The Great Chicken Debacle

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Oh, Deeter, would you?” asked Cornelia gratefully.

  “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

  Mrs. Delaney called Deeter to come home, and when he told her he wanted to camp out, she said that was fine as long as he was asleep by eleven. So Deeter took his pup tent, his sleeping bag, a jug of water, a flashlight, and a sack of potato chips, and went out back. He set up the tent, but he wasn’t going to sleep in it. No way. He was sleeping in the shed with No-Name to make sure nothing happened to her.

  “Move over,” he said to the ugly chicken that came strutting out of her nesting box.

  He closed the door behind him and unrolled his sleeping bag.

  “I hope you don’t snore,” he said to No-Name.

  Cluck, cluck, cluck. Cluck, cluck, cluck, went the chicken.

  Deeter lay down on top of his sleeping bag and set his water and flashlight beside him. He ate eleven potato chips, saving the rest for breakfast, then stretched his arms and closed his eyes.

  Cluck, cluck, cluck. Cluck, cluck, cluck, went the chicken, walking all around him. First the clucking went by his right ear. Then it traveled down his left side and came up the other.

  Suddenly the chicken walked right up on Deeter’s chest and crossed over, as though she were climbing a hill.

  “For Pete’s sake, settle down,” he told her. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  Cluck, cluck-a-cut, the hen said in answer, and Deeter didn’t know what happened next because shortly after that he fell asleep.

  At some point in the night the fox must have come around, because the chicken began to squawk. Deeter rolled over and sleepily turned on the flashlight. The door was still shut, and the chicken was safe, but there were soft noises from outside—a shuffling, scuffling, snuffing sort of sound. Deeter was too tired to get up and see what it was. He just banged on the side of the shed with the flashlight, and the noise went away.

  In the morning Deeter opened his eyes and looked slowly about the shed. Had he only dreamed it, or had a fox come around in the night?

  His eye fell on the shed door. Still closed.

  He looked for the cockeyed chicken. Still there.

  Smiling with relief, Deeter lay quietly a few minutes longer, then sat up. He felt something roll off his chest. Crack. Crunch.

  An egg.

  When Cornelia, Charles, and Mindy got to the shed the next morning, Deeter was hard at work on an old umbrella that had no handle. He was sitting on the floor with the opened umbrella upside down in his lap, trying to mount a fish mobile onto the metal shaft.

  “What are you doing?” Cornelia said, crouching down beside him, and looking at the things he had collected. The cockeyed chicken who had been clucking in one corner, cocked her head and stared at the new arrivals, holding one foot in the air.

  Deeter grinned. “It’s almost done,” he said. “Watch.” Placing the upside-down umbrella in the middle of the floor, he gave it a spin and it went whirling around. The fishes hanging from the mobile swung back and forth as though they were swimming.

  “So?” said Cornelia.

  Deeter only smiled. He picked up a hammer and a six-inch nail and pounded it into the dirt floor through a dime-size hole near the center of the umbrella. Then he reached over for No-Name, put her in his lap, and with a short piece of ribbon, gently tied one end to the chicken’s leg, the other end to the silky edge of the umbrella.

  Charles began to grin.

  “Is it going to hurt her?” Mindy asked.

  “Not a bit,” said Deeter. “Now. The test.”

  Setting the hen back on the ground and taking a handful of grain, he carefully placed the kernels about three inches apart in a wide circle around the umbrella. As No-Name moved forward, pecking at the grain, her foot turned the umbrella which rotated around the nail, and the little fishes began to sway and swim.

  “Perfect!” cried Cornelia. “A chicken circus!” They watched some more as No-Name started and stopped, started and stopped—the fishes jerking this way and that. “Now all she needs is a costume,” Cornelia added. “I’ll have to find one for her.”

  “I think she needs some music” said Charles. “I’ve got an old music box. I could play along with her.”

  “What will I do?” asked Mindy, realizing that everyone else had made a contribution.

  “Why don’t you do that chicken dance you learned in camp last summer while Charles makes the music?” Cornelia suggested.

  “This one?” said Mindy. She tucked her hands under her arms, flapped her elbows up and down, clucked like a chicken, and strutted round the shed, poking her head in and out, and making them all laugh.

  “Perfect!” Cornelia said again.

  They spent the afternoon helping No-Name get used to the ribbon around her leg, and watching Cornelia try out various doll clothes on the chicken, till finally they voted for a little red cape and a yellow straw hat that would have tied under the chin if chickens had chins.

  “Now she’s our present too,” Cornelia said, as they put things away, carefully removing the fish mobile from the shaft of the umbrella, then folding the umbrella up and placing it in the cooler along with the costume and the music box and the chicken feed.

  “Dad’s really going to be surprised when he sees how well we’ve trained No-Name,” said Charles.

  “Here’s the deal now,” Cornelia went on. “After we have dinner on Friday, I’ll come over and get the chicken, and the rest of you bring the other stuff.”

  “When do we eat the cake?” asked Charles.

  “If all goes well, Charles, we’ll get not only cake, but Starlight Park as well,” Cornelia told him. “If everything goes well.”

  At that moment the one little window in the shed seemed to darken, and when Cornelia looked up, she thought she saw a face. Deeter, however, scrambled to his feet, but by the time he got to the door and opened it, there was only the sound of footsteps running among the trees.

  8

  The Following Night

  Monday night, it was Charles’s turn to sleep in the shed. He had received permission to spend the night at the Delaneys’. “We’ve got a sort of a camp back there, with a tent and everything,” he had told his mother.

  “Now that’s the kind of thing that summer is for,” said his mom. “The great outdoors!”

  When it was time to go, he thrust a few things in his backpack and yelled, “I’m leaving now, Mom.”

  “Did you take a bath?” his mother called up the stairs.

  “Yeah. Well...” he said, and lowered his voice. “Sort of.”

  “Did you put on a clean T-shirt?” the voice came again.

  For Pete’s sake! Charles wanted to bellow. I’m sleeping with a chicken! “Yeah,” he said again.

  “Be sure to thank Mrs. Delaney tomorrow for breakfast,” Mother said.

  “Good luck,” whispered Cornelia as Charles left the house, his pack thrown over one shoulder.

  Deeter came out to the shed to keep Charles company until it got dark; they took turns holding a flashlight under their chins and making horrible faces. No-Name appeared to be asleep, but every time Charles turned the light on her, one pink eye opened and the black pupil stared at Charles. Then the membrane closed again and the head began to nod.

  “Dee-ter!” came Mrs. Delaney’s voice finally.

  “Gotta go,” said Deeter. “And listen: If a fox tries to get in, throw red pepper in its face.” He gave Charles a little bag of his mother’s chili powder.

  When the shed door closed again, Charles sat on his sleeping bag in one corner of the shed, back against the wall, and watched the chicken in the beam of his flashlight. Was this the stupidest thing he had ever done, or what? Man, oh, man, Starlight Park had better be worth all the work he was doing to get there. He wished he had eaten more dinner, because he didn’t feel very full. He tried to put his mind on the rides at the amusement park, but his thoughts kept stopping at all the concession stands: cotton candy, strawberry smoothies,
funnel cakes, foot-long hot dogs, popcorn, caramels...

  He wondered what he would do if that old fox came sniffing and snuffing around. Maybe if he heard it digging away outside the shed, he’d wait until it stuck its head through the hole under the wall, and then he’d blast it with pepper.

  Charles had brought a bunch of comic books, but was afraid if he used his flashlight any more he’d wear out the battery. He just might need that light later. So he climbed in his sleeping bag, turned over on his side, and prepared to go to sleep.

  Perhaps he did sleep for a while, because when he first lay down he was lying on his left side, and when he woke he was lying on his back. He was too warm, for one thing, and thought about climbing out of the bag and lying on top, but he was too sleepy to actually do it.

  Something else was wrong, however. There was definitely a noise from somewhere beyond the wall of the shed—a soft noise, a footstep kind of noise—a footstep or pawstep, perhaps, of a fox. A hungry fox. A fox who would come all the way out of the woods for a tender, plump chicken that was supposed to be a birthday present for somebody’s mother.

  Suddenly, before Charles could reach for his flash-light—the chili powder, even—the door of the shed swung open, there was a beam of light, and Charles found his sleeping bag rolling over and over with him inside it, his face in the dirt. And when the rolling stopped at last and he worked his way out of the bag, the shed was as quiet as a churchyard.

  Charles crawled around until he found the flashlight against the wall. He turned it on. The shed was empty.

  There was no fox; no chicken, either.

  How could this be? What kind of fox could roll a boy over and over in his sleeping bag before he ran off with a chicken? Then Charles remembered the light. That was no fox!

  He jumped up and dashed outside, looking this way and that. He ran down the path into the woods and looked around, hoping to see the beam of the chicken-robber’s flashlight, but all was dark. He ran back the other way, into the Delaneys’ yard. No beam of a flashlight there either.

  Not again! Why did this have to happen on the night he was supposed to be guarding the chicken? Wasn’t it enough that he had forgotten to latch the door once and the chicken had escaped? Now Deeter and Cornelia would really be mad, but what was he supposed to do?

  Charles took it out on a tree, that’s what he did. After knocking his head against the trunk, he kicked it once, kicked it twice, then grabbed one of the branches and shook it so hard that an owl, from somewhere above, hooted at him.

  There was nothing left to do but go home and tell Cornelia what had happened. He didn’t know what he would tell his mother when he rang the doorbell for her to let him in. Maybe he’d say he wasn’t feeling well and decided to come back home. That was the truth. Charles was feeling terrible. No matter what he did, it turned out wrong. He wouldn’t mind if his chickens did all come home to roost—one particular chicken, anyway.

  He went back in the shed to roll up his sleeping bag, and the beam from his flashlight fell on a sheet of paper he had not noticed before. On the paper was a large blue circle. Inside the circle there was a red circle, and inside the red circle was a green one. Inside the green circle was this message:

  If you ever want your stupid chicken back, you can look inside Susan Slager’s shirt.

  The Scoates Gang

  9

  Ransom

  Charles stared at the note in his hand. It didn’t make one bit of sense. Who was Susan Slager, and why would she be walking around with their chicken inside her shirt?

  He stuffed the note in his pocket and walked home with his sleeping bag under his arm.

  “What are you doing home?” Mother asked, coming to the door in her pajamas. She looked at him closely. “Are you sick?”

  “Yes,” said Charles. He was sick, all right. Sick to his stomach. “I thought I’d better come home in case I throw up.”

  “Gracious!” said Mother. “I’ll bet you boys sat around eating junk food.”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Charles. “I went right to bed.”

  “Right to bed! You are sick!” Mother told him. “Go on upstairs and I’ll bring the Pepto-Bismol.”

  “I’m not that sick!” Charles said, but before he knew it, Mother was walking behind him with the big pink bottle and a minute later one horrible mouthful was sliding down his throat.

  When he was sure that Mother was in bed, Charles crept down the hall to Cornelia’s room and softly opened the door.

  “Cornelia,” he whispered through the darkness.

  No answer.

  “Cor-ne-lia!” he whispered again.

  The bedsprings squeaked.

  “What is it?” Cornelia said. She didn’t sound very pleasant. Cornelia was never pleasant when you woke her up.

  “Who’s Susan Slager?” asked Charles.

  “How should I know?” snarled Cornelia. “What are you doing home? You’re supposed to be guarding No-Name.”

  Charles swallowed. “The chicken’s gone, Cornelia. Susan Slager kidnapped it, and she’s got it in her shirt.”

  Cornelia bolted upright and turned on her lamp. “Are you crazy?”

  Charles miserably sat down on the edge of her bed and told her what had happened.

  Cornelia’s eyes, which had grown wide at first with the story of the shed door flying open, grew narrower and narrower as she listened to the rest of the story.

  “Somebody,” she said, tightening her jaw, “has been spying on us and knew that chicken was in the Delaneys’ shed. I’ll bet someone thought you were Deeter.”

  Charles began to feel a little better. If somebody had a grudge against Deeter, then losing the chicken again wasn’t exactly his fault, was it?

  “Go on to bed,” said Cornelia. “I’ll handle this.”

  Those were the most wonderful words Charles had heard in a long, long time.

  The next day the Morgan children got up as usual. They ate their breakfast as usual and did their morning chores. But when it came time to feed the chicken, they went over to the Delaneys’ shed and waited for Deeter. All except Mindy. Cornelia decided not to tell her what had happened. Not yet, anyway. Besides, Mindy had started collecting bugs for No-Name and spent her mornings happily adding ladybugs and ants and beetles to the menu. It gave her something to do.

  Deeter came out at last. He was wearing a baseball cap that said Chicago White Sox and a T-shirt that read Chicago Bears and Michael Jordan high-tops under the baggiest pants Cornelia had ever seen. The pockets were almost down to his knees. He whistled as he came down the path to the shed, and every so often he leaped into the air and practiced a one-handed hook shot with an imaginary basketball, hanging onto his pants with his other hand so he wouldn’t lose them.

  As soon as he got to the shed, however, and saw that the door was open, he stopped in his tracks. And when he peeked inside and saw Charles sitting in one corner, his back against the wall, and Cornelia, with her arms folded across her chest, sitting in another, he swallowed.

  “Who,” Cornelia asked, “is Susan Slager?”

  Deeter’s head began to swim. What was happening to his life? First he had taken Homer Scoates’s multi-colored pen and made some boys mad at him, then he’d added a chicken to his problems, and right this moment Cornelia Morgan, who had begun to interest him very much, was asking about a girl he hardly knew.

  “What?” asked Deeter, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Who is she?” Cornelia repeated.

  Deeter stared. Cornelia must be jealous! He hardly even knew Susan Slager, but somehow Cornelia must have thought he liked her.

  “And why would she put a chicken down her shirt?” asked Charles, glaring at him.

  Deeter began to feel his world slowly tipping sideways.

  “What?” he said again.

  Charles showed him the note. The Scoates Gang, it said at the bottom.

  Deeter swallowed. It was beginning to be clear. Very clear indee
d. He had to stand here about as close to Cornelia as he would ever get, he imagined, and tell her about the stupid day at the stupid school when he had borrowed the stupid pen from Homer Scoates, and how, when he had dropped it from the top of the stupid monkey bars, it had fallen down the back of a stupid shirt, worn by a girl named Susan Slager. Now, it seemed, he was going to go on paying for it for the rest of his stupid life.

  “See?” Charles said after he’d heard the story. “Your chickens are all coming home to roost!” Now Grandma’s saying was beginning to make sense. And then, to Cornelia, “What are we going to do? Mom’s birthday is only three days off.”

  “What we are going to do,” she said, “is wait for another note.”

  “What other note?” asked Charles.

  “A ransom note,” said Cornelia.

  10

  Waiting for Homer

  By five o’clock that afternoon, Mindy had caught two crickets, a ladybug, three beetles, a centipede, and a moth. Cornelia had to tell her that the chicken was gone.

  Mindy threw up her hands with the open jar in one, scattering bugs to the four winds. “Okay, that’s it!” she said. “No-Name’s gone forever. Good-bye, birthday party! Good-bye, merry-go-round.”

  “Maybe not,” said Cornelia. “Tonight I’m going to sleep in the shed, and I’ll bet Homer Scoates will deliver a ransom note. Criminals always return to the scene of the crime.”

  If only she felt as confident as she sounded, Cornelia thought. For all she knew, the Scoates gang was enjoying a fried chicken dinner that very moment. Still, she had to admit, this was interesting. Nothing like this had ever happened in Iowa.

  Now the problem was getting Mother to let her sleep outside.

  “It sure is a nice night out,” Cornelia said that evening as she helped with the dishes.

  “Yes, it is,” said Mother. “I can smell the sweet peas I planted this spring.”

  “I smell them too!” said Cornelia. “In fact, the air smells so good I’d love to sleep outside this evening. Could I? In our camp?”

  “What do you kids have over there?” asked Mother. “Where would you put your sleeping bag?”