Brood

Larry was on the verge of retirement. He had been prepping his garden for the last twenty years, all with the golden end in mind. The only thing, the solitary thought that got him through the monotonous days at the office, was his garden and the hours he’d spend in it once he had put in his decades of hard work pushing papers. He’d grown the prized orange tree from a seed in a small pot, tending to it on the back porch of his first apartment, which was only slightly larger than a shoebox. The tiny patch of sunshine that touched the porch was used solely for the growth of that precious seed, which was, by the way, germinated from a seed from his grandmother’s orange tree. As a young boy, he’d been nurtured on her oranges and their juice, and he loved his precious orange tree more than most love their first babies.

The peach tree was no less valuable. It had been given to him by his first girlfriend, along with a promise for her forbidden fruit, should he prove himself worthy. That didn’t work out, but the peach tree always represented his youth and days of carefree freedom, so he had kept it planted in the corner of his yard, tending to it the way she had wished he would tend to her.

Larry would have been the perfect husband and father, had he been able to translate his love and devotion for agriculture to fellow humans. Instead, his wife and children settled for scraps of him, leftovers after his garden had its fill of his care and attention.

Perhaps more poignant than his love for the oranges and peaches was his devotion to his plumerias. His neighbors had long since given up on growing plumerias…they were too fickle and required too much attention, but that didn’t stop Larry. He kept them in pots outside in the summer and brought them indoors when temperatures dropped too low for them. He had brought back a stem cutting from his one and only trip to Hawaii after college, and had multiplied that cutting over the years in upwards of ten pots of various sizes.

In addition to the oranges, peaches, and plumerias, Larry grew seasonal vegetables and had both annuals and perennials thriving in their seasons. His hydrangeas were the envy of every housewife on the block. To the curious observer, his yard was the picture of perfection, the masterpiece of a master gardener. To Larry, it was only child’s play, just the beginnings of greatness, waiting until the day when he could retire and give it his undivided attention.

His wife was only slightly resentful of his obsession, but she tolerated it because of her own enjoyment of the garden and the fruits and vegetables it produced. Larry’s tomatoes had made her tomato soup famous among their social circles, so the flattery she received for her cooking compensated for the lack of attention from her husband.

Their home was built in the 1950s, long before screens stole the soul of America, and the brick walls between houses were low enough to set your arms on, lean in, and actually visit your neighbors. Larry and his wife Jenny loved spending their Saturdays and Sundays basking in their sunny backyard, improving it with every passing hour. They watered, pulled weeds, and pruned.

When the young family of five moved in behind them, they were delighted to hear the pitter patter of little feet running barefoot through the yard and hear the occasional squeals of happy children. The sounds reminded them of their own years of raising a family. Larry loved to throw oranges over the wall after dark so the children would wake up to a sea of magical oranges across their lawn. As frugal as he was, he loved sharing the fruit that he had worked so hard to nurture. As the years passed, the toddlers grew into kids who played baseball in the backyard.

One Saturday, Larry heard the mother saying, “Please practice batting with a whiffle ball, boys. We don’t want to break any neighbors’ windows.” Larry smiled. If only all families were as conscientious as this one. He heard a saw at work and popped his head over the fence to see the husband, Michael, cutting a large piece of wood.

“Hi, what are you folks up to today?” He asked, in all sincerity, always the friendly neighbor.

He had learned over the years that the secret to peaceful relationships was a sincere interest in the other. After all, people loved talking about themselves.

“Oh, Sandy has been reading all about how chickens are treated in those farms, and with the price of eggs these days, we decided to build a chicken coop and teach our kids a thing or two about raising chickens! The chicks will be ready to come home from the feed store next week!”

Larry couldn’t tell if Michael, the husband, was actually excited about the chickens, or just trying to keep his wife and children happy, but nevertheless, he joined in with the sentiment.

“How great. Way to raise the kids by teaching them responsibility and to be self-sustaining.”

Michael smiled, “I’m sure Lizzy will be sending lots of eggs your way. How many could we possibly eat?!”

Larry wished Michael the best of luck, and returned his attention to harvesting his cherry tomatoes. Jenny was waiting to make tomato soup.

A week passed and as Larry and Jenny were enjoying their iced tea under the orange tree, they heard commotion in the neighbor’s backyard. Always the amiable neighbors, they set their frosty iced tea glasses down and popped their heads over the wall.

“Happy Saturday! What are you up….oh!!!!” Jenny exclaimed as she saw six little cheeping balls of downy feathers wandering around an encircled portion of grass. The parents were leaning in taking pictures of their children holding the baby chicks.

“Aren’t they adorable!” Jenny cooed.

“I’m never eating chicken nuggets again,” one of the children said, tears in her big brown eyes.

Larry smiled, delighted at the fact that this family was on board with making suburbia as much like a homestead as humanly possible. Clearly, he was passionate about making the most out of every square inch of his humble backyard, and these neighboring backyard chickens would only add to the nostalgia of the farm life he’d always wanted but had never been able to achieve with the financial demands of life. Maybe he and Jenny would clear the flowers one day and build their very own coop. He started daydreaming of feeding chickens kitchen scraps and collecting fresh, warm eggs in a basket every morning. His garden would flourish even more with chicken droppings to fertilize the soil.

All of this was happening in his mind, while his face revealed nothing of the daydream. He was a quiet man and not too expressive, making him quite a mystery to his wife, coworkers, and neighbors.

The days passed, and weeks turned into months. Larry was days away from his retirement, as he dreamt one night of his orange tree being hit by a fly baseball, he was startled out of sleep by the most feral, angry screaming he’d ever heard. Was it a catfight? He jumped out of bed, stumbled into his slippers, and rushed outside. The sun was just beginning to rise, the world was still, in that magical moment before the world awakes and the day becomes busy. Again, the screaming, which, now that he was awake, he realized was more like a squawking. It didn’t take long for him to realize that the squawking was coming from the neighbor’s chicken coop, adjacent to his bedroom window, which, by the way, he always left open so he could smell the orange blossoms and plumeria that he had worked so hard to grow.

That noise was coming from those picturesque hens? The little downy fluffballs of perfection had grown over the months into a variety of colored hens. One was snowy white, two were white and grey speckled, one was the color of the creamiest latte, and the last two were varying shades of reddish brown. Together, their variety made him think of farm animal books his mother had read to him as a boy, always more centered around the adventures of cow, pig, or sheep, the chickens painted as part of the pristine background of the farm. He loved glancing over the backyard dividing wall and seeing the chickens pecking the grass for worms, or burrowing into the dirt, but this noise? This noise didn’t fit his preconceived notion of farm life. The crowing rooster, yes, that was always part of the storybook, signaling to all that another morning had come. But hens? They were quiet and peaceful, faithfully laying their eggs each morning. That was their role in the food chain, right? Eating insects and laying eggs, quietly. He searched his mind for any notion that hens were noisy, but could find none. There must be a mistake. Michael had mentioned that once in a great while, one of the chickens turned out to be a rooster. The neighbors must have had a stroke of bad luck.

Relieved it wasn’t his problem to rid the neighborhood of a rooster, he headed back inside to make the coffee and get ready for his last week of work.

The next morning was even worse. It became clear that this wasn’t just a noisy rooster, but all six hens screaming at each other. The noise didn’t get any better as the day dawned, but only heightened. Larry’s alarm was set for 6:30 every morning, but this new development in the neighborhood had him rising long before 5 am.

Larry was a mild mannered man, and any harsh emotions that he experienced in his life went into his trees and plants. Pruning them was his free therapy for things in his life that needed to be dealt with; anger, rage, disappointment, shame, and such. Pulling weeds helped him cope with frustrations he had in the workplace, and the oranges and peaches were the tangible rewards that he could control when life felt uncontrollable. True to form, he began coping with the unruly hens by weeding. The problem was, the more he worked in the yard, the closer he was to the screaming hens, and the more evident it was that the busy family was doing nothing to solve the problem. It was almost as if their young ears were deaf and his aging ears had become more fine tuned to the nuances of the coop. He knew when the hens were out of food, when one was laying, and when they were merely bored. His keen sense of observation that caused his garden to thrive also served to privy him to the ebb and flow of life in the coop. He even knew which hen was the instigator in the commotion.

As Larry shifted into retirement, the quiet mornings and satisfyingly lazy afternoons that he had dreamed of were stolen by the ruckus coming from the neighbor’s coop. It was not, in fact, an incognito rooster, but six hens, fighting for their pecking order (which he had always assumed would be silent pecking), or screaming at a fellow hen to get off the eggs already.

The racket didn’t seem to bother the young family, or any of the other neighbors, for that matter. They seemed to be so busy raising rowdy children that screaming hens were the least of their worries.

Larry didn’t want to ruin the relationship he and Jenny had built with the family over the years, but he also couldn’t let the daily commotion permanently disrupt his serenity. He sent a kind text message to Michael and Lizzy the next morning at 5:58 am.

Good Morning, can you please silence the hens. It’s a little early to be woken up.

Michael responded immediately.

So sorry. They were out of food.

This interchange went on for months, on and off, Larry’s early morning texts growing slowly more short-tempered and dare we say, angry.

This is out of hand. Please shut those hens up.

The noisy chickens were a drop in the bucket with all of Michael and Lizzy’s other stressors and responsibilities that came with raising a family of three school aged children, with their sports, art classes, music lessons, and not to mention, Michael and Lizzy’s careers. What were clucking chickens compared to making ends meet?

For Larry, however, they were the single most stressful thing in his retired life; the only worry he had. The injustice of the commotion kept him awake at night, tossing and turning over how to rid his life of the noise. He had spent an entire life suffering through noise. His children, when they were growing up, his nagging wife, his chattering coworkers, it was crystal clear to him that he had earned a retirement of solitude and silence. A garden, by its very nature, is a silent space. Come to think of it, that’s what had always drawn him to the garden. The leaves didn’t talk to him, the orange tree a silent companion. The garden was the only space he could hear his own thoughts. But now, all he could hear were raging chickens.

It was a year after the chickens had come home from the feed store, and the little downy chicks had grown into outspoken, clucking hens. As usual, the families were outside on a sunny Saturday evening, when Sam, one of the boys, noticed there were only five chickens in the coop.

“Dad! One of the chickens is missing! It’s Betty!”

Larry’s ears perked at the commotion…he didn’t know that the hens had been named.

“She’s probably in one of the boxes laying her egg.” Michael was clearly not concerned with the chickens, he was busy checking his phone.

“No, Dad. She’s not in the coop. I checked all four of the laying boxes. She’s gone.” He was starting to panic. The chickens were, after all, his pets.

Michael set his phone down and walked over to the coop, checking each box himself. There were clearly only five chickens. He scratched his head.

“You’re right. I wonder if she somehow got out of the backyard yesterday when we let them free range.”

“No, Dad. I put all six of them back in their coop yesterday.”

Michael wasn’t convinced. In his experience, ten year old boys’ narratives were less than reliable.

Just then, Lizzy walked outside, taking a deep inhale. A tantalizing smell drifted over the back wall, that low wall that was responsible for the friendship between the neighbors.

“What is that amazing smell, Larry?!” She shouted over the wall. “You’re putting my cooking to shame.”

“Oh, I’m just barbequing some chicken,” he said with an unassuming smile, “and we have plenty to share if you’d like some.”