by Joy Cowley
chicken
feathers
Joy Cowley
With illustrations by David Elliot
PHILOMEL BOOKS
Patricia Lee Gauch, Editor
PHILOMEL BOOKS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.
Published by The Penguin Group.
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Text copyright © 2008 by Joy Cowley. Illustrations copyright © 2008 by David Elliot. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
Printed in the United States of America.
Design by Semadar Megged. Text set in 13.5 point Kennerly.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cowley, Joy. Chicken feathers / Joy Cowley ; with illustrations by David Elliot.
p. cm. Summary: Relates the story of the summer Josh spends while his mother is in the hospital awaiting the birth of his baby sister, and his pet chicken Semolina, who talks but only to him, is almost killed by a red fox. [1. Chickens—Fiction. 2. Pets—Fiction. 3. Farm life—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction.] I. Elliot, David, 1952– ill. II. Title.
PZ7.C8375Ch 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007038635
ISBN: 978-1-101-65232-9
10 9 8 7 6 5
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ELIZABETH MILLER, a gifted storyteller who has brought the magic of story to thousands of children. May she long continue to inspire the child in all of us.
The book is also for Tori, granddaughter of Dr. Maryann Manning. Tori was born while I was writing chapter nine, and she naturally found her place in the story.
Last but not least, it is for those marvelous birds who have invaded my life. There was Colonel Sanders, an old blind rooster who walked sideways toward me, guided by my voice, until he was leaning against my legs. When I picked him up and stroked his glossy black feathers, he cooed like a dove. There was Lily, a bantam hen who inhabited my studio. She laid her small eggs in the correspondence tray on my desk and interrupted my writing with triumphant egg songs. Beatrice the goose was devoted to us until she transferred her affections to an old woolly sheep. Ruby, a white Orpington hen, used to wait at the gate, rain or shine, for my return from town.
Pets may have a short life, but the love and wisdom they give us lasts an entire human span.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
TUCKER AND ELIZABETH MILLER were serious about life. Maybe it was something to do with living on a farm with three thousand chickens, or maybe it was because their hearts were as soft as the new-laid eggs they took to market. Whatever, their son, Joshua, had a fair dose of that seriousness. When he did tell a joke, it was the kind that made folk groan and hold their stomachs as though they’d swallowed ice cubes. Josh worried about things, not big things like earthquakes and tsunamis, but the little wrinkles in each day—how best to fix the lawn mower and who was doing the shopping for old Mrs. Waters, who broke her ankle falling off the horse she wasn’t supposed to be riding. People said the Miller boy had a touch of softness to him—which is how Semolina came to be his pet.
Semolina was no ordinary chicken. She may have looked like any old hen, legs scaly with age, ragged tail feathers, comb pale and small, body on the plump side from sitting on the table beside Josh’s plate. But it wasn’t eating corn bread that made her unique. Fact was, Semolina could talk, really talk, and it started soon after the day Tucker Miller came up the path with the hen tucked under his arm.
“She’s a character, this one,” Tucker said to his son. “Too old to lay, fights with the other chickens. But I guess I don’t have the heart to do the dirty. Josh, you’re hankering for a pet. You want her?”
Josh, who was thinking along the lines of a puppy, nodded and carefully took the bird, who had the good sense not to peck his hand. Of course he knew Semolina. Who didn’t? If there were feathers flying in the barn, it was Semolina causing chaos. Chickens couldn’t get to the drinking water because the old girl was there first, guarding it. Couldn’t get heads down at the food trough, either—Semolina walked behind them, pulling out tail feathers. She was trouble with a capital T, and smart with it.
He lined an old wash basket with a blanket and set it on the front porch for her, but since his bedroom window opened to the porch, it took no more than an hour or two for Semolina to decide that the head of Josh’s iron bed was the best place to perch.
As for the talking, that began with a word here or there. “Josh,” she’d cluck. “Josh, Josh. Josh.” Then, “Food. Window. Hurry.” Before long, she was chattering away like a picnic of parrots and then some. But the embarrassing thing was she’d only speak to Josh.
“She does so talk!” he told his parents. “Listen to this! Semolina, say it’s a sunny day.”
Semolina put her head on one side and stared with a blank yellow eye. “Caw-awk! Caw-awk!”
“Sunny day, Semolina! Sunny day!”
“Cawk!”
Tucker and Elizabeth smiled at each other, and Elizabeth kissed Josh on the top of his head the way she did when he was three years old. “Of course she talks,” she said. “Sweet chicken talk.”
The most serious matter in the Miller family concerned a sister or brother for Josh. Elizabeth Miller, nearly six months pregnant, ended up in the hospital on a Friday morning due to something the doctor called complications. There was a danger she could lose the baby.
“What’s wrong?” Josh asked.
Tucker pushed back his cap and scratched his head. “Blessed if I know. Your mom and I are not good layers, and that’s the truth of it. We thought we’d be right this time.”
Josh tried not to think about it. When he was six, he had sorted out his toys for a new baby that didn’t come. “Lost it,” people whispered, as though his mother had somehow forgotten where she’d put the baby. He never did play with those toys again. This time he wouldn’t hope too much, so when disappointment came, h
e could tell himself it was what he expected.
If the baby wasn’t complication enough, Saturday afternoon Semolina flew through Josh’s window, landed beside his model yacht and demanded Grandma’s brew from the cupboard in the laundry. The old hen had a wicked thirst for the brown water, as she called it. No one else liked the stuff. Grandma made it with hops and yeast in a big old tub at the back of her house, and Tucker reckoned it tasted as though she’d washed the socks of a baseball team in it. Grandma kept giving it to Tucker. He stowed it in the cupboard behind the laundry powder and mousetraps, and there it stood, an army of large brown bottles with dusty shoulders and crown caps.
Saturday wasn’t the first time Josh had gotten brew for Semolina. But it was the first time Tucker noticed that a bottle had been opened.
Josh felt bad. He wished his dad would get fired up like other fathers. He dang well hated the way Tucker looked at him soft-eyed as though he was going to cry.
“Dad?” he said. “I only took it for…”
But Tucker turned away without saying a word.
Josh wanted to explain. He’d given Grandma’s brew to Semolina, fair trade for information about the missing eggs in the number-three henhouse. He wanted his father to believe that Semolina could really, truly, without-a-doubt talk.
But Tucker himself had his mouth closed thin. He just put the bottle in the trash can, his face as heavy as a rainy day, and sat on the porch swing, where he clasped and unclasped his bony hands and sighed so deep the air seemed to come from the soles of his feet.
Josh stomped into his room and threw himself on the blue patchwork quilt. Semolina was in her usual place on the wrought iron bedpost. She fidgeted, and a reddish brown feather floated down to the pillow.
Josh glared at her. “What kind of hen drinks brew?”
“My kind, buddy.” She snapped a yellow eye at him. “Ain’t my fault you was caught.”
She flopped from the bedpost to his bookcase, her claws scrabbling on the top shelf and upsetting a can of pencils. As she leaned against his picture of a three-masted sloop, Josh thought she looked mighty unsteady. “Talk to Dad, will you?” he begged. “Please? Just this once? Explain you made me get Grandma’s brew.”
She shook her wing feathers. “I told you umpteen times I ain’t never wasting words on biggies. They got no ears for it. I made you do nothing, buddy. Fair trade, I said. Brown water for news about the fox.”
Josh turned on his bed until his head was over the edge, his legs up the wall. “You got to tell him, Semolina. He thinks I drank it!”
“What a biggie dumb cluck!” she trilled. “One huff of your breath and he’d know it wasn’t you.”
Josh whirled around. In a quick, swooping movement he was on his feet, his hands outstretched. “I’ll get him to smell your breath!” he cried. “That’ll convince him!”
Semolina flew up in a frenzy of feathers, and Josh’s fingers closed on air. Before he could open his hands again, that old fowl was out the window and onto the back porch, lurching across the boards, feathers ruffled.
“Come back!” Josh yelled.
She briefly turned her head. “Aw, shut your beak,” she said as she disappeared into the garden.
The open bottle of brew had gone clean out of Tucker Miller’s head by egg collection time. He had more important things to think about.
“Had a phone call from the doctor,” he said as Josh climbed into the egg trailer. “They’re keeping your mom in the hospital.”
“Keeping her?” Josh frowned. His mother was never this sick. “Can’t they fix what’s wrong and send her home?”
“She could lose the baby—like those other times.” Tucker started the tractor and yelled above the engine noise. “They reckon she’ll be in the hospital till it’s born.” He put the tractor in gear, and his voice got swallowed up in the rattles as they rolled down the hill toward the barns. The trailer swung from side to side over ground as hard as nails. Most of the grass had dried and the wheels sent up dust behind them, like brown smoke.
Josh took off his shirt. This surely was the hottest day of all summer. The sun swam in a big blue bowl of sky, and shadows crouched small as though they were scared of getting burned on the scorched earth. Days like this, his mother usually took him swimming in the river behind the woods. Josh counted weeks on his fingers. If babies took nine months to grow and his mother was six months pregnant, then he’d be back at school before she was home again. He wiped his shirt across his face. Spittin’ bugs! He wanted a baby sister, sure, but there were limits to the cost.
His father stopped the tractor and swung his long legs down. “Okay, son. Back to the salt mines. Another day, another dollar.”
He always said that.
Other chicken farmers had red barns, but Tucker Miller painted his inside and out with tar to keep the chickens free of parasites like lice and red mites. Since black was a color that sucked up heat, there were cooling systems in each of the nine big chicken houses.
“Yes, sir,” Tucker had said to the reporter from the newspaper. “Our chickens are spoiled rich. Not only free range, they also have air-conditioning, cool in summer, and heaters to keep warm in winter. Take it from me, these hen hotels produce right royal eggs.”
Josh thought that free range was a matter of opinion. The only chicken truly free was Semolina. The others were always kept inside the chicken houses but not in little cages. They could wander around, scratching in the straw, giving themselves dust baths, and when it was time to lay, they hopped up into one of a long line of nesting boxes and plopped out perfect little brown eggs. Well, mostly perfect. The eggs too small, too big or soft-shelled were sold cheap to Mr. Sorensen, who made wedding and birthday cakes.
Josh jumped off the trailer with a stack of egg baskets. “If she came home now, she could stay in bed—the same as in the hospital.”
“Not the same. She’s got a nurse checks her every four hours, and all the medicine right there—” Tucker took a load of baskets from Josh. “We’re not taking any more risks, Josh. Not after trying seven years to get you a brother or sister.”
“Did you try a long time to get me?”
“Yup.” Tucker ruffled Josh’s hair. “Some people are like that pesky chicken of yours—they just ain’t good at laying. They got other talents.”
“Semolina doesn’t lay because she’s old,” Josh said.
“Right, son, and me and your mom ain’t no spring chickens either. I reckon this’ll be our last chance. Don’t fret.”
“Who’s fretting?” Josh chewed the edge of his thumbnail. “It’d be okay to be a big brother, but I’m not holding my breath. I just want Mom home.”
Tucker nodded. “That makes two of us. But I don’t expect you to choke on pizza every night. We’ll get someone in to cook regular meals and help with the house.”
Josh shrugged. “It’s okay, Dad. I like pizza.”
Inside the first chicken house, sunlight melted dust and filled the air with gold. The floor was as busy as a city mall on Friday night. More than three hundred chickens scratched, clucked, pecked, fluffed in the straw in a haze that gave their feathers an orange glow. Josh closed the door and breathed in deep, the smell as thick as gravy. Everything about chickens, their feathers, feet, eggs, smelled like their poop. It was a rich smell, and Josh loved it. He wanted to believe that God had made people out of clay that smelled like chicken poop, warm and friendly, full of good stuff for growth. His father said you could raise anything on chicken manure, and he would know. They sold the old chicken house straw by the truckload, and Tucker reckoned it made tomatoes as big as pumpkins.
Josh walked slow and light-footed lest he trod on something. The chickens were so used to him, they didn’t get out of the way, and there were eggs hidden in the straw like Easter surprises. They got laid there when all the nesting boxes were full. Josh understood how that happened. Once when they had guests in the bathrooms, he had to go under a tree in the backyard and hope no one was watching
. You couldn’t expect a chicken to hold off when an egg was coming into the world.
He found twenty-seven good eggs in the straw and two that were broken.
The morning Elizabeth was admitted to the hospital, Josh had sat on the swing seat on the back porch, Semolina beside him. He told Semolina how scary it was seeing his mom in bed with a needle in the back of her hand, a long tube joining her to a bag of fluid.
“So you took her to the vet,” Semolina said.
“Animals and birds have vets,” Josh said. “Human beings have doctors.”
Semolina did not like to be corrected. “Excuse me. I forgot to tell you I know the difference between biggies and chickens. So your mom’s gone broody. That’s natural, buddy.”
He tried to explain without offending her. “The baby’s not due until September. If it comes now, it’ll die.”
Semolina’s mood changed. She hopped onto his knee, her claws sharp through his jeans, and clacked her beak. “Aw, aw,” she crooned.
Josh felt his eyes become hot. “They’ll be heartbroken if they lose it.”
Step by step, the old hen crawled up his shirt until she was resting her beak on his shoulder. Her feathers quivered as a sigh went through her. “Eggs is easier,” she said. “They only take three weeks to hatch.”
While Josh went through the barns searching for the eggs that had been laid on the straw, Tucker did the nest boxes from outside, lifting up the lids, filling his baskets, cleaning out the occasional blob of gray-and-white poop.
“The water all right?” he asked Josh.
Josh nodded. Each of the nine chicken houses had two fresh water fountains that had to be checked daily. “No problems,” he said as he put the last lot of eggs in the trailer. “How was number three today?”
In answer, Tucker scrunched up his mouth and shoulders. That meant the egg count in the number-three shed was still down.