The Chicken Plucker

by Darrel Bird

Rougarou?”

  “He’s like a half man, and half wolf.”

  “WHAT? Oh my God, my sins have caught up with me!”

  “Now don’t worry Sage, he don’t come out in the day time. Look, I have to go back to work; we are having trouble with the plucker.”

  “Oh, don’t go, please Dylan, I don’t want to stay here by myself!”

  “Now honey, I have to go. You can go over and visit Mama.”

  “I’m afraid to walk over there by myself.”

  “Shoot Sage, it’s only two hundred feet! Now I have to get back to work. Ok?”

  “Ok.” She said in a small voice.

  When he was gone she sat there almost crippled with fear, she was more afraid of being by her self than she was the trip through the Kudzu, so she carefully closed the door behind her and walked down the trail to Papa Dubois house. When she came to the yard the hounds greeted her with various bellowings, and lickings. The tallest hound placed his paws on her shoulder and licked at her face with generous slobbers.

  “Get off that gal Rover!” Mama Dubois appeared on the front porch with a straw broom. “Get down!” She waved the broom at the hound. The Redbone dropped down, and ran under the porch.

  “Hounds ain’t got no sense when they ain’t hunting child, come on in, and I’ll fix us some Rhubarb tea.”

  Sage ran to the porch, leapt up the steps and clung to Mama Dubois, “Lawsamighty, whats wrong with you child?” Mama asked with a soft and tender voice.

  “On Mama Dubois, I have never been so scared in my life.”

  “What of? Them old hounds? They might lick you to death, but they won’t hurt you.”

  “No, not the hounds, some ‘thing’ that made a screeching sound and Dylan said it might have been a Rougarou!”

  “Oh Butter beans child, they ain’t no Rougarou. You probably heard that old feral tom cat that’s been hanging around the place lately.”

  “But, what if it was a Rougarou Mama?”

  “I’m telling you child, there ain’t no such thing. Our men down here use that as an excuse to go tearing off into the woods with their shotguns and rifles loaded, then they get loaded themselves, and innocent leaves and trees get shot up. There ain’t nothing excites a man more than something to shoot at besides beer cans.”

  “I’ll go get the Rhubarb tea, and we’ll sit on the porch where it’s cool, and get acquainted.”

  She soon returned with the tea, and they sat on the porch swing, “This is delicious tea.” Sage said, as the swing swung gently back and fourth. The birds chirped in the trees, and a squirrel wandered across the yard. The hounds under the porch raised one eye brow, and watched the squirrel, the summer hanging too delicious to give chase.

  After they whiled away a couple hours talking, Sage announced, “I’m ready to go back now, Dylan will be coming back from plucking chickens.”

  “Do you think that boy plucks chickens honey? He don’t do nothing but sit in an air conditioned room, and push buttons on a computer. He’s up for president of the company when old man Scott retires this fall.”

  “President of the company?

  “That’s right, and sure to get it too.”

  “Why doesn’t he buy a decent house too live in?”

  “Cause some of these boys down here don’t care for that sort of thing, but if you pushed him, there ain’t nothing that boy wouldn’t do for you, I ain’t never seen a boy so in love with a woman. I’ll put a bug in his ear to push that Kudzu back, and build you a house if you want me too, I don’t interfere though.”

  “Would you Mama? I just don’t know how too ask him.”

  “I sure will honey, now you go on back, and don’t be scared about no Rougarou. You’ll get used to it in a little while.”

  Sage hugged Mama Dubois, and said, “I already love you Mama.”

  “And I love you child.”

  A week later trailers with Dozers rolled into the yard, and began pushing back the Kudzu, and when they were gone, the building crews arrived, and hammers rang out an announcement of a new house on the Dubois place.

  The place wasn’t finished when a taxi cab pulled into the yard hauling her mother along with six large suit cases. The cabby unloaded the suit cases, and left her standing in the yard. Sage was over at Mama Dubois helping her shell peas for canning. The hounds, hearing a lot better than humans, rushed over to see who had invaded their territory. The red bone immediately began to baptize her face with slobbers. She screamed at the top of her voice, and fell back. The hounds lit atop her and continued with their licking.

  Sage and Mama Dubois dropped the peas and went running to see. Mama Dubois pummeled the hounds with her trusty broom, and they went running for the porch.

  “Mother! What are you doing here?” Sage asked.

  “Help me up, I’ve been attacked by dogs and had to ride with a man that chews tobacco and spits out the window! Who is this crude looking woman?” She got up off the ground spitting a piece of grass that had found a home in the corner of her mouth.

  “This is Mama Dubois; mind your manners mother!”

  “I’ll just go along to the house and let you two be.” Mama Dubois said gently.

  “Where’s the house?” Her mother demanded.

  Sage pointed toward the trailer house, “Oh my God!”

  “Come on mother, and I’ll fix you something cold to drink.”

  Her mother followed her to the rickety steps, and climbed into the trailer house, “Is this it?” She said when she saw the couch.

  She sat her slightly bulbous butt carefully down on one end of the couch, “Why haven’t you called? I had to ask some crude men to direct me to the chicken pluckers house.”

  “I lost the charger to my cell phone mother, I was going to call you when I found it. I didn’t feel calling you was an emergency since you didn’t even care to come to my wedding.”

  “Now don’t you get smart with me young lady, I would have come, but the bridge club was having a bake sale.”

  “Yes, bake sales take priority don’t they mother?” Sage said with a sadness in her voice.

  “Where is this chicken plucker you married?”

  “He’s at work mother.”

  “You have to come home with me right now, and we’ll have the marriage annulled, I know a judge who will do it for us.” She reached in her bag for her cell phone.

  “No mother, we won’t.”

  “What do you mean no?” She stopped the cell phone half way to her ear.

  “No, I mean no, an N and an O.”

  “Well…I can see you’ve made your mind up. Then I’m going back to New York, and leave you down here with the dregs of humanity! I will! I’ll leave you right here missy!”

  Alice began to dial the number to the cab company, and the cab company of one pulled up in the yard thirty minutes later. The suitcases were where he had unloaded them, and the cabby said, “Why did yall bring all these suitcases just to stay half an hour?”

  “Oh tend to your own chew!” Alice scolded him.

  She sat down in the cab, and when the suitcases were loaded she said through the window, “I’m leaving now Sage!”

  She walked over to lean into the window, and kiss her mother goodbye, “Goodbye mother. “ She said sadly.

  Her mother was sad too, but she was trapped in her own world of bridge clubs, and parties that catered to the wealthy of this world, women that pretended to care for the poor of the world by tossing a few coin to organizations that gave no inkling to where the money went, and people that gave no accounting circulated the money right back to the rich who now and then tossed a well gnawed bone to the homeless missions to get their pictures in the paper. They patted themselves on the back while they sat in their mansions, and drank the most expensive liquor that money could buy. That was who her mother was, and there was no changing it.

  The cab left in a trail of dust, and Sage turned away to walk back through the Kudzu to Mama Dubois house to finish the peas. A week later t
he house was finished, and Sage had a tinge of pain in her heart as the dozer pushed over the old trailer to load on dump trucks. Later that summer she discovered the swimming hole, and what the long table was for as brothers, sisters, uncles and Aunts along with many children gathered in Papa Dubois house, and Papa Dubois prayed a prayer of thanks for food and family.

  Two days later she heard it, she was on the front porch of their new three bedroom house, and she heard Mama Dubois praying in tongues on the far side of the Kudzu. Nine months later a baby girl was born in the Dubois house. She was sitting on the front porch swing nursing the baby when Dylan pulled up into the yard. After the dust cleared he jumped out of the new vehicle.

  “Dylan, what on earth is that?”

  “It’s a brand new four by four Jeep! I got it for you for a present!” He smiled.

  She looked at him with love in her eyes, not because of the Jeep, but because she loved him. She would take the Jeep into town later and trade in for a car they could use. Sage knew that there was more than one way to pluck a chicken.

  The end