Читать книгу The Lost Landscape - Joyce Carol Oates - Страница 12

I WAS HER PET chicken. I was Happy Chicken.

Of all the chickens on the little farm on Transit Road in the northern edge of Erie County in western New York State in that long-ago time in the early 1940s, just one was Happy Chicken who was the curly-haired little girl’s pet chicken.

The little girl was urged to think that she’d been the first to call me Happy Chicken. In fact, this had to have been one of the adults and probably the Mother.

Probably too it was the Mother, and not the little girl, who’d been the first to discover that of all the chickens, I was the only one who came eagerly clucking to the little girl as if to say hello.

Oh look!—it’s Happy Chicken coming to say hello.

The little girl and the little girl’s mother laughed in delight that, without being called, I would peck in the dirt around the little girl’s feet and I would seem to bow when my back was lightly stroked as a dog or a cat might seem to bow when petted.

The little girl loved it, my feathers were soft. Not scratchy and smelly like the feathers of the other, older chickens.

The little girl loved hearing my soft, querying clucks.

Early in the morning the little girl ran outside.

Happy! Happy Chicken!—the little girl cried through small cupped hands.

And there I came running! Out of the shadowy barn, or out of the bushes, or from somewhere in the barnyard amidst other, ordinary dark-red-feathered chickens. A flutter of feathers, cluck-cluck-cluck lifting in a bright staccato Here I am! I am Happy Chicken!

The Grandfather shook his head in disbelief. Never saw anything like this—Damn little chicken thinks he’s a dog.

It was a sign of how special Happy Chicken was, the family referred to me as he. As if I were, not a mere hen among many, a brainless egg-layer like the others, but a lively little boy-chicken.

For the others were just ordinary hens and scarcely discernible from one another unless you looked closely at them which no one would do (except the Grandmother who examined hens suspected of being “sickly”).

Truly I was Happy Chicken! Truly, there was no other chicken like me.

My red-gleaming feathers bristled and shone more brightly than the feathers of the hens because I didn’t roll in the dust as frequently as they did, in their (mostly futile) effort to rid themselves of mites. It wasn’t just that Happy Chicken was young (for there were other chickens as young as I was, hatched from eggs within the year) but I was also far more intelligent, and more handsome; your eye was drawn to me, and only to me, out of the flock; for you could see from the special gleam in my eyes and the way in which I came running before the little girl called me, that I was a very special little chicken.

The yard between the barn and the farmhouse was cratered with shallow indentations in which chickens rolled and fluttered their wings like large demented birds who’d lost the ability to fly. Sometimes as many as a dozen chickens would be rolling in the dirt at the same time as in a bizarre coordinated modern dance; but the chickens were not coordinated and indeed took little heed of one another except, from time to time, to lash out with a petulant peck and an irritated cluck. When not rolling in the dirt (and in their own black, liquidy droppings) these chickens spent their time jabbing beaks into the dirt in search of grubs, bugs. Stray seeds left over from feeding time, bits of rotted fruit. Their happiness was not the happiness of Happy Chicken but a very dim kind of happiness for a chicken’s brain is hardly the size of a pea, what else can you expect? This was why Happy Chicken—that is, I—was such a surprise to the family, and such a delight.

My comb was rosy with health, erect with blood. My eyes were unusually alert and clear. But each eye on each side of the beak, how’d you expect us to see coherently? We see double, and one side of our brain dims down so that the other side can see precisely. That’s how we know which direction in which to run, to escape predators.

Most of the time, however, most chickens don’t. Don’t escape predators.

Sometime, they’re so dumb they run toward predators. They do this when the predator is smart enough to freeze. They can’t detect immobility, and they can’t detect something staring at them.

I was not really one of them. To be identified as special, and recognized as Happy Chicken, meant that, though I was a chicken I was not one of them. And particularly, I was not a silly stupid hen.

SOMETIMES—AT SPECIAL TIMES—UNDER CLOSE adult scrutiny and always held snug in the little girl’s arms—Happy Chicken was allowed inside the farmhouse.

No other chicken, not even Mr. Rooster, was ever allowed inside the farmhouse.

Never upstairs but downstairs in the “wash-room” at the rear of the house—a room with a linoleum floor that contained a washing machine with a hand ringer, and where coats and boots were kept—this is where the little girl Joyce could bring me. But always held gently-but-firmly in her arms, or set onto the floor and held in place, in the wash-room or—a few special times—in the kitchen which opened off the wash-room, where the Grandmother spent most of her time. Here, the little girl was given scraps of bread to feed me, on the linoleum floor.

And here, I was sometimes allowed up in the little girl’s lap, to be fussed over and petted.

The other chickens would’ve been jealous of me—except they were too stupid. They didn’t know. Even Mr. Rooster didn’t understand how Happy Chicken was privileged. Sometimes Mr. Rooster stationed himself at the back door of the farmhouse, clucking and preening, complaining, fretting, fluttering his wings, insisting upon the attention of everyone who went inside the house, or came outside, shamelessly looking for a treat, and when he didn’t get a treat, squawking indignantly and threatening to peck with his sharp beak.

The little girl was frightened of Mr. Rooster, and hurried past him. The Mother and the Grandmother shooed Mr. Rooster away, for they were frightened of him, too. The Grandfather and the Father laughed at Mr. Rooster and gave him a kick. They thought it was very funny, a goddamn bird trying to intimidate them.

Sometimes Happy Chicken was allowed in the wash-room overnight, in a little box filled with straw, like a nest. And little Joyce petted me, and fussed over me, and fed me special treats.

Happy Chicken! You are so pretty.

. . . you are so nice. I love you

Happy Chicken. I love you.

The little girl whispered to me, that no one else could hear. The little girl had many things to tell me, all kinds of secrets to tell me, whispered against the side of my head where (the little girl supposed) I had “ears”—and when I made a clucking noise, the little girl spoke to me excitedly, for it seemed to the little girl that I was talking to her, and telling her secrets.

What are you and Happy Chicken always talking about, the Mother asked the little girl, but the little girl shook her head defiantly, and would not tell.

(Sometimes, there was an egg or two discovered in Happy Chicken’s little nest. The little girl took these eggs away to give to the Grandmother for they were special Happy Chicken eggs not to be mixed with the eggs of the hens out in the coop.)

(Yet still, though Happy Chicken produced eggs, it seemed to be taken for granted that Happy Chicken was a boy-chicken. For always, Happy Chicken was he, him.)

The little girl was given a gift of Crayolas! At once the little girl began drawing pictures of me on sheets of tablet paper. Russet-brown was the little girl’s favorite Crayola crayon, for this was the color of my beautiful red-brown feathers. The little girl drew and colored many, many pictures of me, that were admired by everyone who saw them. With the help of the Mother, the little girl carefully printed, beneath the drawings

HAPPY CHICKEN

Sometimes, visiting relatives would peer at the little girl and me from the kitchen doorway, as the little girl sat on the floor beside my box drawing me, and I was tilting my head blinking and clucking at her.

The little girl would overhear people saying Is that just a—chicken? Or some special kind of guinea hen, that’s smarter?

For it had not ever been known, that a “chicken” could be a pet, in such a way. At least, not in this part of Erie County, New York.

Between a chicken and a little girl there is not a shared language as “language” is known. Yet, Happy Chicken always knew his name and a few other (secret) words uttered by the little girl and the little girl always knew what Happy Chicken’s special clucks meant, that no one else could understand and so when the Mother, or the Father, or any adult, asked the little girl what on earth she and the little red chicken were talking about, the little girl would repeat that it was a secret, she could not tell.

Sometimes, at unpredictable moments, I felt an urge to “kiss” the little girl—a quick, light jab of my beak against the girl’s hands, arms, or face.

And the little girl had a special little kiss on the top of the head just for me.

I WAS A YOUNG chicken less than a year old at this time in the little girl’s life when she hadn’t yet learned to run on plump little-girl legs without tripping and falling and gasping for breath and crying.

If the Mother was near, the Mother hurried to pick up the little girl, and comfort her. If the Grandmother was near, the Grandmother was likely to cluck at the little girl like an indignant hen and tell her to get up, she wasn’t hurt bad.

If the Father was near, the Father would pick up the girl at once, for the Father’s heart was lacerated when he heard his little daughter cry, no matter that she hadn’t been hurt bad. (But the Father was not often nearby for he worked in a factory seven miles away in Lockport, called Harrison Radiator.)

But always if an adult wiped the little girl’s eyes and nose the little girl soon forgot why she’d been crying even if she’d bruised or scratched her leg—the little girl cried easily but also forgot easily.

When you are a little girl you cry easily and forget easily.

Nor is it difficult to appear happy when you are a young chicken and without memory as the smooth blank inside of an egg.

The Mother had chosen the little girl’s name Joy-ce Carol because this seemed to her a happy name, there was joy in the name, when people spoke the name they smiled.

The Mother was a happy person, too. The Mother was not much older than a schoolgirl when the little girl was born but the little girl had no notion of what “born” was and so the little girl had not the slightest notion of how old, or how young, her pretty curly-haired Mother was, no more than Happy Chicken had a notion of anyone’s age.

This was the time when the little girl was an only child and so it was a happy time for the little girl who had her own room (separated by just a walk-in closet from her parents’ room) upstairs in the clapboard farmhouse. One day soon it would be revealed that the little girl was just the firstborn in the family. There would come another, a baby brother with the special name Robin, competing for attention and for love the way the squawking chickens competed for seed scattered in the barnyard at their feeding time.

The little girl had no notion of this amazing surprise to come. The little girl had no notion of anything that was to come except a promise of a drive to Pendleton for ice cream, or a visit with the Other Grandmother (the Father’s mother) who lived in Lockport, or a holiday like Christmas or Easter, or the little girl’s birthday which was the most special day of all June 16 when dark-red peonies bloomed in profusion along the side of the house as the little girl was told, just for her.

On her fourth birthday, the little girl was allowed to feed cake-crumbs to me, while the adults looked on laughing. Happy Chicken was allowed to sit on the little girl’s lap, if the little girl held me snug, and my wings tucked in, inside her arms.

Pictures were taken with the Father’s Brownie Hawkeye camera.

Pictures of little Joyce Carol and Happy Chicken, 1942.

With a frown of distaste the Grandmother would say, in her broken English, A chicken is dirty. A chicken should stay on the floor.

The Grandmother did not like me though sometimes the Grandmother pretended to like me. In the Grandmother’s eyes, a chicken was never anything more than a chicken. And a chicken was only of use, otherwise worthless.

Outdoors, when the little girl was nowhere near, and the Grandmother approached, I knew to flee, and to hide. Always to flee and to hide away from the other chickens, so brainlessly scratching and pecking in the dirt, in the darkest corner of the barn or far away in the orchard.

A chicken is not dirt-y, the little girl protested. Happy Chicken is nice and clean.

And so when a small dollop of hot wet mess came out of my anus, which I could not help, and onto the little girl’s shorts, the adults pointed and laughed, and the Mother quickly cleaned it away with wadded tissues as the Grandmother made her clucking-tsking noise.

The little girl was embarrassed, and ashamed. But the little girl always forgave me. And soon forgot whatever it was I’d done, because she was such a little girl, and forgot so easily, and was soon again stroking and petting me, and kissing the bone-hard top of my head.

Happy Chicken—I love you.

BECAUSE SHE WAS SUCH a little girl the little girl was always hoping that all the chickens would like her, and not just Happy Chicken who was her pet. Naively the little girl hoped that the rooster—(who was even more handsome than Happy Chicken, and much larger)—would like her. And so the little girl was continually being surprised—and hurt—when the rooster ignored her or worse yet bristled his feathers indignantly and rushed to peck at her hands or bare knees sharp enough to draw blood.

Many times this happened, that the little girl cried Oh!—and ran away frightened, and sometimes Mr. Rooster would chase her, and if the Grandfather was watching he would double over in laughter as if he’d never seen anything so funny. The Grandfather had a loud sharp laugh like bottles popping corks. His barrel chest would shake, his small shrewd eyes would shrink in the fleshy ridges of his face, his laughter turned into snorts, wheezing, coughing. Such loud, protracted coughing. And still, the Grandfather was laughing. For nothing amused the Grandfather more than someone chased by that goddamn bird unless it was the sight of the Grandmother’s white sheets billowing on the clothesline so hard, in such wind, clothespins slipped and a sheet sank to the ground and the Grandmother came running out of the house, furious, agitated, muttering in a strange guttural speech the little girl did not understand and that frightened her, like the loud shrieks and squawks of the chickens when something threw them into a panic, so the little girl stood very still and cringing and shutting her eyes pressing her hands over her ears like one who is waiting for something distressing to go away, stop.

If the little girl was inside the farmhouse, and heard a sudden squabble outside, a sign that someone or something was agitating the chickens, the little girl would run outside immediately to search for me. Oh oh oh—where is Happy Chicken?

The little girl knew about foxes and raccoons and stray dogs that might drag away chickens and devour them—(though it would be very unusual for any creature to make such a foray in daytime)—and so the little girl had to find me amidst the commotion, scoop me up in her arms and kiss the top of my head and smooth down my neatly folded wings and carry me quickly away promising that nothing bad would ever happen to Happy Chicken.

WE WERE RHODE ISLAND Reds. Three dozen hens and a single rooster.

Other male chickens in the flock had been squashed as soon as it was evident that they were male. Our rooster had not a clue that he’d come close to oblivion. Or, our rooster had not a care that he’d come close to oblivion. Through the day Mr. Rooster strutted in the yard and roosted in the lowermost limbs of trees showing off his spectacular tail feathers, and the ruff around his neck; bristling red-brown, dark-red, yellow-red feathers that shone in the sun. Yellow-scaly legs, and nasty-sharp spurs just above the talon-claws. Though Mr. Rooster was as stupid as any hen pecking brainlessly in the dirt, or rolling in the dirt in the (mostly futile) effort of getting rid of mites, yet Mr. Rooster was fascinating to watch for you never knew what Mr. Rooster would do next. (You never knew what any hen would do next, but anything a hen can do is of so little significance there is no point in observing her.) Mr. Rooster could leap into the air fluttering his wings, for instance, and devour a dragonfly three feet above the ground, and Mr. Rooster could rush in a blind rage at an unsuspecting hen, or two unsuspecting hens, or, as if he’d only just thought of it, and now that he was doing it, it was a significant thing to do, throwing himself down and rolling over vigorously in the dirt until his gaudy feathers were dull with dust like those of an ordinary chicken.

Mr. Rooster gave no sign of knowing who I was—who Happy Chicken was! Ridiculous how this stupid bird seemed not to notice even as the little girl singled me out for special attention and treats in his very presence. (I’d have liked to think that Mr. Rooster was jealous of me, but the fact was, Mr. Rooster was too vain and too stupid for jealousy.)

That is, Mr. Rooster was indifferent to me unless I stepped brashly in his way, or failed to get out of his way quickly enough when he charged forward into the midst of the chickens at feeding time.

Sometimes for a reason known only to Mr. Rooster’s pea-sized brain he crowed loudly and irritably and flapped his wings in a show of indignation and flew clumsily to alight on a rail fence, like a person clumsily hauling himself up by a rope.

At dawn, Mr. Rooster woke everyone with his crowing. He was the first rooster to wake in all of Millersport—soon after Mr. Rooster crowed, you would hear roosters crowing at neighboring farms. No other rooster at any neighboring farm woke earlier than Mr. Rooster, and no other rooster crowed as noisily.

The hens took for granted that Mr. Rooster’s crowing tore a rent in the silence of the countryside-before-dawn that allowed the sun to appear. The little girl may have thought this also, but only when she was very little.

The Grandfather who took little interest in the chickens—(these were the Grandmother’s responsibility)—was yet proud of his goddamn bird. The Grandfather liked it that Mr. Rooster chased away other chickens and barn-cats who ventured too near and had to be disciplined.

How many dawns, the little girl was wakened by Mr. Rooster’s cries. Through her life to come, long after she’d grown up, and gone away from the farmhouse on Transit Road to live, she would wake to the faint, fading cry of a rooster just outside in the dark-before-dawn.

Is a rooster a harbinger of the Underworld? Does a rooster wake you so that you have no choice but to follow him into the Underworld?

After she’d become an adult older than the Mother and the Father of her early childhood, and the little scabs and scars caused by the rooster’s beak had long faded from her knees, frequently she would find herself touching her knees like Braille, when she was alone.

Very often, in bed. In the bright pitiless light of a bathroom she would examine her knees frowning and baffled, her childhood scars had so vanished as if they had never been . . . It is hard to disabuse yourself of the superstition that your skin is indelibly marked since childhood in a way known only to you.

Upsetting to remember how Mr. Rooster would single out a hen for no reason—(had she disrespected him? taunted him? dared to eat something meant for him?)—peck and jab at the terrified bird until she began to bleed, and chase her until she seemed to fall, or to kneel, before him. And then, Mr. Rooster might have mercy on her, and strut away. But a scab would form shiny and bright as a third eye on the hen’s head, that would attract the attention of another hen, and so soon—for some reason—(the little girl could not understand this, it frightened her very much)—this hen would peck at the afflicted hen, and soon another hen would hurry over to peck at the afflicted hen, and another, and another; and sometimes Mr. Rooster, attracted by the squawking, might return for the coup de grâce—a series of rapid beak-stabs until the poor afflicted hen was bleeding, fallen over and unable to right herself beneath the frenzy of stabbing beaks . . . And hearing the barnyard commotion the Grandmother would hurry out of the house scolding and shooing with the intention of rescuing not the struggling live hen but the limp hen-corpse for the Grandmother’s own purposes.

In her harsh guttural speech the Grandmother would curse the chickens and the rooster. Much of the Grandmother’s speech had a sound of chiding and cursing. And the Grandmother would take up the limp blood-dripping hen-corpse into the kitchen and boil a pan of water on the stove and drop the hen-corpse into it, so that the feathers could be plucked more easily.

At these times the little girl had run away and hid her eyes.

The Mother would say to her, Don’t pay any attention, help me in the kitchen, sweetie!

Mostly the little girl would not remember such things. The little girl’s memory of the farm on Transit Road was very selective like the colander into which the Grandmother dumped boiling water containing her thin-cut noodles, made out of the Grandmother’s noodle-dough, that trapped just the noodles but strained away the liquid.

In later years recalling with a fond smile very little of the farm, the barnyard, the flock of Rhode Island Reds—just, me.

THE LITTLE GIRL WAS so excited! She was five years old.

This was the summer the little girl was allowed to help the Grandmother collect eggs from the hens’ nests in the chicken coop (where the chicken droppings were so smelly, you had to hold your breath especially after a rain) and soon then, the little girl was allowed to feed the chickens by herself, twice a day, their special chicken-feed. Like tiny pebbles the chicken feed seemed to the little girl, seized in handfuls to toss to the chickens; to get the seed you lowered a tin pie pan deep into the feed-sack, itself contained inside a larger, canvas sack to keep out rats and mice.

So exciting! Almost, the little girl wetted her panties, with anticipation.

And when she began to call to the chickens in her high, quavering voice as the Grandmother had taught her—CHICK!-chick-chick-chick-chick-CHI-ICK!—chickens came rushing in her direction at once, and made the little girl feel very special—very powerful. It was not ever the case that the little girl felt powerful—nor could the little girl have defined the sensation, at the time; but calling CHICK!-chick-chick-chick-chick-CHI-ICK provoked such a feeling in her, set her heart to pumping and a warm, rich sensation coursing through her veins, the little girl felt very special, and very proud.

Oh, she could see—(for she was a quick-witted, smart little girl)—that the chickens were oblivious of her, in their greed to devour seed they took not the slightest interest in her, or in their surroundings; yet still it seemed to the little girl that the chickens must like her, and knew who she was, for they came so quickly to her, colliding with one another, scolding and fretting, pecking one another in a frenzy to get to the seed the little girl tossed in a wide, wavering circle.

The Grandmother had instructed the little girl to distribute the seed as evenly as she could. You did not want all the chickens rushing together in a tight little spot, and injuring themselves. The little girl understood that she had to be fair to all the chickens, not just a few.

But the largest and most aggressive chickens rushed and pecked and beat away the others no matter how hard the girl tried.

Of course, Joyce Carol always fed me, specially. In a safe little area, by the side of the house. This was Happy Chicken’s special meal, which was served ahead of the general feeding. If other chickens noticed, and ran clucking to this meal, the little girl stamped her feet and shooed them away.

Though he might have been prowling out in the orchard, soon there came Mr. Rooster running on his long scaly legs. Mr. Rooster could hear the Chick-chick-chick! call from a considerable distance. He pushed through the throng of clucking chickens knocking the silly hens aside and gobbled up as much seed as he could from the ground. Sometimes then pausing, looking up with a squint in his yellow eyes, and made a decision—(who knows why?)—to rush at the little girl and jab her bare knee with his beak.

So quickly this assault came, when it came, the little girl never had time to draw back and escape.

Ohhh! Why was Mr. Rooster so mean!

The little girl was always astonished, the rooster was so mean.

The rooster’s beak was so swift, so sharp and so mean.

Worse yet, the rooster sometimes chased the little girl, trying to peck her legs. If the Grandmother saw, she shooed the rooster away by flapping her apron at him and cursing him in Hungarian. If the Grandfather saw, he gave the rooster a kick hard enough to lift the indignant bird into the air, squawking and kicking.

It was one of the mysteries of the little girl’s life, why when the other chickens seemed to like her so much, and her pet chicken adored her, Mr. Rooster continued to be so mean. It did not make sense to the little girl that Mr. Rooster devoured the seed she gave him, then turned on her as if he hated her. Shouldn’t Mr. Rooster be grateful?

The Mother kissed and cuddled her and said, Oh!—that’s just the way roosters are, sweetie!

Plaintively the little girl asked the Grandmother why did the rooster peck her and make her bleed and the Grandmother did not cuddle her but said, with an air of impatience, in her broken, guttural English, Because he is a rooster. You should not always be surprised, how roosters are.

THE LITTLE GIRL WANDERED the farm. The little girl was forbidden to step off the property.

There was the big barn, and there was the silo, and there was the chicken coop, and there were the storage sheds, and there was the barnyard, and there was the backyard, and there were the fields planted in potatoes and corn, and there was the orchard and beyond the orchard a quarter-mile lane back to the Weidenbachs’ farm where there were big nasty dogs that barked and bit and the little girl did not dare to go. In these places chickens wandered, and also Mr. Rooster, in their ceaseless scratching-and-pecking for food, though it was rare to see a chicken in one of the farther fields or in the lane. Happy Chicken only accompanied the little girl if she called him to these places, or carried him snug and firm in her arms.

The little girl placed me on the lowermost limb of the lilac tree by the back door of the house, so that I could “roost.” The little girl urged me to try to “fly—like a bird.” But if the little girl nudged me, and I lost my balance on the tree limb, my wings flapped uselessly, and I fell to the ground and did not always land on my feet.

At such a time I picked myself up and tottered away clucking loudly, complaining like any disgruntled hen, and the little girl hurried after me saying how sorry she was, and promised not to do it again.

Happy Chicken! Don’t be mad at me, I love you.

(IT WAS TAKEN FOR granted, it was never contested or wondered-at, that our wings were useless. We could “flap” our wings and “fly” for a few feet—even Mr. Rooster could not fly farther than a few yards; though there were wild turkeys, fatter and heavier than Rhode Island Reds, who could manage to “fly” into the higher limbs of a tree, and there “roost.”)

NOT JUST THE CHICKEN coop and much of the barnyard but the grassy lawn behind the house—(“lawn” was a name given to the patch of rough, short-cropped crabgrass that extended from the barnyard and the driveway to the pear orchard)—was mottled with chicken droppings. Runny black-and-white glistening smudges that gradually hardened into little stones and lost their sharp smell.

You would not want to run barefoot in the backyard, in the scrubby grass.

And there was the ugly tree stump along the side of the barn, stained with something dark.

And surrounding the stained block, chicken feathers. Sticky-stained feathers in dark clotted clumps.

No chickens scratched and pecked in the dirt here. Even Mr. Rooster kept his distance. And the little girl.

GRANDMA WAS THE ONE, you know. The one who killed the chickens. No! I did not know.

Of course you must have known, Joyce. You must have seen—many times. . . .

No. I didn’t know. I never saw.

But . . .

I never saw.

In later years she would recall little of her Hungarian grandparents. Her mother’s stepparents. For few snapshots remained of those years. She did know that the Grandfather and the Grandmother were something that was called Hungarian. They’d come on a “big boat” from a faraway place called Hungary years before the little girl was born and so this was not of much interest to the little girl since it had happened long ago. The grandparents seemed to the little girl to be very old. The big-breasted big-hipped Grandmother had never cut her hair that was silvery-gray-streaked and fell past her waist if she let it down from the tight-braided bun. The Grandmother had been eighteen when she’d come to the United States on a “boat” and at age eighteen it had seemed to her too late for her to learn English, as the Grandfather had learned English well enough to speak haltingly and to run his finger beneath printed words in a newspaper or magazine. The Grandfather was a tall big-bellied man with scratchy whiskers who liked to laugh as if much were a joke to him. He had rough calloused fingers that caught in the little girl’s curly hair when he was just teasing.

Worse yet was tickling. When the Grandfather’s breath smelled harsh and fiery like gasoline from the cider he drank out of a jug. But the Mother insisted Grandpa loves you, if you cry you will make Grandpa feel bad.

The farm was the Grandfather’s property. Of farms on Transit Road it was one of the smallest. Much of the acreage was a pear orchard. Pears were the primary crop of the farm, and eggs were second. The little girl and her parents lived on the Grandfather’s property upstairs in the farmhouse. The little girl understood that the Father was not so happy living there, for the Father had been born in Lockport and preferred the city to the country, absolutely. The Father had tried his hand at farming and “hated” it. The little girl often overheard her parents speak of wanting to move away, to live in Lockport, where the Father’s mother who was the little girl’s Other Grandmother lived. Except years would pass, all the years of their lives would pass as in a dream, and somehow—they did not ever move away.

There was something strange about the Grandfather and the Grandmother but the little girl could not guess what it was. Later she would learn that the Grandfather and the Grandmother were not the Mother’s actual parents but her stepparents and it was worrisome to the little girl, that in some way steps were involved. Like the long frightening stepladder that only Daddy could climb to pick pears, apples, and cherries from the highest limbs of the trees.

The little girl noticed that, when her parents were speaking together, or any adults were speaking together, if she came near they might cease speaking suddenly. They would smile at her, they would say her name, but they would not reveal what they had been saying.

The little girl ran away to hide, sometimes. When the adults were speaking sharply to one another. When the Grandfather cursed at the Grandmother in Hungarian, and the Grandmother wept angrily and hid her flushed face in her hands.

The little girl had several times seen the Grandmother’s long coarse gray-black hair straggling down her back like something alive and livid. The little girl shut her eyes not wanting to see as she shrank from seeing the Grandmother’s large soft melon-breasts loose inside a camisole, that was wrong to see for there were things, the little girl realized, that it was wrong to see and you would be sorry if you saw.

On a farm, there are many such things. Wild creatures that have crawled beneath a storage shed to die, or the bones of a chicken or a rabbit all but plucked clean by a rampaging owl in the night.

“Joyce Carol! Come here.”

With a nervous little laugh like a cough the Mother would shield the little girl’s eyes from something she should not see. Between the Mother’s eyebrows, faint lines of vexation and alarm.

“Sweetie, I said come here. We’re going inside now.”

SOMETIMES THE LITTLE GIRL was breathless and frightened but why, the little girl would not afterward recall.

The little girl often took me with her to a special hiding place. Happy Chicken in the little girl’s arms, held tight.

My quivering body. My quick-beating heart. Smooth warm beautiful chicken-feathers! The little girl held me and whispered to me where we were hiding in the old silo beside the barn, that wasn’t used so much any longer now that the farm didn’t have cows or pigs or horses. Smells were strong inside the silo, like something that has fermented, or rotted. The little girl’s mother warned her never to play in the silo, it was dangerous inside the silo. The smells can choke you. If corncobs fall onto you, you might suffocate. But the little girl brought me with her to hide in the silo for the little girl did not believe that anything bad could happen to her.

Except the little girl began more frequently to observe that if a chicken weakened, or fell sick, or had lost feathers, other chickens turned on her. So quickly—who could understand why? Even Happy Chicken sometimes pecked at another, weaker chicken—the little girl scolded, and carried me away.

No no Happy Chicken—that is bad.

We did not know why we did this. Happy Chicken did not know.

It was like laying eggs. Like releasing a hot little dollop of excrement from the anus, something that happened.

Hearing a commotion in the barnyard, the little girl ran to see what was happening always anxious that the wounded hen might be me—but this did not happen.

Though sometimes my beak was glistening with blood, and when the little girl called me, I did not seem to hear. Peck peck peck is the action of the beak, like a great wave that sweeps over you, and cannot be resisted.

THE LITTLE GIRL GREW up, and grew away, but never forgot her Happy Chicken.

The little girl forgot much else, but not Happy Chicken.

The little girl became an adult woman, and at the sight of even just pictures of chickens she felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, sharp as pain. Especially red-feathered hens. And roosters! Her eyes mist over, her heart beats quick enough to hurt. So happy then. So long ago . . .

Still, she would claim she’d never seen a chicken slaughtered. Never seen a single one of the Rhode Island Reds seized by the legs, struggling fiercely, more fiercely than any human being might struggle, thrown down onto the chopping block to be decapitated with a single swift blow of the bloodstained ax, wielded by a muscled arm.

It was the Grandmother’s arm, usually. For the Grandmother was the chicken-slaughterer.

Which the girl had not seen. The girl had not seen.

The girl did recall a time when Grandfather was not so big-bellied and confident as he’d been. When the Grandfather began to cough frequently. And to cough up blood. The Grandfather no longer teased the little girl, or caused her to run from him crying as she’d run from Mr. Rooster. The little girl stared in horror as the Grandfather coughed, coughed, coughed doubled over in pain, scarcely able to breathe. The Grandfather would scrape phlegm up from his throat, with great effort, and spit the quivering greenish liquid into a rag. And the little girl would want to hide her face, this was so terrible to see.

It was explained that the Grandfather was sick with something in his lungs. Steel-filings it was said, from the foundry in Tonawanda. The Grandfather had hated his factory-job in Tonawanda but the Grandfather had had to work there, to support the farm. For the farm would not support itself, and the people who lived on it.

The Grandfather had liked to say in his laughing-bitter way that he and the other workers should be running the foundry and not the goddamn owners. Until the terrible coughing spells overcame him the Grandfather would say how the workers of the world would one day rise against the goddamn owners but that was not to happen, it would be revealed, in the Grandfather’s lifetime.

SELLING EGGS, SITTING OUT by the roadside. Sitting, dreaming, waiting for a vehicle to slow to a stop. Customers.

How much? One dozen?

Oh that’s too much. I can get them cheaper just up the road.

Always there were eggs for sale. And, at the end of the summer pears in bushel baskets. Sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes. Apples, cherries. Pumpkins.

With a faint sensation of anxiety the little girl would recall sitting at the roadside at the front of the house behind a narrow bench. When sometimes the Mother had to go inside for a short while and the little girl was left alone at the roadside.

Hoping that no one would stop. Hoping not to see a vehicle slow down and park on the shoulder of the highway.

Some of the anxiety was over chickens, that made their blind-seeming way down the driveway, to the highway. Chickens oblivious of vehicles speeding by on the road, only a few yards from where they scratched and pecked in the dirt.

Anxiously the little girl watched to see that no chickens drifted out onto the road. The little girl knew, though she wasn’t altogether certain how she knew, for she’d never seen, that from time to time chickens had been killed on the road.

Sudden squawking and shrieking, and a flapping of wings. At first you rush to see what it is, and then you do not want to see what it is.

One of the constant fears of the little girl’s life was that Happy Chicken might be hit on the highway for the little girl could not watch me all of the time.

Each morning running outside breathless and eager to call to me—Happy! Happy Chicken!

And I came running, out of the coop, or out of the barn, or out of a patch of grass beside the back door, hurrying on my scrawny chicken-legs to be stroked and petted.

“Happy Chicken! I love you.”

THE LAUGHTER WAS KINDLY, and yet cruel.

Of course you ate chicken when you were a little girl, Joyce! You ate everything we ate.

No. She didn’t think so.

You’d have had to eat whatever was served. Whatever everybody else was eating. You wouldn’t have been allowed to not-eat anything on the table.

No! This was not true.

You hated fatty meat, and you hated things like gizzards, and we laughed at how you tried to hide these—beneath the rim of your plate!—as if, when the plate was removed from the table, the fatty little pieces of meat you’d left would not be discovered. But you certainly ate chicken white meat. Of course you did.

No. That was—that was not true . . .

Children ate what they were given in those days. Children ate, or went hungry. Your father would have spanked the daylights out of you if you’d tried to refuse chicken, or anything that your mother or grandmother prepared.

But no. She did not believe this.

It’s true—she does remember her Hungarian grandmother preparing noodles in the kitchen. Wide swaths of soft-floury ghost-white dough on the circular kitchen table that was covered in oilcloth, and over the oilcloth strips of waxed paper. She recalls the Grandmother, a heavyset woman with gray hair plaited and fastened tight against her head, always in an apron, and the white apron always soiled, wielding a long sharp-glittering knife, rapidly cutting dough into thin strips of noodle. And the Grandmother’s legs encased in thick flesh-colored cotton stockings even in hot weather. The surprise was, sometimes you could see a pleading girl’s face inside the soft flaccid Grandmother-stern face. And the little girl remembers something white-skinned, headless in a large pan simmering on the stove, the surface of the liquid bubbling with dollops of yellowish fat.

You loved your grandmother’s chicken noodle soup! You don’t remember?

She hides her eyes. She hides her face. She is sickened, that terrible smell of wet feathers, plucked-white chicken-flesh.

Protesting, I had nothing to do with that.

Trying to recall in a sudden panic—what had happened to her pet chicken, she’d loved so?

Our memories are what remain on a wall that has been washed down. Old billboards advertising Mail Pouch Tobacco, in shreds. The faintest letters remaining that even as you stare at them, fade. The Hungarian Grandfather who’d been so gruff, so loud, so confident and had so loved his little granddaughter he’d been unable to keep his calloused fingers out of her curls had died at the age of fifty-three, his lungs riddled with steel filings from the foundry in Tonawanda. The Hungarian Grandmother lived for many years afterward and never learned to speak English, still less to read English. The Grandmother died in a nursing home in Lockport to which the granddaughter was never once taken, nor was the granddaughter told the name of the nursing home or its specific location.

Why was this? The Mother had wished to hide the little girl’s eyes. Even when she was no longer a little girl, yet the Mother wished to shield her from upset and worry.

What happened to me? What happened to Happy Chicken?

Oh, the little girl did not know!

The little girl did not know. Just that one terrible day—Happy Chicken was not there.

She mouths the words aloud: “Happy Chicken.”

There is something about the very word happy that is unnerving. Happy happy happy happy.

A terrible word. A terrifying word. Hap-py.

Waking in the night, tangled in bedsheets, shivering in such fright you’d think she was about to misstep and fall into an abyss.

Happy. Hap-py. We were so hap-py . . .

In the cold terror of the night she counts her dead. Like a rosary counting her dead. The Grandfather who died first and after whom the door was opened, that Death might come through to seize them all. The Grandmother who died somewhere far away, though close by. The Mother who died of a stroke when she was in her mid-eighties, overnight. The Father who died over several years, also in his mid-eighties, in the new, twenty-first century shrinking, baffled and yet alert, in yearning wonderment.

Wanted you kids to have the best you could have, but that didn’t happen. We were just too poor. I worked like hell, but it wasn’t enough. Things got better later, but those early years—! The only good thing was, we lived in Millersport. We lived on the old man’s farm. You loved those animals. Remember your pet chicken—Happy Chicken? God, you loved that little red chicken.

Daddy brushing tears from his eyes. Daddy laughing, he wasn’t the kind to be sentimental, Jesus!

She was thinking of how they’d found the rooster—not Mr. Rooster then, but just a limp, slain bird—beautiful feathers smudged and broken—out back of the barn where something, possibly a fox, or a neighbor’s dog, had seized him, shaken him and broken his neck, threw him down and left him for dead. Poor Mr. Rooster!

Seeing the rooster in the dirt, horribly still, the little girl had cried and cried and cried.

And several hens, limp and bloody, eyes open and sightless. Flung down in the dirt like trash.

AND THERE CAME THE time, not long after this, or maybe it had been this time, when Happy Chicken disappeared.

The girl was stunned and disbelieving and did not cry, at first.

So frightened, the little girl could not cry.

For it seemed terrifying to her, that Happy Chicken might be—somehow—gone.

She’d run screaming to her mother who was upstairs in the farmhouse. The Mother who claimed to have no idea where the little chicken might be. Together they searched in the chicken coop, and in the barn, and out in the fields, and in the pear orchard. Calling Happy Chicken! Happy Chicken! Loudly calling Chick-chick-chick-chick-CHICK!

Other chickens came running, blinking and clucking. Yellow eyes staring.

And not one of these was me.

That morning the Mother had taken the little girl into Lockport to visit with the Other Grandmother, who was her father’s mother, who lived upstairs in a gray clapboard house on Grand Street just across the railroad tracks. The highway that was Transit Road that ran past the little girl’s house became Transit Street inside the Lockport city limits and was but a half-block away from the Other Grandmother’s house.

The Other Grandmother was named Blanche: but she was also called “Grandma”—like the (Hungarian) grandmother. The little girl tried to understand why this would be so. How could the two persons who were so different, be somehow the same—Grandma?

The Other Grandmother, who lived in Lockport, was much nicer than the (Hungarian) Grandmother who lived in Millersport. This Grandmother did not smell of grease, or chicken gizzards, or wet chicken feathers, or any other nasty thing, but rather of something pale and creamy like lilies—did this Grandmother wear perfume? Were this Grandmother’s hands soft from hand lotion? The little girl was always welcome to explore the Grandmother’s rooms which included the Grandmother’s bedroom that had such nice things in it—a shiny pink satin bedspread with white flowers, a “dressing table” with three mirrors and a mirror-top, many sweet-smelling jars and small bottles, a hairbrush with soft bristles that did not hurt the little girl’s hair when the Grandmother brushed it.

Most importantly the Grandmother who was Blanche did not speak angry-sounding guttural words in Hungarian, and would never have raised her voice to scream at anyone; you could not imagine—(the little girl could not imagine!)—this nice Grandmother being cruel to any chicken.

This was the Grandmother whom Daddy loved—for this Grandmother was Daddy’s mother. The little girl had been told this remarkable fact which she could not comprehend because Daddy was so much taller than the Grandmother it seemed to her silly—that her tall strong Daddy who was so forceful would have a mother.

This was the Grandmother who read books from the Lockport library, never fewer than three books each week. And these books smelling of the library in plastic covers. And these books smartly stamped in dark green ink LOCKPORT PUBLIC LIBRARY. This Grandmother took the little girl hand in hand into the children’s entrance of the library, to secure a library card for the little girl. For here was the surprise, that would be one of the great, happy surprises of the little girl’s life—“Joyce Carol” was old enough for a children’s library card: six. And she was allowed to take out children’s books, picture books, selected by the little girl herself, from shelves in the library—so many shelves! Such beautiful books! The little girl was so excited she could barely speak, to thank the Grandmother. Having her books stamped and discharged by the librarian made the little girl very shy but the Grandmother stood beside her so there was nothing to fear. And the little girl and the Grandmother-who-was-Blanche read these books together sitting on a swing on the front veranda of the gray clapboard house on Grand Street.

In all that day, the little girl did not once think of me.

Those hours, blinking and staring at the beautiful brightly colored illustrations in the books, turning the pages slowly, as the nice Grandmother Blanche read the words on each page, and encouraged the little girl to read too—the little girl did not once think of Happy Chicken.

But when the Mother took the little girl home again to Millersport, in the late afternoon of that day, and the little girl ran out into the barnyard to call for me, there was no Happy Chicken anywhere.

The little girl and the Mother would search the chicken coop, the barn, the orchard. . . . Oh where was Happy Chicken? The little girl was crying, sobbing.

The (Hungarian) Grandmother who was hanging sheets on the clothesline insisted she had not seen Happy Chicken.

The Grandmother had never really distinguished Happy Chicken from any other chicken—the little girl knew that. How ridiculous, the Grandmother thought, to pretend that one chicken was any different from any other chicken!

The Grandfather too insisted he hadn’t seen Happy Chicken! Wouldn’t have known what the damned chicken looked like, in fact. Anything that had to do with the chickens—these were the Grandmother’s chores, and of no interest to the Grandfather who was worn-out from the foundry in Tonawanda and couldn’t give a damn, so much fuss over a goddamn chicken.

When the father returned from his factory work in Lockport in the early evening he was in no mood either to hear of Happy Chicken. He was in no mood to hear his little daughter’s crying, that grated on his nerves. But seeing his little girl’s reddened eyes, and the terror in those eyes, the Father stooped to kiss her cheek.

Don’t cry, he’ll come back. What’s his name—“Happy Chicken”?

Sure. “Happy Chicken” will come back.

SHE IS CALLING HIM-HAPPY Chicken. Her throat is raw with calling him—Happy Chicken!

She has wakened in a sick cold sweat tangled in bedclothes. The little red chicken is somewhere in the room—is he? But which room is this, and when?

But here I am—suddenly—crouching at her feet. Eager quivering little red-feathered chicken at the little girl’s feet. The little girl kneels to pet me, and kisses the top of my hard little head, and holds me in her arms, my wings pressed gently against my sides. And the little chicken-head lowered. And the eyelids quivering. Red-burnished feathers stroked gently by a little girl’s fingers.

Where did I go, Joyce Carol? I flew away.

One day that summer, my wings were strong enough to lift me. And once my wings began to beat, I rose into the air, astonished and elated; and the air buoyed and buffeted me, and I flew high above the tallest peak of the old clapboard farmhouse on Transit Road.

So high, once the wind lifted me, I could see the raggedy flock of red-feathered chickens below scratching and pecking in the dirt as always, and I could see the roof of the old hay barn, and I could see the top of the silo; I could see the farthest potato field, and the farthest edge of the pear orchard, and the rutted dirt lane that bordered the orchard leading back to the Weidenbachs’ farm where the big barking dogs lived.

For it was time, for Happy Chicken to fly away.