Hypnotizing Chickens

by Julia Watts

  “Are we feeding the chickens Pop-Tarts?” Peyton asked.

  “Now who’s the silly one?”

  The chickens swarmed around them, clucking and tilting their heads quizzically. Chrys grabbed the sack of feed and let Peyton help her scatter handfuls. The chickens pecked and tossed their heads back to swallow, making pleased little chortling noises.

  “They’re saying ‘om nom nom,’” Peyton said.

  “They are, aren’t they?” Chrys said. “You know what else they like to nom? Worms.”

  “Eew!” Peyton squealed.

  It was fun spending time with her niece, living in the immediate the way one did in the company of children. That was one of the things she liked about kids—they were so engaged in their senses that they made you engaged, too. She was glad to become the kind of aunt who walked and talked with her niece instead of the kind who just stuck the occasional present in the mail.

  As soon as they were in earshot of the pigpen, Porkchop started oinking up a storm.

  “He’s happy to see us,” Peyton said.

  “He’s happy to get food. I don’t think he cares who brings it.”

  The oinks turned into squeals as they got closer. Chrys dumped the bucket of slop into Porkchop’s trough, and he fell to, slurping and snorting. Chrys turned to leave, but Peyton said, “Let’s stay a minute and watch him eat. I think he’s funny.”

  “He is a pretty noisy eater,” Chrys said. “No one would compliment him on his table manners.”

  Peyton looked at Chrys, her eyes narrowed. “You don’t like him, do you?”

  She wasn’t a stupid kid, Chrys thought. “It’s not that I dislike him. I just don’t let myself get to know him because I know what’s going to happen to him.”

  “That’s dumb,” Peyton said. “He don’t know what’s gonna happen. It don’t bother him, so why should it bother you?”

  “I don’t know. I think you’re a better farm girl than I am.”

  Peyton picked up a stick and scratched Porkchop’s back with it. “There you go, buddy,” she said. He grunted, and his little eyes closed in ecstasy. “I ain’t a farm girl. I’m a farm princess.”

  Walking back from the pigpen, Peyton said, “Can I play with the chickens now that they’re done eating?”

  Chrys remembered something she hadn’t thought of in years. “Did your daddy ever show you how to hypnotize a chicken?”

  “What’s hippotyze?”

  “Hypnotize. It’s kind of like making somebody fall asleep except they’re not all the way asleep.”

  “Like sleepwalking? I do that sometimes.”

  “Kind of. Come on. I’ll show you.” She took Peyton’s hand, and they ran laughing toward the chicken coop.

  When she and Dustin were kids, they thought hypnotizing chickens was the height of hilarity. Once a bird was under, you could move it to a random place, dress it in doll clothes, or nestle it in a catcher’s mitt. After five minutes or so, the bird would snap out of it, act briefly disoriented, and then go about its business. As humor went, it certainly wasn’t the height of sophistication, but even now, the memories made Chrys smile.

  “Okay,” Chrys said, surveying the selection of chickens. Roosters could be difficult, so she chose a little black hen. “Let’s try it with this girl right here.”

  Peyton laughed. “That’s Sleeping Beauty!”

  “Well, that’s perfect, then.” Chrys knelt behind the hen and held her gently, pushing her head to the ground. With her other hand, she made a shushing gesture at Peyton. “Okay,” she whispered. “This is what you do.” She picked up a stick and drew a circle in the dirt surrounding the chicken. Then she drew a straight line extending from the chicken’s beak to the edge of the circle. When she let go of the hen, it stayed still on the ground, staring fixedly at the line in front of it.

  “She ain’t moving!” Peyton said.

  “She can’t move. She’s hypnotized.”

  Because Chrys had grown up in the land of country and gospel music, she’d had to play catch-up with rock ‘n’ roll once she left home. The first time she’d heard Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” had been at a party in grad school where someone was playing the Trainspotting soundtrack. She had been immediately enthralled by the opening riff and Iggy’s slurred snarl, and then when he sang the line comparing love to “hypnotizing chickens,” she had laughed out loud.

  A fellow partygoer who looked like he had answered casting call for English graduate student types said, “That is a delightful figure of speech, isn’t it?”

  Chrys answered that it wasn’t just a figure of speech, that she had done it, and then proceeded to explain to a roomful of fascinated grad students the finer points of chicken hypnosis.

  It was only now, with a broken heart which had mended just enough to stir again, that she truly saw the brilliance of Iggy’s analogy. She watched the blissed-out, dazed hen, oblivious to all outside stimuli, seeming to look ahead while still unable to see what was right in front of her. It was a perfect metaphor for love.

  After five minutes or so, the chicken started to snap out of it. She cocked her head a couple of times, shakily stood, and staggered drunkenly for a few steps before returning to chicken business as usual.

  “So that’s how you hypnotize a chicken,” Chrys said.

  Peyton applauded. “That was the best thing ever!”

  “Better than SpongeBob?”

  Peyton’s brow creased in thought. “As good as SpongeBob.”

  “I can accept that.”

  Peyton slipped her hand back into Chrys’s, and they began the walk back to the house.

  “Aunt Sissy, look!” Peyton cried.

  Chrys turned around, and there was the little black hen, following them like a puppy.

  “She liked it,” Peyton said. “She wants you to do it again!”

  * * *

  “Did she drive you crazy?” Amber asked when she came to pick up Peyton after work.

  “No, we had a good day,” Chrys said, tousling Peyton’s hair. “She helped me feed the pig and chickens, and she helped Nanny make a banana pudding. And she made some nice drawings to spruce up the refrigerator.”

  Amber smiled. “Well, you’uns is lifesavers. Hey, listen”—she looked around to make sure Nanny was nowhere in sight—“Me and Dustin’s going out tonight. I’m supposed to sing over at the Tumbleweed Lounge. Your mama’s staying with Peyton and said she’d be on call for Nanny if you wanted to come, too. I could pay you in beer for your babysitting.”

  “You don’t have to pay me anything, but I’d love to hear you sing.”

  “I’m supposed to go on at nine, so we’ll pick you up at eight, all right?”

  After Amber and Peyton left, Chrys went into the living room where Nanny was watching the six o’clock news.

  “Nothing but people on dope shooting each other,” Nanny said. “I don’t know why I even bother watching.”

  “No news is good news I guess,” Chrys said. “Is it okay if I just fix us a quick supper tonight? Spaghetti or something?”

  “That’d be fine,” Nanny said. “I’m more tired than I am hungry. I love that young’un, but she wears me out.”

  “She is a ball of energy, isn’t she?”

  “Same as her daddy was at that age.”

  Nanny drank buttermilk with her spaghetti, which struck Chrys as disgusting, but the old lady drank buttermilk or coffee with just about everything. Chrys knew Nanny had had to do some adjusting to get used to her cooking; her go-to quick meals—spaghetti with jarred marinara sauce, omelets, big salads—were all dishes Nanny had politely described as “different.” And they were different from the soup beans and cornbread and fried taters that Nanny had subsisted on all her life (though Chrys still made sure Nanny got her beans and taters at least once a week).

  “Amber invited me to go hear her sing tonight,” Chrys said, twirling her spaghetti on her fork. Nanny always cut her spaghetti into tiny, stick-like pieces.

  “I d
on’t reckon she’s singing in a church.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “It’s a shame to waste a pretty voice singing in a beer joint.”

  “Lots of great singers got their start in beer joints.”

  “Lots of great singers got their start in church, too,” Nanny said.

  Chrys had no choice but to agree with her.

  * * *

  The Tumbleweed Lounge was across the Tennessee state line. Amber was driving, as Dustin seemed to have gotten an early start on his beer drinking.

  “I wonder why it’s called the Tumbleweed Lounge,” Chrys said. “It’s not like there are any tumbleweeds in east Tennessee.”

  “Yeah, I never could figure out why people around here love western shit so much,” Dustin said. “When you go inside, it’s even worse. All these dudes wearing cowboy hats and boots, acting like they’ve been out riding the range or some shit when they’ve probably been blasting for coal or working at the Walmart all day. It don’t make no sense.”

  “Maybe they figure a girl’s more likely to go home with somebody who looks like a cowboy than a Walmart stock boy,” Amber said.

  Dustin laughed. “That’s probably it. It’s all about getting laid.”

  Amber laughed, too, but play-slapped Dustin. “I can’t believe how awful you talk around your sister!”

  “I’m used to it,” Chrys said. “I grew up with him.”

  The parking lot of the Tumbleweed was full of pickup trucks festooned with NRA and “Friends of Coal” bumper stickers. Inside, it was dim and foggy with smoke, and Dustin hadn’t been kidding about all the pseudo-cowboys. There were also a few biker types, burly and bearded, monopolizing the pool table. At the bar itself, a beer-bellied guy in a Kentucky Wildcats T-shirt was talking to a similarly built gentleman in a T-shirt that read God, Family, and Guns. The few women were all in the company of men. They were also mostly bleached blondes who were decked out in a style Chrys’s mother would refer to as “mutton dressed as lamb.” Clearly, the Tumbleweed wasn’t a popular choice for a girls’ night out.

  Dustin nudged Chrys. “What you drinking?”

  “Well, a cabernet would be nice—”

  “Don’t be a wise ass. It’s PBR tallboy night. You want one?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  When Dustin disappeared to the bar, Amber said, “I hope this place ain’t too nasty for you. I know you’re used to better.”

  “Oh, I’ve been in worse,” Chrys said, and it was true. Actually, if you changed the gender of everybody in the bar to female, the Tumbleweed wasn’t that different from the dive bar she used to frequent in Lexington—right down to the patrons’ western and biker attire. “I like a good dive bar. Always have.”

  When the three of them scooted into the vinyl, duct-taped booth with their beers, Amber said, “Don’t worry, Chrystal. I’m just drinking one beer as liquid courage to get up there to sing. I’ll be sober as a judge by the time we drive back.”

  Chrys popped open her tallboy. “Well, I’m glad to see my little brother had the good sense to marry somebody with some self-control.”

  Dustin grinned. “Why, Sissy, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you was implying something about me.” He lifted his beer can, took a long chug, and let out a voluminous belch.

  “About you?” Chrys said, laughing. “You’ve always been a model of restraint.”

  “You know what’s funny, though, Sissy?” Dustin said. “Compared to a bunch of guys I used to hang out with I might as well be a Baptist preacher. I mean, I’ve always like my beer and weed, but Tommy—you remember him from high school?”

  Chrys nodded.

  “He died from meth before he turned thirty-five.”

  Chrys pictured Tommy back when he was sixteen and hanging out in the now-unthinkable high school smoking area with Dustin. “That’s awful.”

  “He had a couple of kids, too, but the state took them. And then Keith—my friend Jesse’s younger brother—he OD’d on Oxy.”

  Amber nodded. “It’s even worse with the younger people. Not that you’uns is that old.”

  “Thank you for that,” Chrys said.

  “But when I was in high school,” Amber continued, “there was lots of kids scoring Oxy or crank. Scoring it or selling it.”

  “Why do you think the drug thing has gotten so much worse?” Chrys asked. She had been sober and studious in high school, and back then she had never heard of anybody doing much more than booze and pot.

  Dustin shrugged. “Meaner times, meaner drugs.”

  “So many people feel so trapped with no chance of getting out of here and no future if they stay,” Amber said, looking at Dustin, who looked away. “I guess the pills or the crank help them get away in their minds anyhow.”

  “Me, I’ll stick to my beer and weed,” Dustin said. “Course, Amber don’t like me to smoke since Peyton was born.”

  “That’s because it ain’t legal, and I don’t want nothing illegal going on with a child in the house,” Amber said. “When it’s legal, you can smoke it all damn day if you want to.”

  “They ought to make it legal,” Dustin said, laughing. “It’s the biggest damn cash crop in Kentucky.”

  Amber took a big gulp of beer. “Well, I reckon I’d better get up there.”

  “Do good, baby,” Dustin said and kissed her cheek.

  On the edge of the makeshift stage in the corner, Amber set a goldfish bowl with a sign reading “Tips.” Her only accompaniment was canned music on an old boombox, which made Chrys wonder if this was going to be a painful experience. But when Amber sang her first note, all of Chrys’s fears were erased. Amber’s voice was as clear and bright as a mountain spring, with a little heart-tugging “cry” in it worthy of the queens of country music. Chrys hadn’t listened to much country as an adult, so she didn’t really know any of the songs Amber was covering, but she didn’t need to know them to understand that Amber was singing the hell out of them.

  Chrys and Dustin applauded wildly between each number, but they weren’t the only ones. Amber had attracted the attention of many of the bar patrons and had made unlikely fans of the bikers at the pool table.

  “She’s really good,” Chrys yelled across the table.

  “Ain’t she?” Dustin said, grinning. “I’m gonna go on patrol for a minute and make sure none of these guys is thinking about hitting on her. I’ll get us a couple more beers, too.”

  Chrys was almost halfway through her second tallboy when Amber launched into a song she actually knew, “Crazy.” It took real courage to put one’s own voice up against the great Patsy Cline’s, but Amber, while no Patsy, still managed to capture the song’s feelings of regret and longing. Chrys’s eyes welled as she thought of Meredith when Amber sang “crazy for thinking that my love could hold you.” God help me, Chrys thought as she blinked away her tears, I’m a country music cliché.

  But then as Chrys continued to drink and listen, a transformation took place. When Amber sang the song’s last drawn-out line, “crazy for loving you,” the face that appeared in Chrys’s mind was not Meredith’s but Dee’s.

  “You crying into your beer, Sissy?” Dustin asked.

  “Maybe a little. It’s a beautiful song.”

  “Willie Nelson wrote it, you know,” Dustin said. “Speaking of fellers who like to smoke weed.”

  When Amber announced a short break, Chrys excused herself for the ladies’ room. She did so with some trepidation—she knew the room was about as likely to be clean as it was to contain actual ladies—but after two tallboys, her bladder was sloshing.

  The restroom was as dank and foul as she’d imagined, and emerging from her stall, she discovered that her neighbor in the adjoining one had been Amber, who was now trying to look in the smeared, fly-specked mirror to fix her lipstick. “Oh, hi!” she said. “Them last two songs, I had to pee so bad I thought I was gonna die.”

  Chrys turned on the tap and made a gesture of washing her hands, though there were no s
oap and no towels. “You’re really good, you know. What you need is a kick-ass band to back you up.”

  “I know, right?” Amber said. “So you think I’m, like, professional-quality good?”

  “I’m no expert, but I can totally imagine hearing your voice on the radio.”

  Amber flashed a little-girl smile that was just like Peyton’s. “Thank you. That means a lot.” She patted Chrys’s arm. “Listen, I’ve been wondering if you might be willing to talk to Dustin for me. He really looks up to you, you know.”

  “What about?” Chrys cut Amber off before she could butter her up any more.

  Amber looked around as though spies were everywhere. “I’ve been trying to talk Dustin into moving to Nashville so I can have a chance at being discovered. I know there’s lots of people with the same dream, but here my chances is zero. The thing is, Dustin would have a better chance there, too. His unemployment’s fixing to run out, and there ain’t no jobs around here.”

  “There would be more jobs in Nashville,” Chrys said.

  “And you know what?” Amber said. “Dollar Tree’s a chain, and there’s six of them in Nashville. I’ve already gotten approved to transfer to a store there.”

  “You’ve really done your homework, haven’t you?”

  Amber nodded, her eyes shining. “It’d be good for Peyton, too. Good schools, after-school activities—”

  Chrys recognized Amber’s longing because she had once felt something similar herself. “Dustin is totally against this?”

  “So far. It’s like he laughs it off, like we couldn’t really do it. To be honest, I think he’s scared.”

  “He probably is. He’s taken a lot of silly risks in his life, but he’s never taken a serious one. You want me to talk to him?”

  Amber took both of Chrys’s hands in hers. “That’d be great. Not tonight, though. Sometime when he’s sober and will actually listen to you.”

  “Okay.” Chrys hesitated a moment, then decided to ask the question that was on her mind. “So like I said, I think you’ve got the talent to succeed. But there are lots of people with talent who never make it. What are you going to do if you go to Nashville and things don’t happen for you?”