Cheating for the Chicken Man (20 page)

HOMECOMING

T
ucker saw them first. Outside on the porch, the dog started barking, and Kerry ran to the front window. “They're here!” she shouted to Kate, who was in the kitchen spreading garlic butter on the French bread while Jess cut cucumbers for the salad.

The girls hurried outside. It had just stopped raining, and the porch steps and sidewalk were slick, forcing them to slow down in their rush to greet J.T. He lay in the backseat of his grandmother's car with pillows propped up behind him. His injured right leg, wrapped heavily in gauze and encased in a splint, stretched across the seat in front of him.

“Welcome home!” Kate exclaimed, leaning in as she opened the car door.

J.T. grinned sleepily. “It's good to be here.”

Kate and her mother eased J.T. out of the backseat and got him propped up on crutches. They guided him inside, practically carrying him up the steps, while Kerry and Jess held Tucker back so he wouldn't get in the way.

After they settled J.T. on the living room sofa, Grandma stuffed pillows in here and there, and Kate's mother covered his legs with a blanket. Finally, Tucker was allowed to say hello. With his tail beating back and forth, he nuzzled J.T.'s hand and side and seemed amazingly mindful of the injured leg. After a
quick head scratch from J.T., the dog settled down quietly on the floor, tight beside the couch.

“Did you see?” Grandma asked J.T.

Everyone stepped aside so J.T. could view the colorful banner Kerry had taped to the fireplace mantel.

“Beautiful.” He winked at Kerry.

A few minutes later, Ashley arrived. When Kate saw how she and J.T. exchanged something special with their eyes, she gave up her seat so Ashley could sit beside her brother. Everyone watched as J.T. opened the gift bag from Ashley and pulled out a computer magazine, an iTunes card, and some candy, his favorite Swedish fish.

A knock at the door prompted Kate's mother to rise. “There were two more people invited,” she told them. “I hope you don't mind. Miss Hatcher wasn't able to come, but we do have one other guest.” When she opened the door, there stood Brady Parks.

Silence as he stepped into the living room. The air seemed to have gone out of the room. So much had happened between the two boys that Kate hadn't thought she'd ever see Brady in their house again.

“Come on in, Braden!” Grandma urged him, breaking the silence and motioning energetically with her hand. She had always called Brady by his full name. It was nice hearing it, Kate thought, after all the time that had passed.

Brady smiled shyly and timidly approached. He handed J.T. something wrapped in tinfoil. “My mom's banana bread,” he said, “no nuts.”

J.T. grinned as he took the bread. “Just the way I like it.”

“I know,” Brady said.

Kate's mother pulled another dining room chair into the circle around J.T. for Brady.

J.T. turned to Ashley. “You know my friend Brady, right?”

Ashley widened her eyes and laughed. “Duh. Of course! We're in the same English class! We were at the hospital together last weekend! Brady's dad gave us a ride up!”

“You were there together?” J.T. touched the palm of his hand to his forehead. “
Whew!
I guess I was pretty much out of it, then!” He rolled his eyes and reached out for Ashley's hand. She blushed, her round, freckled cheeks filling with a rosy color. She had long, straight brown hair with brown eyes to match, a quick smile, and a sweet voice. But most important, she was super nice, Kate thought. Just the kind of girl her brother deserved.

When Ashley took J.T.'s hand with both of hers, it was impossible not to notice. For the briefest moment, Kate's and Brady's eyes connected.

“Okay. Here's what I want to know,” Kerry piped up suddenly. “Can you marry a cat?”

Everyone laughed, and Grandma announced it was time to set up the TV trays for dinner so they could eat in the living room surrounding J.T.

“A toast! Welcome home, J.T.!” Grandma announced, raising her glass of ice water. Everyone else lifted glasses of water and Diet Coke, including J.T., who added, “Thanks, but I also want to toast my sister Kate, who—no slouch—saved my life.”

“Hear, hear!” Grandma said.

After eating and taking his pain medication, J.T. immediately cocked his head and fell asleep on the couch. Dessert hadn't
even been served, which, Kerry said, meant he was “
really, really tired
.”

Kate and Jess gathered the dishes, and everyone moved quietly to the kitchen to sit at the table for slices of coconut cake and small chunks of brownies. When they finished, Grandma put the teakettle on while Mom loaded the dishwasher and told the kids to “sit and visit.”

“Maybe a homecoming party was too much for J.T.,” Jess suggested.

“I don't think so,” Kate said. “He seemed really happy. Especially when he saw Ashley.” She turned to Brady. “And then
you
!”

“Yeah. No one expected that!” Jess said.

Brady seemed embarrassed. “Yeah. Well. J.T. and I, we're old friends.” He paused and rubbed at a spot on his temple, but didn't seem to want to say anything more than that, which was fine, Kate thought.

“I appreciate you all inviting me,” Ashley told the group. “I'd really like to help when J.T. comes back to school. I could carry his books and help him get to classes.”

“Me too,” Brady said eagerly. “I wanted to talk to you guys about that. We could make a schedule and do shifts, helping him get around school.”

“Do you and J.T. have any of the same classes?” Jess asked Brady.

“No, but that won't be a problem. I already talked to the assistant principal. He said I could be late to class if I was helping J.T. with his wheelchair or when he's on crutches.”

“And I can help him get to Spanish and algebra,” Ashley said.
“He's actually saving my life in algebra. It's so hard for me.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “I dread it next year.”

“But you'll have J.T. to help!” Ashley said.

“Hey—and me, too,” Brady chimed in. “That's one of my best subjects.”

Kate's heart skipped a beat. She would love getting help from Brady!

“J.T. is so incredibly smart,” Ashley said. “Last week, before the accident, he was showing me how to do a quadratic equation—just for fun!”

The kids chuckled.

“So do you guys know I had a crush on J.T. in middle school?” Ashley asked.

“No way!” Jess exclaimed.

Ashley confirmed with a nod. “It was middle school, and I thought I was fat and ugly,” Ashley told them. “I didn't have much self-confidence. We were in band together, though, and J.T. was always really nice to me.”

“It must have been hard to keep it a secret,” Jess said.

Ashley wrinkled her nose. “Not really,” she disagreed. “I mean, it's not always easy, but you
can
keep a secret if you're careful. I just didn't say anything!”

Kate didn't say it out loud, but she agreed with Ashley. One hundred percent.

DISCOVERY

S
aturday morning, Kate's alarm went off early. Now that the chicks were a little older and more or less uniform, the culling was easier. Still, there would be a few who looked off, and she wanted to quickly relocate them before the rest of her family was up.

After unlocking the back door, she let the dog scamper out first, then softly pulled it closed behind her and held the screen door, too, so it wouldn't clap shut.

A full day of rain had given the world a good rinse. Even the air smelled clean and refreshed. Moisture on the grass sparkled, and the temperature was crisp. The sweatshirt Kate had pulled on felt good.

While Tucker ran off to make his rounds, Kate headed down to the chicken houses to get her chores done. She picked up several dead chicks and buried them in the manure pile beneath the shed. Then she selected a total of eight for culling, put them in the box, and walked across the field.

When she arrived, she discovered a fox, or a dog, had been digging a hole alongside the chicken coop and had almost made it underneath. After settling the chicks inside, she pulled a loose board off a dilapidated coop nearby and used it like a shovel to scoop dirt back into the hole. She put the board over the spot inside the coop where the animal almost got through, then went outside to stomp down the dirt with her feet. After brushing off her hands, she went back in to feed her flock.

The chicks seemed excited to see her and followed her around, which forced Kate to step carefully, almost shuffle, so as not to crush any of the little birds. Whenever she stopped, they pecked at the toes of her sneakers and went nuts for her shoelaces. What did they think? That they were worms? Kate smiled as she ripped open a bag of chicken feed and scooped out some of the grain with an empty coffee can. She sprinkled the feed in the pie tins and was about to scoop up another can full when a noise stopped her.

Straightening up, she held her breath and listened. Suddenly, a loud
click!
Kate stared at the metal latch on the door and watched as it was lifted by the outside handle. She glanced at the board she had just placed inside the coop, but there wasn't time to fetch it.

With a slow and agonizing creak, the door swung inward, and all at once, Kate's mother filled the opening. She had tennis shoes on, but clutched her bathrobe to hold it closed at her neck. Her hair, long and loose, fell over both shoulders. “Oh, my,” she said.

Kate's heart fell.

“What is this?” her mother asked.

Where to begin, Kate wondered as she stood motionless, the coffee can of chicken feed still in her hands.

She met her mother's bewildered gaze. “I couldn't do the culling,” she confessed.

The chicks were still pecking at her shoes. Tears seeped into her eyes. “I tried, Mom, but I couldn't kill them.”

Her mother put a hand on her cheek as she surveyed the small, illicit flock. “I had no idea,” she said. “When I looked out the bedroom window and saw you crossing the field with that box . . .”

For a moment neither spoke, but then the corners of her mother's mouth gently lifted, and she opened her arms. “But I
do
understand, Kate.”

Kate set the can of feed down, stepped carefully through the chicks, and went to hug her mother.

“I don't blame you,” her mother said, wrapping her arms around Kate. “I could never do it, either.”

“You're not mad?” Kate asked.

“How could I be angry?”

Kate pulled back. “But it could get us into so much trouble!”

Her mother relaxed her arms, and the two of them stepped back to survey the chicks. “Well, it could certainly get us in trouble,” she agreed. “We'll have to think of something.”

Surprised—relieved—
overjoyed
at her mother's reaction, Kate finished the feeding while her mother waited.

“A dust bath!” Kate's mother exclaimed, watching as one of the small chickens made a great show of rooting in the floor
dirt and debris while ruffling its feathers. “A natural thing for a chicken, but the ones we raise don't even have room to walk around, let alone take a dust bath.”

“I know,” Kate sympathized. “Even if they have a short life, it would be nice if that life could be normal, wouldn't it?” She finished refreshing the chicks' water.

“Do you know why your father never let me near the chickens?” her mother asked.

Kate set the water jug down. “Actually, I think I do know,” she said. “Was it when the company told you to close in the chicken houses?”

“Yes,” Kate's mother replied, her gaze growing distant as she remembered. “When the company told us to nail shut all the windows and cover them with blackout curtains so there was no light and no fresh air. That's when I started to lose it. It only made sense to the company—dollar sense, that is. When chickens are in the dark, they think it's night and they don't move around, so they grow faster. It was better for ‘feed conversion,' the company said.”

She looked up at Kate. “I once asked your father how much time it saved, keeping the birds in the dark that way. Do you know what he said?”

Kate shook her head.

“He told me it shaved off about two days, which meant the company didn't have to pay to keep them alive for that much longer—two days' worth of feed is what it came down to. We couldn't argue. We had to do what the company told us. They owned the chickens, remember? We were being paid to raise them, and our pay was based on pounds of meat.

“With the windows closed, it became our responsibility to keep the chickens cool with fans. We had to dig a deeper well for more water for the cooling pads and buy a new generator in case the electricity went off, because if the birds overheated, thousands of them would die.

“It got harder and harder for me to deal with it. ‘It's only business,' your father tried to tell me. But I know it bothered him, too. You know what it's like inside those houses, Kate. It's not humane. The chickens are packed in so tight you can't even see the floor. All they do is eat. Some of them—their internal organs grow so fast—they have heart attacks and keel over dead.”

“I know,” Kate said. “They flip!”

Kate's mother moved her head back and forth. “I couldn't stand it.” She brought her hand down. “One day, I was alone. It was a beautiful day. A day like today! I went down to the chicken houses, and do you know what I did, Kate? I pulled the nails out from two of the window frames. I pushed open the windows, the way we used to, to let in fresh air and light. I was starting on another window when your father came and stopped me. He was so angry.
S
o angry
. He told me not to ever go near the chickens again.”

Kate didn't tell her mother she knew all this because she had witnessed everything that day. What good would it do now? But she would never forget. A little girl's voice, her own, still echoed in her memory: “Mommy, what are you doing?” Her mother hadn't heard her, hadn't seen her either, and Kate was afraid, so she hid behind the tractor, crouching low and watching when her enraged father stormed down the hill. Later, Kate had told J.T., but no one else. They both knew that if there was a
beginning to their mother's depression, that must have been part of it. Not long afterward, her mother couldn't handle their homeschooling, and J.T. and Kate were enrolled at public school.

Kate and her mother walked back through the field quietly. There wasn't much more to say. Both of them were troubled by the business that had become their livelihood. At the house, her mother squeezed Kate's shoulders one more time.

“It's not so bad, is it?” Kate asked. “Keeping the chicks at Beck's place? No one goes there.”

“But it won't always be the case,” her mother said. “Who knows when they'll try to sell the property? We'll talk about it later. Meantime, we need to get on with the day.”

Kate returned to her room and saw on her cell phone that she'd received a text message.

Curti
s:
U there? I heard
from Hooper.

Kate sat on her desk chair texting back.

Kate:
What did he say?

Curtis:
G
otta be quick. Am at wor
k. Hooper said if u
didn't do the report
on highroglyphics (
sp??) by Monday he w
ould do a Facebook p
age on Justin, then
squeal about the chi
ckens and JT's proje
ct.

Kate's shoulders drooped.

Kate:
What
did you tell him?

C
urtis:
That I needed
to talk to u.

Pause.

Curtis:
So what do
I say?

Kate:
Tell h
im to meet us by the
labs upstairs.

Curt
is:
U sure?

Kate:
Ye
s.

Curtis:
U going
to write that report
?

Kate:
No.

Curtis:
But tell him to meet us?

Kate:
Yes.

Curtis:
I don't get
it.

Kate:
Just tell
him to meet us. I ha
ve a plan.