Fresh Eggs

by Rob Levandoski

  Calvin explains that the cages increase efficiency. “Eggs are a high-volume, low-profit business,” he says.

  Dr. Aram chuckles. “Fortunately for me, the psychiatry business is exactly the opposite. Very few patients and lots of fancy vacations.” Seeing that neither Cassowary is amused by his honesty, he removes the Greek fisherman’s cap he’s wearing today, sits up straight, and begins to act like the professional they’re paying for. “It is going to take a long time to make Rhea a happy person. But I thought I might give you my initial impressions.”

  Donna Cassowary wipes her nose and picks suspiciously at the fabric of the arm of her chair. “We’d appreciate that.”

  And so Dr. Aram begins: “No one really knows what the mind is—except that it is as distinct from our brains as a bucket from the water it carries. But we do know that the thoughts and images our minds create can have physical effects. Fear gives us goosebumps. We get red in the face. We go white with worry. Our flesh is a mirror of our minds. You are following me? Sometimes my ideas are as confusing as my accent.”

  Calvin reassures him. “I think I know what you’re getting at.”

  Dr. Aram is surprised. “You do? I’m not so sure I know what I’m getting at myself. I’m a student of the thinking-out-loud school, I’m afraid.”

  Checking his watch—there’s a shipment of replacement pullets coming at two o’clock—Calvin tells the doctor what he thinks he was getting at: “You’re saying Rhea’s feathers are a psychological reaction to the way I treat my chickens—which is a lot of bullshit.”

  “You think so?”

  “I think so.”

  Apparently Donna thinks it’s bullshit, too. “There’s a big difference between getting goosebumps and growing feathers,” she says into her soggy handkerchief.

  Dr. Aram is nodding. “You are right, of course. Rhea’s feathers could be caused by a defective chromosome. But am I safe in guessing, Mr. Cassowary, that there are no other people in your family with feathers? An uncle or a distant cousin? A great-great-grandmother who looked like a turkey?”

  “Of course not,” Calvin says.

  “Then,” says Dr. Aram, “you have to admit that Rhea’s feathers could have something to do with the way you treat your million chickens?”

  The doctor’s accusation makes Calvin’s face redden. “I don’t treat my chickens any differently than any other large operator.”

  “Do any of your fellow chicken farmers have children with feathers?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Dr. Aram sees that Donna is getting ready to explode. He hands her the handkerchief from his coat pocket. “Sneeze into this.”

  She thanks him and does.

  The doctor continues, “I was raised a Moslem, but like any good Moslem, I am very familiar with the Christian religion—did you know that Moslems consider your Jesus a great prophet? Anyway, Rhea’s feathers reminded me of what happened to Saint Francis of Assisi.”

  Again Calvin checks his watch. “And just what happened to Saint Francis of Assisi?”

  Dr. Aram reaches for the book on his desk. “Let me read this to you: ‘It was wonderful to see in the middle of his hands and feet, not indeed the holes made by the nails, but the nails themselves formed out of his flesh, and retaining the blackness of iron, and his right side was red with blood. These signs of martyrdom did not arouse horror in the minds of those who looked upon them, but they gave his body much beauty and grace.’”

  He puts the book back on his desk. “It was written in the 1200s, the first account of what today we call stigmata, people who feel Jesus’s suffering on the cross so deeply that his wounds appear on their skin, too.”

  Calvin is offended. “So Rhea’s feathers will disappear if I get rid of my chickens?”

  “Not necessarily,” Dr. Aram says. “St. Francis got his wounds twelve hundred years after Jesus’s suffering ended. If Rhea’s feathers are a reaction to the way you treat your chickens, getting rid of your chickens now might not have any effect on her. Her mind would still picture the suffering she saw.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the way I treat my chickens,” Calvin growls.

  “Rhea apparently does not agree,” the doctor growls back.

  Calvin pulls Donna from her chair. “We’re not paying you eighty bucks an hour to tell us why Rhea has feathers. We’re paying you to make her behave like a normal human being.”

  Dr. Aram finds this funny, and wants to laugh. But he knows he mustn’t. Not if he is going to help Rhea. “There is a great debate in modern psychiatry, Mr. Cassowary—we call it, ‘Which came first—the chicken or the egg?’”

  “That’s hilarious,” Calvin says, pulling Donna toward the door.

  Dr. Aram springs in front of him. “Not hilarious at all. It’s a very serious question. Very serious. I’m not telling you to get rid of your chickens. All I am suggesting—and I am suggesting and nothing else—that Rhea’s feathers may be a physical manifestation of her sorrow for the way your chickens are treated. Your chickens. Everybody’s chickens. And if she feels that deeply about it—well—is it so surprising she would try to set them free? You can deal with your daughter in one of two ways. You can lock her in a cage like your chickens, so she doesn’t do any more harm. Or you can set her free.”

  Donna backs away from the doctor’s aftershave. “We want what’s best for her, of course.”

  The doctor puckers his lips sympathetically. “We do not want to change her mind about things. Or change her heart. What we need to change is her behavior. Transform her destructive impulses into constructive ones.”

  “And we do that how?” Calvin asks.

  “By helping her accept herself,” says Dr. Pirooz Aram. “By helping her enjoy having feathers.”

  Asks Donna, “Who would enjoy having feathers?”

  Answers Dr. Pirooz Aram, “How about a swan?”

  The next day the receptionist puts down her tea and answers the phone. “Dr. Aram’s office—”

  “This is Rhea Cassowary’s father.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cassowary—”

  “Rhea won’t be needing any more sessions.”

  “Don’t you want to discuss this with Dr. Aram?”

  “No, I do not.”

  Fifteen

  At dawn Calvin Cassowary sits in the weather-worn rocker on the porch and pulls on his work boots. The lawn is white with frost. So are the roofs of the layer houses. So are the roofs of the new, unfinished people houses on the old Van Varken farm. It is October again.

  Calvin crunches down the driveway. First he takes the newspaper from the plastic tube nailed below his mailbox and wedges it into his back pocket. Then he hops across the ditch, to the FRESH EGGS sign his grandfather Alfred put up in 1928. He takes it in his shaking hands and lifts it off its rusty iron hooks. He tucks it under his arm and walks to the garage. The smart thing, he thinks, would be to smash it into pieces with a sledgehammer, and then burn those pieces, so the sign would simply disappear. The respectful thing, he knows, would be to hang it in a prominent place, in the living room, or the kitchen breakfast nook, or even give it to Rhea to hang in her bedroom. But he is too filled with remorse to do either the smart thing or the respectful thing. He gets the stepladder and, climbing to the top step, slides it onto the pile of old dust-covered lumber resting across the rafters. Rhea will never find it up there. Then he goes in for breakfast.

  Donna is sniffling about the kitchen, mooshing frozen orange juice concentrate in a Rubbermaid pitcher. She’s still wearing the cotton nightgown Calvin pushed up over her thighs the night before. “Rhea hasn’t come down yet, has she?” he asks.

  “You should have talked to her about it first,” Donna says.

  Calvin pours his own coffee and sits down at the table. It wobbles under his elbows. “Either way I’d get a fight. This way it’s done.”

  The upstairs toilet flushes and the steps start squeaking. Rhea pads into the kitchen. “Morning, pumpkin seed,” Calvin
says.

  Rhea doesn’t answer him. She goes to the cupboard where the cereal boxes are kept. She chooses the Honey Nut Cheerios.

  Rhea is wearing her baggy blue bathrobe. She wears it almost every day now. Whether she is wearing anything underneath, Calvin and Donna don’t know, but probably she isn’t. Her feathers cover her entire body now and they know pants or a tee shirt or even underpants would be uncomfortable for her. Her hair is gone now, replaced by a cap of small, frizzy feathers that layer down across her ears and jaws like shingles on a roof.

  When the Cheerios are drowned in milk, Rhea squeezes around the back of the table, to her place in front of the window. No chance anyone will see her, though. The Venetian blinds her father installed in July are closed tight.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Calvin begins. “You won’t like it.”

  Rhea says nothing. Her eyes are fixed on her bowl of cereal. After only a few spoonfuls, the feathers on her chin are dripping with beads of milk.

  “We’re not going to sell brown eggs anymore,” Calvin says.

  Rhea says nothing.

  “We’re only getting—what—three dozen a week?” Calvin says. “And we’re down to Marilyn Dicsissel and Mrs. Baleen.”

  “And Beth Craddock,” Donna says.

  Calvin doesn’t appreciate her help. “And Beth Craddock,” he repeats.

  Now Rhea says something. “Which makes three. Which is more than a couple.”

  Calvin shifts his elbows. The table wobbles. “The point is this: Donna is busy with the house and the bookwork and taking care of you. She can’t drop everything every time somebody drives in for a dozen brown eggs.”

  “I could do the selling,” Rhea says.

  Calvin’s frustration is bubbling. “You don’t need everyone gawking at you.”

  “You mean you don’t need it,” Rhea says.

  “Your father and I are not ashamed of you,” Donna says.

  “Then let me do the selling.”

  “We are not going to bother with three dozen eggs a week,” Calvin says. “I’ve already taken down the sign.”

  Rhea pries open the blinds. “You really took it down—daddy?”

  Calvin checks his watch, kisses his wife, and pats his daughter’s feathery head. “And it’s going to stay down.” He runs to the garage, backs the pickup out, and beeps the horn. Jimmy Faldstool comes trotting. He’s dressed a bit better today, clean pair of jeans and a flannel shirt without any holes.

  “Ready to rock-and-roll?” Calvin asks as Jimmy hops in.

  “That I am,” says Jimmy.

  Calvin can tell by the way Jimmy’s cheek muscles are twitching that he wants to ask him something important. But after that business over the FRESH EGGS sign, he is in no mood for an important question. So he lets Jimmy’s cheek twitch and crunches the pickup down the driveway and heads toward Tuttwyler.

  On Townline Road they pass the Chervil’s place. The field east of the house is littered with rusted farm equipment. There are dozens of old tractors and an uncountable collection of disks, plows, cultivators, combines, balers, and manure spreaders. Every one of them is busted and rusted, held to the ground by tangles of high grass and blackberry briars. This is how the Chervil brothers, Doug and Dale, scrape out a living, specializing in hard-to-find parts for old farm equipment. D&D Tractor Sales, they call their business. They supplement their income by selling pumpkins at Halloween. As Calvin and Jimmy drive by, Dale is busy unloading a trailer of them on the front lawn.

  “We’ll stop on the way back and get a pumpkin for Rhea,” Calvin says.

  “That’ll be nice,” Jimmy says, cheek muscles twitching again. “My boy’s outgrown having a pumpkin.”

  Calvin smiles at him and quickly turns his attention back to the road. He knows Jimmy Faldstool like the back of his hand. Whatever Jimmy wants to ask him has something to do with his boy.

  In Tuttwyler they find a place to park on the square. Calvin heads for First Sovereignty Bank. Jimmy heads to the hardware store for fly strips. They’ll meet at the Pile Inn for a quick coffee and a donut before driving over to Mueller Auto Parts to buy that new battery for the tow motor.

  Ted Rapparee greets Calvin with a big grin and an even bigger handshake. “I know it’s not a pleasant thought, Cal, stringing out your loan,” he says, dropping into his swivel chair, “but we’re here for you, buddy.”

  “The papers are ready?”

  “All they need is your John Hancock,” Ted says. He opens the folder in front of him and spreads out the forms like a magician splaying a deck of trick cards. He pushes a silver pen across the desk.

  Calvin bends over the forms. “The interest rate is locked in?”

  Even though the forms are upside-down for him, Ted knows exactly where to point. “Tight as a drum.”

  “Good,” Calvin says, though there’s nothing good about it at all. Stretching out that loan another ten years will cost him an additional hundred thousand in interest. And unless Gallinipper’s new contract ups its per-dozen price another penny, he’ll be extending his other loans, too.

  Ted reaches for the silver pen as soon as Calvin sets it down. “How’s the family, Cal? My Amy misses Rhea not being in school anymore.”

  Calvin stands and wipes the sweat from his palms, eager for the good-bye handshake. He knows why Ted said that. Ted knows about Rhea’s feathers. Just like everybody knows.

  Calvin trots across the square toward the Pile Inn. Inside he can pick out Jimmy’s clean flannel shirt from the eight or nine other shirts hunched over the counter. He also can make out Paul Bilderback’s back. He drove a school bus with Paul for several years, and Paul always had a big sweat stain down the back of his blue workshirts, like the stripe of a skunk, even in the cold months.

  Calvin starts for the empty stool next to Jimmy when he hears Paul ask, “That true about Cal’s girl being covered head to toe with feathers?”

  He hears Jimmy answer, “That ain’t for me or you to talk about.”

  Hears Paul say, “Then it’s true.”

  Hears Jimmy answer, “That’s your conclusion.”

  Hears Paul say, “Makes you wonder what kind of cock Cal’s first wife was fooling with.”

  Hears the other men hunched over the counter laugh like hyenas. Hears Jimmy say, “I think you better shut up.”

  Hears Paul say, “Now Jimmy, don’t get your feathers ruffled.”

  Sees Jimmy push Paul off his stool and pelt him with donuts and pieces of pie from the dessert rack. Hears himself say, “Ready to go, Jimmy?”

  The laugher collapses and the men swivel back to the counter. Jimmy’s eyes are hot with anger.

  Paul Bilderback crawls to his stool. His face is covered with powdered sugar and pie filling. He cocks his arm to take a swing at Jimmy, but thinks better of it.

  Calvin and Jimmy walk to Mueller’s Auto Parts and buy the new battery. They head for home. “Ain’t we gonna stop for that pumpkin?” Jimmy asks as they drive past the Chervil brothers’ place.

  “Not today.”

  “Buy ’em too early, they’ll just rot,” Jimmy says, adding, “It’s the same with Christmas trees. Too early, the needles fall off.”

  “That’s right,” Calvin agrees. He reaches out and squeezes Jimmy’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

  Jimmy smiles, knowing his boss isn’t thanking him for his advice on pumpkins and Christmas trees. “I hear cracks about Rhea all the time like that.”

  “I suppose you do.”

  Jimmy’s cheeks start to twitch again and after taking a deep breath asks the question he’s been wanting to ask all morning: “My boy’s turning sixteen next month and I wonder if you wouldn’t have a job for him? Just part-time.”

  Calvin thinks about his loans and his exploding costs, about the wages and benefits for the three full-time men he’s had to hire since ascending to the million-Leghorn level. “Sure,” he tells Jimmy.

  Three days after his sixteenth birthday, the very Saturday he takes an
d flunks his temporary driver’s license exam, Joon Faldstool comes to work at the Cassowary farm. His father drives him, and stays with him all morning, showing him how to shovel out the manure pits in the older layer houses. How to hose down the concrete floors without making a mess. Where to wash up before going home.

  “Washing up is the key to this job,” his father says. He shows him how much liquid soap to squirt on his palms. He shows him where the clean towels are kept.

  Calvin makes Rhea go upstairs when he sees Norman Marek’s car coming up the driveway. He gathers the homeschooling workbooks off the table and gets out the farm ledgers. He also gets out two of the better coffee cups. Saucers, too.

  Norman is as friendly as ever. But he’s also a bit nervous and he puts more sugar in his coffee than usual. “Cal,” he says, “let me get right to the skinny. All this crap about cholesterol is taking a toll on egg consumption. Now we know this health and fitness stuff is just a fad—a five-minute Hoola Hoop thing—but until the industry can wind up its PR machinery, well, we’ve got an egg glut.”

  Calvin may have majored in art, but he understands the laws of supply and demand as well as anybody. “My contract locks me in at three cents a dozen.”

  Norman splays his fingers and calms the air between Calvin and him. “Of course your contract locks you in. Nobody’s gonna dick with that. But still the pain has got to be spread around somehow, doesn’t it?”

  “Meaning what?”

  Norman Marek sips and puckers and plays with the button on his ballpoint. Click-click. Click-click. Click-click. “What it means,” he finally says, “is that Bob’s asking all the producers to take ten percent of their hens out of production—for the time being.”

  “That’s a hundred thousand hens. That’s a lot of money out of my pocket.”

  “Out of my pocket, too,” Norman Marek says. “Everybody at corporate has been asked to take a temporary ten percent cut in pay. Everybody tithes ten percent to the god of over-production and before you know it prices have re-couped and everything’s copacetic—”

  Calvin takes Norman’s half-full coffee cup away from him. “Copacetic, my ass.”