Chicken Feathers

by Joy Cowley

  “How much?”

  “Same. Three to four dozen missing.”

  Josh said carefully, “You don’t think it could be a fox?”

  Tucker frowned. “How would a fox get in?”

  Josh was stuck. Any mention of a talking chicken would send his dad into a silence colder than snow.

  “I—I just thought—it might be a fox.”

  Tucker said, “Ain’t been a fox here in years. Anyways, foxes come at night. Chickens lay in the morning. Even if a fox did find a way in, which is downright impossible, the timing’s all wrong, and what makes you think a fox would prefer eggs to chicken? You ever consider that?”

  Josh was silent. Maybe Semolina lied about the fox to get brew. That was unlikely but possible.

  A long breath went out of Tucker, and his shoulders dropped. He put his hand on Josh’s head. “Sorry, son. When a man’s got worries, his jaw can get snappier than a turtle’s. Come on. Let’s get this lot down to the sorting shed. We need to get ourselves cleaned up before visiting hour.”

  Elizabeth Miller had a room of her own in the hospital and a bed that was bent like a V, with the bottom part steeper than the top. Josh ran to her, the toes of his shoes squeaking on the smooth floor. As he hugged her, he asked, “Doesn’t all your blood flow up to your head?”

  She laughed and tickled him under the arms. “It might improve my brain.”

  He laughed. “Mom, your brain couldn’t get improved. It’s a best-Mom-in-the-world super-brain!” He put his head on the pillow beside her. “What about the baby?”

  “I guess she’s getting her share. I can feel her wriggling. Want to feel?” She grabbed his hand and held it on her stomach, but all he could feel was the rise and fall of his mom’s breathing.

  He sat beside her, took some grapes out of a paper sack and put them in the white fruit bowl on her nightstand. Nearly everything in the room was white, but Elizabeth Miller shone with color—skin like polished wood, dark red hair, pink cheeks, brown eyes. She looked like the magazine ad for Dr. Granger’s Elixir of Life, good for everything from sore feet to earwax. “Do you really have to stay here until the baby’s born?”

  “Oh, honey, I hope not. But if it has to be that way, we’ll cope. Won’t we?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “It’ll be worth it,” she said. “When the baby’s here, you’ll forget about the long wait and I’ll forget that I lay in the hospital bored out of my skull. Tell me about your day. Have you been working on your boat?”

  “Not much time. I’ll get back to it.”

  “You like the motor Daddy bought you?”

  “It hasn’t come yet. We figured maybe a week or two before we pick it up. I promised Annalee first ride on the river. That okay?”

  “You mean I’ve lost first ride to pretty little Annalee Binochette?” She laughed and pushed her fingers through his hair. This hair ruffling was something both his parents did to him, but Mom’s touch on his scalp made his eyelids drop like heavy blinds. He curled up beside her.

  “What has that sassy Semolina been up to?” she asked.

  The chicken barns had been long silent when Semolina tottered into Josh’s room.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  She spread her wings and with great effort flapped to the back of his chair. She looked poorly. Her feathers were rumpled. Her comb was extra pale. “You spilled the beans on the fox?” she said.

  He was still mad at her. “My dad didn’t believe me!”

  “It is a fox,” she insisted.

  “Dad says number one, there are no foxes, and number two, chickens don’t talk. So you tell him! Semolina, I’ve begged you till I’m blue in the face. You got to say something to my father!”

  She hunched down and closed her eyes but a few seconds later opened them. “Water! I need water.”

  Josh got out of bed and went to the bathroom. He put his blue mug under the cold tap, came back and held it in front of her. She dipped her beak in, lifted her head and swallowed again and again, the small feathers at her throat fluttering with every sip. When she had finished, he put the mug down on the chair and climbed back into bed.

  She was restless. “Aw, this headache’s bad,” she moaned.

  Josh pulled the sheet around his ears. “That’s what happens to chickens when they drink brew,” he said.

  Chapter Two

  IF YOU LOOKED AT THE MILLER farm from a distance, you’d be hard-pressed to tell what they raised on it. It was just a big patch of dirt with a house, nine big black barns, a flat-roofed concrete barn nearby, a tractor shed and a green patch of Swiss chard out back. But turning in the gate, you’d know those big black barns were full of chickens. The crooning noise and the warm smell would soon tell you. Now, the Binochette farm next door, there was no doubt about that. Strangers could pick it out half a mile away, a dairy farm with green fields along a riverbank, big black-and-white cows up to their hocks in grass and rolls of hay plastic-wrapped like giant salamis. Everything about the Binochettes’ place was tidy. From that half-mile view it looked like a toy cow farm with its fresh-painted barns and picket fences.

  Tucker’s mother-in-law always commented, and today was no different. On the way back from the train station, as Tucker drove around that curve in the road, she called out from her seat, “Stop! Stop right here!” Tucker pulled over, the car brushing sun-dried grasses and disturbing small blue and yellow butterflies. Grandma lowered her window. She smiled down on the black-and-white cows, the neat fences, the long swoop of the Grayhawk River. “Now that’s what I call a farm.”

  In the seat beside her, Josh felt the sting of unsaid words. He wanted to lean toward her and shout in her good ear, “Pardon me, Grandma, our farm doesn’t have the river for irrigation or hired hands to make pretty picket fences, but we have happy chickens. Yes, ma’am. The Miller chickens are equally happy and healthy as those Hereford cows, and if you look past the Binochettes’ farm, past the black barns and dust, you’ll see a dark green field of Swiss chard that gets watered nearly every day. I know because I turn on the sprinklers, and you won’t get better Swiss chard anywhere. That’s what gives our famous eggs their rich yellow yolks that people like to see with their bacon and hash browns.”

  Of course, he didn’t say a word. He sat in the backseat as still as a rock, sharing his father’s silence, while the heat poured through Grandma’s open window and the blue and yellow butterflies flew back into shade in the long grass.

  When Tucker told him Grandma was coming to keep house for them, Josh had been half pleased, half afraid, and he hadn’t known which half was which. Now he remembered. One half was about her pickiness, the way she criticized everything, and the other concerned her cooking. She could do suppers a hundred delicious ways, and her peach pies were even better than the peach pies made by his mom, who had the same recipe. He promised himself he would think of Grandma’s cooking every time she got picky. That seemed only fair.

  Grandma looked like a cook. She was a widely spaced woman, different from her daughter, who was tall and lean, and it always seemed strange to Josh that a grandmother could have young skin matched up with old hair. From where he sat, the side of her face was as smooth as sanded wood while her pinned-up hair was like a heap of snow.

  Without a word, Tucker rolled up the window from his side and steered the car back onto the road.

  “How’s their little girl?” Grandma asked. “Annabel Whosamecallit.”

  “Annalee Binochette,” Josh said loudly. “She’s not little, Grandma. She’s fourteen and grown—” He stopped, unable to describe the changes in Annalee. Last summer she wasn’t much bigger than he was, and they climbed trees together in the woods at the back of the farm. This summer she didn’t climb trees. She was tall and had bumps in her T-shirt, but that wasn’t all. Her ears were pierced, she wore bright pink nail polish and there was a silver ring on one of her toes. When she said a boy named Bob had given her the toe ring, Josh had felt a creeping sadness. His
friend Annalee was leaving him for a world that seemed uncomfortably distant.

  Tucker smiled. “She’s working for us this summer. Vacation job, sorting eggs two days a week.”

  “Pretty little thing,” said Grandma. “A younger child too, isn’t there? Handsome, that entire family.”

  Josh grunted. Annalee’s brother, Harrison, was only nine but in the same year at school as Josh and the smartest kid in the class, something Josh didn’t want to think about too much. Not that he had much choice. Harrison reminded him often enough. “Need help with your homework, Slosh?” he’d say.

  He tried to ignore Harrison, which wasn’t easy, especially with Elizabeth at him to play with that nice little Binochette boy. “Maybe he’s difficult because he feels left out,” Elizabeth had said.

  “Mom, he’s left out because he’s difficult,” Josh argued. “He’s downright mean.”

  “The way to get rid of your enemies is to make them your friends.” Elizabeth almost sang it like a line from a hymn.

  Josh stopped trying to explain. Harrison Binochette wasn’t an enemy. He wasn’t anything except Annalee’s little brother with the first r left out.

  “You’re blessed to have such nice neighbors, Tucker,” Grandma said. “Did you hear me, Tucker? What’s with the face? Cheer up. Elizabeth’s as strong as a horse. I got you some more of my brew.”

  Tucker took the suitcases up the stairs while Grandma stood on the porch fanning herself with a magazine from her knitting bag. She was looking over the chicken farm, eyes as dark as peppercorns, noting changes since her last visit. Josh suspected she was making a mental list of suggestions that would come out later. He followed her gaze and saw the dried lawn going bald, the dangling wire on the clothesline, clothespins spilled on the ground, dirt and dead leaves on the porch, an assortment of dusty shoes and boots kicked off at the door.

  “We’ve been awful busy,” he said.

  There was no way of knowing if she’d heard. Her face shone with heat, and there were wet patches under the arms of her brown dress. The magazine flapped back and forth, creating more noise than breeze. It was a book about babies’ clothes, with a cover picture of a baby without teeth.

  She saw him looking and stopped fanning herself. “From the way things are around here, there won’t be much time for knitting. What’s Elizabeth doing?”

  “Huh?”

  “In the hospital. Lying in bed. Is she knitting for the baby? I don’t think so. Knowing my daughter, she’ll be reading. Books, books, books. Someone’s got to knit for the poor little thing.” She took a deep breath, raising and lowering her sweaty arms. “I made you silk and wool vests before you were born, wool sweaters, booties. I knitted you a wool shawl so fine it could pass through a wedding ring.” She looked hard at him, then put the magazine back in her bag. “Natural fibers,” she said. “All natural, remember that.”

  Tucker clattered down the stairs calling, “Your room’s ready, Augusta. I turned on the fan.”

  She heard him and went in the door. “First things first,” she said as she walked toward the kitchen.

  Josh knew the kitchen was tidy. He and his father had spent an hour yesterday cleaning and sweeping. Tucker had hauled a blue-checked tablecloth out of the laundry and ironed it. Josh had picked some of those red flowers out front for the glass vase. Grandma would find nothing wrong with the kitchen.

  Big mistake, he discovered. Semolina was the thing that was wrong. Not that his hen had done anything terrible. She was simply sitting on the table as usual, waiting for lunch, her tail feathers spread over his bread plate. But with them being late and all, the tablecloth was a bit wrinkled and the flowers had been pulled out of the vase. She’d probably tried to eat them.

  “You’ve still got that scrawny chicken!” Grandma shrieked, waving her bag. “Out! Out!”

  Semolina shifted sideways, fixing a wary eye on the old woman.

  “Off the table!” cried Grandma, and whump, the knitting bag caught Semolina on her side, sending her clean over the top of a chair and onto the floor. She landed on her feet, wings spread, and ran out of the kitchen, her claws scrabbling and sliding on the polished wood.

  “She’s housebroken!” Josh yelled. “She’s very clean.” He went after her, but by the time he got to the door, she had disappeared under the porch in a huff of feathers. He went back into the kitchen. “Semolina always sits on the table at mealtimes. I feed her!”

  Grandma was opening and shutting drawers. “This is a chicken farm, and chickens have their place. I’ll bet the Whosamecallits next door don’t have a cow sitting on their kitchen table. Aha! So that’s where Elizabeth keeps the aprons.”

  Josh was torn between defending his pet to Grandma and crawling under the house to see if Semolina was all right. “A cow can’t sit on a table,” he said. “The table would fall down or there’d be no room for the food or both. You hardly notice a chicken.”

  His grandmother put the apron over her head and turned her back to him. “Fasten these for me, there’s a good boy,” she said, holding out the apron ties. “I’ll fix us ham-and-corn fritters for lunch—with a Caesar salad. You can set the table if you like. Only remember, if that chicken comes into this kitchen one more time, it’s gravy.”

  Semolina wedged herself in the narrowest place under the house, where Josh couldn’t reach her. He could see her, but she refused to look at him. She crouched with her head bent, one eye focused on the ground while the other inspected the gaps in the floorboards.

  “Aw, come out!” he said. “It wasn’t all that bad.”

  Her head twitched slightly, but she didn’t answer.

  “You haven’t had lunch,” he said. “Look, I got you a corn-and-ham fritter.”

  Even that didn’t work.

  “You going dumb on me, Semolina?” He wiped cobwebs away from his face. Lying on his belly in the dust under the house was not Josh’s favorite thing, and besides, Annalee would be over at two o’clock to sort the eggs. She might even be there now. He unwrapped the corn-and-ham fritter and left it lying on the paper napkin. “Suit yourself. When you get over it, I’ll be in the sorting barn.”

  Chapter Three

  BECAUSE THE EGGS HAD TO be kept at a temperature under seventy degrees, the sorting barn was always cool, and Annalee’s arms were dotted with shivery spots she called chicken flesh. Today she was wearing a pink T-shirt with I love Paris in gold letters across her chest. He read it more slowly than was necessary and then, in case she’d noticed, he asked, “Does that gold stuff come off in the washing machine?”

  She shrugged the question away. “I heard about your mom. Is she—I mean the baby…Are they going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, the doctors think so. But she has to stay in the hospital a real long time.”

  “I know. Your grandma called my mother.”

  Phone calls already? He stepped up beside Annalee to help with the eggs and to breathe in the flower smell of her shampoo. Today her hair was tied back with a ribbon. “Until the baby’s born,” he said. “Three whole months.”

  She nodded, her arms moving across each other in an easy rhythm, separating large- and small-grade eggs and slotting each into spaces in the cardboard trays. “How’s your boat?” she asked.

  “Haven’t had time to work on it, but now that Grandma’s here, I reckon I’ll finish it. I’ve got the engine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Nearly new Johnson. It gets here in two weeks.”

  “Cool!” Annalee’s smile was like an explosion. “Remember you promised me a ride on the river.”

  “Sure thing.” He stood taller so that his eyes were in line with the freckles on her nose. “You still want to go fishing?”

  “Josh, that would be so neat! How come you already got a motor?”

  “Dad did it for me. He fixed it—part of my wages.”

  She paused, an egg in each hand. “So when will you be able to go fishing?”

  “Soon. Next month, maybe.” His
eyes slid sideways to I love Paris, and he wondered how come girls grew up so quick. She looked better now than she did last year, but he preferred last summer’s Annalee Binochette. He couldn’t imagine those long pink fingernails scooping up mud to throw at him.

  “That will be so exciting,” she said. “I told Bob about your skiff. He was extra interested—I mean really intense. Do you mind if he comes to see it?”

  Bob. That was the guy in her class who’d given her the silver toe ring. She was wearing it again today. It poked out the front of her right sandal like a dog collar on her second toe.

  Josh didn’t know what to say. He watched her busy with eggs, her hands moving fast, picking up, crossing over, up, down, like a piano player.

  “Bob said he’s going to build a boat too. Maybe you could give him some tips.”

  The silence went on too long. Josh could hear his heartbeat in his ears. He turned toward the door. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “Scratching noise, sort of. Might be that old Semolina.” He went over, turned the door handle and put his head out. “Nah. Not her. She must still be under the house in a sulking fit. Grandma whopped her on the tail feathers, lunchtime.”

  “No!” Annalee’s face creased in sympathy.

  “Not real hard,” he said quickly. “More about hurt feelings, I guess. She won’t talk to me.”

  “Your grandmother won’t talk to you? Why?”

  “Not her. Semolina.”

  “Oh. Yes. I forgot.” Annalee’s eyes went all careful, and she turned back to the egg crates.

  Josh had seen his parents exchange that same look. “You said you believed me.”

  Annalee frowned. “Josh, I—I do believe. I believe that you really, truly think Semolina talks to you.”

  “But not that she talks.”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just—well, chickens don’t. They can’t.”

  “Yes, they can!” he cried. “Parrots can. Budgies. Ravens.”