Fresh Eggs

by Rob Levandoski

  Norman cranes his neck to see if Calvin is refilling the cup or putting it in the sink. He’s relieved when he sees it’s a refill. “It’s only a matter of time before people come to their senses and start eating eggs for breakfast again, instead of those damn rice cakes. So I’m counseling patience, Cal. P-a-t-i-e-n-c-e.”

  “I can’t lose this farm, Norman.”

  “We’ll work with you, Cal. Bob loves you like a son.”

  “The Bob I’ve never met?”

  “I keep him apprised.”

  The refilled cup lands hard on the table. “Apprise Bob of this—at his urging I’ve grown my flock to a million hens, taken on a million dollars in debt. I’ve got manure and flies up the wazoo. I’ve got a daughter who hates my guts and breaks out in feathers the way other kids break out in pimples. I’ve got—”

  Norman stops spooning sugar. “Then all that feather stuff is true?”

  Calvin throws Norman’s coffee cup against the wall.

  Sixteen

  Donna Cassowary puts on her parka, knit cap and gloves, and skates down the icy driveway to the mailbox. Stuffed in the box with the bills and Christmas catalogs is a thick brown envelope. It is addressed to Rhea. There is no return address in the corner except for the word GRANDMA! The flap is heavily Scotch-taped. There also is a row of staples.

  Donna hurries back inside where she has left herself a hot cup of tea. “Rhea!” she yells, loud enough for her voice to carry up the stairs, “your grandma sent you a package.”

  The steps squeak and Rhea pops into the kitchen. “Which grandma?”

  Donna shrugs and holds it out for her. “Feels like a book.”

  Rhea looks at the single word and exclamation mark in the corner. “Probably Gammy Betz.” She squeaks back upstairs and flops on her bed. It takes a couple minutes for her to dig off the tape and pry off the staples. Finally the flap is open and she shakes out the book. A note is taped to the cover:

  Dear Rhea,

  This is not a package from your grandma as the wrapper says. It is from me, Dr. Pirooz Aram.

  It is very unprofessional of me to send you this book. For some reason your father does not want you to see me. Which is his right. But I never had a patient with feathers before!

  So if I cannot be your doctor may I be your friend? A friend you cannot see but is always thinking of you?

  If you do accept my friendship, Rhea, then also please accept this little book. It is called Manteq at-Tair. In English it is called The Conference of the Birds. It was written 800 years ago by a man from my homeland named Farid ud-Din Attar.

  The book is about a journey. And I hope that you will find the time to read it during your own journey.

  Never forget, Rhea, you are a swan! Do you hear me? A swan!

  Best wishes,

  Pirooz Aram

  p.s. In case your parents have opened this package instead of you, let me say Mr. and Mrs. Cassowary that I apologize for meddling, and that if you wish to sue me for malpractice, I understand fully and promise I will not try to defend myself.

  Rhea studies the cover. Below the title is a wonderful painting of a large tree with star-shaped leaves. Gathered under the tree are many types of birds. There are peacocks and roosters and ducks, cranes and doves and woodpeckers, white birds and black birds and red birds and blue birds.

  The book begins with a long introduction, apparently explaining why it is such an important book. The print is very small and the words very big. Rhea reads only a few lines before putting the book under her mattress. She smoothes the feathers on her face and lowers herself to her pillow. She wants to nap but the birds on the book’s cover are fluttering on the insides of her eyelids. The funny man who sent her the book is dancing in her mind, waving that fancy hat he called his chapeau. She pulls out the book and leafs through the introduction until she finds the first chapter. The page surprises her. It is a poem. She flips further. The entire book is a poem. She turns back to the beginning and reads:

  “Dear Hoopoe, welcome! You will be our guide;

  It was on you King Solomon relied

  To carry secret messages between

  His court and distant Sheba’s lovely queen.”

  She reads no more than that when Donna appears in the doorway, a wadded tissue in each hand. “So which grandma is it from?”

  “Gammy Betz,” Rhea lies, “like I figured.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Birds.”

  Donna winces. “Birds?”

  “I think. I haven’t read very much yet.”

  Donna dabs her nostrils with one tissue and then the other. “I’m sure your grandma means well. But you are not a bird.”

  Rhea knows what’s coming next, the you’re-a-normal-human-being speech. “What would you do if I laid an egg?” she asks her stepmother.

  “You are not going to lay a egg.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because you don’t have an egg thing inside.”

  “All females have an egg thing inside.”

  “You know what I mean. You don’t have a bird egg thing.”

  Rhea tells her that a bird’s egg thing is called an oviduct.

  Donna is not impressed with her knowledge of bird anatomy. “Well, you don’t have one of those. You’ve just got feathers. Which one of these days will fall out and you’ll be normal again.”

  Rhea closes her book. “You don’t know that. For all you know I’ll have these feathers forever. For all you know I’ll start clucking and lay a big egg.”

  “You are not—”

  Rhea start clucking. Bends her arms into wings and starts flapping. Starts grunting. Rolls over and looks at the indent her butt made in the mattress. She pretends to pout. “Maybe next time.”

  “This is difficult enough for us—you don’t have to add to it with a shitty attitude.”

  Rhea duckwalks across the bed. “Wouldn’t it be terrible if my feathers were contagious? Some morning you’ll wake up with feathers between your boobs. Just like I did.”

  Donna retreats to the hallway. “It is not contagious.”

  Rhea stands up at the bottom of the bed and, flapping furiously, leaps to the floor. “Maybe you’ll start laying eggs, too. Ooooh, the stretch marks! Ooooh, the stretch marks!”

  Seventeen

  Joon Faldstool likes working at the Cassowary farm. It gives him something to do while other boys his age are playing sports, talking sports, or pursuing their first sexual experiences. Joon doesn’t have any real friends. Doesn’t have any real talents. Doesn’t have a chance in hell of ever having sex with anyone but himself.

  He works every weekday from 3:30 to 6:00. And until he gets his driver’s license—which could be quite a while, given that he still hasn’t passed the test for his temporary—he will continue to have the school bus drop him off.

  No, it isn’t easy being a Faldstool. First, the Faldstools are short—no Faldstool male has ever topped five-four. Secondly, the Faldstools are not very bright—no Faldstool male has ever possessed the capacity for anything but the most mundane and monotonous work. Remarkably, in the three centuries since the first Faldstool arrived in the New World from England as an indentured servant, no Faldstool male has been able to elevate the family’s physical, mental or economic stature by breeding with a woman of superior strain. His own father’s choice of a mate—Eileen Aspergres—not only failed to move the family forward economically, but saddled future generations with a third inhibiting trait: big ears.

  Yes, Joon Faldstool has the Aspergres ears. Big, thin, red ears that look like someone held him down and flattened them with a mallet. When the sun’s behind him they glow.

  So Joon Faldstool is short. So Joon Faldstool is dumb. So Joon Faldstool has big ears. So Joon Faldstool works every day after school at the Cassowary egg farm shoveling manure. And he likes it just fine.

  Yesterday was the last Sunday in October. In Ohio, that means the end of Daylight Savings Time, that extra
hour of sunlight giving people another hour to be productive. Today it will get dark an hour earlier than yesterday. People will drive home from work in the dark. Eat their supper with the kitchen light on for the first time since March.

  For a not-too-smart sixteen-year-old, Joon knows quite a bit about Daylight Savings Time. He learned it from his big-eared grandfather, Hap Aspergres. Hap, who lives in self-imposed squalor in an ancient silver housetrailer in Acorn County, decades ago forsook the accumulation of money for the accumulation of useless knowledge.

  Joon made the mistake of asking Hap about Daylight Savings Time when he was nine or ten, after his father and mother had argued for several hours one April night about whether they were supposed to move the hour hand on the kitchen clock ahead an hour, or back an hour. Joon’s father said it should be moved back. His mother insisted ahead.

  Hap shook his head sadly. “Your mother’s right. In the spring you move the hour hand ahead one hour, so that when it’s nine o’clock at night and still light out, it’s because it’s really only eight o’clock.”

  “I think I understand that,” said Joon.

  “Just remember, in spring you spring forward and in the fall you fall back.” Hap went on to tell him more about Daylight Savings Time than he or anyone needed to know. “It’s said Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea, way back in the 1780s, as a way to save on candle wax. Idea didn’t get very far. Wasn’t until World War I, when every last drop of oil and spurt of electricity was needed for the war machine, that politicians took the idea seriously. Congress adopted it in 1917, the year I was born. Farmers hated it, though, and after the war Daylight Savings Time was repealed. Came back during World War II and stayed. It’s all a bunch of nonsense as far as I’m concerned. Like God doesn’t know what he’s doing. But it’s to be expected, Joonbug. Mankind jiggles with everything the Almighty took sixteen billion years to perfect.”

  Joon gets off the bus and runs up the Cassowary’s driveway. In the employee locker room he puts on his overalls and rubber boots. He goes to Layer House D, to being shoveling.

  Man—Calvin Cassowary in particular—has jiggled with time inside the layer houses, too. In the layer houses it is high noon sixteen hours a day. That’s how many hours a day the ceiling lights are kept on—sixteen hours on, eight hours off—so the Leghorns lay extra eggs. Joon’s father explained it to him on his first day there. It was, Joon thought, an impressive explanation for a man who couldn’t figure out when to spring forward or fall back.

  “In order to get 250 eggs a year out of these ladies,” his father said as they walked the length of a layer house, “you got to keep their ovaries pumping. Keeping the layer houses lit sixteen hours rain or shine does just that. It ain’t easy on their assholes, but a hen’s got to pay for her keep like anybody else.”

  Joon shovels manure for two hours. He knows it’s getting dark outside. But inside the layer house it’s high noon and the hens are squirting eggs. Those eggs are rolling forward across the wire floors of their cages to a conveyor belt that takes them right to the shipping room.

  At a quarter to six Joon hurries to the locker room and slips out of his boots and overalls and washes. He spritzes himself with Old Spice, gathers up his books and gym bag, and goes outside. It is already dark. He sits on the bench by the door and waits. Sometimes his father comes out right away. Sometimes it’s not for a half hour.

  From the bench Joon can see the light on in the Cassowary kitchen, see Calvin Cassowary’s wife, Donna, fixing supper. She has an electric mixer in one hand and a Kleenex in the other. His father has told him that she sneezes a lot. Maybe so, Joon thinks, but she is nothing to sneeze at. He feels himself getting an erection and forces his eyes away from the kitchen window. He sees the dim light inside the little chicken coop where the scraggly little flock is kept. He knows that the Cassowarys are pinching every penny these days. Knows the coop should be dark. Knows that the hens in there are allowed to lay when they feel like it. He can make points with the Cassowarys, and his father, he thinks, if he turns that light out. “By the way,” he could tell Mr. Cassowary the next time he sees him, “I turned off the light in the little coop for you the other day.”

  “Thanks,” Mr. Cassowary will say.

  So Joon puts down his books and duffel bag and walks across the lawn to the chicken coop. He looks in the dirty window. The light is not coming from the light bulb in the ceiling, but from a flashlight. He presses his face against the glass and squints. He sees the Cassowary’s daughter, Rhea, sitting on the bottom perch, surrounded by chickens. The beam of the flashlight is bouncing off an open book cradled in her lap.

  In the pink glow of the flashlight’s red cap, he can see the feathers covering her face. She looks like a giant owl sitting there, deep-set eyes blinking, stiff neck turning from side to side. When he squints he can see that her lips are moving, just slightly. Whoa! Look at that! She is reading to her chickens! He runs back to the bench. In a few minutes the light in the chicken coop goes out and the door bumps open. He sees Rhea running across the dark lawn to the house. He sees the blinds in the breakfast nook go down.

  The next afternoon Joon can’t wait for the sun to go down. He washes and rushes outside to see if there’s a light in the chicken coop. There is a light. He goes to the window and watches Rhea read to her chickens. Very weird, he thinks. It’s the kind of thing he might do himself, he thinks, if he were covered with feathers.

  All weekend Joon thinks about Rhea reading to her chickens, especially when he is raking the wet leaves that are ankle-deep all over the backyard.

  Over the years his father has told him quite a bit about the girl and her chickens: about the Leghorn she rescued from the manure pit; about the name she gave the fortunate hen, Miss Lucky Pants; about how she let her set and have a brood of chicks; about how her father had a fit; about how the rooster she named Blackbutt was killed by a coyote.

  His father talked about darker things, too: about Rhea’s mother dying; about Rhea one night trying to free an entire layer house of hens; about the time he came out of layer house B and saw Mr. Cassowary yanking fistfuls of feathers from Rhea’s naked chest.

  On Monday Joon doesn’t work until six as usual. He stops at a quarter after five and, after giving himself an extra spritz of Old Spice, sneaks to the chicken coop. He doesn’t go to the window. He goes to the door. He opens it gently, not to sneak in, but so he doesn’t startle Rhea or the chickens. “I’m Joon Faldstool,” he says. “Jimmy Faldstool Jr.”

  Rhea swings the flashlight beam into his eyes. “Tired of watching through the window?”

  Joon shuffles across the floor and kneels by the perches. Rhea is sitting on the first perch, slightly above him. The chickens, huddled on the ascending perches like people at a football game, cluck and bruck a little, but quickly accept him. “I know about your feathers,” he says.

  “I know about your ears,” she says.

  Joon wishes that his head would shrivel up and drop inside his shirt collar. “They’re gigundo, aren’t they?”

  “Not as gigundo as my father said.”

  Joon changes the subject. “Do the chickens understand what you’re reading?”

  The feathers around Rhea’s eyes stick out a bit, as if she’s snickering underneath. “Duh? They’re chickens!” Her feathers smooth and her eyes soften. “But I think they like hearing my voice. I know I like hearing it. That’s why I read to them, I guess. To hear my own voice.”

  “Like the sound of your own voice, do you?”

  “Not especially. But I don’t get to hear it much in the house. Nobody talks to me unless they’re yelling. Which means I’m always yelling, too. So it’s nice to hear myself talking calmly once in a while.”

  Joon wants to know all about her feathers—how she got them, what it’s like to have them, how she goes to the bathroom, the whole shebang—but he decides it’ll be smarter to talk about something else. “What’s the book about?”

  Rhea picks up a long ta
il feather from the floor and uses it as a bookmark. “It’s a poem. But it’s pretty neat. There’s this one kind of bird, called a Hoopoe or something, that wants to take a bunch of other birds to see the king of birds, the Simorgh or something. They all have an excuse why they can’t go. But the Hoopoe tells each of them a story and they feel guilty and go along. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

  Joon finds it bizarre that a girl covered with feathers is reading a story about birds to a coop full of chickens. He also finds it sweet and kind and mystical and incredibly feminine. “Your parents don’t mind you reading to them?”

  Rhea ignores the question. “This psychiatrist I used to see sent me the book. He thinks it’ll help me adjust to having feathers.”

  “You think it will?”

  Rhea eases herself off the perch and goes to the window. She cups her hand around her eyes and peers into the kitchen. Her stepmother has a meat fork in one hand and a Kleenex in the other. “He was really strange. Always wearing these funny hats. But he didn’t think my feathers were my problem. He thought they were everybody else’s problem. Like your gigundo ears aren’t your problem. But the problem of the people who think you look goofy. You know?”

  “So you don’t go to the funny hat doctor anymore?”

  “My father wants my feathers to be my problem. I better go in.”

  Joon follows her outside. She’s wearing a baggy coat, so he can’t tell for sure, but she doesn’t appear to have poofy butt feathers like real chickens do. “Can I listen to you read tomorrow?”

  “No way,” Rhea says. “We’d get caught and then I couldn’t come out here anymore. I don’t even want you looking through the window. You saw me and heard me talk. You know I don’t cluck or tweet or have a beak. And if you’re wondering, I don’t lay eggs.”

  They teeter on the chicken coop step trying not to look at each other. It’s getting colder and there’s a drizzle. “I suppose I’ll see you around,” Joon finally says.

  Rhea runs to the house.

  As Joon walks back to the bench there is a sudden halo of light around his head. Rhea must be shining her flashlight at him. His huge Aspergres ears must be glowing red.