The Chicken Dance Read online

  She looked in the air and then said, “Hmmm. That’s not a bad idea. It would teach you some responsibility. Starting tomorrow, you are in charge of the chickens.”

  I smiled and said, “Thank you. Thank you so much,” and I wanted to run up to her and hug her, but The Carol Burnett Show came back on and she said, “Sshh, Carol’s back on and you’re still punished. Go back to your room.”

  Four

  I wanted to do a good job taking care of the chickens, so I spent the whole summer learning as much about them as I could. I read every book on chickens I could find and learned that they think chickens came from Asia and that they are older than Jesus Christ. The chickens I mean, not the people.

  Anyway, I also learned how to tell the different breeds of chickens. In our flock we had White Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, White Plymouth Rocks, and a few that looked kind of like they were a mix of all of them. I called the mixed ones Americans because my teacher had said that America was a melting pot and a mix of a bunch of different races. One book said that a bunch of breeds were made by people because they were trying to make a perfect bird. Some people bred chickens for eggs, others for food, and others just to show at county fairs.

  I also learned a bunch of other stuff about chickens that I used to help them. I made sure they always had fresh water and I changed the grain so it had more protein. After a couple of months, a lot of the chickens started growing thick feathers and ran around the yard like the kids at school. Some of them even started laying eggs every day.

  The thing I learned that made me a little sad was how chickens can’t really fly. They can fly a little bit and I knew this because I’d watched them so much for so many years. But they can’t really fly high or far because they’re kind of fat and they got that way because people fed them a bunch of food to make them that way so they could eat them. People also bred chickens to make them bigger and fatter. If chickens had stayed small, they’d be able to fly and wouldn’t have to stay on the ground and dance.

  Every time I learned something new about the chickens, I wanted to tell someone. I’d tell my chickens, but I think most of them already knew this stuff about themselves. I told my father once that chickens were older than Jesus Christ and he didn’t look like he cared, so I didn’t tell him anything else. It was almost driving me crazy and then something happened and I got to tell a whole bunch of people about chickens.

  It was a few months after I had started taking care of the chickens. I was in the fifth grade and I remember it was October because there was a big pumpkin on my classroom’s door for Halloween. When I walked into class that day, my teacher, who was writing something on the board, turned and looked at me and said, “Good morning, Don.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Forest,” I said, and then walked to the back of the class where my desk was and sat and stared straight ahead while the rest of the kids talked to one another. I heard Leon Leonard, the bully who was mean to me all the time, tell this kid Jude, “I’m going to punch John Jefferson because he’s a geek. You wanna watch?”

  Jude raised his hand in the air and said, “That would be cool, Leon. High five.”

  After a few minutes the bell rang and Mrs. Forest told us to settle down so we could get started. Then she said, “Please stand, children, so we can say the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  After we were finished, Mrs. Forest handed out a science test that we’d taken the day before, and when she gave Leon his, she said, “Leon, you need to study for these tests. If you fail another one, I’m going to have to talk to your parents.”

  Leon said, “Yes, ma’am,” and then Mrs. Forest gave Jude his paper and said, “Not bad, but I think if you try a little harder, you can do even better,” and Jude also said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Then Mrs. Forest handed me my paper and said, “Great job, Don. You got the highest score in the class again.”

  I took my paper from Mrs. Forest and she walked up to the front of the class. Leon was sitting behind me in the row to my right. He threw a ball of paper at me and said, “Hey, new kid, I’m sure you’re going to be real successful in your life as a geek.”

  Some of the kids in class started laughing and Mrs. Forest asked, “Why are you laughing?”

  Nobody said anything and then Mrs. Forest asked, “Did you do something, Leon?”

  Leon said, “You’re always blaming me,” and then Mrs. Forest said, “That’s because the laughter came from the back of the class where you happen to be. In fact, every time there’s trouble, it’s always where you happen to be.”

  Before Leon could say anything back, someone knocked on the door and everyone jumped. Mrs. Forest opened the door and the principal handed her a sheet of paper and she thanked him and read the paper to herself. Her eyes got real wide and she told us she had two very important announcements to make concerning the upcoming Dairy Festival. The first was that infants who had been fed high-protein milk from a can instead of breastfed couldn’t be in the baby contest for obvious reasons.

  The kids in the class started whispering to one another and Mrs. Forest said, “Settle down, children, settle down.”

  The second announcement was the one that gave me the chance to tell people how much I’d learned about chickens. I remember Mrs. Forest’s voice was kind of shaking when she told us, “Okay, now listen carefully, students. You need to promise me that you’ll stay in your chairs and you won’t overreact about this. I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss it, but then we have got to go over the science test. Okay, here goes:

  ‘After a heated town committee meeting, it has been decided that the age requirement for the chicken-judging contest at the upcoming Dairy Festival will be lowered to eleven years old.’”

  Everyone in the class except me started talking, and Mrs. Forest tapped on her desk with a ruler and said, “Settle down, children, settle down.”

  Jimmy Jadeau leaned over to me and lifted his hand in the air for a high five, but because he never spoke to me, I kind of backed away because I thought he was going to hit me. But he didn’t and he asked me, “Can you believe it?”

  Before I could say anything, Leon joined in. “He doesn’t care about this.” And then he stood up and danced a little jig and said, “He doesn’t even know anything about chickens ’cause they only keep theirs for ambience.”

  He said the word ambience real loud and then Jimmy gave the high five to Leon instead of me. A bunch of kids laughed and then he gave them high fives too. Mrs. Forest told us again, “Settle down, children, settle down.”

  None of the kids knew that I cared about the contest because I didn’t really speak to them. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. It was that they didn’t speak to me, and my mother had always told me not to speak unless I was spoken to. I guess I got so used to not speaking at home unless someone asked me a question, that I did the same thing at school. And one time, when I was in kindergarten, the teacher found this rubber rat in her desk drawer and she asked the class who it belonged to. I knew it was Leon’s because I’d seen him with it that morning. He was in the bathroom when the teacher asked, so I told her that it was his because I figured that he’d want it back. He didn’t, though. He was trying to scare the teacher with it, and when he got back from the bathroom he got punished. Brooke Brylee told him that I told the teacher that the rat was his and so during recess he punched me in the stomach and told me that I needed to learn to keep my mouth shut when people weren’t talking to me. I didn’t want to get punched again, so I listened to him. And after that I didn’t talk to anyone unless they spoke to me first.

  So during recess and at lunchtime, I usually played by myself on the jungle gym or swing, or read or watched the other kids play games. Except for the few times someone said something about my parents keeping chickens for ambience, the kids in my class left me alone. They had all been friends since before they started school because all of their parents were friends. So even though I had been at school with the other kids in my class since kindergarten, they st
ill called me “new kid.”

  Anyway, so we’re in class that day, and some other kid, Andrew Alkins, said, “That’s a good one, Leon. The new kid keeps his chickens for ambience. Give me a high five!”

  Mrs. Forest smiled and whispered the word ambience under her breath. She saw me staring at her and she said, “Settle down, children, settle down. Don, ignore them. Now let’s get back to going over our science test.”

  Mrs. Forest went over the science test, but all I could think about was the Dairy Festival and the chicken-judging contest. Before that day I had thought about the year that I would be old enough to compete in it. It was something that I dreamed about, but since it was so far away, I could hardly believe that it would ever happen. I thought maybe my mother would finally get my father to move before the next contest or that the age requirement would be raised even higher or that maybe my mother was right and I’d have my eyes pecked out by one of the chickens. But now, here was my chance to be in the contest and maybe win an award to put next to Dawn’s dance trophy above the TV, music box, and War and Peace.

  I had to get permission from one of my parents to be in the contest and because my mother had said a bunch of times that she hated Horse Island festivals and that they were a breeding ground for malaria, white trash, and tuberculosis, I figured I should ask my father when my mother wasn’t around.

  The teacher made the announcement about the contest on a Tuesday, and my father and I were alone the Friday after, when my mother went to the beauty parlor. I figured this would be the best time to ask, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. Then I realized that my father always signed my test papers on Friday, so I could just put the permission slip in with them and maybe he’d sign it and I wouldn’t even have to ask.

  So that afternoon, I did my homework on the coffee table in the living room, while my father sat in his chair and read his paper. I watched him out of the corner of my eye to see when he was finished, because this is when he usually asked me if I had test papers to sign. It seemed like he was taking forever and it was so hard for me not to jump up and just hand him the papers. But I figured he wouldn’t like that, so I didn’t.

  When he finally finished reading the paper, he folded it up, scratched his head, wiped his glasses, and asked me if I had any school papers to sign.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and then handed him the test papers and permission slip and a pen. My father looked at them and signed each one. The permission slip was the last one in the stack, so I hoped he would just sign it and not ask what it was for.

  But he asked, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Can I be in it?” I asked.

  He looked at the paper again, raised his eyebrows, and then said, “You were fed milk from a can. You aren’t allowed to be in it.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He handed me back the stack of papers and I turned away from him. I looked down at the permission slip and realized that he’d read only the first couple of sentences about the changes at the Dairy Festival. I was trying to think about what to do next when I heard my mother’s car in the driveway. I knew that if I wanted to be in the contest I would have to ask my father before my mother got in the house. So I walked back to my father’s chair and asked real quick, “I want to be in the chicken-judging contest. Not the baby contest.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  I heard my mother’s key slip into the lock of the front door and I tapped my foot because I was so nervous.

  “Well,” he said.

  The front door opened and my mother’s high heels tapped against the hardwood floors and I heard her yell, “Hello! Is anyone here?”

  My father yelled, “In the living room!”

  I heard my mother’s shoes go toward the kitchen and then heard her say, “I’m coming. Just give me a minute.”

  So I asked my father again, “Can I be in it?”

  I could smell my mother’s hair spray getting closer and I thought she’d be in the living room before my father answered.

  But then he said, “Yeah. Why not?”

  Five

  One of the first things I bought when I had saved up enough birthday and Christmas money was a book called The Standard of Perfection. When I bought it from Mr. Chance Chandler, the guy who owned Chance Chandler’s Chicken Chow and Saddle Salon, he told me, “It’s the chicken man’s Bible. If you ain’t got the book, chickens ain’t in your heart.”

  The book was written by the American Poultry Association and it told you everything you’d ever want to know about chickens. It described breeds, varieties, colors, and tons of other useful things. I had read it hundreds of times because chickens were in my heart, and the Saturday morning of the contest, I opened it up to read it again.

  I couldn’t concentrate, though, because I kept wondering what would happen if I won. Would the other kids start calling me Don and invite me to play games with them during lunch and recess? The boy who had won the chicken-judging contest the year before was Michael Motto, and before he won, not many people talked to him, and after he won, people talked to him all the time and he was always picked first for teams.

  I was thinking about all this stuff on the morning of the contest, so I couldn’t concentrate on The Standard of Perfection and decided to go out to the yard to practice judging chickens.

  I pointed at one chicken and said, “You are a White Plymouth Rock, have a reversed main wing feather, and a missing spike.”

  I spun around and kneeled on one knee and pointed to a different chicken and said, “You are a Rhode Island Red, have a crooked breastbone, and are bowlegged.”

  I jumped back on two feet, leaned over, stuck my head between my legs, pointed to a young chicken, and said, “You are a female under one year of age, so you are a pullet.”

  When I had finished judging all of the chickens in my yard, I went into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cereal. My mother walked in and said, “You’re not making a mess, are you?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, and then she asked, “Why are you up so early?”

  “I’m going to the chicken-judging contest today,” I told her, and she said, “Chicken-judging contest. What’s that?”

  “We look at different types of chickens and name their breed and rank them on their traits from one to ten, and the person who ranks them the best wins a blue ribbon, and it’s really cool because—”

  And then my mother cut me off and said, “Don, please, you’re giving me a headache. What I think you’re trying to tell me is that it’s a contest for a bird that can’t fly. Why would anyone want to do something as stupid as that?”

  I wanted to tell her that chickens could fly. They couldn’t fly too high or real far, but they could fly, and the reason that they couldn’t fly like a black bird or an eagle was because people had made them that way. I wanted to tell her that if she would just watch the chickens she would know they could fly. Instead, I swung my foot back and forth and listened to my blue jeans rub against the chair leg until my mother told me, “Don! Stop making that sound. It is too early in the morning to be getting on my nerves. Also, don’t you think you should have asked my permission before you decided to go and do something stupid like this and risk humiliating the family?”

  “Father gave me permission,” I told her.

  He walked in just then and my mother looked at him and asked, “Did you tell him he could go to some stupid chicken-judging contest?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, I wish someone would tell me what’s going on around here,” my mother said. “Who is going to help me do the weekly shopping if he’s off at some chicken contest? I cook and clean all day and all I ask for is a little help now and then.”

  My father looked at me and I thought he was going to tell me that I couldn’t go. I felt like I did the day I got stung by a wasp. My eyes started to water, and then I felt like my nose was leaking. My throat felt dry and it was like I couldn’t breathe. I got really hot and then really cold. I had cri
ed when that wasp stung me and my mother told me to be quiet because she couldn’t hear the TV. So I didn’t want to start crying again even though the TV wasn’t on. But I could feel it coming, so I thought about running out of the kitchen before I started or before my father told me I couldn’t go.

  But before I could, my father asked, “Don’t they have bag boys at Horse Island Food and Furniture?”

  I looked at him, and then my mother said, “Yeah, I guess they do have bag boys and I guess I can get one of them to help me if they’re not off at that chicken-judging contest with Don and the rest of the rednecks.”

  I couldn’t believe my father had saved me and I didn’t know why, either. Maybe he saw that I was about to cry and didn’t want me to give my mother a headache. Or maybe he really wanted me to win that contest so that he could brag to everybody about how smart his son was. A part of me didn’t care why he had saved me and I just wanted to run up to him and hug him. But by the time I’d realized what had happened, he had walked to the freezer and pulled out a box of frozen waffles.

  I knew that I needed to get out of the kitchen before my mother changed her mind, so I finished my cereal in about ten seconds and then cleaned up after myself, left the house, and headed off to the contest.

  It was the last weekend of October so the sun was still shining, and when I peddled to the end of our driveway, I had to cover my eyes a little so I didn’t get blinded. After I looked both ways to make sure that no cars were coming, I took a left.

  The only people out in their yard were Paul Picard and his wife, Patricia. People called Patricia “Purple Patricia” because she had a purple car, a purple house, and wore purple clothes. When I passed their house on my bike, I turned onto Porcupine Street toward a large hill. I had to get off my bike and push it up the hill because it was so steep. Every time I did this, a stray calico cat would chase me and try to bite my legs. That day a raccoon ran by us, and the cat turned from me and chased it through a ditch.