Not The Chickens

It was noon by the time Jesse finally got out of bed, when the heat in his room had become unbearable and even the air seemed to stick to him like a thin film of mucous. He hadn’t stirred once in the night and into early morning, and as he pushed his way through the ripped screen door out to the front porch, he wondered if a fox had gotten the rooster. 

“Y’all seen Mohawk?” he asked. 

His brother, Joe, sat reclined on the porch steps, one arm propping up his head, while the other held a whittled twig that he used to pick at his back molars. He paused for a moment, looked around at the hens clucking in the dirt around him, shrugged and continued his teeth picking. 

“Why don’t you ask that fool boy of yours.” It was Ma, sitting on a rickety stool that you could barely see beneath the rolls of blubber that engulfed the seat. She wore nothing but a threadbare bra with clasps that barely clung together between rolls of fat and a once white skirt, stained brown from years of wear. “He done taken to sleepin’ out there with ‘em,” she added. “No doubt has that damn bird on some cockamamy schedule goin’ ‘gainst instinct.” She was breaking crackers into bits and sprinkling them around her feet to be pecked up by the chickens surrounding her. 

“Where is Jeb anyhow?” Jesse scanned the horizon, the barren corn fields crisped to withering shades of tan and brown.

Joe pulled the twig from his mouth and spit. “Out checkin’ on the cow.”

In worrying about the rooster, he’d nearly forgotten about the cow, and there was no wind to blow the stench towards the house and remind him, but his heart leapt slightly at the prospect of their favorite pastime. “You think it’s gun be ready today?” 

Clenching the twig between his teeth, Joe pushed himself up from the steps with a groan. He stretched his arms upwards and then tucked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans. “I reckon so.” A grin crept up into the corner of his mouth. “It’s been fierce hot. Don’t think it ken git much hotter.”

Jesse poked is chin upwards at the sweltering sun. “I reckon you’s right. Ain’t been no hotter day this summer.” 

Joe shook his head slowly from side to side—“I reckon not”—as his grin slipped into a smile, as a drop of drool slid from between his lips where the twig sat. 

“Ain’t there some work that needs doin’?” Ma said, squinting up at her two boys. “Or you gun waste this day too.” 

They were silent for a moment, nothing but the chickens trilling to fill the air, but the moment they looked over at each other, they burst into laughter. 

Joe doubled over laughing, bracing the palms of his hands on each knee. “Figure we wasted all dem other days. What’s one more?” 

Ma hung her head, solemnly breaking bits of crackers for the chickens. “Sad to know your Pa worked all his days for nothin’.”

Jesse lunged at her with such speed, his hand raised, that she nearly toppled off her seat, but he stopped just inches short of pummeling her across her cheek. “Wasted all his days more like.” His spit speckled her clenched eyes and doughy cheeks. “Now listen here,” he whispered harshly but didn’t continue until she opened her eyes to stare into his. “I didn’t ask him for this life. Lawd knows I never would have taken it if offered.” Her eyes shifted focus from one side of his face to the other in a frightful flutter, never once focusing on the entire thing.   “So no amount of guilt about his pitiful life is gun git me to act any different. Ya hear?” 

It appeared as though he would never back away, never move from his threatening stance, but then an excited child’s voice wafted up to the house. “PA!....PA!...PA!”

Jesse stood just in time to see young Jeb take the three steps up porch in one bounding leap and tear into the house, all while screaming, “It’s ready! I’ll be darned, it’s ready!” 

“Well hold on now here, boy,” Jesse said, but just as he finished the sentence, Jeb was back on the porch, a rooster with a distinctive tuft of hair shooting up from beside its comb, tucked under one arm and a long stick, taller than the boy himself, held in the other hand. “I’s tellin’ you Pa. It’s ready fo’ sure.” He placed the bird down on the porch and it immediately went to Ma to root around beside the hens for some crackers, though she had stalled in her feeding. Jeb plopped himself down on the ground and began inspecting the stick, peeling off loose splinters and holding it out to test if it was true. The sun glistened off the cracking snot caked between the bottom of his nose and his upper lip, with black and gray dirt intermingled. He wore nothing but overalls, and his bronzed shoulders flexed and toned as he worked on his stick. 

“Now hold up there a moment, boy.” Jesse crouched down in front of his son, bracing his elbows against his knees. “You tested it proper?”

“Mhm.”

“You poke the belly with your finger?”

“Mhm.”

“And it was real hard?”

At this, Jeb raised his excited eyes to meet his Pa’s. “Hard as a tater straight out the ground.”

“You heard that?” Jesse bellowed, shooting straight up. “Hard as a tater.” He strutted over to his brother. “Straight out the ground.” Then he walked back over to his son, grabbing him under both arms and yanking him to his feet in playful rough house. “Well, I reckon we best get out there an’ see, huh, Joe.”

“I reckon,” Joe said, as he disappeared into the house.

Jeb screamed his excitement banging the end of his stick on the splinted porch floor, using it for leverage to jump higher and higher. And when Joe reappeared with a half-empty jug of moonshine, they trio set off across the barren field, Jeb hollering, “Come on, Mohawk” over his shoulder, and the rooster jumped to a run to follow before they disappeared into the dried crops. And it was as if the rooster carried the whisper of Ma, because only the boy heard her say, “Your poor father. Wish I’d died ‘fore him.” 

It was only about a twenty-minute walk to the clearing in the corn field, but with each step the stench grew more pungent in their nose, egging on their anticipation, prodding them to walk faster, so that they made the trek in just under fifteen minutes. Jeb led the way with Mohawk perpetually at his ankle, and he burst through the edge of the clearing, circling around the cow carcass splayed in the middle, with his arms out and flapping, like a greasy auctioneer hyping up a broke down tractor at a local estate sale. “I told ya!” Jeb screamed. “Didn’ I tell ya?” 

The cow was so bloated that it was hardly recognizable, its legs almost lost in its bulging belly that threaten to burst if even a strong wind blew over it. 

“Woo-wee, boy.” Joe set the jug down by a log they had dragged into the circle for seats, then also circled the cow, bent at the hips to give the carcass a closer inspection. “You sure weren’t.” Viscous goo oozed from every orifice and its tongue hung, blue and swelling, from its mouth to the ground, as if in its final moments, the creature thought it could pull from the life-force of the Earth. Joe straightened up, sticking his thumbs in his belt loops, and looking from the cow to the boy to Jesse. “What you think, Jess?” he asked with a wink. “You think it’s here ready?”

“Well let’s see what we got here,” Jesse said, catching the wink. He too walked up to the putrid mass and made a big show of examining it, making several contemplative grunts as he did so. But when he gently brushed his fingers across its belly, and it let out a threatening groan, he howled up to the sky and hollered, “Any more ready and we’d miss it!” This set the other two howling up at the vicious sun. 

When they finally settled down, Jesse clapped his son on the back of the neck and led him over to the log, where he and Joe sat down. Jeb crossed one foot over the other and leaned against the stick for support. “I been workin’ on my whackin’,” he said, a proud grin spreading across his face. 

“You gun git it in one go this time?” Joe asked before yanking the cork out of the jug with his teeth.

“Ye’, sir,” he answered with a single, determined nod.

Joe hoisted the jug up onto the outside of his arm and tipped the mouth to his lips. Bubbles gurgled down to the bottom as he took several swigs before lowering it again. “You hear that?” He passed the jug over to his brother. “One hit, he says.”

Jesse lifted the jug up the same as his brother and took his share, then looked the boy up and down, all while side eyeing Joe. “Best git some strength in ya first.” And at that Joe grabbed the boy from behind and held him in a choke hold, while Jesse tipped up the jug and poured liquid down the boys screaming gullet. Joe released him, and he and his brother laughed as the boy gagged and wretched on all fours. But when he was done, the boy stood, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm. “Y’all ever gun just give it to me like normal?” 

Jesse calmed himself, rubbing tears away from his eyes with his knuckles. “I reckon eventually.”  

“If I git it in one go,” Jeb said, pointing the end of the stick at his Pa and then his uncle. “Y’all let me drink like normal next time.”

This sent Joe and Jesse into another fit of laughter. Jeb’s face reddened, and he puffed out his chest, as he raised the stick above his head, bringing it down on the log between his Pa and uncle with a resounding thwack that shook even the stale air. 

They stared at the boy in astonishment. “Woo-wee,” Joe said, and Jesse clapped his son on a still tensed shoulder with a proud smile. “With a hit like that, I reckon we’ll have to.” Jeb allowed himself a quick smile, before straightening his shoulders and saying, “Now, if you two are done foolin’ around,” he turned his back towards them and faced the carcass, “Are you ready for a show.”

Clapping and stomping and hollering was his answer. Mohawk was sitting on top of the bulbous body, twisting his head from side to side at the boy, as Jeb pointed the end of the stick directly at the fowl, taking his aim. With a banshee scream, the boy ran towards the cow, swinging the stick back up over his shoulder and coming to a screeching halt a foot from where the cow rotted, the stick flying up, over and down as the rooster flew out of the way, just as the stick made contact with the bloated belly. The whole thing erupted in a gory geyser of blood and guts that flew ten feet in the air before raining down with plops and squelches. 

The two men stood, stomping and grunting like feral beasts, as the boy slid from the carnage, hair slick and red from head to toe except for the whites of his eyes. Obediently at his ankle was the rooster, flapping his bloody wings, seemingly just as excited as the men. “Y’all saw that! Y’all saw that!” Jeb screamed. 

Jesse slung Jeb over his shoulder and spun him around several times, before thrashing him down in the empty ribcage of the poor beast, and looking down, he beamed at his son. 

They walked slower back to the house, trying to prolong the return to the monotony of their sallow lives and the nagging of Ma that they didn’t care about but was annoying none the less. 

“When you think we gun git another cow?” the boy asked over his shoulder, trotting along ahead. 

Jesse and Joe looked at each other. “I don’t think there’s gun be another cow,” Joe said.

Jeb stopped dead in his tracks and spun around. His eyes blazed. “Bullshit!”

The brothers looked at each other again, and Jesse sighed as he knelt down in front of his son and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Now listen boy. I want another cow and as you, but you remember when your Uncle Joe went into town last week?” Jeb nodded, so Jesse continued. “Well he heard ole farmer Doug talkin’ bout his cows goin’ missin’ and how he’s gun start putting his sons out to guard the pasture at night.” Jeb blinked, but Jesse pressed on. “Now that’s not to say, we ain’t gun go see for ourselves. We gun go see tonight.” He looked over his shoulder at Joe who nodded adamantly. When he looked back at Jeb, he saw the glimmer of hope in the boys eyes, and it broke his heart to continue. “But if he does have those boys out there, there ain’t know way we can git one till he calms down. You see?” 

Jeb nodded and thought for a moment. “Ain’t there nothin’ we can do?” 

“We can start ‘splodin’ chickens,” Joe laughed and pointed at the red-stained rooster. Jeb snatched Mohawk up into his arms and screamed, “Not the chickens!” Jesse and Joe allowed themselves a couple of chuckles, but nothing more out of respect for the boy’s disappointment. He lagged so far behind for the rest of the walk that Jesse wondered if he hadn’t turned around and went back to sleep in the guts. 

But when Jeb came out from the withered corn just a few minutes behind his father and uncle an idea struck him, and he hollered, “Hey! Hold up.” They looked back at him. “I have an idea.” They followed his gaze up to the porch and to Ma, sitting on that rickety stool that you could barely see beneath the rolls of blubber that engulfed the seat.