Fresh Eggs (10 page)

“Dog or coyote. Either way you got a chicken eater.”

“Think I should call the dog warden?”

“Good gravy, I would.”

So that's what Calvin Cassowary does, calls county dog warden Wally Barghest, who spends twenty minutes examining the chicken carcasses and the footprints in the dirt before offering his expertise. “That old pup of yours wouldn't do anything like this, would he?” He points straight at Biscuit.

Calvin scratches Biscuit's ears. “This guy wouldn't hurt a flea.”

Wally Barghest reaches out and pats Biscuit's wet nose. “Then I'd say more than likely it was a coyote.” Like Jimmy Faldstool, he says it the cowboy way. “They've been migrating east last ten years or so. They got big trouble with them in the southern part of the state. Chewing up sheep and hogs pretty bad down there. So I wouldn't be surprised. Those layer houses of yours throw quite a tempting stink. You're lucky it ain't happened before now.”

The easiest thing would be to have Jimmy throw the carcasses into the dumpster with the dead hens from the layer houses. Dozens go in the dumpster every day. But these are Rhea's chickens. They have names. A piece of her heart. And Rhea has a piece of Calvin's heart. He leaves Blackbutt and Nancy in the garden until Rhea gets home from school. Covers them with empty feed bags so nothing chews them up worse than they already are.

Blackbutt and Nancy are buried on the slope south of the old cow barn. For generations the Cassowarys have been burying their dogs and cats here. Captain Bates and Half Pint are buried here, too.

Calvin watches his daughter dig the hole. “That's deep enough,” he says.

Rhea puts one of the feed bags in the hole, spreading it out like a blanket at the beach. She puts Blackbutt in first, then Nancy. She makes sure their floppy heads are touching. She places the other feed bag on top of them and tucks it in. She doesn't shovel the dirt over them, but uses her hands, gently hiding them from the cruel world, handful by handful by handful. The tears she fought off all day at school bubble in her eyes.

“We're going to have to keep your chickens in the chicken yard from now on,” her father tells her.

Rhea doesn't answer. She's thinking about the first year she entered Blackbutt in the Wyssock County Fair. She was sure he'd win a blue ribbon. He was so big and fancy. But he didn't win a blue ribbon, not even a red or white ribbon. The judge—a woman with a very wide hind end—said it was because he was a
mongrel
, part Leghorn, part Black Spanish, part who knows what. “Honey,” she said, “there's only two things you can do with a rooster like this—roast him or fry him.” The next year Rhea entered him again, hoping there might be a different judge. But it was the same woman with the same wide hind end and the same reason for not giving Blackbutt a ribbon. “You going to be the judge next year?” Rhea asked her.

“Honey,” the woman said, “I'm the judge every year.” So the next year, she was ready. While the woman was standing in front of Blackbutt's cage shaking her head, Rhea crept up behind her and pinned the BEST OF SHOW ribbon she stole from the hog barn on the back of her enormous pants.

So now while tears bubble in her eyes, Rhea is able to laugh. As they walk back toward the house, they see Mr. Shakyshiver confidently riding one of the young hens. “He's the boss now,” her father says.

After supper, Calvin calls Rick Van Varken. If a coyote is stalking their chickens, Rick's piglets could be in danger, too.

“I'm glad you called,” Rick Van Varken says. “I need to talk to you about something. You and Donna want to come over for some pie and ice cream?”

Calvin doesn't like the way the phone call ended. Doesn't like the sound of
need
to talk to you about
something
. He and Rick have always gotten along fine. As boys they camped out in the woods and swam naked in the deep holes on Three Fish Creek. They were in the Boy Scouts together. For a few years there, when Calvin was protected by his student deferment and Rick was sweating out the draft lottery, they kept their distance. But that's all water under the bridge now.

Dawn and Donna are another matter. Part of the problem is that Dawn and Jeanie were pretty close. They gabbed on the phone and went shopping together. Dawn drove Jeanie to the hospital when her water broke with Rhea. Another part of the problem is that Donna is so damn young. Her body so damn perfect. Dawn's not so young any more and the five boys she bore to carry on the Van Varken name have wreaked havoc with her stomach muscles and the veins in her legs.

While Calvin and Rick talk about the coyote incident in the living room, Donna helps Dawn with the elderberry pie and vanilla ice cream in the kitchen. Everybody's having ice cream except the lactose-intolerant Donna. “I see Rhea's starting to blossom,” Dawn says, getting down her best dessert plates from the hard-to-reach cupboard above the sink. “How old is she now?”

“Twelve,” Donna says.

Donna's uncomfortable smile doesn't deter Dawn one bit. “Jeanie's boobs were quite big—not Dolly Parton or anything—but I think you and Cal are going to have some serious boy trouble down the road. You get Rhea a training bra yet?”

As soon as they deliver the pie and ice cream to their husbands the talk turns from training bras and coyotes to the real reason for the get-together. “Our families have been living side by side for a hundred years,” Rick Van Varken begins. “So I wanted you to know about this first.”

It's good pie. Sweet sugary crust. Tangy filling. Calvin stops chewing. “Good lord, Rick. You're not sick are you?”

Rick shakes his head and bites his bottom lip. “I've sold the farm.”

While Calvin's wedge of pie goes uneaten, while his ice cream melts, Rick tells him about the financial pinch he's in. Tells him about the five sons he's got to think about. “Hogs aren't like chickens. I can't stack 'em five high in cages. Even if pork prices got up to where they should be, I just don't have enough land here. And you know what the taxes are like in this damn county now.”

Calvin sees the tears running down Donna's face, knowing it's not sympathy but the spicy air freshener Dawn sprayed to kill the smell of pig that's soaked into the house. “Good Lord. Where you moving to?”

“South Carolina,” Dawn says. “The weather is wonderful!”

“Good climate for hogs, both politically and economically,” Rick says, enjoying his own joke. “Cheap labor. Low taxes. Southern politicians don't worry about manure they way they do up here.” He drops his head and plays with his pie. He's got more bad news for his neighbor. “The thing is—I sold the farm to the Gumboro Brothers.”

“Those bastards building all those big houses north of Tuttwyler? Son of a bitch, Rick.”

“I'm not the first farmer selling out to developers and I'm not going to be the last.”

“I don't want to hear this, Rick.”

“I just wanted you to know first.”

“So I could sell out, too?”

“The climate in South Carolina is also good for chickens.”

Calvin puts his uneaten pie on the coffee table. “I'm not moving to fucking South Carolina.”

So the Cassowarys drive home. And while Donna is upstairs deciding which of her allergy tablets will counteract Dawn Van Varken's air freshener best, Calvin sits on the porch, scratching Biscuit's rump, and thinking about the two new layer houses Norman Marek is bugging him to build, F and G. Thinking about the people houses the Gumboro Brothers soon will be building on the Van Varken farm.

When Donna comes out, Biscuit and the cats dutifully jump off the porch and disappear into the night. “Dawn thinks Rhea should start wearing a training bra,” she says.

“I hope those coyotes kill every pig that bastard's got over there,” Calvin answers.

Rhea doesn't want to feed her chickens this morning. But she knows she has to. Her chickens are counting on her. So she goes. Feeds them. Gives them fresh water. Makes sure the calcium dish is filled. Each time she goes in and out of the coop she sees the bloody grass and the feathers still scattered about. She loved Blackbutt and Nancy.

When she's finished with her chores she goes to that horrible spot, squats and wraps her arms around her knees, and gathers up the feathers. She puts the feathers in her Nestlé's Quik can, with her own feathers. She snaps the lid in place and reaches for the blue jumper hanging on the doorknob.

Twelve

Rhea Cassowary hops off the bus and runs up the driveway, using her social studies book as an umbrella. The fat drops on the metal roofs of the layer houses sound like a thousand machine guns. Biscuit is waiting on the porch, wet and stinky. Rhea scratches his happy ears.

She pries her feet out of her shoes and goes in. She can smell the macaroni baking in the oven, hear Donna sniffling in the living room.

“That you, Rhea?”

Rhea, wet shoes in one hand, slippery social studies book in the other, takes just one step into the room.

“I bought you something today,” Donna says. She's curled on the sofa with the farm books, her calculator, and a box of tissues. “It's on your bed, big girl.”

Rhea has had a difficult day at school. Jennifer Babirusa intentionally bumped into her with her trombone case again, and she got seven of ten problems wrong on the math quiz. So she doesn't need Donna buying her things—it's always something ugly—and she sure doesn't need that condescending
big girl
crap. She goes upstairs without saying thanks.

The bag on her bed is from Kmart. That means Donna was in Akron today, seeing either her allergist or her dermatologist. It's not a particularly big bag and it's not very full. So at least it's not another dumb shapeless jumper. She shakes the bag onto the bedspread. It's a bra.

“Try it on for me,” Donna calls up the stairs.

Rhea takes off her blouse and undershirt. She looks at herself in the dresser mirror for as long as she dares, then slips her arms through the bra straps and fastens it.

“Can I come up now?” Donna asks.

Before Rhea can answer that there's no need for her to come up, she can hear the steps squeaking. She quickly puts on a baggy, everyday flannel shirt and sits on her bed, up by the pillows.

Donna comes in and sits on the edge of the bed, blocked from any physical contact by Rhea's stiff outstretched legs. “Does it fit okay?”

“Sure.”

“You hooked it okay? Sometimes that can be trouble.”

“I didn't have any trouble.”

Donna is having trouble keeping her smile up. “Why don't you let me see if it fits right. I've had lots of experience with those suckers.”

“It fits.”

“I know it's embarrassing—”

“I'm not embarrassed.”

“I think you should let me see it, Rhea. You're starting puberty. You're going to need my help on lots of personal things.”

Rhea squeezes against the headboard. She could have showed her mother. Her mother, after all, was her mother. Her mother would have understood. “It fits okay and I put it on right.”

Donna looks around for a Kleenex box. Not finding one, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand, then reaches toward the buttons on Rhea's shirt. “I want to see it.”

Rhea barricades herself behind her knees. “No.”

Donna sneezes loudly and pushes Rhea's legs aside. She slides forward. Her fingers hook around Rhea's collar. She starts thumbing the buttons. “Sit still!”

Rhea wants to fight her off. But her arms suddenly feel like they're nailed to the headboard. She squeezes her eyelids. This day had to come.

Donna does five of the six buttons and pushes the shirt off Rhea's shoulders. She finds more than the tiny breasts she expected. “What is this?”

She means, of course, the patch of small white feathers that stretches from the center of Rhea's chest to her collar bones. They fluff up around the bra's padded cups like delicate lace.

“Those are my feathers,” Rhea says.

“Why did you glue feathers to your boobs?”

“They're not glued,” Rhea says. She is breathing as if her lungs are filled with pudding.

Donna's patience is gone. She takes a pinch of feathers and pulls. “You're too old for silly stuff like this.” The feathers don't budge.

Rhea tells her again, “They just grow.”

Donna pulls harder. Rhea's skin resists, pulling away from her chest like rubber. “You're the most stubborn girl I ever saw in my life.”

One of Rhea's arms becomes unnailed and she slaps her father's wife hard across the face.

Her father's wife slaps her back, screams “Damn you!” and, with her angry strength, rips out a handful of feathers. There is blood on the quills.

Rhea collapses on her pillows.

Donna jumps off the bed and backs into the dresser. She is quivering like a sparrow in the mouth of a cat. She is staring through cloudy eyes at the feathers and drops of blood in her hand.

Suddenly she has Rhea by the arm, pulling her down the stairs, through the kitchen, across the lawn toward the layer houses. She is yelling, “Calvin! Calvin!”

Rhea is yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” Her free hand is trying to rebutton her shirt. She can see her father running toward them. Hear him yelling, “Hold on! Hold on!”

When he is only a few yards away, Rhea yanks her arm free. She runs to him and throws her arms around his waist. She feels his arms wrap around her back. Feels his prickly chin on her neck. “What's wrong, pumpkin seed?” he asks.

Donna pulls her away from her father and holds her tightly by the arms. “She's got feathers, Calvin! Like some goddamn chicken!” She shows him the tiny white feathers in her hand. Shows him the blood. She tears open Rhea's shirt and shows him that the feathers on her chest aren't glued on, but growing there. “I've tried to be a good mother to her, Calvin, but she just fights me every step of the way.”