Twenty Chickens for a Saddle

by Robyn Scott

  Grandpa Ivor may not have given us or Dad presents. But every Christmas, he loaded up his bakkie with several sacks full of little plastic present bags. The bags were prepared by the Phikwe Lions Club, the local branch of the worldwide volunteer service organisation that supports a wide range of charitable causes. Each bag was tied with a ribbon and contained a selection of things like Lux soap, boiled sweets, shampoo, Vaseline, a can of beef, Simba crisps, and a face cloth.

  And every Christmas morning, Lulu, Damien, and I went along with him and Granny Betty to give the bags to patients at the government hospital in Phikwe. We didn’t like going, and, at nine o’clock, it was reluctantly that we changed out of our pyjamas and abandoned our stocking spoils to cross the road to Grandpa’s.

  “Come on, guys,” said Mum. “It’s a lovely thing to do. You’ll make their day. And you’ll appreciate your own presents more.”

  Dad said, “Damien, make sure Robbie doesn’t try to sell eggs to the patients.”

  “I would never,” I spluttered.

  “Bet you would,” said Damien.

  “Come on, Robbie.” Dad smiled. “How about you developing a sense of humour for my Christmas present? Nearly ten years of waiting. But I remain hopeful.”

  Mum said, “For goodness sake. Will you three hurry up. Grandpa’s ‘waiting.”

  I felt depressed just at the thought of the long, full wards, which would, as always, be brightly decorated for Christmas. Strung above the rows and rows of bodies in beds, the strands of red and green tinsel somehow only made things worse. Generally, the best thing about visits was that they meant the morning passed quickly, making the wait for our afternoon Christmas-present-opening session less agonising.

  There were nice parts. Like when a patient’s eyes lit up and they grinned and gripped my hand and thanked me for coming. But sometimes they wanted to keep on talking and holding. And when I tried to pull away, they wouldn’t let go. And then, when I looked into the eyes of the smiling old man or sick young woman willing me to stay, I felt hopeless, and scared and repulsed by the thought that if I looked too long, I’d start knowing what they were feeling, and I’d quickly pull away and hurry to join Lulu or Damien at another bed.

  I hated the smell, too. In it were all the same smells of Dad’s clinic – disinfectant, sweat, and gloves. But mixed with these – which I liked – were the lived-in smells: soggy uneaten food, recently used bedpans, bedclothes overdue for a wash. Dad said that Botswana’s hospitals were some of the best and cleanest in Africa, but in the harsh light of the bare bulbs, even the clean floors and walls were nonetheless horrible. Horrible too – horrible for the guilt – was the reaction to the presents: a delighted laugh as someone sniffed his bar of soap; a shaking smiling head as a frail old woman carefully arranged the tiny gifts one by one on the bare bedside table.

  With every bag I gave out, I felt worse.

  To Grandpa Ivor and Granny Betty, as we progressed down the ward, the reverse seemed to happen. With each new patient, Grandpa joked and laughed more enthusiastically than with the last. And Granny Betty looked happier than she did any other day of the year, chatting and smiling with rare animation. As a nurse, she could ask detailed medical questions, which all the patients loved, and give advice about any problem. She also joked with the arthritic old men and women, showing them her gnarled finger joints and patting her dodgy hip and saying they’d be walking much better than her when they were able to leave their beds.

  Even when we’d given out the last bag, Granny and Grandpa wanted to linger, chatting to the nurses and revisiting some of the beds. I couldn’t wait to leave. The hospital made me feel worse, not better, about my own presents. I liked problems that you could really solve, completely. And the thought of all the sick, poor people – no different but for a chat and a few cheap gifts – somehow ruined the pleasure of giving. I banished the memory the moment we walked back out into the dust and sunlight. And that afternoon at Granny Joan’s and Grandpa Terry’s, eating a Christmas feast, opening presents and playing in the pool until the sun went down, I succeeded, almost completely, in not giving the hospital another thought.

  Twenty abused chickens were just the kind of neat, soluble problem I did like.

  I didn’t want to see all the other abused chickens I wasn’t rescuing, though. And on the Friday after my birthday – which fell on a clinic day – 1 waited in the car as Mum and Dad disappeared into the long grey sheds of the battery chicken farm. Closing the window to block out the mournful clucking noise, I turned towards the bush and studied a fat, crested barbet hopping beneath a tree as it searched for insects.

  On the way home, I crouched in the back of the car and examined the scrawny brown-and-white hens, huddled together in the crate. Most had big patches of feathers missing; all had been debeaked so they couldn’t peck each other to death. They looked exhausted.

  Exactly what I had wanted. And as they clucked dejectedly, I clucked comfortingly back, enjoying the satisfying thought of their imminent free-range ecstasy.

  But of happiness, let alone ecstasy, there was no sign at all.

  When I lifted them out of the crate and gently placed them in the run, the chickens didn’t even move. For a few moments, all twenty just crouched there, petrified. Then, squawking and flapping, they ran from the sunlight, charging en masse through the small door into the dark hutch.

  I couldn’t believe it. The run was ten metres long, shaded by lush summer trees, with patches of green grass, shrubs, and thick soft soil. Two bright red water feeders and shiny tin grain feeders sparkled in the dappled sunlight where they hung from the chicken mesh, hawk-and-eagle-proof roof.

  Ten minutes later, not one chicken had moved from the pathetic huddle in the corner of the hot dark hutch.

  I had voluntary battery chickens.

  Mum had already put Rescue Remedy in the water dispenser, but until the chickens actually ventured outside and drank some, she could offer only optimism. “Don’t worry, Robbie. They’re in shock. It’ll take time.”

  “Don’t be so impatient,” said Dad. “Leave them in peace for a bit.”

  Mum said, “Why don’t you come inside and we can finish off your birthday cake?”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “All right. Well, can I bring you anything?”

  “My accounts book.”

  I left the chicken run and perched outside on a fallen log, peering through the mesh. Mum and Lulu came back with the book, my new calculator, pens, pencils, paints, and two glasses of icy fruit juice. “Have fun, then,” said Mum. “Call if you need anything.”

  Lulu sat next to me on the log with her sketchbook. “I’m going to paint your chickens.”

  “You can hardly see them,” I said, still feeling miserable.

  But Lulu could paint anything, beautifully and creatively, in front of her or not. As I fingered the neatly squared pages of my thick new accounts book, she sketched the food dispenser, encircled by the outlines of animated hens. I began to do projections – grain consumption, egg production, sales revenue, months till saddle, days till saddle. Lulu, meanwhile, took out her paints and did her own optimistic projections, giving colour and a good deal of extra fat and feathers to the chickens, which, for good measure, had deposited ostrich-sized eggs all over the run.

  In the top right-hand corner of the sheet, she painted a small saddle. In the top left she wrote, “Happy Birthday Rob! The Chi ken Queen!”

  Even Damien, who did not, like Lulu, have a natural affinity for my chickens just because they were animals, was being nice. So tar, as promised, there had been no explosions in the nearby shed, which was the site of Damien and Matthews’s long-running project to build a match gun. The gun design involved a match-powder cartridge, made out of the tube that holds a spoke to a bicycle wheel. Mounted on a wooden gun cutout, the powder was exploded by a pin – a decapitated nail – and, in theory, propelled a bullet, made from a second decapitated nail. Matthews, who claimed to have once made a funct
ioning match gun, was adamant this design could succeed. If ever anyone questioned him, he returned to his central piece of evidence. “I shot a chicken. Dead! One time!” he’d say, grinning proudly.

  But with not a single nail bullet successfully fired, I’d long since lost faith in this claim and was much more worried about the explosions further traumatising my hens.

  I did, however, remain suspicious about Matthews’s general callousness towards chickens, and when he strolled over to inspect the hens, I followed him into the run. “Don’t you dare ever try to shoot them,” I said, as he squatted down and peered into the hutch.

  Matthews turned round and gave a scornful laugh. “These chickens are no good. No meat. I only shoot chickens you can cook.”

  “They’re lovely chickens,” I said, indignantly. “They’ll get fat soon.”

  Matthews grinned. “I’ll shoot them later then.”

  “Matthews!” gasped Lulu. I yelled, “Go away!” And Matthews ran laughing back to the shed.

  ♦

  More than an hour later, with all the chickens still huddled in their hutch, Mum and Dad came down the path from the house, carrying the garden table and chairs. They arranged these outside the run and then fetched plates, cups, a teapot, and my remaining birthday cake, draped in a dishcloth to chase away the flies that always hovered in the vicinity of the horse pens.

  “If you won’t come to us,” said Mum, “we’ll come to you.”

  To my annoyance, Mum then insisted that I invite Matthews, saying that no one should ever feel left out on birthdays. I said he’d threatened to shoot my chickens and I didn’t, at present, care if he felt left out.

  Mum said of course he had been joking.

  Dad said that if I was nice about it and invited Matthews, he’d probably be less inclined to try to shoot my chickens when they got fat. I gave in, and both boys joined us. When everyone was assembled, Mum fetched from the kitchen the steaming enamel-plated kettle, streaked with black burn marks from all the times Lulu, Damien, and I had boiled it on open fires.

  As we sipped tea and ate cake, Dad explained how I’d be able to tell exactly when a chicken laid an egg by the distinctive, strained egg-laying sound. “Like this,” he said, emitting a few strangled squawks.

  The chickens clucked nervously inside the hutch.

  “Shhh, Dad!”

  “Sorry, Robbie.”

  Dad stopped squawking, and the clucks died down. Mum poured more tea and we discussed venues for selling the eggs. Saturday mornings at the Phikwe library, it was decided, would be ideal. Mum said she was sure Granny Joan could arrange to make space for me on the table, where donated cakes were sold to raise money for the library.

  Then, midway through our second cup of tea – by which time I was deeply absorbed in planning my free-range egg empire – Lulu put her finger on her lips and pointed towards the hutch.

  One of the chickens had stuck her head out.

  For a few moments she just peered around cautiously. Then, very slowly, her head bobbing backwards and forwards like a cartoon chicken, she edged her way about a metre out into the run. She stopped, and gave the tea party and the dogs at our feet a suspicious glance. When no one moved, though, she relaxed and gingerly scratched at the soft dirt. A small cloud of dust rose at her feet. She scratched again, harder this time. Dust billowed around her.

  And then there was no turning back. She dug in, alternating feet, clawing wildly at the ground, and moments later almost disappearing in an explosion of red dust.

  Another chicken came out and quickly joined in the dust bath. Five minutes later, the last hen had left the hutch and a thick cloud of dust swirled above the run as my twenty chickens scratched at the soil and fluffed their feathers as if a dust bath was something they’d done every day of their lives. They had, of course, never even stood on soil, let alone had the space in which to really scratch. But just as our pet rabbits’ newborn babies had sucked immediately at their mother’s teats, all twenty of these scrawny one-year-old chickens still knew exactly what to do.

  Mum put her hand on her heart. “Makes me want to weep,” she said, “for all the millions of battery chickens that will never enjoy a dust bath.”

  I didn’t want to weep. But I felt a shiver of pleasure unlike anything I’d felt before. And as I watched the chickens, I could feel my face being stretched by an enormous, uncontrollable grin.

  Dad raised his teacup towards the chickens.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  ∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧

  Sixteen

  The Whole Family’s Half of An Island

  Lulu, Damien, and I rushed to the door at once. The firm knock and simultaneous clear call of “Ko-ko” were unmistakeable; a confident synthesis of arrival etiquettes that could belong only to Seloma Tiro.

  “Hi, Slo,” we yelled, bursting out into the dappled sunlight under the bougainvillea.

  Seloma grinned warmly. Lulu extended her arms and clutched him in a delighted hug, which he returned, quickly concealing a flicker of surprise at her affection. The seamless cultural blend was there too in his greeting. Unlike so many Batswana adults who virtually ignored children, Seloma greeted each of us in turn, but in the Botswana way, with a dumela for each, accompanied by the slow, friendly up-down-up clasp of the Botswana handshake.

  Mum he gave a Botswana handshake too, but followed by a kiss and a hug; Dad, a handshake and a friendly pat on the back.

  “So nice to see you, Slo,” said Dad. “Sit down. What would you like to drink? It’s been ages.”

  Seloma eased himself onto the sofa and sighed. “Too long,” he said, smiling and gracefully crossing his legs. “Much too long.”

  “A beer? Wine?”

  “Something soft, please. I’ve got to drive back to Maun.”

  Mum said, “You must stay the night, Slo.”

  “Please stay,” said Lulu.

  “Thank you, Linda. But I must get home. Neo is expecting me. But thank you.”

  He turned to Lulu. “My little Kelly is expecting me too,” he said gently. “She’s even younger than you. I must get back for her. You understand.”

  Lulu nodded.

  “Now tell me, Lulu,” he continued. “How are you? You’ve grown taller. Are you still rescuing insects from the swimming pool every night?”

  “Of course.” Lulu looked indignant. “I’ll always.” She began to tell Seloma about the brown house snakes. And I told him about my chickens, and Damien talked about his mud hut. All the while, Seloma listened intently, nodding slowly, and slowly sipping his fruit juice; moving, always, with his particular version of the bewilderingly unhurried ease of the Batswana.

  To watch him was fascinating. In cashiers, builders, government officials, the slowness seemed mostly a deliberate ploy to frustrate a normal pace of life; in ‘women leisurely raising their arms as they hitched by the roadside, or old men smoking beside their huts and watching their cows, a laid-back torpor from too many years in the heat. But in Seloma, with his precise, softly spoken English and assured gaze – never averted to the floor when a question was asked – slow was different. In him, it was proud, almost stately. And entirely appropriate, worn like a well-fitting suit.

  Dad often teased him about his mix of Motswana and European habits.

  “You’re to blame.” Seloma would smile. “It’s your family’s fault.”

  The family was what he’d come about today. Seloma and his longtime girlfriend Neo had decided to get married. “I’ve just been to see Ivor and Betty,” he explained. “I wanted to give them and you and Linda lots of warning to be sure you could come. I couldn’t have it’without you. Will you come?”

  Dad, who wasn’t keen on weddings and particularly not the famously long Botswana weddings, stood up and shook Seloma’s hand. “Of course, Slo,” he said. “You know none of us would miss it for the world.”

  Wherever she’d lived, Granny Betty had always quickly become known for her soft heart. People and a
nimals alike, she never turned anyone away, whatever the inconvenience to herself. And when, nearly two decades before, she’d been approached by a friend who told her of a clever Motswana boy, in urgent need of assistance with his secondary school fees and costs, she had agreed at once to help. Later, after meeting the diligent, brilliant young Seloma, Granny had offered to fund his whole education – paying school fees, and buying uniforms and textbooks. She also gave him a job in her shop so he could earn pocket money – although Seloma, as she would later discover, had given every thebe straight to his family.

  Grandpa, who now considered Seloma his protege, had, from the start, endorsed the plan. Over the following years, however, after the fall of each embryonic business empire, it was always Granny Betty who’d made sure there was enough money from the Fashion Scene boutique to support Seloma.

  But Seloma, lor his part, looked on from a culture that has the family transcending the individual. He’d always felt grateful and indebted to both Granny and Grandpa, and, by extension, to Dad and his brothers. He considered the whole Scott clan to be part of his family, and the invitation to his wedding was something that neither Dad nor Grandpa would have dreamt of declining.

  Which did not mean, however, as they set off for Francis-town in separate cars, that either had any intention of talking to the other. Mutual avoidance at a huge Botswana marriage ceremony was nothing in comparison to the feat of more than a year’s silence, living opposite each other, next to no one else and nothing else, in the middle of nowhere.

  The wedding was as big and diluting as Dad and Grandpa could have hoped.

  The church was packed, and because, as usual, Dad was exactly on time and Grandpa extremely late, father and son were safely separated in the pews. It wasn’t, moreover, going to be difficult for them to keep an eye on each other and to remain at a safe distance: the two Scott couples were dazzhngly obvious as the only white guests.