A Home in the Country

by Sheelagh Mawe

  Just then I had the best idea I’d had in my whole life and it was my turn to go slitty-eyed. I said, ‘You don’t tell me where you get candy knittin’ nights I won’t finish that sock on purpose and that’s what you can expect from me.’

  That stopped her! Her mouth dropped open and Sally looked like she was going to start crying all over again.

  Cathy got hold of herself. ‘He gives it us,’ she said. ‘Him. The Old Man.’

  I looked at Sally and saw she was holding her hair back from her face with both hands so I could see it and nodding her head, saying, ‘Yeah. It’s the Old Man gives it us.’

  I didn’t believe either one of them and said so. ‘Him?’ I jeered. ‘He don’t even come in the house ’cept but to eat.’

  ‘He can if he wants,’ Cathy screeched. ‘He’s a grown-up, ain’t he? Grown-ups can do anythin’ they feel like and if he feels like comin’ in the house knittin’ nights that’s what he’s gonna do. That first time he come over me’n Sally was sayin’ our Hail Marys and we heard him callin’ out our names. We got up to look and he was standin’ at the bottom of the stairs in his stockin’ feet, a Milky Way bar in each hand.’

  All I could think to say back was, ‘Milky Way bars … ’ in a kind of moan, Milky Way bars, at that time, being my most favourite candy. Maybe Cathy was telling the truth then? If she’d been lying she’d have just said candy, right? I mean, like any old candy.

  Cathy’s eyes went all dreamy as if she was remembering how they tasted. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Milky Way bars. And he told us come on down get one. One at a time though on account of keepin’ a eye out for you all comin’ back. I went first on account of I’m the oldest and the biggest and he picked me up and hugged me and said he knowed me’n Sally was good girls even if Agnes din’t. Then he sat me on his knee and rocked me.’

  ‘He rocked you? In her rocking chair?’

  ‘I just told you! ’Course in her rockin’ chair. Ain’t no other I ever saw.’

  I was silent a long moment while pictures of what she had told me drifted through my head and then I asked, ‘So then what happened?’

  ‘Din’t nothin’ happen. When I got done eatin’ my candy bar he said it was Sally’s turn and give him some goodnight kisses and go get her.’

  Ugh! I remembered how I’d hated it when I was a little kid in England and told to kiss all the hairy, smelly old aunts and uncles who came to tea.

  ‘Poor you,’ I said. ‘I hate kissing grown-ups.’

  Cathy nodded. ‘Me, too!’ She even shuddered. She said, ‘He stinks! And his mouth’s awful big and awful wet and he sticks his tongue inside our mouths between our teeth and don’t never want to quit. But he says “No kisses, no candy bars next time, so …”’ she shrugged, ‘we go ahead and let him kiss us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’d run away and hide.’

  ‘Like heck you would. I know darn well you like Milky Way bars bad as us.’

  She was right. I did. And I wondered how to get him to give me one without kissing him.

  ‘Next Saturday,’ I began, ‘when he’s home, I’ll ask him for one and when he asks for a kiss I’ll tell him I got to go because – on account of – I hear Agnes calling my name.’

  ‘You know well as I do he don’t talk to none of us when she’s around,’ Cathy said, using her, how-come-I-have-to-explain-everything tone of voice. ‘That’s why we need for you to finish that sock and go knittin’ with her. ’Sides, soon’s he gets done deliverin’ the Saturday chickens, he’ll pass out drunk till Monday mornin’ like always, so how’re you gonna ask, huh?’

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know but I was certain I’d think of something.

  SEVEN

  Even with a forty-year interval between our ‘now’ and our ‘then’, James still paled visibly when we got around to the Saturday morning routine at the Slaters’. ‘God, how I always dreaded it,’ he groaned.

  ‘Guts and feathers day,’ was how Danny used to describe it.

  ‘More like, stink and gag day,’ Cathy would argue.

  They were both right. Saturday was the day we killed and dressed the chickens the Old Man took orders for at his workplace during the week. Regardless of the number ordered – anywhere from ten to fifteen – we had to have them all ready and packed up in time for him to catch the noon bus to town and make his deliveries, trailing with him the combined stench of wood smoke, blood, steaming piles of guts and wet feathers that clung to all of us.

  Next to Monday, wash day, Saturday was the day we kids dreaded most at the Slaters’. Saturdays meant the six of us working alongside the sweating, screaming, stinking Agnes the whole morning long and we were agreed that if there was one thing worse than getting beat up and jeered at yourself, it was standing by while she berated someone else. It made you feel ashamed you were too little and too afraid to stick up for the victim, while filling your already bursting heart with ever more hatred and contempt for her.

  We ate our cornflakes standing up Saturday mornings and left the dishes in the sink for later. Then, with fast-beating hearts and lowered eyes, we lined up and followed Agnes outside.

  ‘You boys get that incinerator goin’, get water heatin’,’ she’d begin. ‘Girls, get in the run, start catchin’.’ Shading her eyes with one hand, she’d begin pointing with the other, ‘I want that ’un … n’ that ’un … n’ that ’un….’

  It’s not easy keeping your eyes on just one chicken when you consider all chickens look alike. And forget about chickens being stupid. On the contrary, the minute we opened the gate to their run they knew exactly why we were there and in panicked frenzy, pooping as they ran, headed for a corner where they created, of themselves, a monstrous heap, the object of each being to be buried on the bottom. You could always count on yours being the first to achieve that goal.

  To catch your chicken you had to devise a way to separate it from the others, chase it into a different corner – never mind if you slipped and fell in the poop – and then throw yourself on top of it. There was no other way.

  Try to grab one on the run and all you got was a handful of feathers and Agnes screaming, ‘You miss one more time, girl, and I’ll see you in jail alongside that fool mother of yours that’s been locked up since the day you got born.’

  If you were Cathy, you heard about the colour of your hair, something Agnes could never forgive her. ‘Whatever loony give birth to you must’ve dyed your hair that goldie colour ’fore they took and locked her up for good and that’s where you’re going, girl, the booby hatch, you don’t catch that bird right quick.’

  Sometimes two of us got our chickens headed towards the same corner and, intent on our mission and unaware of the other, collided and knocked ourselves nearly senseless as we hurled ourselves upon our victims. That really got Agnes in a frenzy, especially if one of the two was Sally who ran around inside the pens with her eyes tight shut underneath her flopping hair.

  Poor little Sally. Not only was she still a baby, only just turned five, but she was also terrified – scared to death – of chickens. So scared she’d wake us all up at night, most particularly Friday nights, the sheets and her underpants soaked through, screaming about chickens coming at her with their beaks wide open and their claws in her eyes.

  ‘Beats us how you can be scared of a dumb-ass chicken when you got Agnes outside the fence hollerin’ about how she’s gonna hang you upside down by your feet on the clothes line alongside them dead chickens,’ was what the rest of us told her. Sally stayed scared anyway.

  Once you had your chicken firmly clasped under one arm you groped for its feet – those clawing, frantic feet – and carried it upside down to Agnes at the gate. She passed it along to Danny who, like a miniature executioner, stood at the chopping block, axe at the ready. Severing the head with one blow, he would hand the convulsing body to James.

  Because he was the tallest, it fell to James to hang the headless chickens by their feet to one of the clothes lines so their bloo
d would drain out. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds because although the chickens were headless, their bodies didn’t know it. Their legs kept trying to run, their wings kept flapping, and their blood, spewing from the neck stump at his eye level as he tried to secure them, blinded him.

  On one particularly frightening Saturday Agnes grabbed a caught chicken from Cathy and thrust it at James instead of Danny. ‘I’ve about had enough of your sissy ways, boy,’ she glowered, ‘always hangin’ back lettin’ the others do your share of the work.’

  Yanking the axe away from Danny, she shoved it into James’ free hand, lined him up at the chopping block and roared, ‘Kill it!’

  James took a big, deep breath and closed his eyes. Agnes went ballistic. ‘Open your eyes, boy!’ she hollered. ‘Jesus! No wonder you Limeys can’t win your goddamn war if’n you all run around with your eyes tight shut.’

  James opened his eyes, took another deep breath, raised both arms together, the crazed, flapping bird in one hand, the bloody axe in the other, brought them down together and … no one could believe it! The chicken’s head fell off, landing smack in the middle of the pile of heads already severed by Danny.

  There was a great buzzing from the flies come to gorge on the bloody heads and there was James, all surprised and amazed, turning to see if Agnes had actually seen what he had done while doubtless hoping she’d give him a smile or say something nice. Something like, ‘Well done!’ or, ‘Gee whiz!’

  Forget it. Somehow or other he had done something wrong and Agnes was even madder than before. She grabbed the convulsing chicken away from him, hit him on the side of the head with it – both sides, actually – and blood splattered everywhere.

  ‘I ain’t about to have no sissy Limey boy smirkin’ at me out the sides o’ his eyes,’ she roared. ‘From now on you leave the killin’ to Danny, him being a real boy, and you get in the pens with the girls where you belong.’

  Poor James. No one could look at him. We knew he felt ashamed and scared and desperate all at the same time and that, more than anything, he yearned for revenge. Revenge of the kind we dreamed up on the rare occasions Agnes neglected to keep us separated.

  In those fantasies, Agnes, already starved and desperate with thirst, was sent to catch every chicken in the run. When she had caught every last one, we let them all out and made her start again. When she caught them all a second time, we smeared her with blood, draped her in guts and hung her by her feet on the clothes line. Not just for an hour or a day, but until she died. We felt pretty confident that would shut her up. But good….

  Once the blood stopped dripping out of the chickens the boys would take them down and bring them over to the table where we girls were waiting to pluck them.

  To pluck a chicken properly you have to first loosen its feathers by dousing the entire bird in the bucket of water the boys had set to heat earlier.

  When Agnes’ back was turned, Cathy would hiss dousing instructions to Sally and me since our only skill in that direction seemed to centre on severely scalding our own hands and feet.

  ‘You got to hold on tight to their feet,’ Cathy would hiss, ‘and put ’em in head first else how you gonna get the wings in, huh? Jesus! Now pull it out! Quick! They stay in too long they start cookin’!’

  No sooner had we done exactly what she said than she was hissing the reverse. ‘You’re taking ’em out too soon! You take ’em out too soon, the feathers don’t come out good. And mind you get all them little bitty pin feathers too, hear, else you’ll have Agnes comin’ at you with the hatchet!’

  After the plucking, Agnes cut the chickens’ backsides open and pulled out their steaming innards. ‘Guttin’,’ she called it. Lastly she cut off their feet and set them aside for our nightly soup.

  It was Cathy’s job to pull the gizzards, hearts and livers – giblets, Agnes called them – out of the steaming piles of guts, rinse them, and put a set back in each bird.

  On this particular Saturday, Agnes was in the act of cutting open yet another chicken when her head went down, her eyes closed and she was holding on to the edge of the plucking table with both hands.

  Jesus, our eyes telegraphed one another, she’s havin’ another one of them dizzy spells! Dizzy spells being the latest thing Cathy had warned us about. One more item on the growing list of things Agnes didn’t used to have or do that were making her a little bit worse every day.

  This one went on longer than usual, though, and we were beginning to fidget from staying still so long – we always stood motionless while Agnes ‘had her a spell’ – when she took a deep breath, straightened up and told Cathy to take over. ‘I ain’t feelin’ right,’ she gasped. ‘I need to go on up the house, set a spell.’

  We all knew better than to look at her or say anything, and we didn’t. Not until we heard the back screen door slam at which time we all started talking at once.

  ‘Door slammin’ don’t mean for sure she’s inside!’ Cathy barked. ‘She coulda done it to fool us. Be hidin’… waitin’ with the strap….’

  We stopped our chatter instantly but we looked at each other sideways, all thinking the same thing: There she goes bossing again. Damn, but she’s worse even than Agnes.

  Striding to where Agnes had stood at the table, Cathy took up an Agnes-like stance and barked her first order to the boys: They was to quit with the killing. ‘We got enough,’ she said, finished with her counting. ‘Need you to go build up that fire in the incinerator for the guts and feathers.’

  The boys pulled taunting, ugly faces at her but, while taking their time about it, did as she told them. Turning to Sally, Cathy ordered her, on a high note of exasperation, to quit scratching the bug bites on her arms.

  ‘You can’t see all you’re doin’ is smear blood every which way?’ she asked. ‘An’ what’s that gonna do but make more bugs come’n bite you.’

  Sally’s bottom lip pushed out – I could see it through the curtain of hair hanging over her face – and she kept right on scratching.

  Cathy exploded. ‘I swear old Agnes is right!’ she raged. ‘Ain’t nothin’ gone right around here since Annie and Billy got took away and we got you bunch of sorry cry-babies instead.’ She glared at us and we glared right back.

  ‘I wish Annie was here right now!’ she raged on. ‘She could gut and pluck a chicken faster even than Agnes. The way you’re goin’ at it we ain’t never gonna get these birds done by noon.’

  Loud enough for Cathy to hear, I said to Sally, ‘There she goes again with her Annie and Billy stories and you know she makes ’em up. I bet there never even was an Annie and a Billy. I bet she made them up, too. To scare us.’

  Cathy heard me just as I knew she would. ‘I did not!’ she howled, her eyes watering with anger. ‘Annie and Billy was the first foster kids Agnes ever took in and they was big. Annie was only just turned eleven but she already had grown-up titties. And Billy wasn’t but ten and near as tall as the Old Man. They could do everythin’ better’n us little kids.’

  I wondered why Agnes sent them away if they were so big and so wonderful. ‘Did their Mummy and Daddy come and take them away?’ I asked.

  Pursing her lips, Cathy said, ‘No, their Mum-my and Dad-dy didn’t come and take them away. Old crazy Bennings did.’

  ‘Well … what’d she do that for if Agnes liked them so much?’

  Cathy didn’t know. ‘I’m still tryin’ to figure that one out,’ she complained. ‘All I know is Agnes and her sister Martha – she’s the one I told you used to come visit back then – was fightin’ real bad one time and Aunt Martha told Agnes she needed to get rid of all the girls on account of what if he got after them like he done Annie and they all ended up gettin’ babies.’

  What? Annie got a baby? ‘You mean a real one?’ I gasped. ‘An alive one?’

  ‘That’s somethin’ else I still ain’t figured on account of I never saw Annie with no baby,’ Cathy said. ‘All I know is Agnes told Aunt Martha the girls was stayin’ put bein’ kids and farmin’ was
the only way she knew to make a buck and how was she supposed to get done fixin’ the place over and sellin’ for a profit without them to help out?

  ‘Aunt Martha said, “That’s easy. Just take in boys.”’

  ‘“They won’t let me,” Agnes replied. “I already tried. I gotta take what they send. Anybody’s leavin,” she finished up, “it’s him.”’

  ‘Aunt Martha said, “How you fixin’ to work that one out, huh? You fixin’ on puttin’ a bullet in him?”’

  A bullet? At those words I stopped plucking and Sally stopped scratching. Together, we asked, ‘Who? Who was she fixin’ to put a bullet in?’

  Cathy shrugged. ‘Had to have been the Old Man she was talkin’ about on account of she told Aunt Martha he was fixin’ up the old cabin back in the woods and wouldn’t be comin’ in the house no more ’cept but to eat. Turns out that’s what he done.

  ‘Aunt Martha said if Agnes believed that and that’s how it was gonna be, count on never seein’ her out here no more and she up and left and never has come back.’

  Sally started scratching again. ‘Wisht I could find me a baby so Bennings’d come get me,’ she sighed.

  Even as she spoke those words, I remembered asking my mother once where people got babies from and her saying they found them under gooseberry bushes. I passed the information on.

  Sally stopped her scratching again and pushed her hair out of her face and I could see she was laughing. ‘Heck,’ she said, ‘if that’s all you gotta do, let’s go find one right now! What they look like, them kind of bushes?’

  I couldn’t remember! I knew they had prickles on them but I couldn’t remember anything else because it had been so long since I’d seen one. ‘Maybe they don’t grow in America?’ I ventured.

  ‘They got to, else how come Annie found her one?’ Cathy reasoned. ‘Bet what happens is Agnes pulls ’em up whenever she finds ’em on account of her hatin’ babies like she does. That’s how come Annie got took away and that’s how come she hates the both of you. ’Cause you’re babies.’