The Woefield Poultry Collective (33 page)

“What do you mean? Merle is here? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“You’ve been talking to the prison guard woman so I kept everyone away from you. Mr. Clemente’s mandolin player just came over and told me that they’re not sure this is going to ‘work out.’ I guess Merle’s offended no one’s welcomed him yet.”

“What? No one has gone to see him yet? What about Earl?”

“I don’t know, Prudence. I’m too busy trying to ignore the goddamn beer tent you installed in my face and the toilets that keep falling every which way and stinking up the whole neighborhood. Not to mention the campers. Where did you get those people, man? They’re worse than
the people in that Woodstock movie. You know, the one with the guy with the miser parents and Liev Schreiber as a drag queen with a gun and a strap-on? I had no idea the bluegrass scene was so sketchy. Give me metal any day. Did you know I found one of them in the kitchen washing his dreadlocks?”

I took another deep breath. Seth was right. I had to focus. As a farmer/concert promoter, I couldn’t afford to be distracted.

“Let me speak to Mr. Clemente. I’ll get things sorted out.”

“What about Earl? What are you going to do about him? Someone told me that he won’t come out of his cabin.”

“Can you go talk to him?” I asked.

I cast one more little glance toward the now empty place where Eustace had been standing, then I went to talk to Mr. Clemente.

I have no idea why Prudence sent me to talk to Earl. It’s not like the guy likes me. He barely tolerates me. I may be in a program now and working on my issues and getting better at talking about my feelings and well-versed in my many, many defects and all that, but my focus has been mostly on my own feelings. I have no skills with anyone else’s.

It didn’t help having Travis and all the other reporter types trying to get background on Earl and asking me what I thought the reunion meant for the future of bluegrass. I was like, dude, I’ve basically been in my room since the end of eleventh grade. All I know about bluegrass is that it gives me a wicked headache. At least, I thought it did. I wasn’t too familiar with the genre, to be honest.

Anyway, as a newly sober guy, being put in charge of getting two mulish bluegrass legends on the same stage was too much pressure. Think about it. I was being asked to overcome a family feud that was twice as old as I was. It was like sending me to patch things up between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar the night before
5150
was released.

I made the reporters wait outside the cabin. Earl’s a very solitary guy, which I understand better than probably anyone. He spends a lot of time alone and I sort of figured strangers would upset him. He had the sheep for companionship, but I wasn’t sure she counted. It was the first time I’d been in his cabin, and the first time I’d visited him alone. Shitting bricks pretty much describes my feelings.

I could have used my sponsor right about then. Considering that he’s supposed to be my go-to guy, Eustace can be a bit of a selfish prick.
There had been times I’d called him late at night when I couldn’t sleep and he totally screened my ass. I know he did. What is that? They never did that shit in the old days with Bob and Bill and those other old guys who started AA. Those dudes would have gotten up and out of bed and walked on bare feet over two miles of broken glass to help out a fellow sufferer and been glad about it. They were on the job. Not like sponsors of today. I could have gotten loaded on one of those nights. Fact: Three a.m. is the hour when the most people die. It’s true. It’s the hour of death. If a sponsor isn’t available at three, he’s really not available at all.

Anyway, when I went into his log cabin Earl was sitting in his old lady chair, watching Oprah. I shit you not. Oprah. The day of his big comeback, the day he sees his estranged country music star brother for the first time in like a hundred and fifty years, the day he makes hillbilly music history, there he was, watching daytime TV. Looking completely unconcerned. Dressed in his usual old green work shirt and green pants. I don’t think he’d even shaved. I had to hand it to him. He was a cool mother.

“Hey, Earl,” I said.

He didn’t answer me.

“So it looks like this concert thing is really happening,” I said.

Oprah was turned on so loud that the old TV was almost shaking. I doubt Earl had any idea how busy it was outside. His cabin faces away from the rest of the farm and his flowery curtains were closed. It was kind of cozy in his place, actually. If I ever decided to go into seclusion again, I might try for a place like his.

“Quite a few people here,” I told him.

He didn’t turn to look at me. I spotted his banjo, or what I supposed was a banjo. It had a country music look to it.

“That your banjo?” I asked. I felt like a total ass, but I’m not exactly a family therapist and you have to give me credit for trying. I have no idea how Prudence gets everyone to do what she wants. It’s like an evil genius skill of hers or something. “Earl, are you up for this?”

Nothing.

I took a few more steps into the little joint, which smelled like coffee and damp wool but was pretty neat and everything. I wondered if Earl had started letting Bertie come inside. Anything was possible. I took a few more steps and sat in an easy chair covered in some chintz pattern, firm but surprisingly comfortable.

“Your brother’s here.”

At this he made a sniffing noise. He wasn’t crying or anything. It was more like the kind of sniff a person gives before wiping his nose with his sleeve. A snot sniff, if you will.

“Right,” I said. “I thought so.” Then I sat back and watched Oprah give one of her staffers a thousand bucks just to show she could.

Now I wouldn’t go around saying this to just anyone, but the truth is Seth reminds me of Pride in some ways. Pride was a handsomer man. No doubt about that. And he had some talent on him, which is different from Chubnuts.

But they was both bad drinkers. And one thing I know about bad drinkers is that they can’t help it. At least, not the way you and me can.

Merle never could understand that. He never saw the sickness. He just figured Pride was trying to bring him down. I think he’s one of them annihilists you hear about. From what I hear, a lot of them annihilists run major companies, like the oil companies and big stores on the highway. Merle’s like that. Can only get his head around something for how it’s about him.

I was sitting there trying to think my way through things and Seth was trying to be quiet for once, and I remembered that I hadn’t seen him hitting the sauce for a while. So I asked him how it was going with the not drinking.

He looked at me funny. He didn’t have on his sunglasses. In fact, he was only wearing those outside lately, I noticed. I guess that wasn’t the question he was expecting. He told me he was geting used to it.

I asked him how that was working out for him. I musta said it the wrong way, because his forehead got all suspicious under that damned bandana he keeps wrapped around his head like he thinks his brains will leak out if he takes it off. Can’t blame him for wondering. I ain’t been that friendly since he got here. He said it was going okay, he guessed.

I told him I heard that wasn’t too easy to do, sobering up, and he allowed that was so.

We set like that for a while and let that sink in.

Then he asked me how long since I last seen my brother. I thought about not answering, because sometimes that’s easier. But then I told him since I was seventeen or thereabouts.

And he said a hundred and twenty years was a long time and then said sorry, he was just joking.

I said I’d be ready to play when they were ready for me. He said that was good.

The real open-type conversations ain’t easy for no one.

Then he came out of left field and asked me if I missed my brother. He meant Merle.

That stopped me. I had to think on that for a while. I told him not Merle so much. It was my middle brother that I missed. He said he didn’t know I had another brother. So I told him a bit about Pride, how he reminded me of Pride in some ways. He wanted to know how.

I said they both got to drinking and carrying on but how people liked both of them. I told him that he and Pride both had that way about them.

He asked if I really thought he had a way about him. I looked at him then, and remembered that he wasn’t much more than a kid in a lot of ways. Like Pride had been.

I told him sure, stay off the sauce and you’ll do okay.

He asked what happened to Pride and I told him how Merle turned him loose from the band and he went downhill and didn’t make her back up.

He said Jesus and sorry and I said, me too.

After that, he didn’t say another word until I was ready.

The girls from the big school, the ones who hang around outside the store and were mean to Bethany that time, found us when we were trying to put new toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms. The bathrooms smelled pretty bad, especially after a few people had used them, so we had to take turns and hold our noses.

When I came out of the second potty, the big girls were standing around Bethany. Bethany was holding her extra toilet rolls tight, and squishing them to her chest. Her cheeks had bright red spots on them.

“Hey, turd face,” said one of the biggest girls. Her hood was pulled over her head and her shirt had little skulls on it. Which was sort of funny because she wasn’t very bony. “You got any money?”

We had lots of money, because we sold a lot of muffins to people coming out of the outhouses. The money was in my backpack, which I was wearing. But I wasn’t going to tell them.

Bethany shook her head. She looked really scared, which I don’t blame her for because those girls are bad. They have no leadership qualities. Or maybe they do, but only the criminal kind.

“Come on, retard. I saw you selling those muffins. Where’s the money?”

The three girls were standing really close to Bethany. Part of me wanted to go back in the portapotty and hide. I’m really sick of people being mean and angry. And my stomach hurt and I hoped I wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital.

“Leave her alone,” I said. My voice sounded kind of weird and low, like a scary movie. I barely even could tell it was my voice.

Bethany stared at me. The big girls stared at me.

The biggest one, the one who called Bethany the R-word, put her hand out.

“Hand it over or the retard dies,” she said. All her friends laughed, like that was really funny.

“Bethany, go find Prudence,” I said.

Before Bethany could leave, one of the girls grabbed her finger and kind of twisted it. Bethany started crying, which I didn’t blame her. I put my hands in fists so they couldn’t get my fingers and break them.

“Give me the money,” said the big girl. She put her face right in mine so I could smell her breath, which smelled like cigarettes and like she just woke up.

“No,” I said. “The money’s for the farm.”

The girl, whose face was fat and white, smiled, but not in a nice way.

“Then I guess it’s into the shitter for you,” she said and grabbed me and squished me under her armpit and started to drag me toward the outhouses. I was probably starting to suffocate when a voice said to put me down or let me go. I couldn’t tell exactly what it said because I was kind of smothered.

I couldn’t hear what happened next because my face was all smushed into the girl’s shirt with the skulls on it that smelled like sweat. When she let me go, she pushed me away and I nearly fell down, but someone caught me. Someone tall.

I looked up and saw a man in a really nice gray suit. He had a suntan and wore a big, white hat. He was old but extremely fancy.

“This one of yours?” he asked someone. That’s when I saw Earl standing near us. He wasn’t tall or fancy. He was just Earl and he had whiskers and no suntan. But I was really glad to see him. Seth was with him and Prudence too. We were all there.

“Yup,” said Earl.

“And these other little fillies?” asked the man in the hat.

“It’s time they were leaving,” said Earl.

“Hillbillies,” said one of the girls, slouching away toward the driveway.

“Smells like piss around here anyway,” said another one.

When they were nearly past the house I heard one of them whisper, “Is that guy famous?”

“Shut up. Old people can’t be famous,” said the one with the skull shirt.

And then it was just me and Bethany and Prudence and Seth and Earl and the man with the fancy hat who turned out to be Earl’s brother, the one I saw on TV. Plus all the people who wanted to write about Earl and his brother. And quite a few other people, like maybe twenty or so, who just happened to be wandering around and wanted to see what was going on and a few who wanted to use the bathrooms or buy muffins.

It’s funny how you can be all alone and in danger and then a minute later feel totally safe, like you’ve never been lonely before.

Merle had tremendous star quality. Of course he wasn’t a young man, but he leaked charisma. As soon as he and Earl met it was as though an electrical current ran through the crowd. Merle had a far more pronounced American accent than Earl, whose accent is an odd mix of what I had begun to recognize as small-town Canadian and grumpy old man of indeterminate heritage.

“Earl,” said Merle. He tipped his hat slightly. His legs were long and thin and slightly bowed. There was white piping on his suit and his tan seemed to glow against the light gray of his suit.

“Merle,” said Earl.

Someone took a photo when the two of them shook hands and a big black man in Merle’s entourage, whom I later found out was the band’s chef, frowned and the young reporter put the camera away. I thought that was a nice touch.

They weren’t saying anything so I took the opportunity to take control of the situation.

“This is wonderful. Just wonderful. I know you two have a lot to catch up on. Including what time you’d like to go onstage tonight and what songs you’ll perform.”