sleep on it,” and then my mother said, “Oh my god. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”

  I heard my mother’s shoes tap on the floor like she was running somewhere. When I was sure she wasn’t coming toward the kitchen, I walked out of the pantry and out the side door into the yard. I walked back to the coop so I could think about what I’d heard them say. I didn’t understand why they kept saying “her.”

  “He thinks he may have found ‘her.’”

  “I think we’ve finally found ‘her.’”

  “Mr. Munson wants us to bring ‘him.’” He said it might keep ‘her’ from running.”

  I didn’t know who “her” was, and I was really confused. I thought that I might be the “him” that Mr. Munson wanted them to bring. But then I started thinking that maybe the “her” was Stanley and that my twin brother was really a twin sister. It just didn’t make sense to me because I’d never heard of a girl named Stanley. So I asked Stanley, “Are you a girl?” and he said, “Don, I’m in your head. I can’t answer that.”

  That night during dinner, my parents didn’t tell me anything about why they were going to New Orleans. They acted real strange, though. Like they talked during the TV shows and then didn’t say anything during the commercials. My mother laughed out loud a few times and then all of a sudden she started crying. My father even said something, and he never talked during dinner. He said, “Don’t you think the Fonz was a little old to be dating all those high school girls?”

  Happy Days wasn’t even on when he said that.

  Anyway, all that night I couldn’t sleep because I thought about everything that had happened and everything that I knew. It didn’t make any sense to me and I think I got even more confused. I realized that I had to either listen to my parents some more or ask them what was going on.

  So the next morning, I lay in my bed until I heard my parents’ footsteps, and then I got dressed and walked toward the kitchen. It was Easter morning and so I stopped in the living room and looked for a basket with colored eggs and chocolate bunnies. There wasn’t one. There never was one, but I always checked. I’d heard kids at school talk about getting baskets from the Easter Bunny. I had figured out that he wasn’t real, but I’d always hoped that there would be a basket of candy waiting for me on Easter morning.

  Since there wasn’t a basket, I went into the kitchen. My father was sitting at the table eating waffles, and my mother was pouring herself a cup of coffee. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and stared at them until my mother said, “Come and eat your breakfast, Don. Remember that your father and I are leaving today for New Orleans. You’re going to stay with a babysitter for a couple of days until we get back.”

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bsp; I didn’t move. I knew they weren’t going to tell me anything and I really wanted to know what was going on. So I closed my eyes and said real fast, “I know about Mr. Munson. I know that he’s a private detective and that you hired him to find Stanley, my twin who was kidnapped when we were at a picnic and Mother picked up a Frisbee and threw it.”

  My parents asked, “What?” at the same time and I opened my eyes and told them, “I know about Stanley, and I want to go to New Orleans to get her.”

  My mother said, “Don, you’re out of your mind. What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah,” my father said. “What are you talking about?”

  I took a couple of steps toward them and said, “I saw the bills from Mr. Munson and I heard both of you talking and that’s the only way to explain why there’s a birth certificate for someone who was born on the same day as me.”

  My mother stood up from the table and screamed, “You were listening to us? How dare you spy on us!”

  I backed away from her because she looked really mad and her face was red and I was kind of scared that she would spank me.

  My father stood up and said, “Janice, calm down.” Then he pulled a chair out from the table and said, “Come here and sit down, Don. We have to tell you something.”

  I didn’t move and my father said, “Okay, stand if you want. We’re not going to New Orleans to pick up your twin brother, Stanley, because you don’t have a twin named Stanley. Like I told you, you’re Stanley.”

  He looked down at the ground and then back at me and said, “We’re going to New Orleans to pick up your sister, Dawn.”

  Nineteen

  Our hotel room in New Orleans was in the French Quarter and it had two windows and from them I could see Bourbon Street and a place called Bourbon’s Broadway. On top of its door, there was a pair of plastic woman’s legs popping in and out of a curtain, which I thought was kind of weird but I also thought New Orleans was kind of weird. There were people running and dancing and singing in the middle of the street. Nothing like that ever happened in Horse Island, so I guess that’s why I thought it was weird.

  Anyway, after my father had told me that Dawn was alive, I felt weak, like I’d been standing out in the sun all day and hadn’t drunk any water. I sat down on a kitchen chair and stared at the ground.

  “Are you okay?” my father asked.

  “She’s alive?” I asked.

  “Yes, Don,” he told me. “She’s alive. And there’s something else we have to tell you.”

  “No, there’s not,” my mother said. “She’s alive and we’re going to get her. That’s all he needs to know.”

  “But how?” I asked. “I thought she was dead.”

  I looked up at my father and he put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped a little.

  “It’s okay, Don,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  “Look,” my mother said. “We don’t have time to get into this today. We’ll explain when we get back.”

  “No,” my father said. “We’ll explain in the car. He’s coming with us.”

  My mother crossed her arms and said, “No, he’s not.”

  Then my father crossed his arms and said, “Yes, he is.”

  My mother jerked her head back and made this surprised-looking face. It was the same face she’d made when this man fixed our air conditioner and told her that she would have to pay him in cash and not in eggs.

  “Well, I guess my opinion doesn’t count,” she said.

  “No. No, it doesn’t,” my father said back.

  My mother made the same surprised-looking face and then ran out of the kitchen crying. Then my father told me to go and pack some clothes.

  A lot of stuff was going on in my head just then. I was excited about going to New Orleans because I’d never been and I’d heard kids at school talking about how cool it was. I was also kind of excited about meeting Dawn. But then I was a little nervous about leaving my chickens. Leon wasn’t talking to me so I couldn’t ask him to take care of them. The only person I could think of to take care of my chickens was Mr. Chandler. So I called him and asked him if he could feed them and pick up the eggs and bring them to Mr. Bufford. He told me, “Of course, my boy. I’d do anything for the smartest chicken guy I’ve ever met.”

  An hour later my parents and I were in our car driving to New Orleans. My mother had stopped crying by this time but wasn’t talking. Neither was my father. He just drove while my mother stared at herself in a pocket mirror. Then my mother pulled a tube of lipstick out of her purse and said, “Okay, Don. Here’s the truth about your sister, Dawn. She didn’t die. She was kidnapped.”

  My father turned and looked at her the way he did when she spoke during his favorite television shows. My mother looked back at him, tilted her head and smiled and put on some lipstick.

  Then she told me, “You see, the spring break when Dawn was fifteen years old, she went to visit your father’s blind mother, who was living with a nurse in Texarkana, Texas.”

  “But I thought you told me that his parents were eaten by sharks?” I asked.

  “Oh,” my mother said. “I told you that because they hated me so I hated them back.”

  She looked at herself in her mirror again and rubbed her lips together.

  Then my father said, “My father died of a heart attack before you were born and my mother died of cancer a few months after you were born.”

  “I’m telling the story, Dick,” my mother said while she pulled a nail file out of her purse.

  Then she said, “Dawn wanted to stay the week in Texarkana because she didn’t think your grandmother would live much longer. Dick, slow down. You’re going too fast. I’m filing my nails. Do you want me to stab myself?”

  My father turned and looked at my mother and then tilted his head and smiled the way she had done to him a couple of minutes before.

  “Because of the cancer?” I asked.

  “Who is telling this story, Don?” my mother asked. “Yes, she died because of the cancer. Now you’re going too slow, Dick. We’ll never get there at this rate. Where was I? Yes, so when we went to pick her up, she wasn’t there because someone had kidnapped her.”

  My mother said they hired Mr. Munson to find her. He was a private detective from Texarkana who looked for Dawn for a year. My father started missing work and spent a lot of money on Mr. Munson. My father got fired because of all the work he’d missed. He didn’t have a job for almost a year and my parents got into debt and they lost their house in Shreveport. That’s why they had to move to Horse Island and live in Uncle Sam’s house, which my father inherited around the same time. They didn’t think they’d ever see Dawn again until Mr. Munson called.

  I was kind of scared about Dawn coming back because my mother always talked about how good my sister was at dancing and how she could hold one leg in the air and spin a baton with her free hand. But I thought it would be kind of nice if Dawn could come to chicken-judging contests with me and dance for everyone and I could shout out, “That’s my sister!” I even wondered what it would be like if we became a brother-and-sister act like Donny and Marie Osmond, and went to parish fairs, and while I was winning chicken-judging contests, she’d be winning dance contests, and then we’d put my ribbons and her trophies on the bookcase in our living room.

  I was getting real excited about having a sister, but then I got a little sad because that meant that I didn’t really have a twin brother named Stanley because I was Stanley. I wondered if maybe my parents had lied to me about Stanley and so I decided that maybe there really was a Stanley, and because I liked talking to him and being friends with him, I would keep on doing it.

  So when I was in New Orleans looking out our hotel window, I asked him, “Do you think she will like me?”

  “I’m sure she will, buddy,” he told me. “You’re a pretty cool kid.”

  Then my father came and stood next to me and stared out the window. I don’t know what he was looking at. Maybe he was looking at the legs poppi
ng out of the door above Bourbon’s Broadway or maybe he was looking at this man selling hotdogs out of a cart that looked like a hotdog. But he only looked outside for a couple of minutes and then he looked at me and put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed it a little. I didn’t know what to do but kind of figured that maybe I should do something back. So I put my hand on his leg. When I did that, my father winked. I had never seen him wink and so I thought maybe he’d gotten something in his eye. It was making me nervous and so I sneezed and then my father looked back out the window. We must have stayed there for like ten minutes just staring at the people in the street. Then, all of a sudden, all of the people who were walking on the street kind of disappeared. So my father and I just stood there all alone in the quiet staring at nothing for like ten seconds until someone knocked on the door.

  We both turned and looked. I don’t know what my father was thinking, but I was wondering if it was Dawn with a baton in her mouth. And so I followed my father when he walked over to the door and opened it because I really wanted to see her.

  “Mr. Munson,” he said. “I thought we were going to meet you at the restaurant.”

  My mother walked out of the bathroom and Mr. Munson said, “Hello, Mrs. Schmidt. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Where’s my daughter?” my mother asked.

  Mr. Munson was about my father’s age. He was kind of tall and had brown hair and blue eyes like the superheroes on all the cartoons I watched. He was wearing jeans and a navy-and-red-plaid shirt. I was kind of surprised by his clothes, because all the detectives I’d seen on television wore dark suits, trench coats, and hats. Well, except for Starsky and Hutch, but they weren’t regular detectives.

  Anyway, Mr. Munson bent down and looked me in the eyes and said, “Hello, young man. You must be Don.”

  He stuck his hand out and I stood still and stared at him until my mother said, “Don, he wants to shake your hand. Stop being so weird and shake his hand.”

  I wasn’t used to people putting their hands out to shake mine so I didn’t know what to say. But then I remembered something that I’d heard Leon tell my father, so I put my hand out and said, “Nice to meet you.”