The Chicken Dance

  That’s when my mother ran down to the street and screamed, “Where is she? Where’s Dawn?”

  Mr. Munson grabbed my parents by their arms and then walked a little ways up the street. I could hear him say something about a back door, and then he made a hand motion like someone would give to a dog to stay, and then he walked off.

  My parents stood in the street staring at the front door of Bourbon’s Broadway for over an hour. They spoke a little to each other, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. After a while, I got bored and started wondering what Mr. Munson was doing. I guessed that he had gone to look for a back door on another street. It had been over an hour since he’d left my parents and I was beginning to wonder if he needed something to drink or just someone to talk to. It made me a little sad to think that he was alone and thirsty, so I decided that I should go and find him.

  I figured my parents would probably be out on the street for a couple more hours and that I could see Mr. Munson and get back to the room before they did. So I grabbed the extra room key and a map and went through the back door of the hotel to a street named Dauphine.

  I looked at the map and then headed over to the street behind Bourbon, which was Royal and where I figured the back door of the club would be. When I got there, I was a little surprised because the street was so different from Bourbon. There weren’t any bars or restaurants, and there weren’t that many people walking around.

  I saw Mr. Munson walking back and forth, smoking a cigarette, but I didn’t walk up to him. Instead, I stood at the end of the street behind a big trash can and watched him. After a few minutes, a door opened and a girl walked out. It was an Oriental girl and I figured she was probably the same one my father had talked about. Mr. Munson started talking to her, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying and after only a couple of minutes, the girl walked away from him and toward me.

  Mr. Munson threw down his cigarette and walked in the opposite direction and I waited behind the trash can to get a closer look at the girl. She was wearing high heels, jeans, and a black tank top, and when she passed by the trash can, she turned her head and saw me and said, “Oh my god. What are you doing out here at this time of night? It’s, like, one in the morning.”

  I didn’t say anything and just looked at her.

  Then she asked me, “Did the cat get your tongue? Are you lost?”

  “Dawn’s my sister,” I said.

  “What?” she asked, and I told her, “I mean, Liza Pinelli is my sister.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Well, I hate to tell you this, but Liza left. Did she know you were here?”

  I shook my head and then she said, “Well, she left because some crazy man tried to attack her tonight.”

  At first I wondered why she didn’t speak with an accent like the Oriental people on TV and then I began to realize that she would tell me whatever I wanted to know because I was a kid and she didn’t know that the crazy man was my father.

  So I asked her, “Do you know where Liza is?”

  The girl kind of frowned and said, “I know where she lives, but the thing is, she snuck out of the theater about an hour ago and said she needed to get out of town right away. I doubt she’s still in New Orleans. She said she had some friends in Baton Rouge who she was going to stay with for a while. She used to live there, you know. I think she worked at Bill’s Broadway. It’s the same guy who owns Bourbon’s Broadway. His name is Bill.”

  Then the girl made a funny face and said, “Oh, you’re so cute. What’s your name?”

  I told her “Don” and she said, “Nice to meet you, Don. I’m Stephanie. You know, Don, it isn’t safe to be running around New Orleans this time of night. Where are you staying?”

  I pointed down the street and said, “At a hotel around the corner.”

  She grabbed my hand and said, “Let me walk you there.”

  When we got to the back door of the hotel I asked her, “Why don’t you talk like the Oriental girls on television?”

  She smiled and said, “First of all, young man, food and rugs are Oriental. People are Asian. Second of all, I’m from Hawaii.”

  Twenty-Two

  My parents and I stayed in New Orleans for a couple more days so they could look for Dawn. Mr. Munson had to go back to Texarkana but said he had some detective friends in New Orleans and that he’d ask them to keep an eye out for Dawn. My father didn’t go back to Bourbon’s Broadway because they wouldn’t let him in. So instead, he walked or drove around the city while my mother watched the back door of Bourbon’s Broadway and I watched the front.

  I didn’t tell my parents about meeting Stephanie, the Hawaiian girl, because I thought they might be mad at me for leaving the hotel room. And even though I thought Stephanie was telling the truth and Dawn had left New Orleans, I guess part of me wanted her to still be there and I thought that if we looked for her, she would still be there and that we’d find her.

  But we didn’t find Dawn and so we packed up the car and drove back to Horse Island and on the car ride is when my mother stabbed me. You see, she was sitting in the front seat and filing her nails and she asked me to get some nail polish out of her bag in the backseat. I leaned forward and asked, “Which bag is it in?”

  My mother said, “In the makeup case.”

  Then she pointed at it with the nail file and when she did, she hit me in the face.

  I yelled, “Ow!” and then grabbed my face and then both my parents looked back at me.

  “What’s wrong?” my father asked and so I told him, “Mother stuck me with the nail file.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said.

  Then my father asked, “Are you okay, Don?” and I told him, “I guess so.”

  Then my mother said, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  My father didn’t answer her or even look at her. Instead he drove into the parking lot of a convenience store.

  “What are you doing?” my mother asked him.

  “You just stabbed Don,” he said. “I’m stopping so I can see if he’s okay.”

  “Stop saying that,” she said. “I didn’t stab him!”

  My father turned and looked at me and said, “Let me see. Move your hand.”

  So I moved my hand and my father said, “It looks like she broke some skin.”

  “Stop saying that!” my mother yelled. “Stop saying that I hurt him!”

  My father and I both jumped back a little because she’d yelled really loud. We looked at her for a couple of seconds and then my father said, “Okay. But would you mind running into the store to see if they have some bandages and hydrogen peroxide?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Dick,” my mother told him. “I think you’re making too much of this. It’s just a scratch. Kids get scratches all the time. It’s what they do. You don’t see other parents rushing them to emergency rooms.”

  “Janice!” my father said. “Please! I’m not in the mood.”

  My mother stared at my father for a couple of seconds and then made a fist with the nail file in it. She picked it up real slow and then screamed, “Fine!”

  She got out of the car and slammed the door and walked into the store. Then my father turned and looked at me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “It’s not your fault.”

  My father didn’t say anything. He just stared at me for, like, ten seconds and then turned back around and looked out the front window. Then he asked, “So how are your chickens?”

  My father never asked me about the chickens and so it took a couple of seconds before I knew what he was asking. At first I thought he said, “How are your children?” but then I thought that wouldn’t make sense at all. And even though it didn’t make sense to me that he was asking me how my chickens were doing, it made a lot more sense than him asking me how my children were doing. So I was about to tell him all kinds of stuff about my chickens, but then my mother got back in the car.

  She turned around and looked at me and sa
id, “I’m sorry I hurt you, Don. But I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Then she turned back around and looked out of the window and said, “I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry I forgot your birthday.”

  My father looked at her for a couple of seconds like he didn’t know who she was. Then she looked at him and asked, “Why are you staring at me?”

  “Sorry,” my father said.

  Then he took the bag from my mother, opened it up, and pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, some cotton balls, and a bandage and told me to lean forward. He dipped a cotton ball in some hydrogen peroxide and then wiped the cut on my face with it.

  “Does it sting?” he asked me.

  “Just a little,” I told him.

  He smiled at me and then put a bandage on the cut. When he was finished, he rubbed the top of my head and turned around real fast. Then he started up the car and turned back onto the road.

  I thought that both my parents were acting really weird, but I figured it was because they were worried about Dawn. I couldn’t believe that my mother told me she was sorry that she forgot my birthday. She never really apologized for anything and if she did, it never sounded like she meant it. But I really think she did mean it that time. I don’t know why my father asked me about my chickens. He never asked me about them. I wondered if my parents were going to say other weird stuff to me on the way home. But they didn’t. They didn’t talk at all the whole way home and that was almost two hours!

  When we did get home, they didn’t talk, either. They just unloaded the car and went into the house. My father went to the living room and turned on the TV and my mother went into her room.

  Since they weren’t going to talk and I missed my chickens, I went out to the yard to see them. Before I even walked through the gate, I felt like smiling and talking and I wanted to pick one of them up and squeeze it real tight. But not too tight because that might have killed it or hurt its wings.

  Anyway, when I walked through the gate, most of the chickens didn’t move. They just pecked at the ground or sat and stared straight ahead. KC was the only one that noticed me and she ran right up to me and danced around.

  I asked her, “Did you miss me?”

  She didn’t say anything, but I imagined that she said, “Yes, my friend. I did!”

  I told her and Stanley everything that happened and how we found Dawn and then lost her and that she’d gone to Baton Rouge and that my mother had stabbed me and my father had asked me about the chickens.

  “I’m sorry you lost Dawn,” Stanley told me. “But I’m still here.”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “You’re still here. And so are the chickens.”

  But even though they were still there, I kind of wanted Dawn to be there too because she was a real person and she could speak back to me and I wouldn’t have to make up what she said to me. My parents were real people but they had never really spoken to me that much, and after the trip to New Orleans, they spoke even less.

  That evening, when I went into the house for dinner, there was a note on the table from my mother. It said, “Don, choose whatever TV dinner you want and heat it up. I’m eating in my room tonight and your father isn’t hungry.”

  I thought the note was kind of weird for a few reasons. One is because my mother never ate in her room. And my father was always hungry so that didn’t make any sense. But the thing that was the weirdest is that my mother had written me a note to let me know that she was in her room and that my father wasn’t hungry. She never left me notes unless she wanted me to do something or if I’d done something wrong. And those notes always had an exclamation point after my name. But this one only had a comma!

  Even though I thought that note was weird, I found another one a couple of minutes later that was even weirder. It was taped to my bedroom door and was from my father. It said, “Son, I borrowed your bicycle.”

  My father never called me “Son” and he never borrowed my bicycle. I didn’t know that either one of my parents knew how to ride a bike. I’d never seen them ride one and I didn’t know if bicycles had even been invented when they were kids.

  They must have been, though, because later that night, after I heard my father come home, I went to check on my bicycle and it wasn’t broken. I had been worried that my father might wreck my bike, but after I saw that it was okay, I got more worried that my parents were going crazy and I figured it was because of Dawn. I would be sad too if one my chickens ran away and I didn’t know where it went or why it left.

  So I was lying in bed thinking about this when it hit me. On TV when someone was kidnapped, someone else usually asked for money. But nobody had asked my parents for money. At least I didn’t think anyone had. So then I thought maybe my parents just forgot to tell me that part. But I didn’t understand why Dawn didn’t come home after she escaped from the man who kidnapped her. Then I remembered one time on The Jeffersons when Weezy got hit on the head and forgot everything. The doctor said that she had amnesia. She didn’t even know George or Florence or Mr. Bentley. I thought that maybe that had happened to Dawn and that’s why she thought Father was a crazy man.

  But then I thought that maybe Dawn wasn’t kidnapped at all. Maybe she ran away and that’s why nobody asked my parents for money and that’s why she didn’t want to see my father. I thought that maybe Dawn ran away because she didn’t like living in Shreveport or with my parents or maybe she owed some bookies a lot of money because she’d lost a big bet on horses and so she had to get out of town or they’d break both her legs. I’d seen people on TV run away because of that.

  Anyway, it was kind of driving me crazy that I didn’t know if Dawn really was kidnapped or if she’d run away. I knew I had to find out the truth or that I’d start acting crazy like my parents and leaving notes and not talking. And so I figured that the only way I could know if Dawn had run away and or was kidnapped was if I found her and asked her.

  Twenty-Three

  For the next couple of weeks after we got back from New Orleans, my parents still acted kind of weird. My father came home late at night and my mother ate dinner in her room. A lot of times I would eat dinner in front of the TV by myself, which was kind of cool because I could watch anything I wanted. But it also got kind of boring because my mother wasn’t there talking.

  Sometimes my mother wasn’t home when I’d get back from school. But she’d always leave a note and it would say something like, “Don, I’m out running an errand. Hope you had a nice day at school. If I’m not home and you get hungry, there are TV dinners in the freezer.”

  When I did see her in the house, she didn’t say much. She’d just smile at me and then make this sad-looking face and walk away. The couple of times I saw my father, he did the same thing. It was like they were both sad but they didn’t want me to know.

  I had thought and thought real hard about how to get to Baton Rouge to find Dawn, but I couldn’t think of anything. It was too far away to ride my bike and there wasn’t a bus in Horse Island that went to Baton Rouge and I couldn’t hitchhike because I saw a scary movie on TV about a girl who hitchhiked and who disappeared. I don’t know if they found her because I turned it off before it was over.

  But then one day at school, without even trying, I found a way to get to Baton Rouge. It happened when I was walking out of the building to go home and the school nurse stopped me. Her name was Nancy and we called her Nurse Nancy and she wore a white uniform like the nurses on TV.

  “Don,” she said. “Guess what!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “This year, for the first time in a long time, the 4-H club is going to Baton Rouge for the chicken-judging contest—because of you, Don. Since you know so much about chickens, we decided that we would be crazy not to go.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But I’m not in 4-H.”

  “Well,” Nurse Nancy said. “You’ll have to join.”

  “Do I need my parents’ permission to join?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “But you�
�ll need their permission to go to Baton Rouge, of course.”

  I was real excited when she told me that about the chicken-judging contest in Baton Rouge because it was a lot bigger than the one at the Dairy Festival. I figured that if I won, I’d become popular again and maybe even more popular than when I’d won the Horse Island competition. Then girls would start crying when I wouldn’t date them and boys would beat each other up to sit next to me at lunch. Then I realized the best part about going to Baton Rouge was that I could look for Dawn.

  I figured that if I found her, my parents would be so happy and maybe even have a party for me, and I could invite everyone in the class. I was sure I could find Dawn and get her to come home if I told her my plan of the two of us traveling to different parish fairs, and she could compete in the dance contests and I could judge chickens, and we’d become known all over the world as the brother and sister “Festival Dynamic Duo.”

  I was so excited about the contest and looking for Dawn that I forgot something. I didn’t know if my parents were going to let me go.

  So for the next two weeks, when I wasn’t studying for the contest, I was trying to think of a way to ask my parents. I thought about just asking them, but like I told you, since we’d come back from New Orleans, they didn’t speak that much and walked around looking really sad and tired.

  Then the Saturday before the contest, when I was out collecting eggs, my mother walked outside and up to the fence of the chicken yard.

  “Don,” she said. “Can you come with me to do the shopping at Horse Island Food and Furniture?”

  Since we’d gotten back from New Orleans, she had been going shopping by herself, so I was a little surprised that she’d asked me, but glad that she had. I figured that it meant she was starting to be happy again.

  While we were driving to Horse Island Food and Furniture, I got an idea. I decided I would ask her if I could go to the chicken-judging contest when we were in the store because she always seemed like she was happier there than when she was at home. I guess she liked shopping or something.