The Woefield Poultry Collective (31 page)

I felt my face get hot.

“Yeah, we were just … writing something.”

“Sure you were,” he said. “I scratched that bird’s entry for you.”

“Oh, right. Thanks,” I said.

When it was my turn, I put Sara’s frizzle on the show table.

I’d heard Sara give the little talk about her birds’ breeding, feathers, wattle and beak enough times that I could repeat it, more or less verbatim. The little dishrag performed pretty well. She walked the length of the runway with hardly any prodding from my piece of doweling, which was good, because if I’d had to move her too much, I might have fallen over. The table had been set up for small kids and I had to crouch way down so that I was pretty much squatting in front of the judges, looking every inch the tool.

When it was over, the older judge, a girl in her early twenties with a nose ring and spiky black hair, kind of cute if you’re into young poultry judges, said, “Tell Sara she’s done a nice job with her hen.”

“Good work,” said the other judge, a grim-looking kid with patchy facial hair.

I picked up the hen and as we left the judging area, I heard clapping. It was Eustace. He was standing there with, get this, my parents. Well, my mom, anyway. I barely recognized her out of her usual habitat. She
had on her jean pantsuit with the Bedazzled seams, big old smile on her face. Bobby was beside her and the two of them were holding takeout Tim Horton’s. Bobby had some Timbit remnants in his ‘stache.

Fucking Hallmark never wrote anything for how I felt then. When Metallica and the rest of the metal community pitched in to pay for Acrassicauda, the Iraqi heavy metal band, to move to the US is the only thing that comes close. And maybe the late-breaking success of Anvil. I had a toasty heart, especially after I got called back to pick up first prize for Miss Frizz. Ah, never mind. You know what I’m saying.

The lady doctor told us the kid was okay and give us a look like we just drove the new tractor into the creek. Prudence told her that the kid’s parents was indisposed but the lady doctor still had that sourpuss look on her face.

Prudence used her cell phone to call the kid’s mom and I could hear the crying all the way over where I was sitting out in the waiting room. That woman is a one-trick pony if I ever seen one.

Then this other doctor, a young feller, come sidling over to me and asked if it was true.

I told him I had no idea. And then he asked me if I was really a Clemente brother. I told him I was, because we were in a hospital and he’s a doctor and I was raised to respect the medical profession.

He told me he’s always admired the High Lonesome Boys and what they did for bluegrass. And I said, Oh yeah, the way you do when you want to finish up a conversation. I was starting to feel some pain in my stomach from people bringing up my personal history every five minutes.

The doctor told me he played a bit of mandolin and I said I could just imagine. I didn’t mean it, of course. He looked like the last guy you’d see playing mandolin. Then he said how he can’t believe the missing Clemente brother was right here in his emergency room. That’s when I shot him a look, doctor or no doctor, and told him what I told the other guy. That I wasn’t missing because I was standing right there. He said he understood, but he didn’t, because no one, not even bluegrass music crazies, know the whole story.

That’s when Prudence came hurrying over. She had a hold of that phone of hers like it was a radioactive turd that’d blow up if she let go of it. Which is exactly how I’d hold one of them little bastards if anyone tried to make me use one. Regular phones is bad enough.

She started shouting at me, saying, He called! He called!

And I told her I didn’t know who the hell he is and I more than likely didn’t care. And she says, His manager called and he’s coming.

I still wasn’t catching her drift but the doctor was. His eyes went all monkey-bright and he said, Are you talking about who I think you’re talking about? And she said she was talking about Merle Clemente coming to the First Annual Woefield Farm Music Festival and that the High Lonesome Boys were getting back together.

Prudence and that doctor grabbed each other’s hands and started jumping up and down like a couple of goddamn Mexican beans. Jesus Christ. I heard Rex Murphy on
Cross Country Checkup
say the medical system in this country is in a crisis. I can tell you why: Them medical bastards has their minds on other things.

Finally Prudence stopped jumping and turned around and said, Isn’t this great, Earl? and Aren’t you excited?

And all of a sudden, I felt like I might have some of what the kid had and I needed to sit down.

One of the best things about the day before the concert was all the volunteers who came to help us get set up. The Blaines came and they brought Bethany. They were going to spread the Word of God with CDs of inspirational music from their church and sell tickets, but first they helped to paint the ticket booth. Seth’s mom and her boyfriend walked over, although all they did was drink beer on the porch and talk about how their house looked different from this angle. Some of Prudence’s writers came too, and they helped a lot after Reporter Travis finished giving them their writing lesson. Travis missed quite a bit of the second part of the day because of having to go to bed for the headache that he got after teaching. Prudence said it was very nice of Travis to help her out like that, but after he was gone she muttered that if all Brady did was write a single sentence with the words “man root” in it, Travis should count himself lucky. Prudence teaches lots of people writing now, not just the Mighty Pens. I think she’s getting quite tough because of it.

I listened to part of Travis’s writing lesson, even though it meant I had to take a break from helping to move my chickens behind Earl’s cabin so they wouldn’t get stressed during the concert and to make room for the truck to bring amplifiers and equipment and stuff. I thought the part where Travis asked the writers to explore their senses was interesting, even though that big lady, Portia, said good sense wasn’t exactly anyone’s strong suit. The mean girl and her mom came to the Pens’ lesson again. I’m not a writer or anything, but the girl’s
mom looked really depressed. I guess I’d look depressed too, if I had a terrible daughter who was unpleasant to those who are younger and less fortunate.

I thought Seth’s music that he played outside made everyone have more energy, even though after three songs Earl said if Seth didn’t turn off that you-know-what racket he was going to take a hammer to the boom box. Megadeth is surprisingly more catchy than you’d think. I think I might like heavy metal.

The only person it didn’t make go faster was Prudence and that’s because I don’t think anyone could go faster than her. She is extremely active and energetic for her age. It was pretty hot and sunny, but as usual she didn’t even sweat.

When everyone was outside putting up signs for camping and the ticket booth and putting the equipment on the bandstand I tried not to show how excited I was because then everyone would get all worried and ask me how I was feeling and I don’t like that. It’s hard to feel like a leader when people treat you like a sick person. I knew the concert was going to be one of the best days of my life.

The day of the concert, people started arriving at eight o’clock in the morning. Locals. Out of towners. The level of interest was extremely gratifying, and we’d sold a lot of tickets considering the concert was only announced five or so weeks before. The reunion of the Clemente brothers was big news for bluegrass fans.

The place was already busy with volunteers, including Bethany and her parents and the Mighty Pens, who came back after the previous day’s lesson, though we lost them early on when one of Marvin’s feet got run over as he helped move the ticket booth. Marvin said the pain was so excruciating that he might have to go home, but I got them talking about how one might describe a pain so indescribable and before I knew it, they’d all abandoned their posts and headed off to do another writing exercise. Which was a relief in a lot of ways, because Verna had dragged Laureen out of bed to help and Laureen’s constant complaining about how lame country music is and how she didn’t think she could stand a whole day and night of listening to it and how it was almost as bad as writing was getting on everyone’s nerves. Her mother said Laureen was practicing “contempt prior to investigation” and that if she, Verna, could go to Al-Anon every Tuesday when she’d rather be watching her daytime shows on TV, then Laureen could participate in her recovery by helping with the sobriety festival.

I had to tell them it was a bluegrass festival, not a sobriety festival, and we were holding it as a sort of family reunion for our hired man, Earl.

“Bluegrass?” asked Laureen.

“It’s one of the oldest musical traditions in North America,” said Brady. “It originated in the—”

“Hillbilly suck music,” said Laureen.

“This isn’t a sober concert?” asked Verna. She was already in a bad mood because her feet got run over too. I think at this point Travis had already hurt his back and was in bed waiting for the spasm to stop.

“Well, not really,” I said.

That’s when the large panel truck with the words “Mobile Liquor Sales” painted on the side pulled up into the yard and the driver leaned out and asked where he should set up.

I’d been relieved to find that it’s possible to hire an independent contractor to run a beer garden at your event rather than get the permits and kegs and so forth yourself. I’m increasingly in favor of delegating. I have Travis to thank for putting me onto the alcohol sales and so much more. I really don’t know how I’d have put the event together without Travis’s help and expertise. That said, the presence of alcohol at a place that many people thought was a treatment center was a source of some confusion.

“What kind of a treatment center
is
this?” Verna wanted to know.

“A cool one,” said Laureen. It was nice to hear her finally sound positive about something.

Seth was also upset. He said he felt that the beer garden was going to undermine his sobriety and that he’d have to speak to Eustace about it. Again, delegation in all things is a byword with me.

That’s when Phyllis Snelling, the banker, drove up. That was also when I realized that I hadn’t yet had a chance to tell her that we’d changed the overall idea of the place and its mandate from treatment center to farm/bluegrass festival site. There’d been so much going on in the weeks leading up to the concert. Between all of the activity and the arrival of campers, things were hectic but in no way unmanageable. I wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression.

One of the key concepts in early recovery is staying away from “sticky” places and “slippery” people. Actually, I might have that reversed. When I first heard it, I laughed because it sounded so porny, if you know what I mean. Or like metal lyrics.

But that’s not what the recovery people mean. Well, maybe it is, come to think of it. But they’re also talking parties, bars, piss-ups and drug fests of any description. You’d think that as a person who stays at home most of the time with a kid, an old man and a girl who barely drinks, I’d be safe. Well, you’d be wrong, especially when beer gardens started popping up all over the property.

Even Eustace thought the beer garden was highly uncool. He actually listened for a few minutes while I bitched about it. Normally he tells me to try and “keep it positive” because he says I’ve got a tendency to be negative. Eustace is a good-looking guy and more or less has his shit together so it’s easy for him to be positive. If I looked like Brad Pitt and George Clooney with a bit of Christian Bale around the eyes, I’d be positive too.

For a supposedly upbeat guy, he wasn’t saying much to Prudence, who was ignoring him right back. It got on my nerves, the two of them. I was dealing with some serious issues and all they could do was pretend not to have the hots for each other. At one point I brought out the Big Book and started reading it out loud but Eustace told me I was supposed to practice “attraction rather than promotion,” whatever the fuck that meant, and that I should stop getting on people’s nerves.
That gave me a severe resentment in my ass, to be honest. I had to go to my room and listen to Queensrÿche’s “Silent Lucidity” to calm down. I followed that up with some “Fade to Black,” which always centers me.

Anyway, I was just about to go back outside to help when Prudence started letting people into the house. If the drinking and douchery had been contained in the beer garden, that would have been bad enough, but this was a highly unwelcome twist.

When I went downstairs, I found a guy with long hair leaning over the sink. Dude was actually
washing his hair
in the kitchen sink.

“What the fuck, man?” I told him. “Party’s outside.”

He had the dish-soap bottle in his hand. Some of that non-toxic, biodegradable stuff made out of recycled mosquito spit that Prudence insists on. It does nothing to get dishes clean and it sure as hell wasn’t going to help with the gnarly set of snakes and ladders on the guy’s head. He turned to me and, still rinsing, said, “She told us we could.”

I assumed he was talking about Sara.

“Man. She’s just a little kid. She doesn’t know the rules. Campers, festival attendees, whatever you want to call yourselves, stay outside. This is a private residence.”

He finally pulled his hair, which made mine look all neat and trimmed by comparison, out of the basin and wrapped it in a dish towel.

“It wasn’t a little kid. It was the girl, lady, whatever, that runs this place. The nice-looking one.” He nodded all thoughtfully and squeezed water out of the end of his hair onto the linoleum.

“She seeing anyone?” he asked.

I ignored the question, choosing radical restraint of tongue and pen.

“Dude, she misspoke. No one is allowed in the house.”

“What are we supposed to do about water?” he said. “Are there any lakes nearby?”