The Woefield Poultry Collective (15 page)

Mrs. Spratt joined us.

“Some debut, heh?” said Seth.

“You have no idea,” said Mrs. Spratt.

Sara crouched over the cage inside the chicken run and, after peering under the sheet for several seconds, pulled it back and unclipped the cage door. Then she backed out of the coop.

After a minute or two, a chicken emerged. It walked with an odd back-and-forth motion that reminded me of a heartbeat. I gasped when it cleared the cage because it was no regular chicken. It had a glossy black body and a head topped with an elaborate arrangement of white feathers, like the sort of hat a British aristocrat might wear to a wedding.

“Check it,” breathed Seth beside me.

“Don’t that beat all,” muttered Earl.

Mrs. Spratt said nothing.

As we watched, a second bird and then a third came out of the cage, each more striking than the last.

“They’re incredible,” I said.

“Holy shit,” said Seth.

“Seth,” I said, and nudged him with my elbow while casting a meaningful gaze Mrs. Spratt’s way. But she didn’t seem to notice his profanity.

“Just you wait,” muttered Mrs. Spratt.

Sure enough, a fourth bird appeared out of the sheet-draped cage. This one was even bigger and glossier than the others and it had a huge plume on its head. It looked haughtily around its new surroundings. Then, with no real warning, it walked over to one of the smaller birds and leaped onto its back.

“Not again,” said Mrs. Spratt.

“Are they fighting?” I asked.

“That bird is such a pig,” said Mrs. Spratt.

“He’s giving that other one the bone!” said Seth. “Look at him go!”

Earl took a few steps back.

“Sara, can you please do something about that animal?” asked Mrs. Spratt. She turned to us. “I thought he might calm down in a new situation.”

But the bird showed no signs of calming down. He pumped busily away, while continuing to survey his new domain with a beady eye.

“He’s multitasking,” said Seth, his voice high and excited. “Taking care of his star player.”

“Seth!” I said, although in light of the scene of chicken debauchery going on right in front of us, it seemed pointless to ask him to tone it down.

“Mom, can you get the frizzles?” said Sara.

Her mother sighed and clumped back toward the car.

Moments later Mrs. Spratt was back, this time struggling with a large cage draped with a couple of threadbare beach towels. She set the second cage down beside the first inside the run and Sara went through the routine of inspecting the birds inside, then opening the door to the cage and backing out of the enclosure.

I don’t know quite what I was expecting. Even
more
impressive chickens, probably. Ones with tails like peacocks or elegant swan necks. But the birds that emerged were small, strange and bedraggled.

“What on earth—” I said, and then broke off.

“You can see why they call them frazzles,” commented Earl. “Look pretty goddamn frazzled all right.”

One by one the birds lurched out of the cage, each one messier and less prepossessing than the last.

Sara stood and beamed at them and then at us. Her small figure swelled with pride.

“These,” she said, “are my frizzles.”

I knew then that I had nearly everything to learn about farm livestock.

I nearly fell over when that second batch of birds came out. I should have known any birds belonging to the kid would be unusual. She is nothing if not radically strange. She’s like the Ted Nugent of little kids or tweens or whatever you call people who are her age.

When she ordered her mom to “go get the frizzles” I thought she was asking for a snack. Then comes another cage, but instead of good-looking birds, out come these draggle-ass, used-Kleenex-looking chickens. It was awesome.

There was something perfect about her having the real fancy chickens and chickens who are about the saddest things that ever walked the earth. I mean, those frizzles were a mess. They looked like something J. Lo wore five years ago on her Latin American tour dates. They looked like they’d been bleached and then put in the dryer on high for about thirty-six hours. Their feathers were tattered and hanging off them and they had this very dim expression on their faces, even for chickens.

“What on earth are those?” said Prudence when the frizzles came poking out of their cage, looking like they’d been on a group meth bender for about a month and were about to go on the long ride to tweaker heaven.

“Those are the frizzles,” said Sara. “My show birds.”

Earl shook his head and grumbled something.

“And what are those called?” I pointed at the black chickens.

“Those are my white crested non-bearded black Polish. My backup birds.”

“Get out of here,” I said.

“My frizzles are top quality.”

I wanted to understand. I may not know a chicken from a turkey, but I do know good-looking versus pathetic. I’m fairly solidly on one side of that dividing line and it’s not the good-looking side.

“You got it all wrong,” I told her. I pointed at the big black chicken, the one with the huge head of feathers that made him look like he was wearing a whole other fucking bird on his head. He’d finally gotten off the hen he’d been humping. The poor thing shook herself off and was eating a few bugs to try and regain her dignity. The black bastard was moving toward another unsuspecting hen with murderous lust in his little round eye. He reminded me of Gene Simmons, only attractive. Actually, he reminded me of Alec Baldwin.

“You need to understand something,” I told Sara. “These here, the shiny black ones with the shit—sorry Mrs. Spratt—weird white feathers on their heads? These are your Baldwins. And that big one is the Alec Baldwin of the flock.”

The others might let the kid continue telling herself lies about her chickens, but I wasn’t about to.

I pointed at the scruffy little white birds. “These here are your Dog the Bounty Hunter and family chickens. They’re low class. You can tell from their hair.”

“Feathers,” Sara corrected. “And for your information my frizzles are perfect. The B-list birds—”

“The Baldwins,” I interrupted.

“The Polish non-bearded are my alternates because they have flaws.”

“Bullshit,” I said, and quickly added, “Sorry Mrs. Spratt. I’ve been watching old Alec Baldwin for a few minutes now. That bird has no flaws that I can see. At least not where it counts.”

“He doesn’t meet the Standard,” said Sara, and something about the slightly wistful angle of her head made me think that deep in her heart she probably recognized Alec Baldwin’s superiority.

“You’re way too hung up on standards,” I told her. “Is it because of the new kind of testing they do in schools now?”

“Sara means the Standard of Perfection,” Mrs. Spratt finally spoke up. “It’s the poultry fancier’s bible.”

“Don’t that just curl your whiskers,” said Earl, forgetting for once to take the Lord’s name in vain.

“Then the Standard’s wrong,” I said. It was so obvious. Alec Baldwin was now going for broke on the second hen and she had the same long-suffering look as the first one. You know, I could relate to that hen. I’ve never been jumped by a rooster who didn’t believe in even the most basic foreplay, but I have definitely been boned by life more than once.

All at once, I wanted to convince the kid I was right about these chickens. They aroused some sort of appreciator’s passion in me. I had this vision of joining the poultry club and becoming a famous chicken fancier, which was kind of crazy since I never cared about even dogs or cats or any other kind of pet.

“I’m telling you, that one is a champion. Trust me. I’ve spent the last five years reading celebrity and music blogs. I know pretty much everything about A-lists and B-lists, all the way down to Z-lists. I have also learned to recognize quality. That bird there is A-list all the way,” I said. “You know how I know? None of us can take our eyes off him.”

It was true. Every single one of us was staring, mouths hanging open like we were frogs waiting for flies, while we watched Alec Baldwin.

Ten minutes before all I knew about chickens was that they came on Styrofoam trays at the supermarket, but it turns out that just like humans, some of them have a certain kind of star quality, like James Hetfield or Bruce Dickinson. It’s like the golden proportion. They say that every species has one. The Polish chickens definitely did. Not a feather out of place. Their bodies were covered with a glossy black sheen that turned green when the light hit them a certain way. They reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Alec Baldwin’s hair when he was younger. I don’t know what it is about those Baldwin guys. They’re fascinating. There’s just something about them, even the fugly one and the fundamentalist Christian one, although now that I think of it, they may be the same person.

“I’ve obviously got to school you in recognizing beauty and natural charisma,” I told Sara.

Prudence suggested that I should get back to painting the kitchen.

I came away from that chicken coop knowing that I wasn’t going to have to look at porn online anymore because I would be able to get my sex and violence fix out at the chicken house.

Another thing we learned about leadership in Jr. Poultry Club is that winners stick with other winners. Or at least not with losers.

That’s why I was kind of worried when I saw that girl and her mom go into the house the day after my chickens moved to the farm. I wasn’t worried about the effect they might have on me or my birds, but I didn’t think Seth or Earl should be near a bad influence like her.

The girl and her friends, who go to the high school, hang out near the Stop ‘n’ Save Corner Store. The store even posted a sign against them that says only two students are allowed in at a time. The lady who works there told me it’s because some kids steal if too many of them are inside at once. She didn’t say specifically that it was that girl, but I knew it was. The lady also said she hoped I didn’t grow up to be like those kids. I found that kind of offensive, but I didn’t say anything.

That girl and her three friends all wear dark clothes and keep their hoods pulled up over their heads. They sit against the wall at the side of the store, smoking, or sometimes they sit on the railing of the little overpass bridge like they might jump or push someone off. They sort of remind me of trolls.

My dad says they’re rebates, at least I think that’s the word, but he says that about nearly everyone, so I didn’t think it meant too much. About a week before she showed up at the farm, I saw that girl and her friends when I went to the store with Bethany and her family after church.

Bethany’s parents let me and Bethany go inside while her dad gassed
up their minivan and her mom stayed in the car. We were each supposed to choose a treat and her dad said he would pay for it. On our way inside we had to pass by that girl and her friends, who were sitting by the door.

There was a boy with them and he told us to give him our money. He said it in a low voice so Bethany’s dad wouldn’t hear. The boy might have been joking, but it scared Bethany. She stopped walking and just stood there.

My leadership kicked in and I told the boy to leave us alone.

The boy told me to suck his dick, which is one of the worst things anyone has said to me so far in my life. When he said that, that girl and her friends laughed in this very mean way. I pushed Bethany to get her going again.

Then the guy called Bethany a f%#$ retard. I feel bad even writing those words.

What kind of person who is nearly an adult says something like that to kids? I’ll tell you who: a very bad person, one who better not get his hopes up about being taken when the Rapture comes. The pastor at Bethany’s church had just been talking about the Rapture and it’s an extremely scary and exciting thing that most people who don’t go to Bethany’s church don’t know about.

When we got into the store I could tell Bethany was going to cry, so I told her he was talking about me, which made her feel better. That was lucky, because like a lot of leaders, I don’t like it when people cry. My mom cries all the time, especially when my dad starts complaining. It’s very hard on my stomach.

That day in the store I picked the biggest and most expensive treat. A Häagen-Dazs chocolate-covered ice cream. I think I deserved it.

Anyway, I was very disappointed to see the girl at the farm with her mother. I felt bad when they went inside and met with Prudence. I hoped they weren’t going to try and bring some animals here. I know it’s not good leadership to be jealous, but I kind of was. I have a bad feeling about this. School is terrible mostly and so is home. I don’t want the farm to get ruined, too.

When she was giving us the detailed instructions for building the chicken coop Sara neglected to mention that we were going to have to deal with a chicken apartheid situation. The frizzles aren’t supposed to mate with the Polish non-bearded so her breeding line doesn’t get screwed up. I pointed out that there wasn’t going to be any breeding, because we are going to eat the eggs. Sara said that I had a point, but asked me to keep an eye on Alec Baldwin, which is what Seth had everyone calling the black rooster. If we see Alec “doing it” to a frizzle we’re supposed to get in there and break it up. I decided to delegate that chore to Seth. Somehow, I couldn’t see Earl going in the coop to pull that chicken off his romantic targets.

I would have liked to delegate the meeting with the banker’s sister and her daughter to someone else as well. I’m not saying that I think we were doing anything particularly wrong with our little subterfuge about being a treatment center. It was a means to an end. But addictions services was outside my field of expertise. The key, I thought, was to do no harm and give no bad advice. Remain neutral. That was my goal.

Ten minutes before the girl and her mother were due for their consultation, I chased Seth out of the kitchen and looked around and tried to see the place through the eyes of a prospective patient. Would it pass as a treatment center? I’d covered much of the mismatched flooring with simple but attractive area rugs I’d found on a local used furnishings website. The bathroom, living room and kitchen had been painted white and I’d had Seth wash all the windows and I’d replaced the curtains.
Seth had also painted all the cupboard doors a soft dollar-bill green. The whole place smelled like cleanliness and fresh paint, and it looked cheery and bright.