Cheating for the Chicken Man

by Priscilla Cummings

  Kate put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in close. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. But she didn’t know if it would be.

  The next day, J.T. was too sick to go to school.

  “Do you know what’s wrong?” Kate’s grandmother asked after J.T. drank some orange juice and went back to bed holding his throat.

  Yes, Kate imagined saying. I do know what’s wrong. Her grandmother would pull out a chair and sit down to listen. But really, Kate thought, what could her grandmother do? And did Kate really want her involved? J.T. would be furious.

  Still, it was tempting. Kate finished pouring milk on her cereal and gazed at the back of her grandmother, who stood at the sink, encased in her fuzzy, pink bathrobe, washing off the tips of her fingers. She was wearing the brace she sometimes put on her left wrist, which meant her carpal tunnel must be hurting again. And she’d slept funny, because her short gray hair was parted and flat, like a cowlick, in one spot on the back of her head. Sometimes, Grandma had a hard time sleeping—“fitful,” she called it—and got up in the middle of the night to eat a piece of toast and work on a crossword puzzle. No way was Kate going to ask any more of her. She was already doing so much for them, plus she had Kate’s grandfather to worry about. Every night she called him. Did you take your heart medicine? Did you remember that the garbage goes out on Wednesday? Don’t forget to bring the bins in.

  “Other than that sore throat, your brother seems fine,” Grandma said, turning from the sink while she dried her fingertips on a small towel. “No fever. No chills.” With a furrowed brow, she looked at Kate. “Are things okay at school?”

  Quickly, Kate shoved in a spoonful of cereal and kind of shrugged, a cop-out, she was well aware, as she pointed to her full mouth.

  “I’m concerned about that boy,” Grandma said as she walked to the stove to cook an egg.

  Kate swallowed and pushed the cereal around in her bowl. She wondered what it was going to take to stop Curtis. Because if the people at school wouldn’t stop him, then who would? And how?

  It seemed an impossible situation, Kate thought. Until Curtis himself offered the solution.

  ~11~

  A PROPOSITION

  Kate, slow down! I want to talk to you.”

  It was Curtis Jenkins. His voice saying her name sent a chill through Kate and almost made her stumble. She hadn’t realized he even knew her name.

  “Kate!” he called again as they left the Creative Writing classroom and merged into the stream of hallway traffic. When he tapped her on the shoulder—he actually touched her—every muscle in her body tensed. Kate pressed the books she was carrying tight against her chest and plunged into the mass of kids squeezing through a double doorway.

  But she couldn’t escape. Curtis quickly caught up. “I need to talk to you,” he said over her shoulder. His hot breath on her neck made her cringe.

  “Come on, Kate. I have a deal for you,” he murmured.

  Kate kept moving.

  “Actually more like a proposition,” he added, staying right behind her.

  A deal? A proposition? What in the heck did that mean? Panicked, Kate pushed so hard through the crowd she knocked a girl’s purse off her shoulder.

  “Hey!” the girl said.

  “Sorry,” Kate said. She tried a different angle through the knot of students, but Curtis was like a leech she couldn’t shake. Finally, she swung around and told him, “Leave me alone!”

  “Shhhh! Calm down!” Curtis urged her, one hand pumping toward the floor.

  “And lay off J.T.!” Kate fired back. “He didn’t do anything to you!”

  “Give me a second, will you?” Curtis drew his head back and grinned. “You know, you’re kind of cute, Kate, when you get all mad like this.”

  Kate felt the warm rush of blood to her face. His out-of-line compliment only infuriated her more. She had half a mind to slap him across the face—or stomp on his foot! Instead, she took a deep breath and forced a calm voice. “Curtis Jenkins, stop torturing my brother.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Curtis exclaimed. When he leaned toward her again, his eyebrows went up beneath the wispy blond hair that fell over his face. “I will stop.” The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “I will—that is, if you do something for me.”

  Kate took another step back, but bumped into the wall.

  Curtis moved forward so he was right in her face again. He was so close that Kate could see his intense blue eyes and a narrow scar over his left eyebrow. “If you write that assignment for me, I’ll leave your wimpy brother alone.”

  Speechless, Kate stared at him.

  A silly, lopsided smile spread over Curtis’s face.

  Incredible. He wanted her to write a paper for him?

  “You are truly despicable, Curtis,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  “Whoa!” Curtis reeled away and broke up laughing. A fake laugh, though, Kate could tell.

  “Truly despicable? Wow! That’s pretty strong, Kate!” He pointed at her. “You know I could report you to the principal for using language like that.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything for you. Not if my life depended on it!” She practically spit the words out as she brushed past him.

  “Yeah, well think about it!” he called after her.

  No. She was not going to think about it, she said to herself as she rushed down the nearby stairs. But her mind was spinning anyway. The assignment was simple: Pretend you’re an author and write your own author’s note, the stuff on the book flap. Tell us about yourself in third person and write it in a way that connects you to the topic of your new book. No more than 250 words. She could write that piece for Curtis’s book called How to Be a Bully. The essay would practically write itself. Two pages that would end her brother’s torment.

  Kate had to shake her head to get rid of the thought trying to worm its way into her brain. Because no way. It would be cheating, and Kate was not a cheater.

  *

  “Lots of garlic. Don’t be shy. I always put three or four cloves of it in,” Kate’s grandmother instructed her. That evening, she and Kate were making J.T.’s favorite spaghetti meal again, this time with ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert. While no one said so, Kate knew it was because J.T. would have to stay up most of the night supervising what the farmers called “chickens going out” or what the chicken company called “movement.” When the chickens were seven weeks old, they were rounded up and taken to the processing plant. Several men came out to do the work, usually in the middle of the night when the chickens were apt to be quieter.

  “Will you try to get some sleep before they come?” Grandma asked J.T. as they finished their meal. It had been a hot and humid day, and a fan was humming on the kitchen counter behind them, cooling them off slightly.

  “Maybe,” J.T. replied, resting his spoon with a clink in the empty ice-cream dish. “Sometimes it’s easier to just stay up.”

  “Have the feeders been raised?” their mother asked. She was coming to dinner almost all the time now.

  “Feeders have been up since this morning,” J.T. told her.

  Withholding feed from the birds assured that they wouldn’t have anything in their stomachs the day they were taken for slaughter.

  Angela pushed her chair back. “Well. Good luck with it,” she said. “I hope you’ll excuse me. I’ve got a terrible headache.”

  After taking her plate to the kitchen counter, their mother went upstairs. The night the chickens went out had always been difficult for her even in better times. It wasn’t that she had refused to help over the years; their father had actually forbidden her from ever going near the chicken houses. Even after he got sick, their mother was never asked to help out. Responsibility for that went to J.T., and after he was sent away, Uncle Ray stepped in. “It’s not your mother’s job,” Kate’s dad always said.
But Kate knew it went deeper than that.

  “I’m going out to recheck everything,” J.T. said, putting on his baseball cap. When he opened the door, they could hear raindrops hitting the back porch. Kate hoped the rain would cool things off.

  After putting leftovers away, Kate sat back down at the table in front of the fan to finish writing the recipe for the spaghetti sauce.

  “Two kinds of meat, remember. Ground beef and hot sausage,” Kate’s grandmother said as she dried the pasta pot. “A green pepper is good, too.”

  Add a green pepper, Kate wrote, leaning her head on one hand and slowly writing with the other.

  “Kate, dear, what’s wrong?” her grandmother asked.

  She wrinkled her nose and sat up. “Nothing, really. I just don’t want to have to do all the cooking again.”

  Grandma put down the pot and came to sit beside Kate. “No. I don’t want you to have to do all the cooking either,” she said quietly. “And I don’t think you’ll have to. But I’ve got to go home to North Carolina. Your grandfather needs me, too. If your mother has a relapse, you’ll have to help out until I get back. Your mom’s doing so much better, Kate. She’s trying. But if she stops taking her medicine, she could get depressed and anxious again. It’s a delicate balance, like walking a tightrope.”

  “I understand,” Kate said, but she didn’t really. Even when her mother took her medicine every day, it didn’t seem to make her all better. She was taking on more of her old chores, it was true, but she still wouldn’t drive the car or leave the house. It frustrated Kate. Why couldn’t her mother just decide to be stronger?

  It was complicated, Kate realized. Her mother’s depression and anxiety were real, not just in her head, and they had changed her. She could only hope that with time, her mother would get better. And that the same thing didn’t happen to her brother.

  *

  After the recipe was done and Grandma went upstairs to read with Kerry, Kate propped up pillows on the living room couch and settled in to do homework. By ten P.M., she had finished most of it. She plugged her cell phone in to charge and took a shower. While drying off, she heard the wind pick up. The rain came harder, with heavy drops hitting the windows. It felt good to be in pajamas, curled up on the couch again to read. Kate pulled out her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and opened to chapter one. Soon she was immersed in a sleepy Southern town, with children who didn’t have a mother and who called their lawyer father Atticus.

  Suddenly the lights blinked twice and the house was plunged into darkness. J.T.’s heavy footsteps pounded down the front stairs.

  “Power’s out!” he said, coming through the living room with a flashlight. “I hope the generator kicks on.”

  J.T. wasn’t talking about a generator for the house, but the generator for the chicken houses. Because none of the windows in the buildings opened, the birds were totally dependent on air-conditioning to stay cool. If the temperature rose too fast, hundreds of birds would start dying. The cost to the Tylers could be huge.

  “Do you need help?” Kate asked, following her brother into the kitchen.

  “I’ll come get you if I do,” he said, pulling on a raincoat.

  Kate stood at the door as thunder clapped and watched J.T.’s bouncing light disappear through the rain toward the chicken houses. Twice he was silhouetted by lightning in the distance. Within a few minutes, Kate’s grandmother—and then her mother—were standing close behind her as they peered through the curtain and waited.

  “I’m going to go help him,” Kate decided, unable to just stand in the kitchen and wait. After pulling on boots and a raincoat, she grabbed her cell phone and a flashlight, and darted out into the rain.

  Approaching the still-darkened chicken houses, she heard a loud engine start up. From out of the darkness, J.T. rounded a corner on the small John Deere tractor, its front light illuminating the ground before it. Kate jumped out of the way and watched J.T. drive in front of the first chicken house, where he backed up.

  “J.T.!” Kate hollered above the tractor noise.

  “Kate!” he yelled back, surprised to see her. “Hey! Can you hold the light on the hookup? I’m going to try to get the generator going with the PTO! I saw Dad do it once!”

  The Power Take Off (the PTO) behind the tractor provided electricity to power the equipment pulled by the tractor. Kate had never thought of using it on the generator that ran the air conditioner, but why not?

  “Okay!” she called out. As she took up her position, the wind blew the hood on her raincoat back, and rain pelted her from all sides. Soon, Kate’s hair and pajama bottoms were completely soaked.

  “Shine the light right here!” J.T. directed.

  Kate focused the flashlight, but within seconds, it cut off, probably because the batteries were dead. Stuffing the flashlight in one pocket, she pulled her cell phone from the other. Quickly, she pressed the flashlight app and shielded the phone from the rain with both hands.

  J.T. went to work in the splotchy, soft light, trying again and again to get the generator going. Finally, he made a connection. The generator roared to life and, once again, the air conditioner blew cool air into the chicken houses.

  “Thanks, Kate! Go ahead inside! I’m going to stay and make sure the power stays on. I may have to gas up the tractor again.”

  “Of all nights!” she shouted back.

  J.T. threw up his hands like, what can you do? He smiled. “Tell Mom I have it under control!”

  But Kate didn’t have to, because her mother was standing right behind them with a thermos in her hands. “Hot chocolate,” she said, handing the thermos to Kate.

  For a moment, they simply stared at each other while the tractor rumbled behind them. Had Mom really come down from the house?

  “Thank you!” their mother said as loudly as she could. “Uncle Ray called to see if we needed help. I’ll tell him you have us covered!”

  Kate watched her brother grin and nod. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, although they were barely able to hear him.

  “No,” her mother replied. “Thank you.” Then she pulled her coat tight, popped open an umbrella, and hustled back up the hill to the house.

  *

  With power restored to the air conditioner, Kate and J.T. took turns returning to the house to change into dry clothes. Then they waited together in a small room just inside one of the chicken houses where controls for the air-conditioning and heating were located. Shovels and rakes were lined up against one wall with buckets stacked nearby, and long ago, someone had moved in the old card table and a couple of metal folding chairs where Kate and J.T. sat down to begin the long wait.

  Toward midnight, a large tractor-trailer truck with several workers arrived to collect the chickens. By then, the storm had blown itself out and, in the lingering drizzle, J.T. went out to greet the driver. While the men pulled on work gloves, Kate and J.T. stepped back. Soon the noisy, messy work began. The birds seemed to know what was up, and right away squawking and feathers filled the air. The men used nets to separate groups of chickens, then grabbed the birds by their feet—four in one hand, three in the other, saving one finger to spring the latch on the metal cages where the chickens were placed.

  Hours passed. When the power came back on, J.T. turned off the tractor, but it was still too noisy to talk, so they played cards and hangman, and sometimes rested with their heads on the table. Just as dawn was breaking, the men finished catching the birds and stacked the metal cages on the back of the truck.

  “That’s it. See you in a couple months,” the driver said. Like the other workers, he was slick with sweat and covered with dirt and dust.

  J.T. signed off on some paperwork, and the big rig rolled down the driveway with its cargo of caged chickens. Wind ruffled the chickens’ white feathers as Kate thought sadly about how they were leaving the only life they had ever known: seven weeks in a darkene
d chicken house.

  “Let’s lock up and go to bed,” J.T. said, glancing at his watch. “We can probably get a whole hour of sleep before school.”

  An hour of sleep sounded good. Kate locked up the second chicken house and did a quick check, peering inside the long, empty building. The floor was littered with white feathers—and in a far corner, movement caught her eye.

  “J.T.!” she called out the door. “They missed some chickens in here!”

  When her brother returned, they slowly approached the three frightened birds. “What are we going to do?” Kate asked.

  “Call the company, I guess. Tell them they missed a few.”

  “But they’ll just come back and kill them,” Kate said.

  “No,” J.T. told her. “They’ll ask me to kill them.”

  “Well, don’t!” Kate exclaimed. “Let them live!”

  “Are you crazy? It’s against the company’s rules to keep any of these birds! You know what the contract says. We can’t have another bird on our property! Remember when you found that owl with the broken wing?”

  Kate frowned. “I wouldn’t have kept him. He needed that rehab place.”

  J.T. looked skeptical. “You were dying to keep that owl.”

  “Come on,” Kate begged. “I’ll be responsible for feeding them, I promise.” Her mind scrambled. “We could hide them at Mr. Beck’s place next door! No one lives there anymore—and he’s got chicken coops in the back.”

  J.T. tilted his head sideways. “What? Trespass?”

  “Who’s going to care?” Kate argued.

  “Probably no one,” J.T. said. He paused. “They won’t live long anyway.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look how fat they are. They’re bred to be broilers. They grow way too fast. Why do you think so many of them flip and die?”

  Kate’s eyes widened. “That’s why? Because they grow too fast?”

  “Sure it is. Their internal organs grow so fast some of them have heart attacks and keel over. You would, too, if you couldn’t move and all you did was eat all day.”