Mr. King tethers his horse. The sky is filling with hard sediment, clouds flourishing, threatening an impulsive blast of first snow. Ada's curtains are half drawn, he sees her arms moving the broom in strong circular pulses. He knocks, bringing his hat down to his chest when Ada opens the door and asks him in.
Where's the boy, Mr. King asks, nodding to Joe who sits before a steaming cup in the tall ladder-back chair he built himself last summer using nails against tradition, causing the wood after two seasons to creak and slouch at the beams.
Working over to Olsen's, says Ada, sweeping the floorboards despondently. Dinner's on soon so he'll be around. Welcome to stay. There's water for tea.
You wanted him for something, Joe stirring methodically, pressing the tea bag against the side of the cup with his spoon, sending flowered crowns of black pigment across the steeping water.
Truck's coming tomorrow for the last haul of the season.
You got a lot of 'em this year?
Couple hundred. Kept one barn quarantine due to something they picked up in the water. Spread like wildfire. You could see the fever in their eyes. Broke the neck of every single one of them myself.
The door floats open, hinges grieving in faulted hymn, the boy's boots pounding, painted cheeks and lean lines waning leaner.
Mr. King, he says. Joe examines the grime and soil beneath his nails. He pulls a toothpick from his pocket and braces it between his teeth. Listening, head cocked, he expertly rents the jutting bit of wood beneath each of his nails, pausing to wipe the dark lumps from the tip after each pass.
You see, Mr. King explains, my best man run off with some trial by fire wench leaving me short for the last big day before winter. All told it's worth three dollars, thirty cents to you, come what will.
The boy studies pensively a painting hung crooked above Joe's patchy head, then agrees, But don't make a habit of asking.
The chicken farm is a series of weary barns painted blue lined by ventilation shafts resembling the slats on the side of an old farm tractor. A greasy, beaten truck comes rumbling up pulling a line of trailers cloaked in orange tarp glistening beneath the rain and the streams of shivering beads race crosswise, a mess of tributaries shedding the plastic to pool amidst mud islands peaked and then destroyed by the rows of spinning tires. The boy observes the truck as it lines up alongside the barns where doors high up open to a weary darkness from which the sounds of shifting wings, beaks tapping, and claws stepping uncertainly emanates above the railing creed of the rain.
The driver hops down from his noble chariot and unveils the stacks of cages bound by an arcing structure, the tarp spilling into the mud and catching water in its folds.
A gang of men stands beneath an awning, some smoking, picking at the strings of tobacco caught along their lips and tongues. The boy knows them all, none by name. They are rushing souls somehow caught on farm soil with nowhere to move or reason. The boy thinks of the city and of his plans to go there, days working at Olsen's gone forever, traded for the deafening pounding of steel streetcar wheels on steel track pulling people down every lane.
All of the men walk around to the opposite ends of the barns where Mr. King is handing out gloves and sorting the men into regiments that disappear into the bleak doorways, some sneezing at the foul smell of shit and urine and the powdery quality of the air about to thicken as the men thrust their hands into the caged commotion of soiled, disgusting birds, tugging at the leathery legs to pull them squawking into a momentarily unfettered space. The boy moves quickly, taking eight chickens at once, hopping along the ramps to the driver, who takes the bushels of squabbling, pissing feathers and thrusts them into the cages crusted by feces and blood. The boy feels legs snap in his hand followed by frenetic beak attacks on his forearm, a Morse code of torture he regrets in his heart. At first - later he is snapping their necks out of rage for their mindless fear. He watches, feeling soothed, streams of blood pouring from the soundless chicken mouths.
He grips accidentally a bird ripening with decay. The eyes are plucked away and there are wounds visible beneath the feathers, signs of cannibalism or insanity due to the lack of space nor a proper floor to balance on. He imagines a shrunken man balancing on the cage wires for days, a stoic soul slowly descending into a fury, warring at the giant birds with his fists and fingernails over a space in the corner where a spot of sunshine can be achieved without cloud.
After the truck is filled completely, the muddied tarp tied in place, it moves off with a roar of shifting gears. There are as yet unseen sections of the barns filled with caged chicks grown large, but still incubating and downy. The men grapple with these innocent, unwary prey, taking them from room to room to the cages they have just evacuated, sending the previous occupants off to their doom. When the work is through they find Mrs. King unloading bronze biscuits and boiled ears of corn into the hands of the men who eat anxiously and without pride as if their muscular frames were tokens of starvation. Mr. King appears with a thin stack of bills sounding cheapness to those more intelligible about the man. The wage drops two dollars, he explains. Better men have finished hours sooner in the face of much larger stock. Each man groans as he takes his bill, some spitting after the boy has spat rudely at Mr. King's feet, the boy repeating, Don't make asking a habit.