The Woefield Poultry Collective (11 page)

She wrinkled her nose at the smell and then put a steaming mug on my bedside table and leaned forward and opened a window, letting in a blast of wind with a distinct Arctic bite to it.

“Please don’t let the air in. I’m allergic,” I said.

“I thought you wanted to die. That’s what you said yesterday when I was trying to get you into the house.”

“I do. But not of fresh air. I was thinking you could smother me or maybe I could overdose on something in the morphine family.” As I spoke, Phil took a bite of my spleen.

I had to sit up to talk to her, but first I had to take a peek under the covers to make sure I had underpants on. I’ve been known to go commando. Also, I was never quite sure what might happen to my lower half when I was trying to sleep one off. Once I established that I was dressed I pulled myself up. God, it felt so bad to have a girl standing in my room looking at me when I felt so sick.

“So I guess I’m fired,” I said. “Sorry about that. I’ll get my stuff and head home as soon as I get my shit together. Thanks for giving me a chance and all that.”

“That’s not going to work,” said Prudence.

“What? Me being fired? Dude, I’ve obviously crossed the line and I deserve it. I realize I’m not employee of the month and I’m ready to take the consequences.”

“Your mother won’t take you back.”

“Did you tell her I was fired?”

“I told her I didn’t think things were working out.”

“So where does she expect me to go?”

Prudence just shook her head.

“This is such bullshit,” I said, pulling the thin blankets higher.

Prudence sat down on a chair across from the bed, gingerly, like I was a very sick patient in a hospital.

“Hmmm,” she said.

I couldn’t even look at her. Her face was so clear and unfucked up. Looking at her, all healthy and everything, made me feel a hundred times worse about myself. My heart was slamming in my chest. I had nowhere to go.

“I brought you some chamomile tea,” she said. “To help you rehydrate and calm your stomach.”

She picked up the mug and I took it with a trembling hand.

Pushing through the pain, I leaned my back so it rested against the wall. I held tight to the cup with both hands and took a small sip. I could see Prudence notice the way my hands shook, even when I had them wrapped around the tea mug.

“Seth, you seem like a nice person. I hate for things to end this way.”

I squeezed my eyes shut so Phil wouldn’t push them out of my head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t seem to get it together.”

“Have you ever thought about your drinking? How maybe it’s becoming a problem?”

“It’s kind of a family trait,” I said. And as I spoke I knew how lame that sounded. “It’s just sort of how I am.”

“Or how you cope,” she said.

Then she really floored me. “What happened with you and your drama teacher?”

“Nothing. It was just this thing that … I’d rather not talk about it.”

She nodded.

“Seth, if you promise to do something about your drinking, you can stay here and keep working on the farm.”

That surprised me so much that I looked at her.

“Many people have substance abuse issues. It’s simply something you’re going to have to tackle. Get in there and manage it.”

She sounded so sure.

“As long as your drinking doesn’t interfere with your work again, I will allow our arrangement to continue.”

She reached out and put a hand on my forearm. Her fingers were cool and her touch was like that Noxzema cream my mom used to use.

“Seth, you are unlimited potential. I want you to remember that.”

“I don’t feel like unlimited anything, except maybe an unlimited disaster.” There was this whiny note in my voice that I hated. When Keith Richards had to talk to the band about being a dope fiend and a drunk, I bet he didn’t whine.

“Maybe you can look for an outpatient treatment program or get some counseling or something.”

Fuck that, was my immediate response, but that would have sounded ungrateful.

“Maybe I could do treatment by correspondence,” I said. “Like online with homework and stuff. You could supervise.”

“Is there such a thing?” she asked.

“Probably. And anyway, people open treatment centers all the time. Like as businesses. Maybe you could do that in addition to your farming.”

She smiled. Her teeth were extra white and probably not from bleaching but from inner purity or something.

“I don’t think we need to go that far,” she said. “I’m going to leave it to you to find a solution. In the meantime, there’s plenty here to keep you busy.”

I was going to tell her how grateful I was that she wasn’t going to make me homeless, but before I could get any words out, Phil lunged for my throat and I had to scramble for the bathroom. I nearly knocked Prudence off her chair in my hurry. When I finished puking, she was gone. But I felt human enough to get dressed and lug my laptop outside, although I was too sick to actually turn it on. The thing is old as rocks, it weighs nearly as much as my tower, and the battery only lasts about twenty minutes and I didn’t have the strength to get the extension cord organized.

As I sat there on the porch, random images from the day before floated into my mind. I couldn’t remember much of what happened. I’m a pretty bad blackout drinker and even though it freaks me out to lose chunks of time, the reality is that a lot of my memories are better off forgotten or suppressed or erased or whatever it is that happens when a person blacks out. Sometimes I can’t remember stuff that happened even before I started drinking. It’s like my blackouts scrub memories on both sides of a drinking session.

I know I talked to the cute lightbulb clerk when I went to the store with Earl. And after I drank some of that rotgut homemade wine, I
went back to Home Depot with Prudence. I think I wanted to try and talk to the girl again. I don’t know why. I guess it was the way she looked at me and didn’t know me or my story. It’s nice, when someone looks at you like you might be cool or have something interesting to say and not like you’re that guy who had that extremely fucked-up thing happen to him. That’s where my memory starts to skip, like a scratched CD. A few images pop up: the look on the girl’s face when I asked her some question. I hoped I didn’t say anything dirty to her. I had this sense that Mel Gibson was there, which is doubtful, seeing as he lives in Malibu, where he’s very active in his church and busy making ultraviolent religious movies with no English in them and saying horrendous shit on the phone. But there you go. After Mel Gibson, nothing. I woke up to find myself at home, in bed, with Phil playing in my guts like a pit-bull puppy with a rope toy.

Then I nearly got fired and kicked out and was only saved by Prudence’s generosity.

Anyway, when I was sitting out there on the porch, I could see cars coming and going from my mom’s house across the street. It looked like someone was dealing crystal over there, but it was just people coming to buy Bobby’s remote-control helicopter parts. Dude was doing a booming business. Nobody ever stopped by when it was just me and my mom. The sight of so many cars going in and out of there made me feel left out, but not in a bad way. Like sometimes it’s not so terrible to realize that things go on without you and that’s totally the way it should be. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.

Old Earl went by the porch and I could see that he was right overjoyed to see me. When he walked past, carrying a hammer, with his leather tool belt hanging off his nonexistent ass, he shook his head and muttered, but mercifully he was far enough away I couldn’t hear what he said. He was doing something to the chicken house and the kid with the hat was out there with him, sort of supervising from what I could see.

She kept telling Earl what to do, pointing at stuff and never, ever cracking a smile.

If I hadn’t had to concentrate on not vomiting up the lining of my stomach, I’d have laughed out loud about that kid. Not at her, but
because
of her. Watching her boss Earl around made me feel way better than I’d have imagined. If the whole world was full of stern little kids in chicken hats who carry clipboards and people buying parts for their model helicopters, there might be a reason to live.

I’d be the first one to tell you I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about kids. Never had any. Barely even knew any. When you grow up in a musical family, ‘specially a musical country family, there’s a lot of working and playing music. Not too much being a kid. So for all I know, maybe all kids is bossy as hell. But I don’t think any of them could come anywhere near that little Sara Sprout. Good goddamn name for her. Some ways, she reminded me of my middle sister, Luanne. Lu was opinionated too. Pride used to call her a wire-haired terror.

It’s funny, because the whole time I been living here, and that’s getting to be a hell of a long time now, nobody’s been giving me orders. That’s ‘cause the old man didn’t know nothing about how to work the land. Part of me figures that’s because the place is mostly scrub. There are some nice parcels around here, but this isn’t one of them. You’d need Jesus Christ himself to turn this into more than a bit of pasture for some goats or cows or what have you.

None of that mattered to little Sara. She was not afraid to dictate an order or two. I learned that after she looked at the chicken house. She walked around it a time or two and asked me if that was it.

So I asked her what the hell she meant by that.

She told me it looked wrong, and I was about to tell her to go to hell when Prudence comes rushing over and sticks her nose in, trying to smooth things out.

Prudence told the kid I been working on it all day and asked what the problem was. So the kid started to tell her. She said the frame
wasn’t plumb and she pointed to the tar paper poking out here and there and said there were no vents and how chickens need excellent ventilation.

God help me, she had a point there. But I didn’t let on that I agreed. Truth is, I was getting a helluva kick out of her. Then the kid got down on her knees and looked inside and told me how none of the stuff she wanted was in there.

I acted like I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, even though I did. I just hate like hell to bend so I skipped it. Way I saw it, them chickens wouldn’t last a week anyway. Some fox or raccoon’d get them and then the goddamn chicken house’d just be one more thing to trip over. Or burn down.

Prudence asked me about the roost and perches and I told her I forgot they had to go in first.

Kid reminded me that there was supposed to be a latch at the back of the nest boxes and a door there so she could get the eggs. I played dumb some more. The way she was getting steamed up was funny.

She told me she couldn’t climb through the front door, which was a few inches square. Kid looked me up and down and said neither could I, obviously. Hell, I nearly laughed out loud at that one.

Had to maintain my sense of myself, so I told Prudence that I got better things to do than to be told my job by some little sprout.

Prudence told the kid I’d be happy to fix it and the kid said how at her junior poultry club they are taught that standards are important.

Standards. Can you beat that?

She told us that without standards you have nothing.

She had a point there. That kid’s not much for smiling, but she sure as hell makes up for it on the giving directions side.

I spent another day fixing up that chicken house and when I finished it was slicker than snot, as far as henhouses go. That’s when the kid got to looking at Bertie. The old sheep was the only livestock on the farm, ‘less you include Chubnuts.

Bertie was hardly moving. I think it’s because she had a dose of that depression you hear about. The old man started out with two sheep.
He got ‘em from some guy down the road who didn’t know what to do with them. There was Bertie and another one called Edie. Anyway, Edie and Bertie buggered off one night and Edie got herself run over on the road. Poor bastard who hit her was damn near hysterical. There was wool and blood and you don’t want to know what all on the grill of his truck. He was near crying when he drove up with Edie’s body in the back.

He told us he hit her and he was sorry.

I didn’t say nothing, but the old man, he shook his head and said how Edie always had the wanderlust in her.

The poor bugger that ran her down didn’t know what to say.

The old man kept going about how he could never keep her home, how she loved to roam. He said she should have been a sheep in the foothills of Scotland. Now if that wasn’t a load of shit I don’t know what is.

I’ll tell you why that sheep roamed. The fences around here was held up with goddamn binder twine and half-assed prayers. That’s why. You need good fences to keep sheep.

The old man got to moaning about poor old Edie and how he was going to miss her. That was another load. We only had them sheep for a couple of weeks and the old man hadn’t barely looked at ‘em. The young feller who hit her offered to pay for her. Nice enough kid. Drove a new Dodge pickup. Probably worked at the mill.

The old man told him no money could replace Edie. She was priceless.

That was a damn lie, too. That sheep cost forty dollars at the auction and the feller down the road gave her to us for free just to get rid of her.

Finally, I asked if there was another sheep with her. The old man plumb forgot about Bertie.

Now the kid with the Dodge was really starting to shit bricks, wondering if he hit two damn sheep. He said Edie walked right into him and at first he thought she was a plastic bag blowing across the road. A big one.

Now that I think of it, there’s a chance that kid was on drugs. Sheeps can look like lots of things, but never plastic bags, as far as I know.

So the old man asked the kid to come in for a drink to calm his nerves, and while they were getting into the sauce I took the old truck and went to look for Bertie. I found her right about where Edie got hit. I could tell it was the place because there was wool and blood and skid marks on the road. Bertie was standing in the ditch, still as if she’d just come from the taxidermy.