Fresh Eggs

by Rob Levandoski

  “That’s Miss Lucky Pants,” Rhea tells him. “I saved her from the chicken shit.”

  “You shouldn’t be using that word,” her mother says. “It gets your father and me in trouble with your teacher.”

  “Okay,” says Rhea.

  Calvin knows he should go into the chick coop tonight and grab Miss Lucky Pants by the feet and wring its neck and bury it and then make up some story to tell Rhea: “It must have escaped” or “It died of old age.” He sure knows he can’t keep every damn Leghorn that gets away from Phil Bunyip’s chicken catchers. The Leghorns aren’t pets. They’re not like the Buff Orpingtons. You don’t talk baby talk to them, or sing to them, or give them names. They’re not part of the old farm. They’re part of the new farm. They’re egg machines. Yet Calvin knows he can no more wring that hen’s neck than he could Rhea’s.

  Six

  Two days after Thanksgiving Jeanie Cassowary contracts pneumonia. Three days after that she dies.

  “Mommy was very sick and God didn’t want her to suffer anymore,” Calvin tells his daughter as they sit on the edge of her bed. “So He took her to Heaven.” The next afternoon they drive to the funeral home in Tuttwyler and Rhea is surprised to see her mother lying in a box. “I thought God took Mommy to Heaven.”

  “Only her soul,” her father explains. “Her body stays down here with us.”

  That seems fair enough and Rhea has no more questions. Only when they drive her mother’s body to the cemetery and lower it into the ground do the peculiarities of death bewilder her again. “Why can’t we keep her at home? Where we can look at her sometimes?”

  Her father closes his eyes and slowly shakes his head no.

  After the funeral everyone gathers at the Cassowary house for a party of sorts. The kitchen counters are covered with casseroles and desserts. The wobbly table in the breakfast nook is covered with stacks of paper plates, towers of Styrofoam cups, pick-up-stick piles of plastic silverware.

  Rick Van Varken, balancing a plate of three-bean salad on top of his can of Bud, finds his young widowed neighbor on the porch. In the field beyond the willow and the old chicken coop, two new layer houses sit half built. “They’re coming along nice,” Rick says. Even with a bath and a spritz of cologne he smells like his hogs.

  “They should be finished by now,” Calvin says. “Pullets are coming in five weeks.”

  Rick chases a slippery kidney bean with his plastic fork. “Your father would be proud of you. You’ve done a fantastic job.”

  Calvin doesn’t answer. He just stares at the half-built layer houses.

  “You hear that Dewey Fowler’s selling his farm?” Rick asks.

  Calvin nods.

  “Some developer wants to build two hundred houses on it. Concrete streets and sidewalks and everything.”

  Calvin nods.

  “Lots of families selling off land in that part of the township,” Rick says. A cucumber slice slides off his plate and lands in the cuff of his suit pants. “Christ, would you look at that.”

  Calvin doesn’t look. “What if a developer dangled a wheelbarrow full of money in front of you, Rick? Would you sell?”

  Rick Van Varken spears the wayward cucumber slice with his plastic fork and eats it. “No way.” Having succeeded in getting Calvin’s mind off Jeanie for a few minutes, Rick goes inside. He is replaced by Norman Marek, who squeaks across the porch with a small clay pot of scraggly vines. “Sorry I missed the funeral,” he says.

  “That’s okay,” Calvin answers.

  Norman holds out the pot. He’s embarrassed. “Bob Gallinipper made me drive all the way to Indiana for these. He wanted you to have them.”

  Calvin takes the pot and examines the sick-looking plant inside. “He wanted me to have a strawberry plant?”

  “Wild strawberry,” says Norman. “Bob wanted me to tell you it’s from his grandfather’s grave. That he planted them himself when he was a kid. I guess he and his grandfather used to pick strawberries together. Bob’s pretty sentimental about family stuff. He says he still goes to the cemetery every spring to eat wild strawberries with his ‘grandpop.’ Almost makes you want to cry, doesn’t it?”

  A week later Calvin takes Rhea to the cemetery in Tuttwyler. They take the strawberry plant with them. The grave is still covered with the fancy cut flowers from the funeral home. Calvin pushes them aside and with his bare hands digs a hole in the dirt. He gently removes the strawberry plant from the pot, along with the rich Indiana soil it’s nestled in, and puts it in the hole. He rakes Ohio soil around the plant and pats it until it’s firm. “Every spring we’ll come here and eat strawberries with Mommy,” he promises.

  “I like strawberries,” Rhea says.

  Calvin doubts the strawberry plant will live. December in Ohio is no time to plant anything. But it’s a good thought, eating strawberries every spring with Jeanie and their Rhea. A good thought.

  A memorial stone has been ordered but it won’t be delivered until spring, until after the ground thaws and settles. It will be a gray granite stone with Jeanie’s name on one side and Calvin’s on the other. The date of Calvin’s death won’t be chiseled in, but the date of Jeanie’s will be:

  CASSOWARY

  JEANETTE

  CALVIN

  LOVING WIFE

  DEVOTED HUSBAND

  1950 ~ 1979

  1949 ~

  It will be one of several gray-granite Cassowary gravestones in the southwest corner of the old cemetery on South Mill, in a neat line just inside the black iron fence, by a bed of myrtle that stays green all winter.

  There is the gravestone of Henry and second wife, Camellia:

  CASSOWARY

  HENRY D.

  CAMELLIA E.

  BORN MAY 1830

  BORN APRIL 1830

  DIED SEPT. 1913

  DIED JULY 1909

  AGED 83 YRS.

  AGED 79 YRS.

  Safe From the Storms of Life

  There is the gravestone of Henry’s son, Clyde Willis, and Clyde Willis’s first and only wife, the much-suffering Ina May:

  CASSOWARY

  CLYDE WILLIS

  1868 TO 1946

  INA MAY

  HIS WIFE

  1872 TO 1961

  There is the gravestone of Clyde’s ambitious son, Alfred, and the ambitious woman from Michigan he married, Dorothy Marie Beane:

  CASSOWARY

  ALFRED E.

  DOROTHY M.

  Beloved husband & father

  Beloved wife & mother

  1894 TO 1962

  1896 TO 1971

  PRECIOUS IN THE SIGHT OF THE LORD IS THE DEATH OF HIS SAINTS

  Psalms 116:15

  There is the gravestone of Alfred’s son, Donald. Donald’s wife, Betsy, who has remarried and moved to Columbus, may or may not be buried there, too, someday:

  CASSOWARY

  DONALD

  BETSY

  SGT. U.S. ARMY WW2

  DEVOTED WIFE

  1920 • 1972

  1923 • 19—

  Calvin brushes his dirty hands on his pants and sits back Indian style. He pulls Rhea into his lap and wraps his arms around her. They share a long conversation of silence. Only when Rhea says she has to pee do they leave, driving to the nearest gas station. Then they drive home.

  Death and winter are no match for life and business. Layer houses D and E are completed and the trucks arrive from Gallinipper’s with 120,000 ready-to-lay Leghorn pullets. Calvin and Jimmy Faldstool work nonstop stuffing the hens in their cages. Calvin now has 300,000 hens squirting two grade A eggs every three days.

  Those 300,000 hens also will squirt thirty-six tons of manure a day.

  “I don’t think I can keep up with the manure much longer,” Jimmy warns his boss one Friday afternoon in February as they sit across from each other in the breakfast nook. Calvin has his payroll book in front of him, figuring how much of Jimmy’s raise will go for Social Security, how much for state and federal income taxes. Jimmy is
sitting in Jeanie’s chair. The drawing of Jeanie feeding the Orpingtons is on the wall behind him.

  “Too bad Gallinippers can’t engineer their hens to crap nickels,” Calvin says as his finger works the egg-yolk yellow pocket calculator Norman Marek sent him for Christmas.

  “That’d be something,” Jimmy says.

  Calvin shakes his head at what’s left of Jimmy’s raise. “I was hoping to hire somebody full time in the spring. But these interest rates—I’ll help you with the shoveling until things turn around.”

  “Good gravy. No need for that.”

  Calvin looks up at his drawing of Jeanie with the Orpingtons. He bites his lip. He hands Jimmy his check. “Wish it could be more.”

  Without looking at it, Jimmy folds the check and sticks it in his shirt pocket. His good-natured acceptance of his low-paid life both saddens and embarrasses Calvin.

  Jimmy heads for the door, zipping his parka as he walks. “We’re almost out of fly strips,” he says.

  “I’ll order some,” Calvin says.

  Jimmy puts on his gloves, then takes the right one off again, so he can dig his car keys out of his jeans. “Too bad those flies don’t crap nickels, too.”

  No sooner has Jimmy Faldstool’s old Chevy slid out of the snow-filled driveway than Marilyn Dickcissel’s new Buick slides in. Calvin gets two cartons of brown eggs from the refrigerator and hurries to the porch.

  Marilyn has another woman with her today. A young woman. They walk up the slippery unshoveled sidewalk, like tightrope walkers high over the Niagara Gorge. “I brought you a new customer,” Marilyn says.

  The new customer is Donna Digamy, who Marilyn has just hired to handle the appointments and billing for her dog grooming business. “Your business isn’t the only one growing by leaps and bounds,” Marilyn says. Her cigarette smoke is mixing with the frozen air curling out of her nostrils. Donna, it seems, is single, attending the technical college in Wadesburg, working towards an associate degree in accounting. “Pretty, isn’t she?” Marilyn says.

  Even with the red runny nose and the bright green earmuffs, Calvin can see that this Donna Digamy indeed is pretty. But he is angry that Marilyn Dickcissel would say such a thing to him. Jeanie has been gone only two months.

  Donna wipes her nose on the sleeve of her puffy coat. “I only need a dozen.”

  So Calvin gets another dozen from the refrigerator. He has no time for this damn brown egg business. If it wasn’t for Rhea he’d wring the necks of those damn Buff Orpingtons. And just as soon as Marilyn Dickcissel and that runny-nosed girl leave he’s going to take down that drawing of Jeanie feeding the chickens. He doesn’t need that staring him in the face every damn morning and every damn night. Maybe Jeanie’s mother would want it. Maybe he should hide it in the basement, or in the attic. Maybe someday, when time has numbed his anger at God for inventing cancer, he will find the drawing and give it to Rhea.

  In April, as the temperature rises and the sweet stench of chicken manure is wiggling from the thawing fields, and flies by the score are staggering out of their hiding places in the window sills, Norman Marek calls. “Calvin, my copacetic amigo,” he says, “how’s the Egg King of Wyssock County?”

  “Tired,” Calvin answers. He is boiling spaghetti noodles for supper. Rhea is standing next to him, making finger pictures in the Kraft Parmesan cheese she’s shaken out on the counter.

  “Not too tired for a little holiday, I hope?”

  Calvin is suspicious. He’s known Norman too long. “Holiday?”

  “Three-day meeting of all our producers and corporate people. The whole shebang is on Bob Gallinipper’s dime. And it’s a family deal, Cal. You can bring Rhea.”

  Seven

  On the first of June, Calvin Cassowary lifts his daughter into the cab of the pickup and helps her buckle her seat belt. They crackle down the driveway, careful not to smash the cats. They pull even with the FRESH EGGS sign. Calvin squints into the still-low morning sun to make sure nobody’s coming. Belted in the way she is, little Rhea can’t see much more than the latch on the glove compartment. They turn onto the road and head west. Jimmy Faldstool, atop a tractor, scooping chicken manure into a dump truck, surrounded by a buzzle of flies, waves at them.

  Wyssock County is a little bit hilly, but the counties to the west get progressively flatter. They pass field after field of ankle-high corn. Barns and silos sit on the landscape like giant lunchboxes and Thermoses. They reach the Indiana border about the same time as the sun does.

  The towns out here are too small for a McDonald’s or a Wendy’s but they do find a hamburger stand named Sooper’s and they sit on a picnic table by a bed of newly planted petunias and share a Big Soopie and fries. Rhea is enchanted by the cardboard tray the fries come in and she wears it on her head like a hat all the way to Illinois. They intersect the interstate and drive north until they are sixty miles south of Chicago. They get off at a great tangle of truck stops, motels, and gas stations. They find the Marriott. The marquee says WELCOME GALLINIPPER FARMS. Calvin doesn’t notice that Rhea is still wearing the French-fry hat until they are in the elevator with half a dozen other people. He crumbles it in his hand. “Behave,” he whispers.

  The room Norman Marek has booked for them is a double and they each get a huge bed. Calvin showers and puts on his suit. He combs the French fry salt out of Rhea’s hair and helps her put on her dress. It’s the dress Jeanie’s mother bought her to wear to the funeral. A serious dress for serious occasions. It’s burgundy, made of soft corduroy. It has long sleeves and a row of gold buttons. It’s also a short dress, so she has to wear white tights underneath, so no one can see her underwear. Last thing to go on are a pair of shiny, black shoes. “Well, look at you,” Calvin says.

  They go down to the banquet. A woman at a table by the door gives them name tags. Someone in a chicken suit gives Rhea a bright yellow balloon. The banquet room is dark and there’s a woman playing a harp. People are standing in bundles, drinks in their hands. Norman Marek is suddenly in front of them. “Hey! Calvin! Got here safe and sound I see!” He bends over Rhea. “Hey! Look at that balloon!” He promises to steer Bob Gallinipper their way just as soon as he gets a chance. “Bob’s looking forward to meeting you,” he says.

  That’s the last they see of Norman Marek all evening. There’s a sit-down dinner—baked chicken, wild rice and cold string beans—and then a welcoming speech by Bob Gallinipper himself, while the waitresses plunk down shallow glass bowls filled with balls of lime and raspberry sherbet.

  Calvin has never seen Bob Gallinipper in person, though he has seen his smiling face on dozens of brochures and Christmas cards. Bob is older than his pictures. Balder. But the smile is exactly the same in person. It’s as wide as a slice of cantaloupe, breaking all the physical laws of distance and perspective, as huge to the people at the back tables as it is to the people sitting up front. “I’m just as happy as the last rooster on earth to see y’all,” Bob says. “I look forward to chit-chatting with each and every one of you.” He introduces his wife of thirty-three years, his beautiful Bunny. “Without my Bunny, I’d be just another tractor jockey growin’ corn and hemorrhoids.”

  Everybody laughs.

  “And God only knows where you’d all be!”

  Everybody laughs harder and gives Bunny Gallinipper a standing ovation. Bob kisses her with his cantaloupe smile and then introduces former California Governor Ronald Reagan who says America has to stand tall again and cut taxes and get the government off the people’s backs. At the end of his speech, the big chicken appears on the stage and hands him a bobbing bouquet of red, white and blue balloons. Reagan is enthralled by the balloons. When he releases them, and they wiggle like giant sperm toward the fertile chandeliers, the crowd applauds.

  Bob Gallinipper steps to the microphone and says, “I think Mr. Reagan is going to be the next president of the United States, don’t you?”

  When the speeches are finished and the sherbet balls eaten, the tables are cleared and
Grand Old Opry regular Louise Peavey bounds on the stage, singing her 1976 hit, “Send Me a Man With Dirty Fingers.”

  “I don’t want no man who pushes papers,

  Who disco dances and burns the flag.

  I want a man who does his duty,

  Works hard all day, loves hard all night.

  So send me a man with dirty fingers,

  A clean-cut man with a dirty mind,

  Send me a man with dirty fingers

  A real American man for this-here real American girl.”

  In the morning there’s a big breakfast. While everyone eats their omelets, Wayne Demijohn, Gallinipper’s vice president of manure management, speaks about the latest developments in his field. “I know some days it must seem like you’re in the manure business, and not the egg business,” he begins, “and I’m sure the day will come when the folks in the genetic research department will develop non-defecating hens …”

  There is a ripple of laughter as the sleepy omelet-eaters try to figure out if he’s joking or not.

  “… but until that glorious day comes …”

  There’s a near unanimous agreement that he is indeed joking and the laughter builds.

  “… it’s up to guano gurus like moi to help you get rid of that awful stuff.”

  Wayne Demijohn gets serious now. Processes are being developed, he announces, to turn chicken manure into feed for beef cattle. “It’s the most exciting development in the poultry industry since the invention of chicken wire,” he says. “We predict that within ten short years twenty percent or more of the nation’s livestock feed will be comprised of chicken manure.”

  Omelets eaten, the producers and their families head for the buses. There are five buses, big fancy excursion buses with tinted windows and air conditioning that works and comfortable jet-plane seats that recline with a push of a button. The person in the chicken suit who passed out balloons the night before is standing by the bus door, passing out coloring books and crayons to all the children.