by Mary Logue
She went back out into the sun and looked at Lupita. The chicken had stopped whirling but was still walking funny. Tilted to one side.
It reminded Jilly of how she felt when she had the flu last winter. Like her head was on crooked. Maybe the chickens were sick. The two by the door hadn’t moved at all. They should be out pecking at the ground.
What was the matter with them? The chickens were mainly her responsibility. That was what Dad told her when they came and they were only little fluff balls. She had begged him to let her have chickens and he had made her promise that she would take care of them. That meant she had to feed and water and gather their eggs every day. Sometimes when she was reaching under the hens to get the eggs, they pecked her, but it didn’t really hurt. She had learned a lot about chickens, but she had never seen them behave like this before.
Lupita went head-down into the dirt. Now look at what had happened. Her chickens were falling over.
Maybe she’d better tell someone, Jilly thought.
Her mother was out in the backyard, hanging up the sheets.
“Mom,” she hollered.
Her mother looked over and waved.
“Mom, the chickens are acting funny.”
Her mother didn’t seem to hear her. Maybe she was too far away. Maybe it wasn’t important.
Jilly looked back at the chickens. Lupita rolled onto her back and started to shake. Jilly had never seen a chicken do anything like that before. It reminded her of Henny Penny, the little chicken who thought the sky was falling. Maybe Lupita was scared and that was why she was shaking.
“Mom!” Jilly heard her voice rise up high in the sky, a scream.
Her mother’s head lifted at the sound. She dropped the sheet she was stretching out on the line and came running.
Rich had driven to the Daniels farm a few times before. They lived up the bluff from Fort St. Antoine, on the rolling farmland that surrounded the lake. As he approached the farm today, he felt the sky open above him. He sometimes drove up near their farm just to watch the weather. It was so much easier to see when a storm was coming out of the basin of the bluffs.
Rich had bought eggs from the Danielses, but he didn’t know them very well. Having moved to the area about ten years ago, they were relative newcomers. Meg played with their children, so Claire knew them better.
Rich had been surprised when Celia Daniels had phoned him this morning—surprised that she even knew who he was. As he drove up the bluff, he remembered her call.
She had been terribly upset, her voice high and shrill. “Our chickens are dying. The vet is out on call. I didn’t know who else to try. Because of your pheasants, I thought you might know something.”
He wasn’t sure he could do anything, but at a time like this it often helped to have someone else there. She had mentioned that her husband had gone to the Fleet Farm in Menomonie and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. Rich had a sack of clothes sitting next to him on the seat. He would change his before he went back home. If the poultry at the Daniels farm were carrying anything, he didn’t want to bring it back home to his pheasant flock.
Rich pulled into the long driveway that curved around the farmhouse and headed toward the barn. He stayed on it until he saw the family gathered at the other side of an outbuilding. He stopped the car and got out. A lanky boy of about ten ran out to greet him.
“Four have died so far,” the boy announced.
“Are you Thomas?” Rich asked, hoping he had remembered correctly.
“Yeah.” The boy pointed at the little girl standing next to her mother. “That’s Jilly. She’s the one who found the chickens. They’re kinda hers. Dad bought them for her. She takes care of them.”
On the drive up, Rich had been searching his mind for any disease that could come on this fast and be this fatal. The one that occurred to him was Newcastle disease. He knew that the Danielses were into back-to-the-land living, eschewing pesticides and chemical fertilizers; he wondered if they believed in inoculating their animals. If they didn’t, that might be the problem.
As he walked up to Celia Daniels, he could see that she and her daughter had been crying. The little girl’s face was streaked with dirt and tears. She was holding an egg in each hand. Her head was leaning against her mother’s thigh.
“I don’t know what to do about them,” Celia Daniels told him. “I don’t know what’s wrong. They’re dying.”
Looking over the flock, Rich saw that they were all Barred Rock chickens, handsome chickens with brown and white stripes and small combs. His uncle used to have a flock of them.
As he recalled, Barred Rocks did well in the cold weather of the upper Midwest. His uncle kept them because they were a good dual-purpose chicken for a small farm. They laid nice brown eggs and then when their productive time was over, they could be dressed into good broilers, too.
Rich bent down and looked at the chicken that was flopped on the ground in front of him. No spittle at the beak, no nasal discharge. He touched the small bird, not so long dead that warmth didn’t hang in its feathers, and wondered what had happened in its body that it had failed.
“How long has this been going on? Did you notice anything wrong with them last night?” he asked.
Celia reached down and tipped up Jilly’s face. “How did the chickens seem last night?”
“Normal.”
“What does that mean?” Rich asked.
The little girl looked up at him. “I found a bunch of eggs. They were going to sleep. None of them were dancing or anything. Just normal.”
“How many eggs did you find today?”
“Only seven.”
“What’s usual for them?”
“More like over twenty.”
“Are the chickens coughing or sneezing?” he asked.
Jilly thought before she answered. “No. Just spinning around and then lying down and dying.”
Rich stood back up. He had some questions for Celia. “Have you vaccinated your birds?”
She stared at him, then reluctantly shook her head.
“Have they been in contact with any other poultry? Did you introduce any new birds to the flock recently?”
“No.”
“Has anyone who raises chickens come and had contact with your birds?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Let me look at their food and water.”
Jilly took him over to the feeder that was out in the yard. He bent down and examined the mash that was in it. He could see some hard, granular shapes. Didn’t look like any feed he had ever used. “What is this?” He held up a piece for Jilly and her mother to see.
“I’ve never noticed that before,” Mrs. Daniels told him.
“Jilly, bring me a cup of your feed.”
The child dutifully ran and got him some feed in a coffee can. No dark, granular shapes were in it.
“It looks like someone might have put something in your chicken feed.”
Celia Daniels looked at him with fear in her dark brown eyes. “Will all the chickens die?”
“I can’t tell you that. I hope not. Let’s get a paper bag for what’s in here and I’ll take it with me. Then wash out the feeder and put new feed in it.”
Thomas ran into the house, happy to help.
His mother yelled at him as he went, “Grab a couple of plastic garbage bags, too.”
Rich looked at her and she answered his question without its being asked. “For the chickens. I suppose we should preserve them.”
“I’ll take them with me, too.”
Thomas came back with a brown paper bag on his head. Jilly laughed. Rich found it a pleasant sound. They dumped the contaminated feed into the bag and he rolled the top up so it wouldn’t spill over in his car.
Then he reached down to pick up the closest of the dead chickens. First he was surprised by the depth of the bird’s feathers. His hands sank in until he found the small body hiding under all that down. Then he wondered at the lightness of the
bird. Fluffier than the pheasants he was accustomed to. And lighter still because it was so quiet. No struggling against him as he lifted it. He wondered if the soul of a chicken were a measurable weight.
After he had filled the bag with the four chickens, he looked at Celia.
She shrugged her shoulders as if to say, What can we do?
He answered her gesture. “You’ll just have to wait and see on the others. I’ll bring this feed in to be tested, and if there’s an antidote, someone will bring it out.”
“What do you think was put in the feed?” She looked at him with swollen eyes. “Why would anyone do this to us?”
“I don’t know. I’d hate to try to guess. Someone from the sheriff’s office will contact you about this.”
Jilly, who had been standing quietly next to her mother, suddenly held up something for him to see. “Lookit what I found.”
Rich looked down and saw a small white bone gleaming in her hand. “Where did you find that?”
“In the chicken coop. In with the eggs.”
Rich took the bone and studied it. He remembered what Claire had said about the culprit leaving a memento. “I think I need to make a call from your house.”
“A story about chickens dying?” Sarah Briding asked him with disappointment and disbelief deep in her voice. Harold knew she had not graduated from journalism school in order to write about chickens. But it was the news of the day. And they needed it quickly, as the paper was about to go to bed.
“Go up to the sheriff’s department and talk to the deputy on the case. I think it’s Watkins. Dig. There might be more to this than you think.” He would see what she found. As he watched her leave the press office, he noted that all of her was in slight disrepair: her handbag dangling from her drooping shoulder, her blond hair pulling out of a loose ponytail, and the hem of her light summer dress falling down in back.
This was a bad business. Sitting at his desk, Harold Peabody worked his forehead with his fingers. He had made a list and he didn’t like the looks of it at all. His role as editor was not to scare the public, but rather to give them the news, warn them if necessary. So he wouldn’t connect it all together for his readership. At least, not yet.
Chickens twirling and dying. Pesticide in their feed. This was the second incident since the break-in at the Farmer’s Cooperative. The destruction of the garden in front of the sheriff’s department, he had decided, could go on the third page. This piece he would put on the front page, but below the fold.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, he saw it was after five. Agnes knew that he was often late for dinner on weekdays. She was in the habit of cooking something that could be held indefinitely in a warm oven or a cold refrigerator. In winter it would be some mishmash of noodles and ground beef and cream of mushroom soup. Summers she often made a cold salad of macaroni noodles, canned shrimp, and peas. Suited him fine.
Tomorrow was the Fourth of July. Middle of the summer. The air conditioner in the back window droned on. Nearly ninety out and very soupy. For the holiday, he planned on grilling a chicken; Agnes would make her potato salad and strawberry shortcake. When it started to get dark, they would drive to the river and watch the fireworks.
Harold heard the door to the front office open. He thought of getting up and talking to whoever had entered, but he wanted to finish this last piece before interrupting his work. When the door opened and closed again, he figured his visitor had come in to buy a paper.
A pile of papers was always left on the counter, and a box sat next to them for quarters. The honor system worked pretty well in these parts. Once or twice they had even come out ahead on the money. Maybe he wasn’t charging enough for his paper—although circulation was not where the money came from; the money was all in advertising. With two more businesses closing on Main Street, he’d be losing some other reliable clients soon.
Sighing a deep sigh, Harold pushed himself out of his chair. He needed to get up and walk around from time to time. Otherwise his legs bothered him. It was time to lock the front door. He walked out to the front desk and turned the dead bolt.
He waved at Harriette Pinkerton as she passed on the street. She’d be a pretty woman if she didn’t pull her hair back so tight and if she put on a little lipstick. Women walked around these days looking more informal than his mother would have ever allowed herself to be seen out of the bedroom: skimpy T-shirts, slippers on their feet, and their bra straps showing on purpose. But he was certainly glad that he didn’t have to wear a suit to work every day. Or a hat for that matter.
When he turned to walk back to his desk, he saw an envelope sitting on the counter with his name on it. mr. harold peabody, it was labeled, then underneath, put in the paper, please. Assuming it was a letter to the editor, he wondered who was ranting about what this week.
Curious, he opened the envelope and pulled out a single piece of paper. Not much writing on it. He peered down through the bottom half of his glasses. At the top of the paper was written a series of numbers:
7, 7, 10, 52.
Offhand, he couldn’t make them mean anything. Then he read the body of the note:
The killer has gone free for far too long. The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. The murdered are crying out for revenge. I have listened to them for half a century.
It is enough.
Wrath of God
Wrath of God. Harold read it again and felt the seriousness of the situation sinking into him. The bad business had just gotten worse. Half a century ago—that was when the Schuler murders took place. Somehow what was happening with the pesticides was connected with them. He saw that the last three numbers at the top of the note were the date of the massacre. The first number, seven, was how many people had died that day.
His hand holding the letter shook. He needed to sit down. But first he needed to call the police. He wondered if they would let him put the letter in the paper. He knew he had to do that. His motto in life had always been: The truth must be told. Now he knew that someone else felt the same way.
July 7, 1952
Bertha Schuler didn’t think much about it when she heard the gunshot, a not uncommon sound around the farm. Otto had probably caught sight of the weasel that was stealing eggs out of their chicken coop. She hoped he got the darn thing.
She picked up the crying child and rocked her in her arms. Arlette. Her last baby, she prayed. Nearly forty, her body had had a harder time carrying this one. She had almost given birth on the farm, but Otto had scooted her to town in time. Arlette had been her smallest baby, barely five pounds, the size of a bag of flour.
Otto wouldn’t even hold Arlette for the first month, said they should be done with that. He tried to stay away from Bertha, tried to keep his hands off her, but then, in the middle of the night, he would take her feverishly and they would both wait to see if her blood came when it should.
Bertha had years to go yet before she’d be done with the chance of having another baby. What would they do? She had tried to get Otto to go buy protection, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it in Durand. Maybe when they went to Eau Claire.
But her sweet Arlette was a prize. Always sunny, smiling. Now, with her tiny fist, she rubbed her head and gave a little weak cry and then smiled at her mother. Bertha kissed the girl on her head where the spoon had hit her.
Bertha set the baby in her high chair and gave her a hard cookie to suck on. Footsteps running above her head told her the children were still playing. She should calm them down. Picking up the platter with the roast, she set it next to Otto’s plate for him to carve and serve.
When she heard the door push open, she turned to see who it was. The gun was what she saw. The gun coming into her kitchen.
She wiped her hands on her apron and turned to pick up her baby. Her last thought was how she had wanted to see them all grow up, her children, her angels on earth.
CHAPTER 7
“I’m an agronomist. Plants
I can tell you about. Crops I can tell you about. Chickens, you got the wrong man.” Charles Folger’s voice came over the phone like a blast of cold air. “What am I supposed to do with this chicken? I don’t know nothing about chickens.”
Claire held the phone away from her ear for a moment and wished she didn’t have to deal with this cranky old guy, but it was her job. She contemplated correcting his double negative but didn’t think their relationship would stand up to the complexities of grammar. She needed this man. If he chose to cooperate, he could be a big help. She had sent the other two chickens to the crime lab, but it might be days before she’d hear back. She needed answers soon.
Claire had just received a call from Celia Daniels. Another chicken had died. The distress in the woman’s voice had been alarming.
“We’ll never be able to use these chickens again,” she had said to Claire. “We raise everything organic, and they’ve been poisoned. No eggs, no meat. I don’t know what we’ll do with the ones that survive. We’ll have to start over next year. Who could have done this?”
Trying to be reassuring, Claire had promised answers—even though she wasn’t sure they would be easy to get.
She needed Folger’s cooperation. She imagined him sitting there with a dead chicken on his desk, and a smile lit up her face. Someone had once told her that smiling made the voice sound sweeter. She tried again.
“What I’m really hoping is that you can analyze the feed. I sent you one of the chickens just in case it might help you out.”
She heard Folger grumbling at the other end of the line and imagined his digging through the papers on his desk as if he would find an answer there.
Just then Chief Deputy Sheriff Stewart Swanson squatted down in her line of vision and held his hands in the T position—time out—his signal that he needed her now. He had played football in high school. Claire was sure it had been the best time of his life. Even though he was in his early sixties he could still recite some of his plays.
