Chickens

By: Amy Jonker Broersma

Ben is a lanky, tow-headed lad whose family arrived in this small Pacific Northwest town in the fall of 1941 as an infant, with his seven older siblings standing on the running boards, clinging to the sides of the rickety Model A pick up their parents had bartered for by picking peaches and apples the previous summer in Eastern Washington. He had been born just months before that, in April, in Minnesota as the end of winter’s mild apricity coaxed the crocuses to poke their tender heads through scales of frozen dirt. His mother, belly swollen with kicking, punching boy energy, had nursed his ever-ailing father through a long, hard season of brutal blizzards that had trapped the family in their two-room shack for months. Violent gusts shook the walls while everyone huddled around the potbelly stove, shivering and hungry. The doctor said she must move her husband to a more temperate climate or he would surely die next winter.

          So, they loaded their meager possessions into the hay wagon, traded the two mules for a skinny horse, sold the plow, and began the trek west towards the hope of better weather. Mother wept when she bid her sisters and parents goodbye, but father had no people to cry over. They camped outside of small towns in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho, mother sleeping in the wagon with Ben, and father and the older siblings drifting off under the dark blanket of night dusted with a billion flickering milky specks. They stopped at farms to ask for work and at churches to ask for food. In some towns they found relief, an afternoon’s work and some spare oats for the horse. In others they found disgust and rejection and were run off by well-dressed proprietors or other migrants afraid of losing the labor they had found.

         By mid-summer they had wandered into the fruit groves of Yakima where farmers let them camp in the orchards and eat as much fallen fruit as they could stomach. Ben’s mother swaddled him to her chest and picked all summer, with her brood bustling about her like chicks, the two girls plucking the fruit from her hands as she balanced on the ladder and scuttling to the bushel barrels to deposit it like gold in a vault, while the five boys fired rotten peaches and apples at each other like missiles until someone got a black eye. Father picked as he could, resting his fragile lungs frequently in the shade of the fruit trees. But as the cool nights of fall creeped up on the hot dusty days of September, the work petered out and it was time to move on.

         They traded the wagon, the skinny horse, and several days wages for the rickety pick-up with one door wired shut and the hood missing. They roped down their scanty belongings in the back, and bounced along Northwest towards Seattle. Then they turned North, just one day’s ride to a small town only a stone’s throw from the Canadian border, that mother’s family had heard from cousins received a mild winter, had a good growing season and lots of dairy farms, and some of the locals would speak father’s language.

         There, they rented a small decrepit farm, bought two rangy milking cows, and settled in, much to the townsfolk's dismay. They didn’t call them Okies that far North, but Ben’s family quickly discovered that all small towns were alike in their prejudices but different in their own personal type of meanness. No one came to greet them or welcome them to town. When they appeared at church with their gaggle of grimy children in patched clothes wiggling in the pews, noses crinkled and there was no invitation to the Women’s Guild or the Dairymen’s League. Every fault was noted, every outburst and mischievous deed registered. No one forgot.

 *      *      *      *       *

Not much had changed since they arrived. Ben’s family was notable in their small town only by the absence of respect or accomplishment they had garnered in the fourteen years they had lived there. To be fair, Ben’s father hardly inspired confidence. He seemed to be a two-dimensional cut-out from a black-and-white photograph: too-large black pants belted high around his skinny waist, a grayish-white shirt, always with the sleeves rolled up around his elbows, a flimsy flap of dirty hair hanging over deep-socketed eyes that left visible only a sharp blade of a nose and thin lips curled over tobacco-stained teeth. If anyone lingered long enough to hear him speak, they would eventually hear, in heavily accented English, a sad tale of living through World War I as a child eating boiled tulip bulbs, of surviving the brutal grip of consumption that kept him bedridden as a teen, damaging his lungs, of his family sending him away in 1927 at age eighteen on a big, noisy ship to the United States, alone with only ten dollars and a passport, of not knowing the language, of walking to Minnesota where people said farm work was plentiful, of sleeping in ditches, begging for handouts, and narrowly scraping by in the harsh Midwestern blizzards and summer dust bowls. Men of that time did not speak of loneliness, abandonment, or desperation. They carried it in their hearts, it lived in the creases of their faces, and settled in the slumps of their shoulders.

         While Ben’s father did not speak often, his mother made up for that with a perpetual fountain of useless thoughts. She traipsed around the house reciting recipes for boiled cabbage soup, debating with herself the benefits of eating oatmeal versus grits, and carrying on about the  best way to sew dresses and crochet baby blankets. It was as if she was constantly discussing every moment of her daily life with the mother and five sisters she had left behind. It may have appeared crazy to some, but her voice was persistently peppy and her jolly bosom jiggled as she bumped around the simple kitchen with a baby on her round fleshy hip, a toddler under foot, and a passel of kids running in and out of the decrepit four room cabin on the small farm they rented several miles outside of town. She referred to it as their dairy farm despite its paucity of profits. The seven older kids and Ben milked the cows, watered the corn, and fed the chickens and pigs. The four younger children helped her around the house, canning, cleaning, and doing laundry. Her husband often lay in bed, wheezing and coughing, although no longer dying, it seemed.

         Breakfast was the most competitive time of the day. Before dawn, after morning milking, the large pot of bland oatmeal disappeared quickly. For Ben to get any food meant getting up earlier to beat his older brothers and sisters to the pot. Ben had often picked the burnt remnants from the bottom of the pot with his fingernails and was known to put his head inside to lick the sides clean. But when he turned twelve, a growth spurt brought him his own personal jackpot. A mile away, an older farmer and his wife, who could not have children, took notice of the new six inches Ben had sprouted over the winter, rendering him a walking skeleton. They hired him to milk their cows and do chores every morning in exchange for breakfast.

         So every day, just before four a.m., Ben rose from the double mattress that he laid across width-wise with three of his brothers on the floor, stepped over the tangle of arms and legs of the other four brothers asleep on another mattress, and over his sisters, who laid five across their own double mattress in the same room, and slipped out of the house. Under the moonlight reflecting off snow-capped mountains and a silvery spray of stars against the dark curtain of night, Ben jogged that mile, did those chores, and was rewarded by the older farmer’s wife with anything he wanted for breakfast. His order was always the same: one dozen eggs scrambled and ten flapjacks with extra butter. He sat, king-like, at the end of the table covered with a clean, pressed floral table cloth, cloth napkin tucked into his shirt, and received the bounty of his labor. He ate in silence, grinning ear to ear, with the missus sipping her coffee and gazing out the window. He never left a crumb behind.

         Ben longed to distinguish himself from his father’s constant ill health, ever failing dairy farm, and legendary lack of common sense, and from his older brothers’ fabled escapades and run-ins with the law that made his family the disdain of the town. Basketball was the obvious answer. Being a player on the team secured the town’s admiration. Family reputations were built on basketball games. Every business deal, bank loan, and livestock purchase for the next several months would start out with a heated retelling of the latest game’s tip-off, jump shots, and free throws. Shared pride and amazement at the feats accomplished on the basketball court by those outstanding young men would garner job offers and cement marriage proposals. Coffee time conversation after church would hum with moment-by-moment replays of the unfair foul calls and the fastest rebounds. Families would be lifted up to their rightful place in the hierarchy of the small town.

         Ben was only a freshman and had never played other than learning how to dribble in gym class, but he was tall, fast, and strong, and was confident that, if given the chance, he would be a good player, and maybe even redeem a bit of his family’s unfortunate legacy. He imagined out-running everyone on the court, making a game-winning lay up, and the crowd cheering for him. There would be no more humiliation when the store clerk asked if he was going to pay for the salt and cooking oil he was picking up for his Ma or if he was putting it on the family’s ever burgeoning account. At school, the teachers wouldn’t groan when they realized they had another kid from that family in their class. He would walk down the school hallway proud, getting high fives from the other players. Being a player on the team secured a place of a respect in town no matter which family you came from.

         With those hopes, Ben showed up for try-outs in the gym late one fall afternoon. Palms sweating, he had lined up with his best friend Jimmy and the others, standing stiffly at attention, still wearing his work jeans and hard leather boots. He looked down the line up: some were gangly, pubescent boys, fuzzy wisps on their chins, others were full grown men, with hairy arms and bulging with muscles. A few of the boys wore sneakers with their jeans, and Walter, the captain of the team and a senior, wore sneakers and track pants. His family owned the biggest dairy farm in the county. The talk around town lately was all about how Walter’s father was going to open a lumberyard in town next year and have Walter run it after graduation.  And then Walter was going to propose to his girlfriend, Elaine, who was also a senior. They had been going steady for the past year.

         Two years ago, Elaine had been sweet on Ben’s older brother, Garrett. Most folks were surprised after he had gotten himself kicked out of high school in eleventh grade, but no one could deny he was handsome, clever, and charming. She had been known to hang around the hardware store where Garrett worked after school and on Saturdays, offering him bubble gum and outright flirting with him. She had even wrangled a spot next to Garrett in the church pew one Sunday so she could share hymnal with him. Her parents were scandalized, as Garrett didn’t have much in the way of prospects for a future and came from that no-good family. Garrett, for his part, didn’t pay her much mind, and then he left town after the incident with the sheriff without even saying goodbye to her. After that, Walter had asked her out on dates, real, actual dates, once even for dinner at the town’s only restaurant, but she kept turning him down. She was waiting for Garrett. After a year of waiting without a single letter or even a postcard, Elaine gave up, accepted a date from Walter, and resigned herself to becoming the future Mrs. Walter Korndyk.  

         Absentmindedly staring down the row of guys at tryouts, Ben caught Walter’s eye. Walter glared at him. Walter was not known for being a nice guy. Ben’s stomach turned but he shrugged it off. He was faster than all of them, he reassured himself. The gym teacher, who was also the coach, started try-outs with the boys running sprints across the gym. Ben pushed himself and could feel the coach’s eyes on him as he ran. He was the fastest by a whole court. After he finished, lungs heaving and walking it off, he saw Walter, the first to finish after Ben, glare at him with vengeance. Ben turned away, pretending not to notice. The way Ben saw it, whatever beef Walter had with Garrett was none of his business. Then they practiced lay ups, free throws, and passing. After two hours, the coach told them to come back the next day.

         Ben walked briskly home and went straight to the barn for chores, knowing that he had already pushed his luck getting home so late. Sliding the barn door open, he stepped in, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. The scent of hay filled his nostrils, then the high whiny whistle of leather reins whipped through the air. Thwack! The fiery sting ripped through the back of his thighs. He heard himself yelp. He ran to the nearest stack of hay bales and scrambled up.

         “Idiot! Have you gone mad! I’m fed up with you! Useless ballsack!” Ben’s father shouted in his thick Dutch accent. Any mistake Ben or his brothers made around the farm earned a scalding bellow of “useless ballsack.” Ben’s father flipped his dirty hair away from his eyes and focused on Ben, who was now out of reach. His crooked, tobacco-stained teeth amplified the glare of his dark glinting eyes.

         “What, Pop? What I’d do?” Ben faked innocence, but he knew exactly what he had done.

         “Basketball?!” Ben’s father coughed and wheezed for breath. “There ain’t time for that! Your chores should be done by now but you’re just getting home! Is your brain rotten? We’re trying to run a farm but you want to play silly games!” Ben’s father snapped the leather reins on the floor, thrashing the loose hay, dust motes spewing, reigniting his coughing fit. He spat and turned to Ben.

         “Pop, I’ll be so good at it. And I’ll still get my chores done. I promise.” Ben thought if he could just show his father what an achievement it would be, he would understand. A pang of guilt and sadness rippled through him. Everyone judged his father and their family so harshly: the failing farm, the unpaid rent, the unsettled accounts at stores, the pack of hungry kids. The glares served up by the church elders when they all tromped down the aisle on Sunday mornings beamed shame straight into Ben’s heart.

         “Never! You quit now. Do not go back or I punish you again!” Ben’s father shouted in his stilted English as he dropped the reins and walked out. Ben felt the sickening drop and crack of a fragile dream shattering, followed by the wet, sinking quicksand of defeat.

         He skulked around the barn, working through dinner to get his chores done. He occasionally stomped and kicked at the hay, empty, angry, and hungry, flares of defiance rising up in the fog of frustration. The sun dipped, the moon rose, the cold night air nipped under his thin jacket. When the house was dark, he slinked in, and checked the ice box for leftovers but there were none. He untied his boots and padded out to the front porch, down the steps, crawled underneath, and laid down next to the hole where Ma kept her canned food. He slowly lifted the rocks off of the boards covering the hole and felt around in the cool darkness for a jar of something, anything. His hand landed on peaches.

         When he twisted the top off and raised the jar to his nose, peach perfume billowed in his face, and he swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly wet. With dirty fingers, he picked out a half peach dripping with sugary syrup. Holding it over the jar, he licked and slurped the syrup off and ate it in two bites, the slippery silkiness sliding down his throat like water. In minutes he finished each of the peach halves and drank the syrup dregs, holding the jar upside down over his mouth and worming his tongue around the edges to catch every drop.

  *      *      *      *       *                                                                          

         Weeks passed. Ben watched each day as the basketball players joked around in the hallways at lunch, high-fived each other, called each other team nicknames, smoked together outside, and rode the bus together to away games. That should be him, he grumbled to himself. Instead, he walked home for chores while the basketball team practiced after school every day.

         The day of the big rivalry game with the neighboring town arrived. The gymnasium would be standing room only. The players would sprint up and down the court fighting for the ball with the seriousness of soldiers at war. All week the students had been chattering like squirrels about the big game. Ben couldn’t wait to escape. Leaving school that afternoon, he and Jimmy walked out the double doors, their spindly freshman arms and legs swinging. Free at last! Chores, then dinner, then sneak into the game at half time. Ben had no idea how their plans were about to change.

         “Whoa, there!” Walter stepped in front of them, blocking the way, blowing smoke in their faces. Ben squinted at the cloud of smoke dissipating against the murky winter sun. “Where ya goin’ so fast,” Walter smiled widely, lips pulling back from his large, square, perfectly white teeth shiny like a steel trap. His smirking crew of friends puffed on cigarettes, eyeing them, snickering under their breath. “Hey kid, gotta match,” one smirked with menacing eyes. Chuckles all around.

         Ben dug in his pocket for matches and, staring at his scuffed leather boots, stepped forward, hand outstretched. All farm boys started smoking young. He was proud of starting when he was just nine years old and always carried matches. A buzzy jitter prickled up his spine as the seniors’ looming physical presence overshadowed him, the density of their flexed muscles filling their jackets. Pushing through his nerves, gratified to be doing a favor for a player on the big game day, his gaze drifted up to meet their eyes. “Good luck tonight, fellas,” Ben forced out of his constricted throat. Jimmy studied the gravel like a geologist.

         Walter lurched forward, thrust his cigarette in Ben’s face, his enormous teeth glistening and the sweet, acrid tobacco smoke shooting out of his nostrils like a bull snorting. “Luck has nothing to do with it!” Walter leaned in, his cigarette dangerously close to Ben’s eyeball. “You could never play with us,” he sneered. “You couldn’t keep up, a skinny kid like you. Your parents don’t even feed you. They can’t afford it,” he knifed the words right into Ben’s chest. Then someone tossed the matchbook at Ben’s feet. Gales of laughter. Too humiliated to respond, too stunned to pick up the matches, Ben stood speechless. Jimmy grabbed the matchbook and pulled Ben by the elbow down the path. Roars of laughter echoed behind them. Flames of rage and humiliation burned in his belly. He held in the tears until he and Jimmy were out of town.

         “Don’t sweat them guys,” Jimmy consoled Ben. “They’re jerks.”

         “They’re gonna get what’s comin’ to ‘em,” Ben murmured under his breath.

 *      *      *      *       *

That evening Ben found himself crouched next to Jimmy behind a large weeping willow at the edge of Walter’s family’s farm, just outside of town. The jagged black outline of the Cascades pressed against the inky blue sky as Ben emerged. There wasn’t another farm for at least a half mile, and Walter and his family wouldn’t be back for hours. Ben hitched his thin wool coat up around his neck a bit tighter and scanned the farmer’s fields. The scent of snow hung in the air, and the silence that precedes it blanketed the frozen pasture in deep peacefulness. Confident that no one was around, he climbed over the fence, dropped into the pasture, and trotted along, dodging cow patties and keeping an eye out for the resident bull. No sign of him yet, but the rank ammonia of a steaming dung pile confirmed his presence.

         Pausing in the open field, Ben called back to Jimmy, who was still crouched under the trees, “C’mon!” Perched on top of the milking barn, a rust-crusted weather vain creaked in the Arctic breeze drifting down from Canada. The frigid air seeped under his thin t-shirt, lighting up goose bumps on his skin-taught ribs. He glanced over his shoulder. The bull was no where in sight. An occasional strangulated moo escaped from the dairy barn where the cows waited to be milked later that evening. This farm was much bigger than his family’s. Walter’s family had four barns to Ben’s one, and their pasture had to be at least thirty acres. Ben had heard around town that they had close to fifty dairy cows. Ben thought of his family’s small three acre pasture and seven cows, half of which were too old to produce much milk. His cheeks flushed with disgrace.

         “Let’s go!” Ben called impatiently to Jimmy as he turned towards the farmhouse, trotting again, scanning for the chicken coop. All the lights were off and the outline of a large maple, swaying gently, threw shade from the hazy moonlight over the farmhouse. A swollen cloud puffed past. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he opened them, he spotted the chicken coop just beyond the first barn. Jimmy’s footsteps crunched in the distance.

         Ben ran past the farmhouse and the barn to the coop. As he stopped before it, Ben thought of the meek, brainless chickens, clucking and pecking, living their pathetic little lives in that cage and he knew exactly how it felt. Loathing rose in his throat like bile, and Walter’s face flashed before him: his ugly words, the sneer, his enormous, perfectly square, very white teeth, the cigarette smoke, the rankle of ridicule, the hot flush of shame. A blazing fury flared up in Ben’s chest, warmth spreading up to his neck and down to his clenched fists. Ben’s arm popped like a cork, his fist cracked into the chicken coop wall and recoiled. The bite of splinters in his knuckles distracted him from the vision of Walter’s smug face. “What was that?” Jimmy whispered, emerging from the shadows. Cool, soothing snowflakes touched down on the back of Ben’s neck. He swallowed hard, “Nothin’.” The lava of rage cooled to the hard, black basalt of contempt. He was back on task, feeling around for the coop door, running his fingers along the perimeter. Finding the latch, Ben crouched down to fit through the small door and Jimmy slipped in behind him.

         Unperturbed by the boys’ presence, the chickens pecked at unseen specks in the dirt. The sour stench of chicken poop wafted up. Ben unfurled two burlap sacks from under his arm and handed one to Jimmy, bits of hay and dust undulating through the air. Ben shot his hand out for a chicken’s neck and stuffed the squawking bird into his sack. That started all the chickens squabbling and screeching. Ben darted around the coop, chickens flapping, jumping, and squalling. He and Jimmy quickly bagged four a piece and knotted their sacks. They crouched out the door, a cloud of feathers floating softly behind them. Hobbled by the bags of flapping, squabbling chickens, Ben and Jimmy dragged the sacks, bent over, shuffling sideways. They crossed the pasture, scuttling along and scanning for the bull.

         As they approached the weeping willows, the fence came into sight. They would have to help each other sling the sacks over the fence to avoid the burlap catching on the barbed wire. As they stopped at the fence, Ben dropped his sack to help Jimmy. In that instant, he clocked a huff and a snort, then saw Jimmy’s face contort in terror. Ben glanced over his shoulder and saw the bull thirty yards off, charging full blast. Hooves pounding, ground shaking, Ben and Jimmy franticly heaved the chicken sacks over the barbed wire and scrambled over themselves, falling to the ground and crawling away.

         The bull rammed the fence post behind them, shaking it with such force that the barbed wire twanged in the crisp air. “Holy shit!” Jimmy cried breathlessly. Adrenaline ignited the tinder of fear, shame, and fury inside Ben, and all of it struck him as so ridiculous that he exploded with brittle laughter. Jimmy shushed him, “Let’s get outta here.” Ben stood, and with the surging venom of scorn, turned to the heaving, snorting bull, and hocked a wad of spit at its head, landing it with precision right between its eyes. Then he turned and dragged his sack to the car.

         Calling it a car was a stretch. No roof, no doors, engine exposed, it only went about twenty miles an hour at top speed, but it had four wheels, two axels, a motor, a steering wheel, and a gear shift. Garrett had helped him scavenge all the engine parts from different cars, trucks, tractors, and farm machines, and helped him assemble it. They had spent hours together, lying under the engine, figuring out how to make it run. It was a Frankenstein contraption, for sure, with bales of hay wired to the floor for seats. The floor was several pieces of barn siding screwed into a rusty metal bed frame and bolted to an old wagon chassis. “Squeaks like a young married couple on their honeymoon night,” Garrett had cracked. Garrett was genius with engines and scrapping parts and wiring stuff together. Their father always said that’s what you do when you live on a farm, but Ben had seen plenty of other farms. No one was scrapping and wiring things together as much as his family. Garrett had always made it fun though. No one had heard from him since he left town a year ago.

         Ben drove the Frankenstein car while Jimmy held the chicken sacks. The squawks subsided as the engine’s rumble and the gentle bumping along the dirt road settled them into a rhythm. Ben’s stomach growled, the emptiness of it folding in on itself. He thought of peaches, sweet, dripping, slippery slices of heaven, and longed for another jar of them. Instead, to distract himself, Ben thought of all the basketball games he and Jimmy had snuck into at half time. During the first half, he and Jimmy would wait by the backdoors of the gym. When the pep band started to play, the other students would come out the backdoors to smoke, propping the door open with a stick. Then he and Jimmy would slip in. He pictured the gym, the players running up and down the court, the sound of sneakers squeaking like fingernails on a chalkboard, cheerleaders chanting, students shouting for their mascots, and parents hollering urgent instructions to their sons, “Get the ball!” as if the boys had never played before. He could feel the moist heat rising in the gym as sweat poured off the players, dripped out of their newly hairy armpits, trickled down their necks and backs. The gym would be swampy with warmth and body odour. The noise would be deafening.

         Sometimes he and Jimmy didn’t slip in right away at halftime but stayed outside for a few minutes to smoke with the other kids. Each time they did, Ben saw the janitor come out the backdoors, circle around to the side, climb the metal ladder attached to the brick wall up to the flat roof, and walk along the side of the vaulted gym ceiling, pulling open the windows that lined the sides of the roof. The windows opened at the top with a metal lever, and once unlatched, the janitor would pull each one down as far as possible, nearly ninety degrees, creating a glass chute that the cold air would drop into. The crowd would sigh with relief. Then the second half would start. And then it’s showtime, Ben smiled to himself.

         Rolling down back roads, Ben and Jimmy approached the high school from the rear. Ben parked about fifty yards from the backside of the gym. “Stay here, I’ll check it out,” Ben whispered and ran towards the gym. From behind nearby bushes, Ben heard the pep band play a march and spotted the ladder on the side of the gym, the janitor already climbing up. A metal door creaked open, someone yelled, “Don’t let it lock,” then a scratch of matches lighting, a sizzle of cigarette paper burning, and smoke drifted towards him. Ben watched the janitor open each of the gym windows, climb down, and go back inside. Minutes later, the buzzer blasted, the smokers jumped, laughed, stomped out their cigarettes, and hustled in. 

         Ben sprinted back to the car. “They’re starting the third quarter,” Ben whisper-hollered. Jimmy produced the twine and Ben the wire cutter. One by one, they extracted a chicken from the sack, wrapped a length of twine around one of its legs, then extracted another chicken and wrapped the other end of the twine around that one’s leg, then forced the leg-bound pair back into the sack. As they finished, the buzzer blared from the gym in the distance. End of the third quarter. They grabbed the sacks and a crow bar from the tool box strapped to the back of the Frankenstein car and dragged the sacks towards the gym, keeping low.

         Under the ladder, Jimmy held the bags while Ben slipped around the corner to the gym’s back doors. Ben slid the crow bar through the handles of the back doors and tiptoed back to Jimmy. Then he hoisted Jimmy onto his shoulders and lifted the sacks up to him. Chickens flapped and squabbled as the sacks jostled between Ben’s outstretched arms and Jimmy’s strained reach, but the racket was drowned out by the collective noise of squeaking gym shoes, cheering crowd, and the whomp, whomp of the basketball being dribbled down the court. Holding both sacks, Jimmy slowly climbed up a few rungs. Ben jumped up, grabbed the lowest rung, and swung his legs up like he was climbing rafters in the barn. Moving up behind Jimmy, he grabbed one of the sacks. Jimmy climbed cautiously with Ben following, up and over the edge onto the roof.

         They crawled to the windows, dragging the sacks behind them. Ben peered down into the gym, giddy with anticipation: fourth quarter, tie game. There was Walter, leading the charge. Smiling with suspense, Ben turned to Jimmy, “Ready?” The gym lights reflected the trepidation in Jimmy’s eyes. Not waiting for a response, Ben flicked his pocket knife open and sliced through the burlap of each sack. He and Jimmy each grabbed a pair of chickens and hurled them through the open windows, then another pair each. The chickens screamed through their descent to the gym floor, feathers flying, wings flapping, eyes popping in terror, frantic squawking and screeching. The crowd gasped, the cheerleaders silenced. The players stopped abruptly, heads swivelling in bewilderment, surrounded by a snow storm of floating feathers. Screaming chickens each tried to fly in a different direction, desperately trying to escape their bondage. The hard charging basketball game wilted into puzzled chaos. Perplexity passed over Walter’s face. Then, Ben saw Walter’s expression change in slow motion to a disgusted scowl as he looked up at the windows and bared his enormous teeth in a snarl. Ben grinned and started to laugh but saw Walter turn towards the gym doors.

         Ben grabbed the sacks, “C’mon!” But Jimmy was already hustling down the ladder. They leapt off the end just as a sharp metal banging resounded from the gym doors. Ben could hear the players trying to force the doors open, shouting curses, and the crow bar rattling against the metal handles. Ben and Jimmy sprinted to the car, Ben arriving first and starting it. Jimmy leaped on just as Ben pulled away.

         They hid the car in the barn at Jimmy’s farm and rolled in the hay, holding their bellies, laughing so hard they choked. “Did you see his face? Did you see it?” Ben gagged as he gasped for breath. “You got ‘em good,” Jimmy managed between laughs.

         As the adrenaline wore off, Ben and Jimmy lay in the hay loft staring at the night sky, eyelids heavy, time fading, dozing into fitful sleep. Ben dreamt of a banquet table piled high with platters of juicy ham, buttery mashed potatoes, steaming roast beef, fresh baked bread, apple pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, a big chocolate cake like the one Jimmy’s granny had baked for him last year for his birthday, and many bowls of peaches soaking in their sweet slippery syrup. Ben woke, mouth watering, stomach grumbling, disoriented with hay in his mouth and hair. He glimpsed the thin line of pale blue creeping up the Eastern peaks, stretched, then climbed down the ladder, opened the barn doors, pushed the Frankenstein car out, and drove towards his chores at the older neighbor’s farm and the breakfast that would be his reward.