Dirty Chick (13 page)

Peter was sitting with Silas, who was dipping a metal goblet in a mud puddle. “You think she's better?”

A feeling of satisfaction came over me. “Yeah. I love that our animal had a problem and we figured out how to fix it.” Silas, who had evidently decided the mud puddle was full of chocolate milk, sampled the water in his cup. He grimaced and spat it out.

“That's great, baby.” Peter approached the chicken, crouching down to her level. She waddled away, but he scooped her up.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see my chicken fly.” Then, before I could stop him, he tossed the chicken in the air. At that moment, several things happened in quick succession. The chicken fluttered her good wing like crazy, but her other wing hung limp, so she spun like a football and dropped like a stone.

Then Jabberwocky pounced on top of her, fluttered six times, and walked away to eat worms.

“What just happened?” I asked in horror.

Peter looked pale. “I think he just fucked her.”

Miranda came up behind me. “Is
fuck
a grown-up word?”

“Why'd you throw the chicken?” I asked accusingly.

“It's a bird. You said it was better.”

I shook my head in disbelief.
Who throws a sick chicken?
“Well, at least there's one thing we can be thankful for.”

“What's that?”

“It wasn't a duck.”

HEAVY BREATHING

W
e weren't the only ones with lamb trouble. All the families in Purua adopted baby animals for Calf Club Day, and challenges inevitably arose. Autumn's daughter Nova chose a pale gray lamb named Cardigan, and when they went out to feed her one morning, they found her dead. No one knew why. She was just too weak to make it through the night.

“Those girls must feel so awful!” Rebecca crooned when she heard the news. “Let's invite them to breakfast, so we can try to cheer them up.”

Like most displaced New Yorkers, Rebecca had spent much of her time with us bemoaning the lack of bagels in New Zealand. Never mind the world-class scenery and the pageantry of exotic birds in these islands. What Rebecca needed most was a sesame bagel with a schmear. We decided to try baking our own, and on Sunday we invited Autumn, Patrice, and their children over for a taste.

“What's that?” Maris asked when the first tray of bagels came out
of the oven. We'd made sesame, garlic, and everything bagels. Plump and steaming on the cookie sheet, they looked like a taste of home.

Rebecca went pale. “You've never seen a
bagel
before? They're only the best thing ever!”

“Why does it have a hole in it?” Nova wanted to know.

“Stop asking so many questions,” Autumn ordered. “Why don't we show Antonia what you brought?” She reached for her bag and pulled out a tablet.

“Ooo, pictures?” We gathered round the tablet, anticipating photos of smiling children and lambs.

“We made a movie,” Maris mumbled, looking up at me with big, dark eyes. Nova just smiled.

Autumn hit the Play button.

On the screen, Maris was bustling about the kitchen pretending to make supper for her family. She opened a recipe book, stirred something in a pot, tasted and seasoned her soup. Carelessly, she wiped her hands on her apron and turned back to her recipe.

And then an ominous soundtrack began. Behind Maris's back, the pantry door began to move. A slender white hand reached out, sliding the pantry open and reaching for Maris's neck.

In the following scene, Maris lay broken on the floor. Her throat was slashed, blood oozing from the side of her mouth. The camera zoomed in on her neck, showing flaps of skin peeling back from the open wound.

In the final scene, the body was gone. Autumn came home, hanging up her coat and moving to the kitchen, not noticing the blood that dripped from the walls. The pot was still simmering on the stove. Autumn took a spoon and tasted. “What a marvelous stew!” she exclaimed. “It's so rich and meaty!” Then: “I wonder where Maris is?”

The movie ended. Peter gave an uncomfortable cough-laugh.

“Oh,
wow
,”
Rebecca stammered, pushing her bagel away.

“They're really enjoying that theater blood you gave them,” Autumn explained.

“And you're doing such a great job!” I cheered the girls. Since no one had much of an appetite for bagels anymore, I decided to change the subject. “I hear Cardigan didn't do so well,” I told Nova sympathetically.

She smiled. “It's okay. We got a new one.”

“Great! What's his name?”

“Pixie.”

“Aw, that's so cute!” Rebecca clasped her hands. “Do you have any pictures?”

“No. He's dead, too.”

“We are thinking we will try a calf next time,” Patrice suggested. “The lambs, they are not going so well.”

Nova continued to smile, and for a serial lamb killer, this looked a little evil.

“You should try the cream cheese with chives,” Rebecca offered, to fill the silence. “That one's my favorite.”

None of our animals had died of natural causes just yet, but it was time to start slaughtering some. The turkeys had proved to be disappointing pets. We were afraid to let them free-range, lest Kowhai help herself to a pre-Thanksgiving snack, so they stayed in their pen, eating expensive food and producing copious amounts of manure.

The birds themselves had cost just twenty dollars each, but we were feeding them something called Meat Bird Crumbles, a high-protein feed that cost the same as dehydrated steak. “Those birds had better pace themselves,” I warned. “They might not make it to Thanksgiving.”

But it was still only June. Toward the end of the month, I started e-mailing Michiko's lawyer about buying her property. It turned out she was eager to sell, just as Amanda had predicted. I didn't understand all the details, but it seemed a bankruptcy or a foreclosure wasn't the best calling card for a professional accountant. And yet, that husband made me nervous. The police didn't have enough evidence to charge him yet, so he was still living nearby.

“He has to sell,” Michiko wrote through her lawyer. “He has no ability to pay. And I think there is no harm to your family.”

That was pretty tepid reassurance, but we felt we were running out of options, so we decided to move ahead with the purchase. We agreed on a price and submitted our offer. Everyone in the community seemed pleased with our decision, since we'd get to stay in Purua and help out their friend at the same time. Autumn even called to congratulate us. “You'll soon be the biggest gorse farmers in Purua,” she teased. New Zealanders have a special kind of hatred for gorse, so this was sort of like congratulating someone on his new swamp full of poison ivy and alligators.

Then one day I got a call from Kim, the real estate agent who had shown us Martin and Klara's property. “I really shouldn't be telling you this,” she whispered over the phone, “but Martin's had a surgery on his eye. He's going about with a patch now.”

I thought of that sixty-acre section, all steep hills and native bush. “He has one eye? How does he get around?”

“I really don't know,” Kim replied. “But I think they'd like to meet with you. They're ready to come down in price.”

“You want to live in that crazy house?” Peter asked when I told him about the Slovakians. “You want to power your washing machine with a windmill?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “Maybe. That land is so gorgeous.”
There were swimming holes, open meadows, secluded glades of trees. So what if the house was illegal and the whole thing was powered with a windmill and happy thoughts? We could work with that.

So Peter called Kim, and she notified Martin and Klara that we wanted to meet. I have no idea how she got in touch with them, since they had no phone, Internet, or street address. It's possible she employed a carrier pigeon.

That afternoon, I took the kids to visit Amanda. Our visits to Amanda's house were always relaxing, because the children all ran in a pack, which meant Amanda and I could sit in the kitchen drinking wine and scarfing down potato chips. Silas loved it, too. There was a trampoline he liked to jump on, and he'd mostly stopped pooping on their lawn. He'd even used the toilet once or twice.

The only problem was that the conversation always revolved around Pearl. Now that we knew she was pregnant, everyone wanted to talk goat babies. Especially Amanda. She considered Pearl's babies to be her grandchildren, since she'd reared their mother by hand, and she never seemed to tire of the topic.

When I sat down at her kitchen table, Amanda started right in. “Have you been fondling her teats?” she asked with a sly grin.

I had a chip halfway to my mouth, and I dropped it. “Have I
what
?”

“Fondled her teats. Oh, you'll have to fondle them. Helps with the milking later, so she gets used to you. You'll have to get in there and have a good fondle.”

“Could you not say
fondle
?”

“Why don't you want me to say
fondle
? What's wrong with fondling? I like to get in there and have a good fondle.”

“Please
,
Amanda.”

She grinned. “Okay, no fondle. What should I say instead of . . .
fondle
?”

I felt a little sick. “Manipulate? No. Manhandle. I think I could cope with
manhandling
her teats.”

Soon after, I collected my kids, making the excuse that I had to go home and get dinner in the oven. But Amanda had me thinking—all this talk about getting fresh milk and cheese, and I still hadn't touched an udder. What if I couldn't do it? What if Pearl kicked me in the face, or I had some kind of udder allergy that made my skin break out in hives? What if it just grossed me out to squeeze a goat's boob?

So the next morning, I went out and tried to manhandle Pearl's tits. I mean teats. Touching a ruminant's teats is not something I ever had occasion to do in my city life, and they weren't quite what I'd expected. To begin with, they were surprisingly large. I thought goat teats would be about the same size as a rubber baby nipple, but that was hopelessly wrong. Pearl's teats were like two large, uncircumcised penises dangling close to the ground. One of them was much larger than the other, a sort of giant, swollen goat breast. Plus they were speckled. Pearl's teats were a pale shade of pink, with gray splotches up and down their length. The whole package was intimidating.

Also, I had no idea how to approach her. Should I coax her to me or try a sneak attack? I went with the element of surprise.

“Hi, Pearl,” I said, in a tone that was intended to be soothing but just came out creepy. “Can I get in there and have a fondle?”

She didn't scream or run, so I touched the big, speckled teat with one hand. Instantly, she jerked away. Which I guess is what anyone would do if a stranger came up behind her and grabbed her by the tit. And that's what surprised me: that a teat really does feel a lot like
a breast. It was warm and soft and surprisingly sensual. I liked touching it a little more than I should have. Pearl must have sensed this, because she trotted away to the safety of her favorite tree, then stood there in the shade looking miffed.

“Mama!” Miranda came running, this time completely nude apart from a stuffed blue monster tail she'd tied to her waist with a ribbon. The tail was about six feet long and filthy with mud and clumps of grass. “Kowhai did kill a chicken!”

“Come on, Magnolia,” I chided, trying to act like I hadn't just been feeling up a goat. “Remember last time, the chicken was just hurt, and then we made it better.”

“No, no, really! Come with me! I'll show you!” She dragged me down to the chicken coop, and there was Kowhai, in her favorite spot beneath the flax bush. Feathers were strewn everywhere, and she was definitely chewing on a corpse. It looked extremely chickenish.

“God
damnit
!” I swore, chasing Kowhai away. I glanced at the henhouse door, noting quickly that the latch was broken. Kowhai must have just strolled inside for an early snack. Miranda and I crept forward. This chicken was most definitely dead. There were crucial parts missing, such as the face. Blood was spattered everywhere.

“Rebecca!” I called.

Becca came over, took one look at the dismembered chicken, and went pale. “I can't deal,” she announced. “I don't do well with dead things. I need to go lie down.” She wandered back to her sleep-out, where she probably lay down on her acupressure mat, which was covered in hard plastic knobs. She claimed they relaxed her. I liked to call it her nail bed.

“What do we do with the chicken, Mama?” Miranda wanted to know. “Do we eat it?”

“I don't know,” I shrugged. “Let's get a bucket.”

But a bucket was only part of the cleanup job. The next step was to call Skin. “He'll know what to do,” I told Miranda, feigning confidence.

“Aw, that's easy.” Skin laughed when I got him on the phone. “Ya tie it round her neck.”

“I . . . sorry? I tie a dead chicken on my dog?” I thought about this for a minute. “But what do I tie it with?”

“A knot.”

“Yeah, but—won't the chicken, I mean, won't it rot and fall apart?”

“Ya can put it in a bag if ya want. But then you leave it on there for a week, and she'll never do it again. Works a treat. Might want to keep her away from the house, though. Gets a bit whiffy.”

When Peter got back from work that evening, he was startled to find his dog crouching under a lemon tree, a chicken corpse lashed to her neck with twine. I'd stuffed the hen in an orange mesh bag first, so that pieces wouldn't fall off as it began to decompose.

Peter emerged from the bedroom, where he'd changed into his farm clothes. He peeked out the window, inspecting his dog. “You're sure about this?” he asked tentatively. “It seems kind of cruel.”

Kowhai certainly looked miserable, a canine Ancient Mariner in disgrace. She cowered beneath the tree, too uncomfortable to sit. Her tail was pointed straight down, an anchor line sinking between her legs.

“Not as cruel as getting shot by a farmer. She can't chase chickens, or sheep, or cows even. Skin says if she does, she'll get a bullet in the head.”

Peter looked doubtful. “We'll try it one night. I might take it off in the morning.”

The next morning, when I woke up, Kowhai wasn't barking, and
I went outside right away to check on her. My first thought was that she might have strangled herself on the twine I'd tied around her neck, but she was safe, and actually quite pleased with herself. Overnight, she'd gotten into the orange mesh bag and devoured the rest of the chicken. All that remained were two chewed-up feet. Kowhai stared up at me, her face full of guilt and repentance. “It's all right,” I comforted, releasing her from the lemon tree. “It's not your fault.”

I told Peter what had happened. “What did you expect?” he asked. “You basically rewarded her with a sackful of food.”

I sighed, looking over at Silas, who was sitting on the couch flipping through the pages of my
New Yorker
. “Bus,” he announced, pointing to a cartoon. “Bus.”

I walked over and sat down next to him. “No,” I said gently. “That's a man. Can you find his eyes?”