Chicken Feathers (7 page)

The long hospital corridor, smelling of antiseptic and dry linen, was lit with the last light of day. Another of Tarkah’s eggs about to disappear, thought Josh as he strode out ahead of his father. Lights were switched on in some of the rooms, but Elizabeth’s room was almost dark. Josh stopped with a feeling of dread. His mother was lying on her pillow, eyes closed, the tube in her arm.

Tucker wasn’t prepared for this either. He went to the bed and put his hand on his wife’s forehead. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Josh heard her say, “Bleeding again.”

Bleeding? What did that mean? He pushed in beside his father and looked down at the needle in the back of her hand. It was the same as the day she came in here, a tube that went all the way up the bed to a bag of fluid on a metal stand. His throat went dry. “What’s gone wrong?”

Her free hand went to the back of his head and pulled him down so that she could kiss him. “Nothing’s wrong. This is a way to take medicine that’s too bad to swallow.”

He knew she was pretending. “Is it the baby?” he asked.

Elizabeth glanced at Tucker, then she smoothed Josh’s
hair away from his forehead. “Honey, the baby’s okay. We had a little scare this afternoon, but now everything’s fine.”

“You sure?” He put his head down on the pillow against hers. Her hair was as thick as Annalee’s, but it smelled of hospital. “I wish you’d come home, Mom. We’d look after you real good.”

“I wish too, but this is the best place for me right now. Josh, if I were a chicken, no farmer would ever want me. I’m such a bad layer. Chickens have the sense to hold on to their eggs until they’re ready to be laid. My body doesn’t want to wait. You know what happens to a baby if it’s born too soon?”

He nodded.

“This is one busy little baby. I think she’s going to be a ballet dancer. But she’s small. We have to give her as much time as we can, and that’s the reason for the medication.” She eased herself up in the bed and took a deep breath. “All right, my two guys. How are things back at the ranch?”

She was interested in all of it, the hole in the shed, Semolina, the quilt, Grandma, the big red fox, but her smile disappeared
when Tucker said that Pete Binochette and his farmhands had a hunting party in the woods. “No!” she said. “Why kill it? The fox is just being a fox.”

“Mom, he’s been stealing our eggs!” said Josh.

“They’re the chickens’ eggs,” she reminded him. “We steal them too, only we think we have that right. So does Mr. Fox. Tucker, darling, can’t they set a snare trap and catch it alive?”

“What then?” said Tucker.

“There must be wilderness sanctuaries for foxes. It’s not a good thing to take a life if you don’t have to. Talk to Pete! Please! Don’t let him shoot it.”

Tucker nodded and scratched the back of his neck. “Well, yeah, I guess.”

She folded her hands on her round stomach and turned to Josh. “Tell me about your boat,” she said.

T
HE DAYS WENT BY AS SLOW AS
molasses in January, and still that big red fox wasn’t caught. Farmers talked of sightings. Two of the ducks from the Binochettes’ pond disappeared, and Mrs. Waters lost a loaf of bread she’d left to cool on a window ledge, although that might have been a hungry dog. Still, the fox managed to dodge every trap and snare and hunting party. Tucker wasn’t worried. He’d hammered
the board across the hole with four-inch nails. His egg count was way up again and all his chicken houses were as safe as Fort Knox.

It was Semolina who was fretting. Rumors were running through the chicken barns, and none of them gave the old hen much comfort. “Fox knows I spilled the beans,” she said. “I’m on his hit list.”

“Don’t worry,” Josh tried to soothe her. “They’ll catch that fox anytime now and ship him clear out of town.”

“They’ll never catch him!” Semolina shivered. “Tell your father to shoot him deady bones. They got to do that. Or else…!” She closed her eyes.

“I’ll look after you,” he said.

Most days, Semolina walked at Josh’s heels, jumpy as a cricket, and at night she insisted that he lock her inside the tractor shed—which was safe enough, having a concrete floor and steel walls. He let her out each morning when he watered the Swiss chard.

Josh begged Grandma to allow Semolina back in his bedroom, but she wasn’t having any of that. “Filthy old bird! I told you before, if she comes in, I move out.”

“What if the fox gets her?”

Grandma smiled, showing all her teeth. “Bring her to me and I’ll give her to the fox! Here, Mr. Fox! Nice little snack, Mr. Fox!”

Josh swallowed back bitter hatred. Forgive people, always forgive people. He chanted his mother’s words as he walked away, clenching and unclenching his fists. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Saying it didn’t make a speck of difference. Grandma might be his mother’s mother, but she was downright miserable, cantankerous mean.

After that, Josh stayed away from the house as much as
possible. When he wasn’t helping Tucker in the barns or Annalee with egg sorting, he worked on his boat in the tractor shed, sanding down the hull to get it ready for painting. Now it looked like a real boat, two seats fore and aft, a metal plate on the stern to hold the outboard and fittings for the oarlocks. There were only three coats of paint between Josh and the river. He’d take Annalee out fishing before the end of the summer vacation.

Semolina, nervous of the tractor shed’s open door, roosted among old tools in the rafters above Josh’s head.

He told her he’d heard the fox was over on the other side of town. “The guys at Semco told Dad—big red fox down at Loon Lake.”

“Semco,” repeated Semolina.

“The place we go every week.” Josh sometimes forgot that Semolina couldn’t read. “Sampson Egg Marketing Company,” he added, hoping she wouldn’t take offense.

But Semolina was too jittery about the fox to get political. “Don’t matter where the fox is. He’s got his gang on the lookout. Ferrets and wildcats, raccoons and rats. Word from the girls is, they got this place staked out.”

“Semolina, you been watching too much television.”

“I don’t get to watch nothing excepting my back,” she snapped.

Josh blew ahead of the sandpaper, and a fine wood dust filled the air. “Why would a fox have a gang? Semolina, that doesn’t make an inch of sense. Foxes always work alone.”

“Carriers,” she said.

“Carriers?”

She put her beak in the air. “Excuse me. I didn’t tell you foxes don’t have shopping carts. Most eggs a fox carries is two or three in his mouth. Takes him all night to shift a hundred eggs. So he has a carrier gang. Raccoons, rats, pack of thieving critters. Now nobody ain’t getting no eggs, and they’re all after the one that got the hole closed.”

“You’re safe here in the tractor shed.” Josh ran his hand over the hull, now smooth enough for the first primer coat. “When Grandma goes, you’ll come back in the house.”

“I might be deady bones by then,” she said gloomily.

“Don’t think like that. It isn’t healthy.” He looked at her. “Semolina, you never told me if you had a family.”

She shifted on her perch. “No, I never.”

“Never told me? Or never had chicks?”

“Both,” she said.

“You could still have babies. You ever thought about that?”

She made a coughing noise. “Excuse me, buddy. You might know biggies, but you don’t know birds. I ain’t laid an egg in four years, and even then…” She stopped and put her head on one side. “How do I say this? One bird don’t make life. It needs two.”

“No rooster?”

“You got it. No rooster.”

“Spittin’ bugs, Semolina, I knew that all along. But if you had a hankering for a family, we could get you some fertile eggs. You still go broody?”

“Don’t get personal!”

“Sorry. I just wanted you to know— if you get that brood itch to sit on eggs, you tell me. I’d get eggs for you. Mr. Pojurski, he’s got hens and roosters.”

A membrane came over her eye. “I might be fox supper by then.”

Josh wished she’d shut up about the fox. He knew if he hadn’t insisted she show him the hole in the number-three barn, she wouldn’t be in this sad, shivery state, scared stiff about being slowly chewed by an angry fox. “Tell me another Tarkah story,” he said.

She was silent.

“The one about snow. Go on.”

“I told it last winter.”

“Tell me again.”

Semolina opened her beak. “I ain’t in the mood, but here goes, buddy. Tarkah laid a fire egg every day so her
chickens on the big earth egg could have heat and light. All the chickens were busy, busy, busy. Every day was new life, and the birds were tired. Tarkah said, ‘My children need a rest time.’ So she plucked out her breast feathers, white and soft, and dropped them down on the earth egg. The earth egg turned white and too cold for new life. That’s why animals and birds do not make young in the time of Tarkah’s feathers. You know all this, buddy. I told you before. Winter is slow time. But some animals like the fox, they don’t rest.” She shivered. “Sun egg or moon egg, fast time or slow time, foxes hunt chickens with big sharp teeth.”

Josh locked Semolina in the tractor shed the day he went to town with Tucker and Annalee. It was Semolina’s idea. She’d talked herself into such a terror that she insisted on having the door bolted while Josh was away.

“You don’t have to worry,” he told her. “If I’m not here, I’ll lock you in, just like I lock you in at night, end of story.”

It was a mighty big building for one scrawny little chicken.
The tractor, plow and harrows were at one end with Tucker’s old motorcycle and several drums of oil and diesel. At the other end were Josh’s boat and a thick wooden workbench that ran the length of the wall. Across the rafters, Tucker had nailed sheets of chipboard to hold storage boxes, old garden tools and spare hoses for the sprinkler system. Semolina fluttered from the oil drum to the workbench and up into the rafters, where no fox was likely to find her.

Josh said she could roost where she liked as long as she promised to stay off his boat. “You know you’re a lot safer here than under the house,” he told her.

Tucker had promised that on this egg trip, they could pick up the outboard and get marine paint at the boat store. If that wasn’t good news enough, Annalee had asked if she could come along too for the ride.

Josh scrubbed up extra smart, put on his nearly new jeans and combed his hair with Brylcreem. Annalee was so pretty that sitting next to her made his breath hurt in his chest. She had on a dress with a skirt that spread over the backseat
of the car and touched his knee. Her lipstick was pink and so shiny it made her mouth look wet. He stared at her and forgot to talk.

Tucker drove carefully, the egg trailer swinging along behind them. No missing eggs these days. The trailer had
Sampson Egg Marketing Company
painted across each side. It was filled with wooden pallets that were in turn stacked with cartons of eggs sorted by Annalee and Josh. They would leave the full Semco trailer at the Sampsons’ warehouse and take an empty one back to the farm.

Sampsons’ was a mile or so out the other side of town, but Tucker pulled up in the main street. He turned to the backseat with his big slow smile. “You kids hop out here and amuse yourselves. When I’m done with Sampsons’, I expect I’ll find you near the marine shop.”