The Woefield Poultry Collective (19 page)

Earl and Sara began to walk after the birds with their arms outstretched—an elderly poultry Messiah and his young disciple. The chickens ignored them.

“Get Alec Baldwin first. He’s the ringleader,” I suggested.

Laureen’s head shot up at the name.

“Not that Alec Baldwin,” I said and her interest evaporated.

Brady was leaning over staring at Seth and Bertie’s prone, bloodied bodies.

“Forgot to hold the skin, huh?”

“My hands. Kept slipping,” gasped Seth. “So. Much. Blood. Like an Ozzy show.”

Brady kept staring. “I’d say it’s just a few nicks. You, I’m not so sure.”

“You know about shearing?” I asked the plumber who was also a pornographic writer.

“I’ve shorn a few sheep in my time,” said Brady modestly.

“What should we do?”

“Well, you should keep a spray bottle of disinfectant handy before you start. In case you make a mistake.”

“We don’t have any disinfectant,” I said.

“You can make some up easy enough. Your sheep’s still got quite a bit of her coat on. I might as well finish shearing her. Then you’ll want to bandage her up to keep the dirt out.”

A few minutes later, Bertie was shaved and the Mighty Pens were on their way home. Each left me ten dollars for the writing lesson. I told Brady to keep his in exchange for services rendered. We wrapped Bertie’s nicks and scratches with a combination of feminine protection and masking tape, which was better for her skin than duct tape. I had no idea those things were such an important part of farm life.

I’ve never been one to get the government involved, but some things is just plain wrong. That poor old sheep. I knew Chubnuts wasn’t the man to handle those shears, but I been sorer than hell ever since Bertie kicked the shit out of me the other day. People don’t realize how tough a sheep can be, even a depressed one.

That feller in the funny shirt did a helluva job, considering he don’t even know how to write. But I still wasn’t feeling good about it. So I called up the vet’s office and told the girl on the phone that I had an anonymous tip about a sheep getting abused.

I wasn’t trying to get no one in trouble. But I seen what can happen when good men do nothing. Saw it in my own family. I’m not sure this outfit should have animals. The kid’s chickens is one thing. At least she’s got her head screwed on tight. But the best thing for old Bertie’d be for the government to pick her up.

Didn’t matter, since the girl at the vet office said they don’t handle that kind of thing. That I should call the CSPCA or something like that. I don’t trust any of them groups that’s all letters and no names. CIA, CSIS, FBI. I guess that’s my American side showing.

So I give up then. I knew we were supposed to keep Bertie’s cuts clean and make sure she didn’t pull off her bandages. Least, that’s what the feller in the Hawaii shirt said.

Well, hell, how’s a person supposed to keep a sheep clean? It’s a sheep for Christ’s sake. She’s got maxipads on her feet and she’s trussed up
in about three hundred yards of tape. No wonder the poor goddamn thing is depressed.

I decided to keep her on my porch for the night, since she’d had a bad time and shouldn’t be out wandering around. Prudence took Chubnuts, who ain’t even all that chubby no more, inside to try and stop the bleeding on his head, at least the part of the blood that didn’t get mopped up by that hair of his. I used a couple of ropes to make a halter and lead, and I somehow got Bertie to my cabin and pulled her up them stairs. I closed her in with some busted-up chairs. No one sits on my goddamn porch anyway.

This is some kind of half-assed operation, I’ll tell you. I figure that one of these days I might just have to call someone else about what goes on here.

No one cared about me. There I was, covered in blood, kicked half to death, lying there trying to hold onto that miserable fucking shitsack of a sheep and all anyone could say was “Is the sheep okay?” “What happened to the sheep?” “Oh, poor sheep.”

Not one of those dudes Prudence was teaching showed the slightest concern about me and the potential extent of my injuries. Even the falling giant. When he woke up, all he could say was how much he hated to see animals suffer.

I was relieved when the Hawaiian shirt guy from the funeral took over the shearing. Dude’s got some skills.

The thing that gets me most is that Prudence barely even complimented me on my
effort
. I did most of the job, I mean after Bertie kicked me in the head and before I nicked her so bad. I also held onto her when she took off and I didn’t let go even when she slammed me head-first into the chicken run. There are Hollywood stuntmen who wouldn’t have hung on like that. It was like being a mixed martial artist grappling with a … I don’t know, a fucking panic-stricken farm animal.

Not only that, but later, after Brady took over, I helped catch the rest of the chickens and got them settled and helped Sara fix the sides of the chicken coop, by like, reapplying the chicken wire, even though my eyes were nearly glued shut with dried blood and I probably had a concussion that would later cause me to develop the kind of dementia football players get. I’m probably going to end up killing a bunch of
people before I’m forty as a result. Earl told me I shouldn’t have been listening to my headphones while trying to shear a sheep, but I was nervous and listening to Nazareth relaxes me. Now my MP3 player’s busted. Basically, I gave that task everything I had, which makes me heroic. A little public recognition would have been nice. Also, I worried about the poor sheep living on Earl’s porch. God only knows how much danger she’ll be in if he gets lonely some night.

I really wasn’t too sure I was cut out for life on a farm even if it was located right across the street from where I grew up. Plus it felt like it had been about six years since I’d had a drink and I wasn’t sure I was cut out for sobriety, either. Tell you the truth, after the shearing, I didn’t know what I wanted, probably because of the undiagnosed head injury.

I thought that I liked to go to the farm because of the chickens and because my parents—well, my dad—fight a lot and it’s not very relaxing at our house. But then we had the thing with the sheep at the farm and it was kind of stressful but still very interesting. It didn’t make my stomach hurt, not even when Bertie and Seth knocked down the chicken run and some of the frizzles and Alec Baldwin got out. I guess I like adventure more than I thought. This is probably what it would be like if I had a lot of brothers and sisters instead of just me.

Part of me didn’t want to get too attached to any of it. That’s because I was still reading
Left Behind
. It doesn’t have a very good plot, but it’s easier to read than the Bible, which Mrs. Blaine also lent to me. I’ve been to church with them five times now and they always ask how I like the books. Mrs. Blaine told me that
Left Behind
was based on real events that will take place in the future. What is going to happen is that good people who have been saved and are religious are going to get taken away by God. But they won’t get any warning. He’ll just take them, even if they are driving or flying planes with other people in them. So that will cause a lot of accidents for the people who are left behind. It’s kind of an irresponsible way for God to handle it, if you think about it. You would think that if God was going to do a Rapture, which is what it’s called when God takes all the people, he would do it when they weren’t busy. But I think the point is that the people who are left behind get what they deserve.

The funny thing is that in the book, none of the people who get taken away sound very fun or nice. The whole book is about the ones who get left because they are more interesting.

Still, just in case there’s a Rapture and I got taken, I tried not to do anything that would put other people in danger. Like at school I refused to hold the climbing rope steady because what if I got Raptured and someone fell? If it was Tilda Best who fell I wouldn’t mind, because she’s not very nice and sometimes teases me because of Poultry Club, but still. When my mom asked me to help with dinner, I would wash salad and open cans but I wouldn’t boil water. I’m not saying my mother is going to get left behind, because I’m not God and such things are not for me to know, as the pastor at Bethany’s church says even though I can tell he thinks he does know, but I have my suspicions. I’m also about ninety percent sure my dad will be here forever.

Same with everyone at the farm. They are all probably getting left. Earl swears and is in a bad mood a lot, Seth swears even more and he drinks sometimes, and Prudence is an unmarried girl who lives with people who swear and drink.

Even though I didn’t like to take on positions of responsibility in case of Rapture, I told Prudence I’d help her find fencing for Bertie. I figured as long as I wasn’t driving, which I wouldn’t be because I’m too young, it should be okay.

The morning after the shearing incident, Sara and I were outside the Grow Right before it opened. She seemed to know a lot about fencing options. It’s probably one of the many topics they cover at Junior Poultry Fancier’s Club. I’m not sure why I felt so strongly about getting some fencing in place right after the shearing incident. A fence wouldn’t have prevented Bertie’s unfortunate haircut, but at least afterward we’d have had some place to put her other than Earl’s porch. Earl was convinced she’d run away if we didn’t contain her and I had to agree that if ever a sheep had cause to bolt, she did. Perhaps I was also feeling like some measure of control and containment was in order.

Sara, who has a tendency to appear undersized even in the confines of the chicken coop, looked positively minuscule sitting on the wide bench seat of the old Dodge. Her feet dangled far above the floor. She reminded me a bit of that children’s book character Flat Stanley, trapped there under her seatbelt. If she hadn’t held it down, the strap would have extended right across her face.

Once I’d exhausted her on the subject of portable fencing, I tried some other conversational gambits.

“Must be hard to get up so early on weekends,” I said. As soon as she moved her chickens over, Sara started to arrive first thing in the morning. Saturdays and Sundays I would get up at 6:30 a.m. and find her already feeding her chickens or sitting on the porch reading one of her poultry-keeping books. She told me her mom dropped her off on her way to work at the grocery store.

“I don’t mind,” said Sara. “I’m a morning person.”

“You don’t miss sleeping in? Staying up late with your friends? Going to sleepovers and all that?”

“Mornings are the best time to handle chickens.”

“I wasn’t aware of that. I’m really impressed with how much you know about them.”

“Our leader says a person shouldn’t have an animal if that person doesn’t know how to take care of it,” she said.

Her leader had a point. After the debacle with Bertie, I’d decided it was time to get serious about sheep care. We couldn’t have her living on Earl’s porch forever.

I wondered if I should send Seth and Earl to go to Sara’s poultry club. Maybe there was a sheep version they could attend.

“Well, I like the sound of that club of yours. Maybe you’d like to be a vet when you grow up.”

“I’m getting a C in science,” she said.

“Oh.”

I pulled into the Grow Right parking lot. It wasn’t yet eight-thirty in the morning but on either side of us farmers were already parked, waiting for the store to open. It was a marvelous feeling. There we were, a row of early risers waiting in our trucks for the feed store to open. One old guy to my left nodded at me and I was filled with a sense of camaraderie.

At exactly 8:30 a.m. a Grow Right clerk in a green smock shirt unlocked the front door. As one, the farmers around us opened their truck doors. The morning sky was bright and cloudless and the air was crisp in my nostrils. I thought I could smell a hint of the ocean.

“Come on, Sara,” I said, as we joined the lineup of farmers filtering into the store.

I sent Sara to pick out a halter and a lead rope, a large water bucket and a black rubber feed bucket. It was high time Bertie had something to drink out of other than the old pasta pot, especially considering all she’d been through. We could do better than that for her. I asked the clerk about the best kind of fencing for a portable corral.

“You want the one-inch Flex-Fencing,” she said. “And the Stomp ‘Er polyethylene posts.”

“Easy to put up?”

“You betcha,” she said. “The posts are dead easy. Some people bring them on trail rides and set them up overnight for their horses so they don’t have to hobble ‘em. Easier and cheaper than driving wood posts and putting up board fences.”

“Perfect!”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma
, in addition to changing the way I think about corn, also introduced me to the work of Joel Salatin, who runs Polyface Farm in Virginia. His father bought a worn-out farm in 1961 and now it’s one of the most productive acreages in America and it supports three generations of the family. They specialize in “beyond organic” meat and produce. I could see Woefield being that kind of success story. I really could. According to Salatin, it’s all about understanding perennial prairie polycultures, respecting animal individuality and soil health. At Polyface they move the animals around all the time to achieve maximal grass growth. It’s a revolutionary concept in this era of big agribusiness and monocultures! And it all depends on local knowledge.

Of course, the Salatins are a big family and so they have an abundance of workers. I’m not planning to have children, because of my concerns about overpopulation, but I believe that many people are eager to find useful and meaningful work.

The other thing I thought about as we shopped for fencing was the quote on Joel Salatin’s website about respecting the “pigness of the pig.” I love that. It was time we started respecting the sheepness of our sheep. I was just having trouble getting a handle on what Bertie’s sheepness was, if you catch my meaning. She was so inexpressive. I think it might have been easier to start with a pig.