Chicken Feathers (10 page)

He woke, heart beating fast.

Outside, the sky was dark as pitch and brilliant with stars. He rolled over, his back to the window, and closed his eyes. Then it came again, the hail noise. Pebbles. No. Not pebbles! Something else!

He rolled to his knees on the bed and pushed up the window.

“You there, buddy?” rasped a familiar voice.

S
EMOLINA LOOKED TERRIBLE.
Half her feathers had gone, her eyes were shut and she was shivering sick.

“I thought you were dead!” he cried.

“Lift me up, buddy. I can’t fly.”

Josh was out that window like an arrow, scooping her up and holding her against his chest. “Semolina! Oh, wow! It’s really you!”

She kicked against him and squawked with pain. “Fox!”

Instantly his touch became gentle. He reached through the window, placed her on the foot of the bed and then climbed back into the room. “What happened? We found your feathers. We had a funeral.”

She was shivering. “Fox got me outside egg shed. I thought I was a goner. Rooty-tooty big fight. I shoved my beak in his front foot. He let go. I hid in straw. Stayed till morning. Then under the boat.”

Josh put on his bedside light and looked at her. There were teeth marks on her bare, mottled back and a cut on her wing but no serious damage that he could see. He snatched his T-shirt from the floor and wrapped her in it. “We thought you had to be dead. There was so much blood.”

Her eyes opened. “Told you, buddy. I got his paw.”

A smile broke open inside Josh. He wanted to hold her and dance around the room. He sprawled across the bed, his face close. “We scooped up that blood, every drop. We buried it with your feathers.”

“Excuse me! You buried my feathers with fox blood?” She struggled and freed herself from his shirt. “Me and fox?”
Then she thrust her beak against his nose. “Whatcha done with my ring?” she squawked.

He laughed. “Oh, Semolina, I love you! I love you so much!”

Josh thought of waking his father that instant, but the idea simmered down. Morning would do. Semolina was hurting and thirsty. He went into the bathroom to get her water in his mug, and as he turned off the tap, he had the sudden thought that her return might be just a dream. He spilled water on the floor running back to his room.

It was no dream. She was real and there, crouched under his T-shirt, her eyes half closed.

Twice during the night, he offered to look in the fridge. She wasn’t hungry, she said, which told him surely she was in pain. The most comfortable place for her was on his chest, and that suited him real fine. He could feel her heart ticking against his and the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth of her on his skin, the occasional pricking of her claws. The old dusty Semolina smell was right there under his nose.

Something in him felt downright foolish for all the grief he’d spent thinking she was dead, but that didn’t matter. This was the happy thing his mother talked about, only Mom had been wrong about the size of it. The happy thing was much, much bigger than the sad.

Semolina slept some of the time and so did he. When they were both awake, she told him what had happened. The fox had come after her in broad daylight and taken her by surprise. The girl biggie was sorting eggs in the shed and Semolina was pecking at the door to get in. Sudden smell of
fox! Too late! Fox grabbed her from behind and carried her, head hanging down, to the back of chicken house three. She knew what was coming. Revenge. Old fox was going to eat her by the nailed-up door. She struggled. Lost feathers. No good. He held her. So she gave it to him. Rooty-tooty fight. Beak into his front foot. Yelped, he did. Let go. Backed off, bleeding. She pushed into the straw, dug deep in where he couldn’t reach her. He tried scratching with one paw. Then he gave up.

Josh sniffed her warm smell. “We were calling you. All over, we called you. For hours.”

“Ain’t no sound plum in the middle of a straw heap,” she said.

First light, she nosed out of the straw. Fox had gone, but she was terrified he’d come back. She made it up to the tractor shed, found the door open. She’d lost wing feathers. Couldn’t fly up to her usual roosting place. The only safe place was under the upturned skiff.

“Wasn’t fox size. Squeezed the breath out of me. I figured you’d be along after breakfast.”

“I didn’t work on the boat yesterday.”

“Yeah, yeah. So I noticed.”

“I was hunting for you in the woods! Then we found your feathers. Annalee and Harrison came over and we had a funeral for you. I didn’t go near the tractor shed all day.”

She shifted and her claws pricked his skin. “Undo it,” she said.

“What?”

“The funeral. Undo it. I want my ring.”

First red light from the new Tarkah egg and Josh was out of bed. Semolina settled into the warm place he’d left, but not for long. Josh couldn’t wait to share the happy thing with his father. “I’ll carry you up the stairs. I won’t hurt you.”

“No!” Semolina snapped her eye at him. “Not the biggie with the broom!”

“Just Dad. Please?”

“Okay. But not the other one!”

At that moment, Josh had a thought that came at him like a bolt of lightning. Grandma and Semolina didn’t get on because they were alike.

He put a folded bath towel over his hands like a cushion and carried the chicken up the stairs on it, careful so that his footsteps wouldn’t jolt her. The door to his parents’ room was closed, and with his hands full, he couldn’t open it. He called several times. “Dad? Dad? Da-ad!”

Tucker gave an answering grunt.

“Open the door,” Josh said. “I got a surprise for you.”

Most times Tucker’s emotions were middle range, neither hot nor cold, but when he saw Semolina, he got lit up like a firecracker, crying, “Well, bless my soul! It’s a doggone miracle! That’s what it is. Miracle!”

“Caw-awk!” clucked Semolina.

“It was fox’s blood, Dad,” said Josh. “She stuck her beak in his paw and he let her go. That’s how she got away.”

Tucker pulled back the curtains and beckoned them over to the window. In the early morning light, he looked at every part of the old chicken, lifting her wings, lightly touching the tooth marks. Then he looked at Josh, his eyes heavy with thought. “Ain’t no fox, son.”

“It was!” Josh insisted. “That same old red fox as stole the eggs.”

Tucker rubbed his mouth. “That’s an interesting theory, Josh.”

“It’s true!”

The sad, soft look came back, and Josh realized his dad was trying to find the best way of dealing with the old problem of the talking chicken. Tucker put his hand on Josh’s head, the way the preacher man sometimes did after church. “We don’t know that, son.”

Josh didn’t say anything. He’d made a promise to himself, he’d never again mention Semolina’s talk, and he would keep that promise, no matter what.

“You see,” said Tucker, “no chicken could fight off a fox. These bites are from a smaller animal, a ferret maybe. Years ago I seen a duck fight off a ferret. Looks like a ferret came snooping and they had a right old tussle. The bites ain’t deep, but they’re likely infected. We need to get her to the vet.”

Josh nodded. His dad was right about that, at least. The chicken’s pimply skin was red around the tooth holes.

There was a knocking at the door, and Grandma called out, “You wanting breakfast early, Tucker?”

“Come in, Augusta,” said Tucker, and Semolina fluttered in alarm. She scrabbled over the towel, claws catching in the cotton, and tried to climb up Josh’s shirt. Josh brought the towel up to cover her, but too late—Grandma was already in the room in her purple robe and slippers.

“Beg pardon,” she said. “I thought you were all up. I heard you—oh my Lord! Is that the chicken?”

“She’s alive,” said Tucker. “It’s a miracle!”

“Looks fifty percent dead,” said Grandma, who wasn’t wearing her glasses. “God help us! The fox has plucked her for the oven!”

“We think it was a ferret—or a rat,” said Tucker.

Grandma poked Semolina. “She’s cold. She’s got the shakes.”

Josh thought the spasms were from fear of Grandma, but he didn’t like to say so. Grandma went back to her room and came out with some knitting, the little green coat she’d showed his mom at the hospital. She thrust the baby garment at Josh. “Here! Put this on her.”

The black telephone in the kitchen grew warm with breath, Tucker calling the hospital to talk to Elizabeth, Josh waking up Annalee, Tucker asking the vet woman if he could have the first appointment at her clinic for his son’s chicken bitten by a ferret.

Semolina wouldn’t eat anything. She was awful tired and mostly wanted to rest. Josh felt he had to put the green knitting on her for Grandma’s sake, but spittin’ bugs, a baby’s coat wasn’t the most suitable cover for a chicken. Wings weren’t arms. He draped it over her like a cape, did up the
top two buttons and let the sleeves hang. It looked stupid on her, but it was of some use. She stopped shivering, and when he next looked at her, she had her head under one of the sleeves and was asleep.

Tucker thought that the picnic basket was best for the trip to the vet. It was round with a double lid, and being of woven cane, the air got through. Although Grandma said nothing, she looked as though her tongue hurt from biting on it. “I’ll scrub it after,” Tucker told her, and she nodded. Of course, he’d never scrub it. Josh knew that. With Grandma, Tucker often made promises to keep peace.

Josh would have preferred to ride in the car with Semolina on his lap, but Tucker said she should be handled as little as possible to avoid spreading infection through her body. The towel was in the bottom of the basket, and she crouched on it asleep in the funny green jacket, every now and then twitching as if she was remembering the fox attack. Josh couldn’t stop himself from lifting the lid to peek at her. “You can sit on the table anytime you like,” he whispered.

The vet woman treated the old, half-plucked chicken as though it was the most beautiful bird on the planet. “All
right, Semolina, let’s look at you. I love your coat. Do you mind if I unbutton it?” She pulled the overhead lamp down close to look at the red marks. “Mmm, it wasn’t a ferret, that’s certain.”

Tucker shrugged. “I guessed some small critter—”