The Lost Landscape

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Though he might have been prowling out in the orchard, soon there came Mr. Rooster running on his long scaly legs. Mr. Rooster could hear the Chick-chick-chick! call from a considerable distance. He pushed through the throng of clucking chickens knocking the silly hens aside and gobbled up as much seed as he could from the ground. Sometimes then pausing, looking up with a squint in his yellow eyes, and made a decision—(who knows why?)—to rush at the little girl and jab her bare knee with his beak.

  So quickly this assault came, when it came, the little girl never had time to draw back and escape.

  Ohhh! Why was Mr. Rooster so mean!

  The little girl was always astonished, the rooster was so mean.

  The rooster’s beak was so swift, so sharp and so mean.

  Worse yet, the rooster sometimes chased the little girl, trying to peck her legs. If the Grandmother saw, she shooed the rooster away by flapping her apron at him and cursing him in Hungarian. If the Grandfather saw, he gave the rooster a kick hard enough to lift the indignant bird into the air, squawking and kicking.

  It was one of the mysteries of the little girl’s life, why when the other chickens seemed to like her so much, and her pet chicken adored her, Mr. Rooster continued to be so mean. It did not make sense to the little girl that Mr. Rooster devoured the seed she gave him, then turned on her as if he hated her. Shouldn’t Mr. Rooster be grateful?

  The Mother kissed and cuddled her and said, Oh!—that’s just the way roosters are, sweetie!

  Plaintively the little girl asked the Grandmother why did the rooster peck her and make her bleed and the Grandmother did not cuddle her but said, with an air of impatience, in her broken, guttural English, Because he is a rooster. You should not always be surprised, how roosters are.

  THE LITTLE GIRL WANDERED the farm. The little girl was forbidden to step off the property.

  There was the big barn, and there was the silo, and there was the chicken coop, and there were the storage sheds, and there was the barnyard, and there was the backyard, and there were the fields planted in potatoes and corn, and there was the orchard and beyond the orchard a quarter-mile lane back to the Weidenbachs’ farm where there were big nasty dogs that barked and bit and the little girl did not dare to go. In these places chickens wandered, and also Mr. Rooster, in their ceaseless scratching-and-pecking for food, though it was rare to see a chicken in one of the farther fields or in the lane. Happy Chicken only accompanied the little girl if she called him to these places, or carried him snug and firm in her arms.

  The little girl placed me on the lowermost limb of the lilac tree by the back door of the house, so that I could “roost.” The little girl urged me to try to “fly—like a bird.” But if the little girl nudged me, and I lost my balance on the tree limb, my wings flapped uselessly, and I fell to the ground and did not always land on my feet.

  At such a time I picked myself up and tottered away clucking loudly, complaining like any disgruntled hen, and the little girl hurried after me saying how sorry she was, and promised not to do it again.

  Happy Chicken! Don’t be mad at me, I love you.

  (IT WAS TAKEN FOR granted, it was never contested or wondered-at, that our wings were useless. We could “flap” our wings and “fly” for a few feet—even Mr. Rooster could not fly farther than a few yards; though there were wild turkeys, fatter and heavier than Rhode Island Reds, who could manage to “fly” into the higher limbs of a tree, and there “roost.”)

  NOT JUST THE CHICKEN coop and much of the barnyard but the grassy lawn behind the house—(“lawn” was a name given to the patch of rough, short-cropped crabgrass that extended from the barnyard and the driveway to the pear orchard)—was mottled with chicken droppings. Runny black-and-white glistening smudges that gradually hardened into little stones and lost their sharp smell.

  You would not want to run barefoot in the backyard, in the scrubby grass.

  And there was the ugly tree stump along the side of the barn, stained with something dark.

  And surrounding the stained block, chicken feathers. Sticky-stained feathers in dark clotted clumps.

  No chickens scratched and pecked in the dirt here. Even Mr. Rooster kept his distance. And the little girl.

  GRANDMA WAS THE ONE, you know. The one who killed the chickens. No! I did not know.

  Of course you must have known, Joyce. You must have seen—many times. . . .

  No. I didn’t know. I never saw.

  But . . .

  I never saw.

  In later years she would recall little of her Hungarian grandparents. Her mother’s stepparents. For few snapshots remained of those years. She did know that the Grandfather and the Grandmother were something that was called Hungarian. They’d come on a “big boat” from a faraway place called Hungary years before the little girl was born and so this was not of much interest to the little girl since it had happened long ago. The grandparents seemed to the little girl to be very old. The big-breasted big-hipped Grandmother had never cut her hair that was silvery-gray-streaked and fell past her waist if she let it down from the tight-braided bun. The Grandmother had been eighteen when she’d come to the United States on a “boat” and at age eighteen it had seemed to her too late for her to learn English, as the Grandfather had learned English well enough to speak haltingly and to run his finger beneath printed words in a newspaper or magazine. The Grandfather was a tall big-bellied man with scratchy whiskers who liked to laugh as if much were a joke to him. He had rough calloused fingers that caught in the little girl’s curly hair when he was just teasing.

  Worse yet was tickling. When the Grandfather’s breath smelled harsh and fiery like gasoline from the cider he drank out of a jug. But the Mother insisted Grandpa loves you, if you cry you will make Grandpa feel bad.

  The farm was the Grandfather’s property. Of farms on Transit Road it was one of the smallest. Much of the acreage was a pear orchard. Pears were the primary crop of the farm, and eggs were second. The little girl and her parents lived on the Grandfather’s property upstairs in the farmhouse. The little girl understood that the Father was not so happy living there, for the Father had been born in Lockport and preferred the city to the country, absolutely. The Father had tried his hand at farming and “hated” it. The little girl often overheard her parents speak of wanting to move away, to live in Lockport, where the Father’s mother who was the little girl’s Other Grandmother lived. Except years would pass, all the years of their lives would pass as in a dream, and somehow—they did not ever move away.

  There was something strange about the Grandfather and the Grandmother but the little girl could not guess what it was. Later she would learn that the Grandfather and the Grandmother were not the Mother’s actual parents but her stepparents and it was worrisome to the little girl, that in some way steps were involved. Like the long frightening stepladder that only Daddy could climb to pick pears, apples, and cherries from the highest limbs of the trees.

  The little girl noticed that, when her parents were speaking together, or any adults were speaking together, if she came near they might cease speaking suddenly. They would smile at her, they would say her name, but they would not reveal what they had been saying.

  The little girl ran away to hide, sometimes. When the adults were speaking sharply to one another. When the Grandfather cursed at the Grandmother in Hungarian, and the Grandmother wept angrily and hid her flushed face in her hands.

  The little girl had several times seen the Grandmother’s long coarse gray-black hair straggling down her back like something alive and livid. The little girl shut her eyes not wanting to see as she shrank from seeing the Grandmother’s large soft melon-breasts loose inside a camisole, that was wrong to see for there were things, the little girl realized, that it was wrong to see and you would be sorry if you saw.

  On a farm, there are many such things. Wild creatures that have crawled beneath a storage shed to die, or the bones of a chicken or a rabbit all but plucked clean by a rampaging owl i
n the night.

  “Joyce Carol! Come here.”

  With a nervous little laugh like a cough the Mother would shield the little girl’s eyes from something she should not see. Between the Mother’s eyebrows, faint lines of vexation and alarm.

  “Sweetie, I said come here. We’re going inside now.”

  SOMETIMES THE LITTLE GIRL was breathless and frightened but why, the little girl would not afterward recall.

  The little girl often took me with her to a special hiding place. Happy Chicken in the little girl’s arms, held tight.

  My quivering body. My quick-beating heart. Smooth warm beautiful chicken-feathers! The little girl held me and whispered to me where we were hiding in the old silo beside the barn, that wasn’t used so much any longer now that the farm didn’t have cows or pigs or horses. Smells were strong inside the silo, like something that has fermented, or rotted. The little girl’s mother warned her never to play in the silo, it was dangerous inside the silo. The smells can choke you. If corncobs fall onto you, you might suffocate. But the little girl brought me with her to hide in the silo for the little girl did not believe that anything bad could happen to her.

  Except the little girl began more frequently to observe that if a chicken weakened, or fell sick, or had lost feathers, other chickens turned on her. So quickly—who could understand why? Even Happy Chicken sometimes pecked at another, weaker chicken—the little girl scolded, and carried me away.

  No no Happy Chicken—that is bad.

  We did not know why we did this. Happy Chicken did not know.

  It was like laying eggs. Like releasing a hot little dollop of excrement from the anus, something that happened.

  Hearing a commotion in the barnyard, the little girl ran to see what was happening always anxious that the wounded hen might be me—but this did not happen.

  Though sometimes my beak was glistening with blood, and when the little girl called me, I did not seem to hear. Peck peck peck is the action of the beak, like a great wave that sweeps over you, and cannot be resisted.

  THE LITTLE GIRL GREW up, and grew away, but never forgot her Happy Chicken.

  The little girl forgot much else, but not Happy Chicken.

  The little girl became an adult woman, and at the sight of even just pictures of chickens she felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, sharp as pain. Especially red-feathered hens. And roosters! Her eyes mist over, her heart beats quick enough to hurt. So happy then. So long ago . . .

  Still, she would claim she’d never seen a chicken slaughtered. Never seen a single one of the Rhode Island Reds seized by the legs, struggling fiercely, more fiercely than any human being might struggle, thrown down onto the chopping block to be decapitated with a single swift blow of the bloodstained ax, wielded by a muscled arm.

  It was the Grandmother’s arm, usually. For the Grandmother was the chicken-slaughterer.

  Which the girl had not seen. The girl had not seen.

  The girl did recall a time when Grandfather was not so big-bellied and confident as he’d been. When the Grandfather began to cough frequently. And to cough up blood. The Grandfather no longer teased the little girl, or caused her to run from him crying as she’d run from Mr. Rooster. The little girl stared in horror as the Grandfather coughed, coughed, coughed doubled over in pain, scarcely able to breathe. The Grandfather would scrape phlegm up from his throat, with great effort, and spit the quivering greenish liquid into a rag. And the little girl would want to hide her face, this was so terrible to see.

  It was explained that the Grandfather was sick with something in his lungs. Steel-filings it was said, from the foundry in Tonawanda. The Grandfather had hated his factory-job in Tonawanda but the Grandfather had had to work there, to support the farm. For the farm would not support itself, and the people who lived on it.

  The Grandfather had liked to say in his laughing-bitter way that he and the other workers should be running the foundry and not the goddamn owners. Until the terrible coughing spells overcame him the Grandfather would say how the workers of the world would one day rise against the goddamn owners but that was not to happen, it would be revealed, in the Grandfather’s lifetime.

  SELLING EGGS, SITTING OUT by the roadside. Sitting, dreaming, waiting for a vehicle to slow to a stop. Customers.

  How much? One dozen?

  Oh that’s too much. I can get them cheaper just up the road.

  Always there were eggs for sale. And, at the end of the summer pears in bushel baskets. Sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes. Apples, cherries. Pumpkins.

  With a faint sensation of anxiety the little girl would recall sitting at the roadside at the front of the house behind a narrow bench. When sometimes the Mother had to go inside for a short while and the little girl was left alone at the roadside.

  Hoping that no one would stop. Hoping not to see a vehicle slow down and park on the shoulder of the highway.

  Some of the anxiety was over chickens, that made their blind-seeming way down the driveway, to the highway. Chickens oblivious of vehicles speeding by on the road, only a few yards from where they scratched and pecked in the dirt.

  Anxiously the little girl watched to see that no chickens drifted out onto the road. The little girl knew, though she wasn’t altogether certain how she knew, for she’d never seen, that from time to time chickens had been killed on the road.

  Sudden squawking and shrieking, and a flapping of wings. At first you rush to see what it is, and then you do not want to see what it is.

  One of the constant fears of the little girl’s life was that Happy Chicken might be hit on the highway for the little girl could not watch me all of the time.

  Each morning running outside breathless and eager to call to me—Happy! Happy Chicken!

  And I came running, out of the coop, or out of the barn, or out of a patch of grass beside the back door, hurrying on my scrawny chicken-legs to be stroked and petted.

  “Happy Chicken! I love you.”

  THE LAUGHTER WAS KINDLY, and yet cruel.

  Of course you ate chicken when you were a little girl, Joyce! You ate everything we ate.

  No. She didn’t think so.

  You’d have had to eat whatever was served. Whatever everybody else was eating. You wouldn’t have been allowed to not-eat anything on the table.

  No! This was not true.

  You hated fatty meat, and you hated things like gizzards, and we laughed at how you tried to hide these—beneath the rim of your plate!—as if, when the plate was removed from the table, the fatty little pieces of meat you’d left would not be discovered. But you certainly ate chicken white meat. Of course you did.

  No. That was—that was not true . . .

  Children ate what they were given in those days. Children ate, or went hungry. Your father would have spanked the daylights out of you if you’d tried to refuse chicken, or anything that your mother or grandmother prepared.

  But no. She did not believe this.

  It’s true—she does remember her Hungarian grandmother preparing noodles in the kitchen. Wide swaths of soft-floury ghost-white dough on the circular kitchen table that was covered in oilcloth, and over the oilcloth strips of waxed paper. She recalls the Grandmother, a heavyset woman with gray hair plaited and fastened tight against her head, always in an apron, and the white apron always soiled, wielding a long sharp-glittering knife, rapidly cutting dough into thin strips of noodle. And the Grandmother’s legs encased in thick flesh-colored cotton stockings even in hot weather. The surprise was, sometimes you could see a pleading girl’s face inside the soft flaccid Grandmother-stern face. And the little girl remembers something white-skinned, headless in a large pan simmering on the stove, the surface of the liquid bubbling with dollops of yellowish fat.

  You loved your grandmother’s chicken noodle soup! You don’t remember?

  She hides her eyes. She hides her face. She is sickened, that terrible smell of wet feathers, plucked-white chicken-flesh.

  Protesting, I had
nothing to do with that.

  Trying to recall in a sudden panic—what had happened to her pet chicken, she’d loved so?

  Our memories are what remain on a wall that has been washed down. Old billboards advertising Mail Pouch Tobacco, in shreds. The faintest letters remaining that even as you stare at them, fade. The Hungarian Grandfather who’d been so gruff, so loud, so confident and had so loved his little granddaughter he’d been unable to keep his calloused fingers out of her curls had died at the age of fifty-three, his lungs riddled with steel filings from the foundry in Tonawanda. The Hungarian Grandmother lived for many years afterward and never learned to speak English, still less to read English. The Grandmother died in a nursing home in Lockport to which the granddaughter was never once taken, nor was the granddaughter told the name of the nursing home or its specific location.

  Why was this? The Mother had wished to hide the little girl’s eyes. Even when she was no longer a little girl, yet the Mother wished to shield her from upset and worry.

  What happened to me? What happened to Happy Chicken?

  Oh, the little girl did not know!

  The little girl did not know. Just that one terrible day—Happy Chicken was not there.

  She mouths the words aloud: “Happy Chicken.”

  There is something about the very word happy that is unnerving. Happy happy happy happy.

  A terrible word. A terrifying word. Hap-py.

  Waking in the night, tangled in bedsheets, shivering in such fright you’d think she was about to misstep and fall into an abyss.

  Happy. Hap-py. We were so hap-py . . .

  In the cold terror of the night she counts her dead. Like a rosary counting her dead. The Grandfather who died first and after whom the door was opened, that Death might come through to seize them all. The Grandmother who died somewhere far away, though close by. The Mother who died of a stroke when she was in her mid-eighties, overnight. The Father who died over several years, also in his mid-eighties, in the new, twenty-first century shrinking, baffled and yet alert, in yearning wonderment.