by Darrel Bird
The Chicken Plucker
By Darrel Bird
Copy©right 2014 by Darrel Bird
Sage Kennedy was twenty years old, and still a virgin. A thing that was almost forbidden in the ‘in crowd’ down at the 4th Avenue pub where she hung out on Friday nights, and God forbid, ever hook up with someone. Although popular in High School and college both, things just never seemed to work out for her in that regard. She didn’t care for guys pawing her, and that was that. The pawers soon turned away to easier pickings. She was beautiful with long blonde hair, but the word got around that she was no pushover as some of the girls were, so the boys figured, “Why struggle?”
She already had a job on Wall Street for heavens sake, even if it was the secretary to a grumpy middle aged man who was tight as Dick’s hat band with his paychecks.
That all changed when Dylan Dubois came through the door of the 4th Avenue pub late one Friday night about ten, and swept her off her feet, leaving her shoes stuck to the floor. He was tall, dark, handsome and spoke with a cute accent that appealed to her right off when he asked if he could sit at her table. Well, nobody else was sitting at her table so why not? By midnight he had her phone number, and her complete history, including the name of her cat Sophie.
They had a whirlwind romance, ending it with a small church wedding down at the Catholic Church. She wasn’t Catholic, but it never entered her addled brain to make much of a difference. She was so in love with Dylan Dubois she would have gotten married on top of the New York state building if he had ask her. They both were hot for each other as Mexican chili peppers.
Her mother, who lived alone in up state New York, didn’t attend. She made the excuse that she was too busy with her club functions to get away. Her father, God rest his soul, couldn’t come because he was in the grave yard, driven there by his cantankerous wife Alice Kennedy. Her father was a first cousin to the famous Kennedy’s, or so her mother claimed, and no one dared to try to say otherwise.
He took her back to her apartment, moved his suitcase in, popped her cherry, and the next morning, announced that it was time to go back home to Louisiana.
“What? Louisiana? But my job is here Dylan! I’ve never been to Louisiana; in fact I’ve never been out of New York State!”
“Oh you’ll love it there, it’s real nice.”
“But…but…but I thought we would live here!”
“Where?”
“Here…in New York!”
“Oh we can’t do that, I have my own property in Louisiana. You don’t even own this apartment.”
“Of course I don’t own the apartment; no one owns apartments in New York.”
“Well somebody owns them.”
“I mean we rent apartments in New York.”
“Well, we don’t, and I have eight acres in Louisiana.”
“All by yourself?”
“Of course all by myself!”
“I married a land owner?”
“Well, not much of a land owner, but it’s all bought, and paid for.”
“But what would we do in Louisiana? How would we live?”
“I have a job at the chicken plant. Its good wages and you wouldn’t have to work.”
“What do you do at a chicken plant?”
“I manage the plucker.”
“You’re a chicken plucker?”
“Yeah, its hard to work your way up to plucker, and I did it in a year.”
“I married A CHICKEN PLUCKER?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it just like that Sage. Besides, Sophie might hear you.”
“So what the hell, she’s a cat for Gods sakes!”
“Now you gotta start watching your mouth, you are a married woman now, and cats got feelings same as anybody else.”
Her feelings plummeted like a crippled fighter jet, as she tried to take it all in. I’m married to a chicken plucker? He doesn’t look like a chicken plucker, and he doesn’t sound like a chicken plucker, so how could he be a chicken plucker? What do chicken pluckers look, and sound like anyway?
She had been raised by her mother, God bless her soul, to be humble, and lady like where at all possible, and to take life in stride, so she asked in a small weak voice, “When do we leave Dylan?”
“We catch a bus day after tomorrow; I already have both our tickets at the Greyhound.”
“ A BUS? Don’t chicken pluckers fly?”
Dylan’s face began to grow dark, and it was something she had never seen, and it scared her.
“Are you making fun of me?” He asked; his eyes boring into her.
“I mean Dylan… sweetie…dear…can’t we fly? You know…in an airplane?” She asked sweetly.
His face lightened again, “We have to save money honey…you know…for the baby.”
“BABY!”
“If you keep hollering you are going to disturb your neighbors.” Dylan said in his normal Dylan voice.
“Are you married to someone besides me Dylan?”
“Of course not!”
“Then who is going to have the baby?”
“Why…you are.”
“Why? How do you know, is it set in stone?”
“It is if you are a Dubois. Dubois have lots of babies.”
“Dylan, let’s talk about something else.”
“Lets get back to the land; do you grow…like cotton on it or something?”
“Oh no, its pretty well covered in trees, and Kudzu.”
“What is Kudzu?”
“It’s a plant.”
“I gathered that Dylan.”
“It’s a vine that grows really fast.”
Two days later Sage had her suitcase, and he had his. That was the sum total of what she could bring with her on a Greyhound bus. Most of the people that got on the bus looked like migrant workers, and most of them didn’t speak English.
“Damn, I forgot to bring lip stick!”
“You better watch your language, my Mama is religious. She won’t like the cussing.”
“I didn’t think Catholics were all THAT religious.”
“My Mama ain’t Catholic, she’s Pentecostal.”
“But…we got married in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest!”
“Uhuh, I told the priest it was an emergency, so he lent us the church and did the honors.”
“Whats the difference in a Catholic, and a Pentecostal?”
“Oh lots! My Mama speaks in tongues, and you can hear her praying clean up to our house.”
“How far is our house from her house?”
“Bout two hundred feet.”
“TWO HUNDRED FEET?”
“Sheeesh, you’re waking all the babies on the bus.”
The driver glared back through his big mirror at them. Babies broke out squalling all over the bus. It sounded more like a herd of dying calves in a hail storm to Sage.
The bus ride was long, and she gave a sign of relief when the bus air brakes gave a swoosh and stopped at a tiny depot in Gordon Falls Louisiana.
As they exited the bus Dylan struggled with both their suit cases, “What do you have in this thing?”
“Everything I have Dylan.”
“Well, papa will be here to pick us up, and that’s a good thing too.”
“Why?”
“Cause you packed that suitcase, you carry it.”
“Wouldn’t you carry it for me Dylan?”
“No, you have to learn somehow.”
“Yes, it is a good thing your papa will pick us up isn’t it?”
“Yont a coke to drink?”
“What did you just say?”
“I said do you want a coke to drink? Something wrong with your ears?”
“No, you said YONT. I heard it.”
“If you heard me, why d
id you ask me to repeat myself?”
“Never mind Dylan, maybe my ears are stopped up from the bus ride.”
“Here comes Papa.”
“Where?”
“There, in the truck.”
She looked and saw a very old faded blue Chevrolet pickup rolling slowly toward them. The old truck gave a cough, back fired, and then died a slow death in front of them.
“Hello Papa.” Dylan said, as he tossed both suitcases in the bed of the truck.
“Welcome home boy, gieatyit?”
“No.”
“Yont too?”
“No, just take us on to the house and we’ll eat there. I’m tired out Papa, and Sage is too.”
“I distinctly heard him say yont.” She whispered.
“Get in the truck Sage.” Dylan opened the door and motioned her into the truck. He climbed in after her, and slammed the door.
Papa Dubois started the truck with a teeth grinding clash of
