Three Chickens

Sheila Tanner hummed to herself as she scraped carrots into a bucket. She used a sharp knife instead of the vegetable peeler, because it felt easier to her, and did just as good a job. She was a Kansas woman, a mid-westerner through and through.

Sheila heard a loud pop from outside and paused to listen. She heard two more in succession and realized a gun was being fired.

She grabbed a towel from the sink and dried her hands as she hurried to the front door. Two more pops sounded before she got there. She peered out the window of the storm door, her pregnant belly and face pressed against the glass.

Outside, the dirt drive was empty. The brown lawn was still and silent. Patches of dirty snow littered the yard. Off to her right, dimly lit by setting sun she saw Ray shooting his revolver at one of the chickens.

Just as Sheila had taught him, he stood with feet spread. He held the pistol in both hands. His arms were slightly bent. He took careful aim at the chicken, but then closed his eyes as he fired. A bright muzzle flash lit up the dark yard like a strobe. The chicken squawked, flapped its wings and moved a couple steps to the right and resumed pecking. Ray closed his eyes and pulled the trigger again, but this time the hammer fell without producing a shot.

Sheila worried that the gun had misfired. She quickly added up the number of shots in her head. She counted six, and felt relieved. She wouldn't have to teach Ray how to clear a bad round again. Then she became annoyed.

Ray seemed to lack much of the common sense that she'd been born with. His resistance to learning country ways bothered her. He hadn't been like this when they'd first been married. Not this resistant, she knew.

She pushed open the storm door and strode out. "Ray. How many times do I have to tell you? Always keep one chamber clear so you don't shoot yourself in the foot. I heard six rounds fired, which means you had one sitting there under the firing pin again."

She walked to the chicken, grabbed its neck and picked it up. She looked it all over, and laughed. "You missed! Six shots and you couldn't even hit a standing-still chicken, from...," She eye-balled the distance between them, "seven lousy feet." She gave the chicken a little twirl, and cracked it like a whip. "That's how you kill a chicken."

She carried the dead chicken by its feet up the porch, and whacked it once against the side of the house to knock any loose dirt off. Then she looked back at Ray and smiled, one of those maddening smiles that she knew he could never figure out, and went inside.

**********

"Damn," said Ray. "Damn, damn, damn." He cocked his arm to throw the pistol, as hard as he could, into the field and immediately felt guilty for doing it. Then he threw the gun anyway, and listened as it made a hard thunk on the frozen ground.

Ray breathed a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere inside his soul.

Ray noticed he'd left his motorcycle out. He grabbed the handle bars, pushed it off its kickstand, and rolled it to the shed. The fit inside was awkward and, as usual, it took some jockeying to roll the wide bike, a used BMW, all the way in.

Ray swung the shed door closed, and winced as the door scraped the ground, like nails on a blackboard. The air temperature had dropped fast as the sun set and the cold began to cut at his exposed face and hands. He forced the door shut with his shoulder, then turned and looked back at the house.

Even in the dark he could see patches of peeled paint. Shingles were missing from the roof and it leaked. The porch needed to be jacked up and fixed. Piles of trash, next to and behind the house, needed to be hauled and buried. Half the storm windows were cracked and needed to be replaced. Sheila wanted a vegetable garden and a patch for flowers. He began to tick off all the things that required doing and all the work he faced when spring arrived. "Damn," he said again, and hit the shed hard with his fist.

At dinner, Ray felt resentful that Sheila gave herself a larger portion just because she was "eating for two." After all, he had worked all afternoon to earn those chickens and felt he had a right to more. But their current poverty was the direct result of his love for her and his guilt for having gotten her pregnant. Simple dinners, and worthless days, were his lot in life now, and at the moment none of that seemed worth the price.

Ray noticed that she watched him as he ate. Her blue eyes matched the blue table cloth, and they stayed fixed on him, unflinching. She asked, "You still sore about the ribbing I gave you?"

A chunk of potato hovered on Ray's fork just in front of his mouth. "No, I'm not mad about that."

He stuck the potato in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully while he stared back at her. He swallowed, and almost wiped his mouth with his sleeve, but caught himself without betraying the mistake, and wiped his mouth with a napkin instead.

"Bob Perkins told me," he said. "that as soon as the ground thaws, he'll hire me to help lay irrigation pipe. That'll be a real job that pays real money. A month's worth at least, to start."

Sheila frowned but didn't say anything. Instead she looked at her plate and started to cut her chicken meat into tiny, bite-size pieces.

Ray watched her small hands at work. He loved the practical look of her hands, the shape of her fingers, her short trimmed nails. He ached. He loved her and knew he loved everything about her.

She glanced up at him.

He smiled warmly and said, "Your eyes, you know. They melt my heart."

"Now Ray, I am too far along with this kid inside me. You're not getting any tonight, nor for a month or more. So no need flattering me if you don't mean it."

Ray felt a helpless lump form in his gut, and it wasn't the food. He put his fork down.

"Now don't be like that," said Sheila. "You know I don't like it when you pout."

"I'm not pouting." Ray swallowed and tried to figure out what he really meant. "I mean..." he started, but he didn't know. "I mean," he started again, but couldn't get a grip on his real feelings. "I mean I don't think I'm worth anything to you anymore."

Sheila smiled. "Well, I admit you seem a pretty piss poor example of a man these days. But you're learning your way around, and you're still my husband, and I still need you."

"It's like this," he began. "When we moved here from California...."

Sheila interrupted. "Now don't start that again. We've sung that song, and danced that dance, and it never got us anywhere."

Ray gritted his teeth. Usually he let her interruptions slide by, but tonight he didn't want to put up with her attitude. "Damn it, Sheila!" Ray pounded his fist once on the table. The dishes jumped, and the napkin holder fell over. "Can't you just listen to me for a change?"

Sheila hesitated, her mouth open as if to reply, but for a moment no reply came, and this filled Ray with courage.

"When we moved here from California, it was supposed to be just to let our kid be born here, like you and your parents were born. In a country house like where you grew up and that's all. That's all it was meant to be."

Ray leaned forward and put his hands on the table to show he was calm. "That's good and I have always respected you for it. But there's a limit to how much I will do, for you and your dream."

"Our dream, Ray. Our dream."

"I don't mind driving ten miles into town, just to see anyone at all. I don't mind that there's no movie theater in town. I don't mind that the only visitors we get are your relatives, and your old high school friends. Really. I don't mind that at all." He could see he was pissing her off now, but he didn't care.

"Ray," she said. "You're bucking for a fight. And remember, you don't like to fight."

"I mean look at me. Three months! For three months now I've been looking for work. I've been hitting every farm and business around here looking for any kind of work at all. But nobody is hiring. And nobody is going to hire anyone that wasn't raised here. Especially someone who doesn't know shit about farming. And you know all this, but you don't seem to care."

"I care. I care about you. But not when you get like this."

"Like what? I'm trying to get you to see that I did something good today. That I did some real work for a change. I earned something. I earned those chickens."

"Ray, that's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean. Look at what you did today. You worked all afternoon, four or five hours, work that should pay you, if not good money, then at least some money. Not three lousy chickens!"

Ray shoved his chair back and stood up. "So now what? So now you call me stupid again? You call me stupid because I don't do things the way you do. Don't you get it? You're poisoning us. You judge me but you never listen to me. You're driving a wedge between us, and I don't know why."

"I gotta pee," said Sheila. She rocked her chair back, put her hands on the arms ready to push herself up and hesitated. "I'm sorry Ray. But I don't know you anymore. And I don't especially like you anymore either. Not when you get in a mood like this." She clasped her pregnant belly protectively. "And, as far as I'm concerned, this child is no longer yours."

"What do you mean?" Ray felt the anger suddenly drain out of him. "What are you saying?"

Sheila pushed herself up and stood. She frowned at him and walked out of the tiny kitchen. "Ray," she yelled back. "You're not sleeping with me tonight."

Ray heard the bathroom door close and thought it sounded abnormally loud. The silence of the empty kitchen mocked him. He felt too big at the small table, out of place in a room that seemed no longer familiar.

He went to the front door, his head filled with stampeding thoughts. He picked up his gloves and coat from the stand by the door and put them on. He waited for the sound of a toilet flush, but caught himself waiting and went outside instead.

The air hit him, cold and dry. The feel of it made his lips purse and he felt the cracks in them from the dryness.

Above him raged a billion stars, but the frown of a moon barely gave him enough light to see.

He wrestled his motorcycle from the shed and turned it around. The tiny yard with its brown lawn seemed to mock him. He sat on his bike and felt like he was floating, detached.

Ray noticed that Sheila stood on the front porch now, her arms folded, watching. She didn't say anything but only dared him with her posture, waiting for him to make his move.

He started the bike and let it idle loudly for a little while. He revved it once and turned on the lights. Then he looked straight at her, straight into her unfriendly eyes and waited for a sign. None came. He felt the anger rising again, like bile in his gut. He popped the bike into gear and accelerated smoothly and fast from the yard.

The bike gave an odd shimmy and he heard a squawk. He stopped and looked back. There on the road behind him, like a wild weed gone wrong, lay one of the chickens, squashed flat.

A bad sign, he thought. Over the loud idling engine he heard laughter. He looked back at the porch, but Sheila stood silent, her arms folded, watching him.

At base of the porch, in the light from the doorway the third chicken stood, awakened by all the commotion. It too seemed to watch him.

"You're lucky!" He yelled. "Damn lucky!"

Sheila yelled back, "What? What did you say?"

"Not you," he yelled louder so she could hear. "I was talking to the chicken."

Ray gave her the finger, then squared up in his seat. He looked at the wedge of light ahead and sighed sadly. Leaving felt like cutting off his own hand.

He accelerated again, but this time carefully, out to the paved county road, and turned west, thinking hard of California.

**********

Sheila sat at the kitchen table and knitted a baby sweater. She glanced at the clock on the wall, a yellow cat with a tail that wagged. Ray had been gone for a little over an hour. She knew how bitter cold these late winter nights could get, and worried about him. He was ignorant about winter and still underestimated its danger.

She heard the front door open and close. The sound of Ray stomping dirt and snow from his boots allowed her to relax. She heard him walk to the kitchen, and felt him stop and stand in the doorway behind her. She put down her knitting and asked, without turning around, "What took you so long?"

"I dumped the bike on a patch of ice," he said. His voice sounded sheepish. "I had to walk back."

"Come here," Sheila said sweetly, her back still to him. "I made you hot chocolate."

Ray walked up behind her and put his hands affectionately on her shoulders. "Thanks," he said. "What's boiling in the big pot?"

"That's the last chicken." she said with the emphasis on the word "last."

"I hate it here," said Ray.

Sheila put her hand on his. His hands were cold. She looked up at him and smiled. "Don't worry. It will be spring soon and everything will get better."

Ray looked down at her and just watched her for a bit. "I don't believe you," he said at last.

"I know you don't," she said, and patted his hand sadly. "I know you don't."