The Lost Landscape (2 page)

WE BEGIN AS CHILDREN
imagining and fearing ghosts. By degrees, through our long lives, we come to be the very ghosts inhabiting the lost landscapes of our childhood.

Carolina Oates and Joyce, backyard of Millersport house, May 1941. (Fred Oates
)

MAY 14, 1941. IT
was a time of nerves. Worried-sick what was coming my father would say of this time in our family history but who could guess it, examining this very old and precious snapshot of Mommy and me in our backyard playing with kittens?

LOOKED LIKE I WOULD
be drafted. Nobody knew what was coming. At Harrison's, we were working double shifts. In the papers were cartoons of Hitler but none of it was funny
. The nightmare of Pearl Harbor is seven months away but the United States has been in a continuous state of nerves since Hitler executed his
blitzkrieg
against an unprepared
Poland in September 1939; by May 1941, with England under attack, the United States is engaged in an undeclared war in the Atlantic Ocean with Germany . . . But I am two years, eleven months old and oblivious to the concerns of adults that are not immediate concerns about
me.

MY TWENTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD FATHER FREDERIC
Oates, whom everyone calls “Fred” or “Freddy,” is taking pictures of Mommy and me behind our farmhouse in Millersport, New York; it is a day when Daddy is not working on the assembly line at Harrison Radiator, a division of General Motors seven miles away in Lockport, New York, involved in what is believed to be “defense work.” It is a tense, rapidly-shifting, unpredictable era before TV when news comes in terse radio announcements and in the somber pages of the
Buffalo Evening News
delivered in the late afternoon six days a week. But such global turbulence is remote from our farm in western New York where everything is green and humid in prematurely hot May and the grass in the backyard grows thick and raggedy. Here my twenty-four-year-old mother Carolina, whom everyone calls “Lena,” is cuddling with me in the grass playing with our newborn black kittens, smiling as Daddy takes pictures.

TAKING PICTURES
WITH THE
blue box camera. Of dozens, hundreds of pictures taken in those years only a few seem to have survived and how strange, how astonishing it would have been for us to have thought, in May 1941—
These pictures will outlive us!

How happy we are, and how good and simple life must have seemed to that long-lost child Joyce Carol—(who did not know that she was to be the “firstborn” of three children)—with little in her
life more vexing than the ordeal of having her curly hair brushed and combed free of snarls and fixed in place with ribbons, and being “dressed up” for some adult special occasion.

You can see in the snapshot behind Mommy and me a young, black-barked cherry tree and behind the tree the somewhat dour two-storey wood frame farmhouse owned by my mother's stepparents John and Lena Bush. Built in 1888 on Transit Road, at the time a narrow two-lane country road linking the small town of Lockport with the sprawling city of Buffalo twenty miles away, and surprisingly large by Millersport standards (where some of our neighbors' houses were single-storey, lacking cellars, hardly more than cabins or shanties), this steep-roofed farmhouse was razed decades ago yet resides powerfully—indomitably!—in my memory, the site of recurring dreams. (In a dream of the old farmhouse in Millersport I recognize, not a visual scene, but a sensation: a tone, a slant of light. Often, details are blurred. If there are human figures, their faces are blurred. I seem to know where I am, and who is with me, though I might not be able to name anyone. Just that sensation, both comforting and laced with a kind of visceral dread—
Back home.
) Note the exterior cellar door, a common sight in this now-vanished rural America, like the rain barrel at the corner of the house where rainwater was collected—and used for all purposes except drinking.

Behind Daddy as he takes our picture (and not visible to the viewer) is the farmyard: weatherworn barn with pewter lightning rod atop the highest pitch of the roof; chicken coop surrounded by a barbed-wire fence to keep out raccoons, foxes, and the wandering dogs of neighbors; storage sheds; fields, fruit orchards. To the right of the sliding barn doors is a smaller door leading into the corner of the barn that houses my grandfather Bush's smithy with its anvil and hammer, blacksmith tools, small coal furnace and bellows that turns
with a crank. Red-feathered chickens with no idea that they are “free range” are wandering about pecking in the dirt, oblivious of all else.
All these—lost.

TAKING PICTURES
HAS BEEN
our salvation. Without
taking pictures
our memories would melt, evaporate. The invention of photography in the nineteenth century—and the “snapshot” in the twentieth century—revolutionized human consciousness; for when we claim to remember our pasts we are almost certainly remembering our favorite snapshots, in which the long-faded past is given a visual immortality.

TAKING PICTURES
WAS AN
adult privilege in 1941. My way of
taking pictures
was to scribble earnestly with Crayolas in coloring books and in tablets. Grass would be horizontal motions of the green crayon. Black kitten, black crayon. Chickens were upright scribbles, vaguely humanoid in expression. My parents, I would not attempt. No human figures would appear in any of my childhood drawings, only very deep-green grass and trees, kittens and cats with fur of many hues, Rhode Island Red chickens.

NO ROMANCE IS SO
profound and so enduring as the romance of early childhood. The yearning we feel through our lives for our young, attractive and mysterious parents—who were so physically close to us and yet, apart from us, inaccessible and unknowable. Is this the very origin of “romance,” coloring and determining all that is to follow in our lifetimes? I am drawn to stare at these old family snapshots lovingly kept in albums and in envelopes. And so I am
drawn too to snapshots of strangers' families, sifting through boxes of old postcards and snapshots in secondhand shops—though these individuals are not “my” family, yet frequently they are not so very different from my family. Children in snapshots of long-ago, given a spurious sort of immortality by an adult's love, and all of them probably now departed. The almost overwhelming wish comes to me—
I want to write their stories! That is the only way I can know these strangers—by writing their stories . . .

I WAS HER PET
chicken. I was Happy Chicken.

Of all the chickens on the little farm on Transit Road in the northern edge of Erie County in western New York State in that long-ago time in the early 1940s, just one was Happy Chicken who was the curly-haired little girl's
pet chicken.

The little girl was urged to think that she'd been the first to call me Happy Chicken. In fact, this had to have been one of the adults and probably the Mother.

Probably too it was the Mother, and not the little girl, who'd been the first to discover that of all the chickens, I was the only one who came eagerly clucking to the little girl
as if to say hello.

Oh look!—it's Happy Chicken coming to
say hello.

The little girl and the little girl's mother laughed in delight that, without being called, I would peck in the dirt around the little girl's feet and I would
seem to bow
when my back was lightly stroked as a dog or a cat might
seem to bow
when petted.

The little girl loved it, my feathers were
soft
. Not
scratchy
and
smelly
like the feathers of the other, older chickens.

The little girl loved hearing my soft, querying clucks.

Early in the morning the little girl ran outside.

Happy! Happy Chicken!—the little girl cried through small cupped hands.

And there I came running! Out of the shadowy barn, or out of the bushes, or from somewhere in the barnyard amidst other, ordinary dark-red-feathered chickens. A flutter of feathers,
cluck-cluck-cluck
lifting in a bright staccato
Here I am! I am Happy Chicken!

The Grandfather shook his head in disbelief. Never saw anything like this—
Damn little chicken thinks he's a dog.

It was a sign of how special Happy Chicken was, the family referred to me as
he
. As if I were, not a mere hen among many, a brainless egg-layer like the others, but a lively little
boy-chicken.

For the others were just ordinary
hens
and scarcely discernible from one another unless you looked closely at them which no one would do (except the Grandmother who examined hens suspected of being “sickly”).

Truly I was Happy Chicken! Truly, there was no other chicken like
me.

My red-gleaming feathers bristled and shone more brightly than the feathers of the hens because I didn't roll in the dust as frequently as they did, in their (mostly futile) effort to rid themselves of mites. It wasn't just that Happy Chicken was young (for there were other chickens as young as I was, hatched from eggs within the year) but I was also far more intelligent, and more handsome; your eye was drawn to me, and only to me, out of the flock; for you could see from the special gleam in my eyes and the way in which I came running before the little girl called me, that I was
a very special little chicken.

The yard between the barn and the farmhouse was cratered with shallow indentations in which chickens rolled and fluttered their wings like large demented birds who'd lost the ability to fly. Sometimes as many as a dozen chickens would be rolling in the dirt at the same time as in a bizarre coordinated modern dance; but the chickens
were not coordinated and indeed took little heed of one another except, from time to time, to lash out with a petulant peck and an irritated cluck. When not rolling in the dirt (and in their own black, liquidy droppings) these chickens spent their time jabbing beaks into the dirt in search of grubs, bugs. Stray seeds left over from feeding time, bits of rotted fruit. Their happiness was not the happiness of Happy Chicken but a very dim kind of happiness for a chicken's brain is hardly the size of a pea, what else can you expect? This was why Happy Chicken—that is, I—was such a surprise to the family, and such a delight.

My comb was rosy with health, erect with blood. My eyes were unusually alert and clear. But each eye on each side of the beak, how'd you expect us to see
coherently?
We see double, and one side of our brain dims down so that the other side can see precisely. That's how we know which direction in which to run, to escape predators.

Most of the time, however, most chickens don't. Don't escape predators.

Sometime, they're so dumb they
run toward predators
. They do this when the predator is smart enough to freeze. They can't detect immobility, and they can't detect something staring at
them.

I was not really one of
them
. To be identified as special, and recognized as Happy Chicken, meant that, though I was a chicken I was not
one of them
. And particularly, I was not a
silly stupid hen.

SOMETIMES—AT SPECIAL TIMES—UNDER CLOSE
adult scrutiny and always held snug in the little girl's arms—Happy Chicken was allowed
inside the farmhouse.

No other chicken, not even Mr. Rooster, was ever allowed
inside the farmhouse.

Never upstairs but downstairs in the “wash-room” at the rear of
the house—a room with a linoleum floor that contained a washing machine with a hand ringer, and where coats and boots were kept—this is where the little girl Joyce could bring me. But always held gently-but-firmly in her arms, or set onto the floor and held in place, in the wash-room or—a few special times—in the kitchen which opened off the wash-room, where the Grandmother spent most of her time. Here, the little girl was given scraps of bread to feed me, on the linoleum floor.

And here, I was sometimes allowed up in the little girl's lap, to be fussed over and petted.

The other chickens would've been jealous of me—except they were too stupid. They didn't
know
. Even Mr. Rooster didn't understand how Happy Chicken was privileged. Sometimes Mr. Rooster stationed himself at the back door of the farmhouse, clucking and preening, complaining, fretting, fluttering his wings, insisting upon the attention of everyone who went inside the house, or came outside, shamelessly looking for a treat, and when he didn't get a treat, squawking indignantly and threatening to peck with his sharp beak.

The little girl was frightened of Mr. Rooster, and hurried past him. The Mother and the Grandmother shooed Mr. Rooster away, for they were frightened of him, too. The Grandfather and the Father laughed at Mr. Rooster and gave him a kick. They thought it was very funny, a goddamn bird trying to intimidate
them.

Sometimes Happy Chicken was allowed in the wash-room overnight, in a little box filled with straw, like a nest. And little Joyce petted me, and fussed over me, and fed me special treats.

Happy Chicken! You are so pretty.

. . . you are so
nice
. I love you

Happy Chicken.
I love you.

The little girl whispered to me, that no one else could hear. The
little girl had many things to tell me, all kinds of secrets to tell me, whispered against the side of my head where (the little girl supposed) I had “ears”—and when I made a clucking noise, the little girl spoke to me excitedly, for it seemed to the little girl that I was
talking to her, and telling her secrets.

What are you and Happy Chicken always talking about, the Mother asked the little girl, but the little girl shook her head defiantly, and would not tell.

(Sometimes, there was an egg or two discovered in Happy Chicken's little nest. The little girl took these eggs away to give to the Grandmother for they were
special Happy Chicken eggs
not to be mixed with the eggs of the hens out in the coop.)

(Yet still, though Happy Chicken produced eggs, it seemed to be taken for granted that Happy Chicken was a
boy-chicken
. For always, Happy Chicken was
he, him.
)

The little girl was given a gift of Crayolas! At once the little girl began drawing pictures of me on sheets of tablet paper.
Russet-brown
was the little girl's favorite Crayola crayon, for this was the color of my beautiful red-brown feathers. The little girl drew and colored many, many pictures of me, that were admired by everyone who saw them. With the help of the Mother, the little girl carefully printed, beneath the drawings

HAPPY CHICKEN

Sometimes, visiting relatives would peer at the little girl and me from the kitchen doorway, as the little girl sat on the floor beside my box drawing me, and I was tilting my head blinking and clucking at
her.

The little girl would overhear people saying
Is that just a—chicken? Or some special kind of guinea hen, that's smarter?

For it had not ever been known, that a “chicken” could be a pet, in such a way. At least, not in this part of Erie County, New York.

Between a chicken and a little girl there is not a shared language as “language” is known. Yet, Happy Chicken always knew his name and a few other (secret) words uttered by the little girl and the little girl always knew what Happy Chicken's special clucks meant, that no one else could understand and so when the Mother, or the Father, or any adult, asked the little girl what on earth she and the little red chicken were talking about, the little girl would repeat that it was a secret, she could not tell.

Sometimes, at unpredictable moments, I felt an urge to “kiss” the little girl—a quick, light jab of my beak against the girl's hands, arms, or face.

And the little girl had a special little kiss on the top of the head just for
me.

I WAS A YOUNG
chicken less than a year old at this time in the little girl's life when she hadn't yet learned to run on plump little-girl legs without tripping and falling and gasping for breath and
crying.

If the Mother was near, the Mother hurried to pick up the little girl, and comfort her. If the Grandmother was near, the Grandmother was likely to cluck at the little girl like an indignant hen and tell her to get up, she wasn't
hurt bad.

If the Father was near, the Father would pick up the girl at once, for the Father's heart was lacerated when he heard his little daughter cry, no matter that she hadn't been
hurt bad
. (But the Father was not often nearby for he worked in a factory seven miles away in Lockport, called Harrison Radiator.)

But always if an adult wiped the little girl's eyes and nose the
little girl soon forgot why she'd been crying even if she'd bruised or scratched her leg—the little girl cried easily but also forgot easily.

When you are a little girl you
cry easily and forget easily.

Nor is it difficult to appear
happy
when you are a
young chicken
and without memory as the smooth blank inside of an egg.

The Mother had chosen the little girl's name
Joy-ce Carol
because this seemed to her a happy name, there was
joy
in the name, when people spoke the name they smiled.

The Mother was a happy person, too. The Mother was not much older than a schoolgirl when the little girl was born but the little girl had no notion of what “born” was and so the little girl had not the slightest notion of how old, or how young, her pretty curly-haired Mother was, no more than Happy Chicken had a notion of anyone's
age.

This was the time when the little girl was an only child and so it was a happy time for the little girl who had her own room (separated by just a walk-in closet from her parents' room) upstairs in the clapboard farmhouse. One day soon it would be revealed that the little girl was just the firstborn in the family. There would come another, a
baby brother with the special name Robin
, competing for attention and for love the way the squawking chickens competed for seed scattered in the barnyard at their feeding time.

The little girl had no notion of this amazing surprise to come. The little girl had no notion of anything that
was to come
except a promise of a drive to Pendleton for ice cream, or a visit with the Other Grandmother (the Father's mother) who lived in Lockport, or a holiday like Christmas or Easter, or the little girl's birthday which was the most special day of all June 16 when dark-red peonies bloomed in profusion along the side of the house as the little girl was told,
just for her.

On her fourth birthday, the little girl was allowed to feed cake-crumbs to me, while the adults looked on laughing. Happy Chicken
was allowed to sit on the little girl's lap, if the little girl held me snug, and my wings tucked in, inside her arms.

Pictures were taken with the Father's Brownie Hawkeye camera.

Pictures of
little Joyce Carol
and
Happy Chicken
, 1942.

With a frown of distaste the Grandmother would say, in her broken English, A chicken is
dirty
. A chicken should
stay on the floor.

The Grandmother did not like me though sometimes the Grandmother pretended to like me. In the Grandmother's eyes, a chicken was never anything more than a
chicken
. And a
chicken
was only of use, otherwise worthless.

Outdoors, when the little girl was nowhere near, and the Grandmother approached, I knew to flee, and to hide. Always to flee and to hide away from the other chickens, so brainlessly scratching and pecking in the dirt, in the darkest corner of the barn or far away in the orchard.

A chicken is not
dirt-y
, the little girl protested. Happy Chicken is
nice and clean.

And so when a small dollop of hot wet mess came out of my anus, which I could not help, and onto the little girl's shorts, the adults pointed and laughed, and the Mother quickly cleaned it away with wadded tissues as the Grandmother made her clucking-tsking noise.

The little girl was embarrassed, and ashamed. But the little girl always forgave me. And soon forgot whatever it was I'd done, because she was such a little girl, and forgot so easily, and was soon again stroking and petting me, and kissing the bone-hard top of my head.