The Woefield Poultry Collective (30 page)

“My bird’s okay!” Sara shouted. She’s a pretty cool little cat, even if she does think about hell too much.

The dude who’d paused kept going.

I put my arm out to shield us from view and looked real close at Alec’s rear end.

“It definitely looks plucked. Just one feather and it’s less full.”

“What are we going to do?”

She sounded like she was about to cry.

“We’re going to put a little more marker on the white ones instead of pulling them. No one will notice.”

I took the Magic Marker out of my pocket and removed the cap. The smell of the ink filled my nose. I’d just reblacked the white feathers when I heard him.

“You damned pervert!” he said.

The kid belonged to a pair of them Bible thumpers from out Cassidy way. I seen them or their type before, holding signs outside the liquor store and the doctor’s office. Car crashes and dead babies. They like to get in other people’s business, those ones.

They’re part of that crowd parks their minivans at eight o’clock Sunday morning outside that New Church of Christ off the highway. Parking lot’s still full at five. I guess they must serve lunch at that place. Either that or the whole lot of them are tough as hell about going without food. Enough righteous god anger will do that.

Oh, thank you so much, said the lady, who had on a pink dress and them sandals that showed her nylons poking out at the toes. It was hot as a Florida whore’s snatch out, even though it was only early summer. You’d think she’d have left off the pantyhose. But I ain’t been to church for a long time and things might have got more conservative since then.

The man nodded at me and called me sir by way of saying hello. He was in a suit. Him and his wife were standing in front of a cage of Rhode Island Reds. Nice-looking birds.

The kid introduced me. She said, This is Earl, he’s Sara’s friend.

The lady leaned in close and asked, How is Sara? She sounded kind of whispery, like we were sharing a big secret.

I told her Sara was fine. Them type of people appreciate cheerfulness.

The lady said, Ooooh, like that was a new one on her.

The man said, Poor kid. No guidance.

He was wrong there. Little Sara has some guidance. It’s just piss-poor guidance for the most part.

I nodded and headed to the concession booth to get a coffee. I was never much for crowds and I don’t care for heat and the fair had a good bit of both. I bought a Styrofoam cup of what looked like piss water for a buck and was putting my sugars in there when the first one come up and asked me if it was true.

I didn’t have the first goddamn idea what he was talking about or who the hell he was. So I said, Sure, it’s true. People like it when you tell them what they want.

Merle Clemente is your brother? he said. Holy shit, man, that’s unreal.

Took me by surprise. I spilled my damned coffee all over the little counter and down my clean work pants.

He tried to help me, and started taking swipes at my pants.

I told him, Jesus Christ, just leave it.

Once I got her mopped up a bit, I gave the guy a look and damned if he wasn’t one of them longhairs like to pretend they’re farmers. Throwbacks to the hippie days, is what I call them. Merle used to call them New Grassers. New gassers is more like it, all the hot air they spout.

He was saying, An original member of the High Lonesome Boys. Living right here in Cedar. I can’t believe it.

I didn’t know whether to shit or brush my hair. Lost. I was lost for words.

I said, ‘Scuse me, and went to get another coffee. He stayed right with me. Let me, he said. Just a young guy, long hair, wearing a plaid flannel work shirt, like mine only new and put on for show.

He said he would like nothing more than to buy a coffee for the missing Clemente brother.

That stopped me.

Finally I told him I wasn’t the missing one. The one that was missing wasn’t ever coming back.

He looked confused behind that little beard of his, probably only three days old.

Sorry man, I didn’t mean to …

I said, ‘Scuse me, again. I got somewhere to be.

I was nearly past him when I heard him say to the little girl he was with, her all dolled up like a goddamn pilgrim or something, They aren’t going to believe this on the folk music listserv. Scoop of the century! Hey, did you bring your BlackBerry?

Like he was talking in French.

I bet if we hadn’t cheated none of it would have happened. God makes people pay for their sins. It’s one of his main rules and leaders are more affected by rules than other people.

Seth says that sometimes being a leader is about knowing which rules to ignore. But he doesn’t have a very good moral compass. Neither does my dad, which is probably why everything went so wrong.

My dad had been drinking, which he doesn’t normally, and he seemed upset, which wasn’t surprising at all. Sometimes he pushes my mom around but mostly he just says mean things, except when he’s throwing food. But when me and Seth were hiding Alec Baldwin’s white feathers my dad came right up to us and pushed Seth. Seth swore at him, but that wasn’t very unusual because Seth swears about everything. I can’t repeat what he said because I am in enough trouble with God already.

Seth also said, “Watch the [bleep]ing chicken!”

And then my dad asked what Seth was doing out here with his daughter, which was me.

And Seth said, “Take it easy dude. I’m just helping.”

Then my dad tried to take a swing at Seth and he missed and kind of fell over.

People started coming out of the poultry barn and over from the sheep barn, which was next door. You could tell they were sheep people because they were leading sheep.

My dad was crying and Seth went to help him up, and my dad tried
to punch him again but he only hit the back of Seth’s leg. That made Seth fall over, so they were both on the ground.

And Seth said, “Why does this [bleep] always happen to me?”

And my dad cried some more.

That’s when Mr. Lymer came down the aisle between the two buildings. He was with Tommy Bristol, who is a Junior Poultry judge. Tommy’s seventeen. Everyone says he’s someone to watch.

“What’s going on out here?” asked Mr. Lymer.

Tommy Bristol just stood to the side. He’s quite dignified. I saw Bethany and Mr. and Mrs. Blaine watching, too. Bethany was holding her rooster, Mr. Red, who weighs almost ten pounds, which is a lot. Maybe too much for a competitive bird.

“Just a misunderstanding,” said Seth. He sounded really upset. He also used some more swear words and Mrs. Blaine put her hands over Bethany’s ears. A couple of the sheep people laughed.

“He’s a pervert! He’s inappropriately interested in my daughter,” said my dad. Which was kind of strange because he never really cared who was interested in me before.

“I am not!” Seth screamed. “I was helping with her chicken. Doing service work.” Then he added some more swears and said something about some guy named Axe Rose. I don’t know why.

I was going to tell them that we were just working with Alec Baldwin, but I didn’t want to confess about the cheating, and before I could say anything my stomach started to hurt a lot.

“Helping how?” said Mr. Lymer.

I saw Tommy notice the ink marker lying on the ground. I could tell he knew what it was for. Before anyone else saw it, he leaned down and picked up the pen and put it in his pocket.

“He was helping with her sign,” said Tommy. “I saw him.”

“That’s right,” said Seth. He picked himself up. “I’m in graphics! Among other things.”

My dad was still sitting on the ground, in the weeds. He was leaning against the side of the building crying but not making any noise.

“Sir?” said Mr. Lymer. “Are you okay?”

Then I didn’t hear anything else because the pain in my stomach all of a sudden got a lot worse.

I was in a booth looking at charts of grass growth cycles when I saw the ambulance drive slowly through the crowd with its lights flashing. The strobes were hard to see, because the sun was bright and glinting off the shiny surfaces of tractors and amusement rides.

I have no idea how I knew the paramedics were there for one of us. The options were endless. Someone might have been choking on a corndog or a 4-H’er might have been trampled by a stampede of heifers tired of being paraded around the small arena like passive and overweight debutantes. But the intuitive part of me knew. Perhaps Earl had keeled over from some fresh indignation or Seth had slipped away from Eustace and gotten drunk and been beaten half to death by a tractor salesmen for an offhand but highly offensive comment.

I didn’t even think to worry about Sara.

When I walked over to the poultry barn, I could see a small knot of people standing around the gap between the chicken barn and the next building. I pushed my way through the small crowd and headed down the narrow alleyway formed by the two buildings. Sara lay on the stretcher surrounded by people. The ambulance attendant, a spiky-haired, muscular young aboriginal man, was bent over, talking to her. I suppose he was really talking at her, because she didn’t seem to be responding.

“Sara?” I said, “Sara?”

Before I could reach her, Seth reached out and touched my arm.

“They said we should meet them at the hospital,” he said. “You should, anyway. She asked me to stay and show her birds.”

“But—” I didn’t finish the sentence.

“They don’t know what’s wrong with her. It’s her stomach.”

That’s when I saw the tall, red-faced man standing off to the side. I thought I recognized him, although his face was so screwed up with emotion that it was hard to tell.

“Is that …?”

“Her dad. Yeah. He saw me talking to her and kind of flipped out. Then she got sick. He’ll meet you at the hospital.”

Earl put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me so I wouldn’t get in the paramedics’ way as they carried Sara on the stretcher to the waiting ambulance.

Eustace still hadn’t arrived and I was worried as hell about the kid. I was supposed to show the chickens but I’d just been assaulted by the kid’s father and I was basically shitting bricks, if you want to know the truth. The weird thing though? I forgot to be paranoid about who knew what happened with me and the drama teacher. Which is kind of screwed up, I know. Like maybe I’m destined to go through life with one epic fuckup supplanting the next one. It’ll get so I can’t worry about anything that happens because something worse is definitely coming. There was a certain relief in the thought.

Anyway, back to the chicken show. I might have been helping Sara train the birds, but that didn’t mean I knew what I was doing. I just got a kick out of the whole idea. I know nothing about competitive poultry and showing them off to their best advantage. So I was seriously considering making a run for it when a kid no more than four feet tall, wearing a nearly knee-length blue T-shirt printed with the silhouette of a chicken and some lettering that I couldn’t read because it was created in a font that looked like chicken tracks, told me I was up next.

“I’m sorry?”

She consulted her piece of paper.

“Spratt. Frizzle hen. Number twenty-four.”

“But where do I—?”

“Take your bird and wait by the judging table,” she said.

I pulled the hen out of the cage. She was a limp little thing with all the personality of a used fabric softener sheet. Sara might have told me
her name, but I couldn’t remember it because most of my attention had been on Alec Baldwin and overcoming his shortcomings. Plus, I think I have brain damage from blackout drinking. I really do.

I stood there holding the hen with all the other contestants, not one of whom was probably more than twelve. Most were younger. I felt like the fair’s prize asshole. The older kids, the Sr. Poultry Fanciers, were acting as assistant judges or watching the proceedings.

“Are you allowed to compete?” asked this one little girl. Her T-shirt said she was on the Nanoose Ninnies team.

I was about to say that (1) I hoped I couldn’t compete, so as to spare myself further humiliation, and (2) her team name should mention chickens in case people thought she was simply a twit, when a voice interrupted.

“Mr. Lymer said he could.”

I turned. It was Bethany, Sara’s friend. She was hanging onto a red chicken the size of an overweight toddler.

“Sara’s sick,” Bethany said, to no one in particular.

“That’s right. But she’ll be better soon,” I told her.

“Poor Sara.”

I nodded.

“She has a bad home life. But God still loves her,” continued Bethany.

“Yeah. That’s true.”

Then the two of us watched a boy show off a small gleaming-white rooster with a spray of black feathers for a tail. The announcer said it was a Japanese cockerel. The boy tried to push it along the piece of shavings-sprinkled plywood that was the runway. Two judges sat across the table from the kid and his bird. They watched as the little rooster took a step, crapped, took another step and crapped again.

“He’s kind of nervous,” said the boy. A fringe of hair hung almost to his nose. “He doesn’t normally poop that much.” The kid had on black skateboarding shoes, one of which was tapping the dirt a mile a minute.

The judges nodded. I got the feeling they didn’t approve of birds with nervous stomachs. That made me think of Sara again. I was so
nervous I felt a little like the Japanese cockerel. At least during the thing with the drama teacher I’d been wasted. This sobriety business was hard going.

A young guy walked up to me.

“You’re up next,” he said.

I felt my stomach do a long, slow flop, releasing a wave of acid into my throat.

“Don’t worry. They’ll go easy on you. Since you’re an amateur.”

I looked at him more closely.

“Thanks, dude,” I said.

“Oh, and I think you dropped this earlier.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the marker we’d been using to hide Alec Baldwin’s white feathers.