The Chicken Dance Read online

  I asked him, “What?” and he said, “I want to buy a couple dozen eggs from you and to make sure you don’t forget me, I’m going to give you the money right now. Just bring them to school on Monday and leave them with the principal. He’s my brother, and he’ll make sure the eggs get to me.”

  I couldn’t believe that he’d given me a dollar for two dozen eggs because we’d been throwing most of the eggs we got from the chickens away. I looked at the dollar and then told him, “I won’t be able to bring you two dozen by Monday, but maybe I can bring you a dozen on Tuesday and one on Thursday.”

  He scrunched his face up and stared ahead for a few seconds and then said that was fine and walked away.

  I stepped off the stage and looked up at the bleachers and saw Leon walking down real slow. When he got to the bottom, he stood for a full minute and stared at me. I looked around to see if there was an adult I could run to and hide behind because Leon looked mad and like he wanted to hit me. I didn’t see any and so I froze and played like I was dead because I had seen on Wild Kingdom that some animals do that when they’re scared. Leon kept staring at me and so I smiled and then let out a little giggle. This seemed to work because he walked away.

  Then Henrietta popped into my mind. I still didn’t have five dollars to buy her, but I did have two since Mr. Bufford had given me one. So I put my blue ribbon in my pocket and then walked to the tent with all the games. I found the man I had spoken to earlier and walked right up to him and said, “I have two dollars. Can I buy the chicken that was in the box this morning?”

  He looked at me for a couple of seconds and then said, “Is two dollars five dollars?”

  I told him, “No, sir,” and then he said, “Then I guess that’s not enough.”

  I turned from him and walked away so I could think and that’s when I heard, “What chicken are you trying to buy?”

  I looked up and saw Mr. Bufford standing in front of me and I told him, “I’m trying to buy the chicken that was in that glass box this morning playing the piano.”

  He looked at the tent and said, “Well, if you want to buy a chicken, then it must be a pretty good one. Maybe I’ll buy it.”

  Mr. Bufford walked up to Henrietta’s owner and asked, “Can I see that chicken this boy wants to buy?”

  “Sure,” the man said. “It’s over here.”

  I followed the man and Mr. Bufford to the back of a large moving truck. On top of a cardboard box with the word Popcorn stamped across it was a cage with Henrietta in it.

  Mr. Bufford asked me, “That’s the chicken you want to buy?”

  I told him, “Yes, sir,” and he shook his head a bit and asked, “Why? That bird ain’t worth a dollar.”

  I told him, “I know, but I like her and I don’t want anyone to use her for voodoo rituals or alligator bait.”

  Mr. Bufford looked at Henrietta’s owner and said, “You know that bird isn’t worth five dollars. Why are you trying to steal from this young boy?”

  “Hey,” he said. “She’s my chicken and I can sell her to whoever I want for how much I want, and I want to sell her to this boy for five dollars.”

  Mr. Bufford answered back like he was mad. “Well, he isn’t going to buy it so I guess you’re going to be stuck with it,” and then he turned to me and said, “Come on, my boy.”

  We walked a little ways and Mr. Bufford said, “I’m passing by your house. If you want, I can give you a ride.”

  “You know where I live?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, my boy. I know where everybody in this town lives. Besides, I was good friends with your uncle Sam before he passed.”

  I had my bike with me so I told him that I didn’t need a ride and he said, “Well you’re going to have a hard time riding a bike while carrying a chicken.”

  I looked up at Mr. Bufford and asked, “What chicken?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, and then told me to meet him with my bike on the northwest corner of the fairgrounds in five minutes. I did like he said because I thought that maybe he was going to buy the chicken for me. I knew that it was a lot of money for a chicken and that he barely knew me and that people don’t usually buy five-dollar chickens for people they don’t know, but I still thought that he might. When he drove up to me, though, he didn’t have my chicken in his truck. He got out of the cab, walked over to me, lifted my bike, put it in the bed, and said, “Get in, my boy. I ain’t got all day.”

  We had been warned in school not to get into automobiles with strangers, but I didn’t consider Mr. Bufford a stranger because I knew him. But then he said some crazy stuff and I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake.

  It started when he was driving and he said, “Now, Don, sometimes you have to do things that may not seem right at first but are right when you look a little deeper.”

  I looked at him and he looked back at me and said, “So you have to trust me on this one, Don. What we’re doing is right.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I was beginning to get a little more scared than excited about maybe getting a chicken. So to calm myself down, I started singing “Shake Your Booty” by KC and the Sunshine Band in my head.

  Mr. Bufford stopped the truck in the middle of the fairgrounds and put it in Park but left it running. Then he stepped out of the truck, turned to me, and said, “Give me that dollar I gave you for those two dozen eggs.”

  I handed it over and he said, “Wait here,” and then walked away.

  I sat in his truck for a couple of minutes trying to figure out what Mr. Bufford meant when he said I should trust him. I wondered if I should leave and just forget about the chicken. But then I saw Mr. Bufford running toward the truck with Henrietta. His clothes were full of feathers and the way he was running with his back bent over made him look like a chicken dancing. When he got to the truck, he opened the driver’s door real fast, put Henrietta in my lap, jumped in, and drove off.

  “There you go, boy,” he said. “A little present. Now don’t worry. I didn’t steal her. I left a dollar in her cage, which is about all she was worth in the first place. Sometimes when people are trying to cheat you, you have to take things into your own hands, and that’s exactly what I did. Even if that man doesn’t think that I gave him a fair deal, that’s too bad because there’s nothing he can do about it anyway. He doesn’t know our name and his carnival leaves town tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t understand why Mr. Bufford was being so nice to me. No one had ever been this nice to me. Not even the babysitter, who was paid to be nice to me.

  “You gonna thank me, boy?” Mr. Bufford asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered. “Thank you.”

  Then he told me, “Now, you know I took a big risk to get you that chicken.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you.”

  And then he told me, “The words thank you are nice and all, but I’d really feel like taking the chicken for you was worth the risk if you’d start selling me your eggs every week. You see, Don, I’m a businessman and I know a smart deal when I see one. People told me I was crazy when I wanted to open up Horse Island Food and Furniture. They said, ‘Bobby, ain’t nobody going to want to buy a kitchen table from the same place they buy their milk.’ And you know what I told them, Don?”

  “No, sir,” I told him.

  And he said, “I told them, ‘And why not? After all, where do you usually drink milk?’”

  “I don’t know, sir,” I said.

  “Now think hard, boy,” he told me. “Where are you sitting when you drink milk?”

  “On our sofa in the living room,” I told him, and he scrunched his eyes up a little and asked, “What?”

  “I usually drink milk when I’m sitting on our sofa eating my dinner,” I told him

  “You eat your dinner on the couch, boy?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” I told him. “The sofa. We don’t have a couch.”

  He kind of pushed his lips out and said, “Oh, well, your answer of a sofa works too, but
it’s not the answer I was looking for. Now where was I? Oh yeah, so I told that knucklehead that didn’t think my food and furniture store was a good idea that when people drink milk, they sit at a kitchen table, so why not go to a place where you can buy milk and a table?”

  I didn’t understand why he was talking about milk and kitchen tables. It started to make sense to me, though, when he said, “You see, Don, people respect a good chicken farmer in this town, and you are a good chicken farmer. I saw the answers you put on your ranking sheet, and I tell you, I’ve never met anyone that knows about chickens as much as you do. I bet those yard birds of yours are producing some mighty fine eggs. Ones that I bet my customers are willing to pay top dollar for. So how about it, partner? How about selling some of those eggs of yours to your good friend Mr. Bufford?”

  I stroked Henrietta and thought about what Mr. Bufford was asking. I didn’t see why I couldn’t sell him our eggs. Except that my mother might think I would humiliate the family by selling our eggs because that would mean we kept our chickens for more than ambience. And then I realized that our chickens gave only about four dozen eggs a week, so I told him that.

  He closed his right eye a little and opened his left one real big and asked, “I thought you had twenty-five chickens?”

  “I do,” I told him, “but a lot of them don’t lay anymore.”

  He opened his right eye and closed his left a little so they were both the same size and said, “Oh, well I guess you’ll have to get some chickens that lay eggs, won’t you?”

  “I guess,” I told him. “I’ll have to ask my mother, but she doesn’t really like chickens and I don’t know if she’ll let me have any more.”

  And then it hit me. I didn’t know how I was going to explain Henrietta to my parents. They would never let me have another chicken. I’d have to let Henrietta loose in the chicken yard and hope that my mother didn’t notice.

  Then I thought about something else and asked Mr. Bufford, “Why do you want my eggs? What about the eggs from the winner of the fourteen-to-seventeen age category or the eighteen-to-twenty-one age category or the adult category?”

  He laughed real loud and said, “Well, you are a smart one, ain’t you, boy? But I have news for you, Mr. Schmidt. I’m a little smarter and I’ll tell you why. You see, I already sell most of those people’s eggs. Oh yeah, boy, I’m nobody’s fool. Now the reason I want your eggs more than I want their eggs is ’cause your eggs are gonna outsell their eggs. Do you know why?”

  His eyes got real big like The Three Stooges’ did when they saw a ghost. Then he asked again, “Do you know why?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so!” he shouted. “Well, I’ll tell you why!”

  Both Henrietta and I jumped and then he said in a lower voice, “Because you’re Don Schmidt and the youngest boy—no, person—to ever win a chicken-judging contest in Horse Island. I hope you understand that your life is about to change. Kids that have never spoken to you will suddenly become your best friends. People will beg you to sell them your eggs. Chicken farmers will ask your advice on which grain to use. Chicken knowing is important in this town, Don, and you are the master of chicken knowing.”

  He scrunched his face together like he was thinking really hard and then he asked, “Have you ever heard of Jonathan Jacobs?”

  I knew who Jonathan Jacobs was because I’d seen him on the news almost every day of the week. I’d also heard people in the grocery store talk about him and how he was famous in Horse Island before he became a weatherman because he had won the chicken-judging contest for five years in a row. Since I knew all this, I told Mr. Bufford, “Yes, sir. I have.”

  Then he asked, “Well, do you know where he is now? I’ll tell you where he is now. He is a weatherman in Lafayette. But before Jonathan Jacobs left Horse Island to pursue his dream of studying rain and stuff, his eggs were going for one dollar a dozen. Can you believe that? Everyone else was getting only forty cents a dozen, but Jonathan Jacobs was getting one dollar a dozen. I’ll repeat it because sometimes I think things are so incredible that they need to be repeated. One dollar a dozen. One dollar a dozen! Now, no one could ever come close to knowing as much about chickens as Jonathan Jacobs. But I think that he has finally met his match.”

  I stared down at Henrietta for a few minutes and then Mr. Bufford asked, “So what do you think about being famous, boy?”

  I couldn’t believe that I would be famous. I was sure that Leon hated me because I’d beaten him in the contest and I was sure everyone else would hate me too.

  I looked at Mr. Bufford and told him, “I think Leon Leonard hates me and is going to hit me because I beat him in the contest.”

  Mr. Bufford started laughing and I looked out of the passenger seat window waiting for him to stop, and when he did, he said, “Ain’t nobody gonna hate you. I know that little Leonard boy, and he’s a tough one, I’ll give you that, but he ain’t stupid. If Leon Leonard knows what’s good for him, he ain’t gonna lay one finger on you. I know for one, his daddy would skin him alive if he did and his momma would be right behind to pour the salt.”

  When we reached my house, Mr. Bufford turned off the truck, leaned across me, and pulled an instant camera out of his glove compartment.

  “Why don’t you let me get a picture of you with your new friend?” he asked.

  I got out of the truck and Mr. Bufford ran around to my side and took two pictures of me holding Henrietta. He gave me one of the pictures and said, “Here you go, my boy. You keep this and whenever you look at it, I want you to think about all the trouble I went through for you. And I’ll keep this one in case you ever forget.”

  After I got my bike out of the back of his truck and he drove off, I went to put Henrietta in the chicken yard. I watched her a few minutes to make sure she and the other chickens got along. Sometimes chickens fight each other to make a pecking order so they know who the master of the yard is. Even though Henrietta was smaller than most of the chickens, she didn’t act like she was scared of them. The other chickens surrounded her and she danced and clucked like she was singing and let them know that she was going to control that yard no matter how small she was. It reminded me of a picture of KC on his album cover. You see, he was dressed up like an Indian chief and he had this hat with all these feathers on it and he kind of looked like a chicken. I imagined him standing in front of the Sunshine Band, dancing like he was the head of the flock, and no one could even come close to being as good at dancing and singing as he was. Henrietta was doing the same thing with the other chickens and so I decided to call her KC.

  When I was sure she was safe, I remembered my blue ribbon and ran into the living room of our house to show my parents. But as soon as I got in, I saw my parents standing up in the middle of the room. My mother screamed, “I hate it here!”

  My parents looked at me but didn’t say anything. I pulled my blue ribbon out of my pocket and showed it to them. I was going to tell them that I’d won but then my mother said, “Don, go to your room.”

  “But,” I said.

  “Don, don’t question me when I talk to you. Dick, tell him not to question his mother.”

  My father closed his eyes and said, “Don’t question your mother.”

  Seven

  The day after I won the contest, I got on my bike and headed to town so I could get a paper with my picture in it. It was really sunny and our closest neighbor, Mr. Picard, and his wife, Purple Patricia, were in their yard painting a fence. When I passed them they both waved and smiled and shouted, “Congratulations!” and Purple Patricia’s purple scarf flowed through the air like an American flag, only purple.

  I turned onto Porcupine Street toward the large hill and I saw the stray calico cat sitting on top of a fence post. I had all this energy and for the first time, I peddled right past her up the hill without getting off my bike. She blinked when I passed and then turned and jumped on top of some dog that was walking by.

  When I re
ached the top of the hill, I took a left onto Armadillo Street. Vickie Viceroy and her little brother were running through the pasture chasing a sheep. When Vickie saw me, she stopped and shouted, “Hey, Don! Congratulations!”

  I waved and then thought that maybe Mr. Bufford was right and that I might be famous. And maybe things were going to change and the kids would stop calling me “new kid” and start calling me “Don” and giving me high fives. And that made me really happy and I didn’t think I could get any happier that day, until I got to the paper box on Main Street.

  That’s when I saw the paper with my picture and the headline “Don Schmidt Is Youngest Boy in Town’s History to Win Chicken-Judging Contest.”

  I was about to put a quarter in the box and take one of the papers out when I heard, “Congratulations again, my boy. You’re going to be a great man one day if you play your cards right.”

  I looked up and saw Mr. Bufford. He bent down and put some change in the paper box and pulled out two papers.

  “Here you go,” he said, and handed me one of them.

  I smiled and said, “Thank you,” and then Mr. Bufford folded the newspaper and asked me, “So did you think about our arrangement?”

  I had thought a little about the arrangement but not a whole lot because I was thinking about how much my life was going to change and how proud my parents were going to be of me.

  But I only said, “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled and asked, “Good. So when can I expect the eggs to start rolling in?”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess I can bring some to school tomorrow and give them to your brother, if you want.”

  Mr. Bufford’s smile got bigger and then he said, “That would be great, my boy. That would be great. So how many dozen do you think you can get to me a week?”

  I told him, “I don’t know. Maybe about four or five.”

  Mr. Bufford stopped smiling and said, “Four or five? That won’t do me no good, boy. I thought you were going to talk to your momma about getting some more chickens.”