Cheating for the Chicken Man (17 page)

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED

K
ate stood at a window in the high-rise hospital's waiting room and stared into a dense gray fog that covered the city streets. A yellow traffic light blinked through the heavy mist, and portions of other buildings poked through. But there was one thing Kate saw clearly: how all of life's priorities had suddenly lined up differently. Bullies, cheaters, chickens being fed arsenic and antibiotics—they weren't even in the picture anymore. Homecoming dances, field hockey games, good grades—who cared? The one and only thing that mattered was that her brother lived.

She didn't even care if J.T. lost his leg. She knew that lots of people lived full lives with artificial limbs. She'd seen how brave soldiers who lost legs in war went on to play basketball, climb mountains, and run races.

The tractor. In her mind, she saw it lying on its side in the field, the evil Bush Hog behind it. Would they even want to keep it? How would they get it back in the shed? Uncle Ray, probably. Uncle Ray would know how to right the tractor. And of course they wouldn't get rid of it. Too wasteful. But Kate would always hate the sight of it.

They had left the farm in such a hurry. Kate's mother went with J.T. in the ambulance while Kate had to wait for Aunt Helen to come pick up Kerry. Then out of the blue, Jess's mother was there offering to drive Kate all the way to the hospital in Baltimore. It fell to Aunt Helen to make an evening check on the chickens because Uncle Ray was in bed, recovering from shoulder surgery. In North Carolina, Kate's grandmother had already started the long trip back to Maryland. Everyone was scrambling to help. Kate was grateful for the circle of friends and family they had.

Despite the early hour, just past dawn, the waiting room was more than half full; there were more than a dozen people, some flipping through magazines, some stretched out trying to sleep on chairs using sweaters and jackets for blankets. Still others sipped drinks out of Styrofoam cups and watched a muted television that was streaming the news and commercials about yogurt and new cars, a reminder of how tragedies coexisted with day-to-day life. Nothing ever stopped, Kate realized over the long night. Even on the happiest of days in the future—if those days ever came again—this space would be full of people waiting, scared and on edge, like her, for news that could change their lives forever.

“I came as quickly as I could!” Miss Hatcher exclaimed, bursting into the waiting room. J.T.'s probation officer opened her arms to Kate.

Kate was astonished to see her. She hadn't thought a probation officer would care so much. But all along Miss Hatcher had said she liked J.T. and wanted to see him “back on track.” Her
driving all the way to Baltimore in the predawn darkness was proof that it was more than just a job to her.

“How's he doing?” she asked, giving Kate a hug.

“Mom is talking to the doctors right now. He lost a lot of blood,” Kate said, feeling her voice grow shaky. “One leg was cut up really bad.”

The two of them sat down together in seats near the window. Miss Hatcher took one of Kate's hands while Kate tried to tell her what had happened.

Not too long afterward, Kate's mother came into the room. Her eyes were moist and red, and her hair bedraggled and messy. Kate and Miss Hatcher rushed to meet her.

“He's going to be okay,” Kate's mother said with a tired smile, her eyebrows lifting slightly.

“What about his leg?” Kate asked.

Her mother's smile brightened. “He didn't lose it.”

And just like that, everything changed. Relief and happiness. A huge weight was suddenly gone. Her brother would live—and he would live with both his legs.

“Thank you, Kate,” her mother murmured, enfolding Kate in her thin arms. “You saved his life. They say if you hadn't stopped that bleeding, he surely would have bled to death.”

Kate pulled back. “But what about the belt? The tourniquet? It didn't cut the blood off?”

“It helped stop the bleeding but wasn't tight enough to cut all the blood off.”

“So, because I didn't do such a great job with the tourniquet, he has his leg?”

Kate's mother hugged her again.

Amazing. Kate squeezed her eyes shut and enjoyed the odd but happy feeling of knowing that she had messed up so badly.

*

Since J.T. was deep asleep and couldn't be disturbed, they decided that it would be best if Miss Hatcher took Kate home while Kate's mother stayed at the hospital for another day or two. There was a house nearby where parents of hospitalized children could stay for free.

“You'll need to do all the chores for your brother,” her mother said. She looked Kate in the eye and put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you understand what that means?”

She didn't have to spell it out. Kate knew that “all the chores” included the culling. She'd have to select the damaged or different chicks and get rid of them.

“Kate?”

She didn't hesitate a second time. “It's fine.”

“The company will be out tomorrow afternoon to check,” her mother said. “You'll have to be ready for them.”

“I'll have it done,” she promised. “Don't worry.”

The long ride home went surprisingly fast. Miss Hatcher stopped at a drive-through restaurant to buy them burgers and drinks, but Kate wasn't hungry. She held an icy soda in her hands, but didn't have much appetite and set the bag of food on the floor by her feet. At first, they didn't talk. Kate stared out the window, watching buildings, houses, and shopping centers blur together as they passed by.

“Just when things were going so well for J.T.,” Kate said after
a while.

“I know.
Now
, of all times,” Miss Hatcher agreed. “Although there's never a good time for an accident. You know that, right?”

“That's true,” Kate agreed.

“I've gotten to know your brother a little,” Miss Hatcher went on. “He is not going to let this get him down. He's come through too much already. The kayak incident, the juvenile detention center, your father's death, that bully from the eighth grade—”

“What? Did J.T. tell you about him?” Kate asked.

Miss Hatcher leaned forward to settle her coffee in the dashboard holder and kept driving. “Yeah. One day he told me about this kid. I forget, what's his name?”

“Curtis,” Kate said.

“Curtis, right. And there was another one.”

“Hooper?” Kate asked.

“Maybe. Although I'm not sure he ever told me the other one's name. Anyway, J.T. told me how Curtis really made his life miserable back in the eighth grade by calling him Chicken Man and being pretty nasty. But then he said while Curtis started up again in high school, he had suddenly backed off. He said Curtis even nodded at him one day in school, almost like he was saying, “Sorry, man.”

Kate was surprised. Why hadn't J.T. ever mentioned that?

“Here's the thing that impressed me about the bully thing,” Miss Hatcher continued. “J.T. said he actually understood why Curtis first bullied him.”

Kate turned to her. “What did he say?”

“Let me think. He said it was because he thought Curtis was angry at the world. He'd lost his older brother, someone he
cared about a lot. And apparently, he had just moved to this area and didn't have many good friends, just this one kid at school who was kind of a loner.”

“Definitely Hooper,” Kate said.

Miss Hatcher glanced over at Kate. “Maybe. Like I said, I don't think he mentioned a name. Whoever it was, the bully just hung out with that one kid.”

“It's kind of sad,” Kate said. “Because that other boy, Hooper, and my brother have a lot in common. They're both smart. They're both computer geeks. I don't know why Hooper wouldn't like J.T., or why he'd want to pick on him.”

“Does Hooper have friends other than Curtis?” Miss Hatcher asked.

Kate shook her head slowly. “I'm not sure, but I don't think so.”

Miss Hatcher drove for a while and then said, “Well, you know what I think? I think this kid, Hooper, has even bigger problems than Curtis.”

And all of a sudden, a possibility occurred to Kate. Had she been cheating for Hooper, and not Curtis?

Maybe not that first assignment for Creative Writing, but then something must have happened, because a chunk of time went by before she had to write all those papers for ancient history and English. Maybe that was why Curtis had
Huckleb
erry Finn
. He wasn't reading
Animal Farm
, Hooper was! Was Hooper forcing Curtis to make Kate cheat? Was the bully being bullied?

It would also explain why Curtis said he couldn't stop the cheating. And why he said it was out of his hands.

But if so,
why
? What power did Hooper have over Curtis?

Kate rubbed her forehead. Maybe she was wrong.

“Goodness, you're thinking awfully hard about something,” Miss Hatcher observed as she reached for her coffee again.

Kate faced forward again and crossed her arms. “I'm just putting some pieces together,” she said.

*

When they turned up the driveway to Kate's house, Tucker came bounding down the driveway to meet them.

“Oh, no. We must have left him outside,” Kate said, feeling bad they'd forgotten him. “Everything yesterday happened so fast.”

Miss Hatcher slowed down so as not to hit the dog and they inched their way around the circular part of the driveway in front of the Tylers' house. After Kate got out of the car, she kneeled to greet Tucker.

“Are you sure you'll be okay on your own?” Miss Hatcher asked through the open door. She leaned over to hand Kate her bag of food.

“I'll be fine,” Kate assured her. “Really. I've got the chores to do—and I've got Tucker. He'll protect me.”

“What about dinner?”

Kate smiled wanly and held up the bag. “Plus I'm pretty good at cooking,” she said. “And anyway, my aunt Helen is coming over with my sister and said she'd bring something to eat.”

“Okay, but if you need anything, you give me a holler, you hear?”

“I promise I will,” Kate said. “Thank you so much.”

Kate closed the car door and kneeled to hold Tucker back while Miss Hatcher drove away. Home alone now, she almost
felt numb—and weirdly suspended in time, as though she were outside of her own life looking down on it. There were so many mixed emotions from the past twenty-four hours that she couldn't feel any one of them. Of course she was happy that J.T. was going to be okay. She still couldn't believe Brady had come with the ambulance. And was it possible that Hooper, not Curtis, was the bully in her life? Although, with J.T.'s tragic accident, wouldn't that whole episode be over? Someday she wanted to understand it all. Overwhelmed, she sank down on the bottom step of the porch. When Tucker sat close beside her, Kate put an arm around the dog.

“J.T.'s going to be okay,” she whispered into Tucker's fur. “He'll be home soon, okay?”

Something else, though. Something else bothered her. The culling. Slowly, Kate straightened up. The chicks were two weeks old now. It would be obvious that some were not growing at the same rate as the others. She needed to separate—and get rid of them.

Could she do it?

She'd promised her mother she would. The chicken people would be out tomorrow to check. She would be staying home from school in order to let them in.

Kate swallowed hard and felt a slight wave of nausea as she turned to gaze across the yard at the two chicken houses. Giant fans that once sucked in fresh air at the ends of the buildings were still, all the windows sealed shut. There were thousands of chickens inside. Probably dozens of them were “different.” Crippled. Bent necks. Blind. Sick. Some simply smaller—although maybe they'd catch up with a little time. Kate wondered: Did
the company ever think of that?

Tucker nudged her hand, but Kate remained still and for a long time simply stared across the yard.

Then she dropped her eyes and went inside to prepare herself.

PLAYING GOD

O
f course there was a procedure for it. For the killing. It was called “cervical dislocation.” It meant breaking the chick's neck. Death was supposedly instantaneous.

A few years ago, when Kate was nine and J.T. was ten, the two of them had been taught how to do it. Kate remembered exactly where they stood in one of the chicken houses, just inside the door beside the gray, metal fuse box on the wall. She remembered peering down at the few day-old chicks her father had selected. They waited in a white, plastic bucket, their little feet tapping the bottom. Kate diverted her eyes to stare at the cement floor beneath her feet, because it suddenly dawned on her what was actually going to happen.

Her father had not asked Kate to watch. He had asked J.T. But she'd been curious, and she hadn't wanted to be left out.

“Why can't I go?” she'd pressed her father at the kitchen door.

“I don't think you'd like it, Katie Bug. Maybe when you're older.”

“But J.T. is only a year older than me.”

Her father had sighed. Big sigh, if she remembered right.

“You said it was part of the business,” Kate had argued. “I want to help, too.”

So Kate's father had shrugged, and they'd walked across the
yard together.

Kate's father was not a mean person. He was a kind man with a big heart who stopped his tractor to move turtles in the fields. When he picked up one of the chicks with his large, callused farmer's hands, he did it gently. He supported the small bird in his palm with two fingers, so Kate and J.T. could see how its head hung forward, toward its chest. “It's called a crookneck,” her father explained. “All the chicks are vaccinated before they come to us, but sometimes the needle doesn't go in the right place. It'll never be able to hold its head up. These are some of the chicks we have to cull.”

Kate felt sorry for the chick and peered up at her father.

He must have sensed what she was feeling. “They don't know what's coming,” he told her, his voice soft, but matter-of-fact. “It's over before they can react.”

She wanted to be grown-up and brave like J.T., so she nodded vigorously that she understood and watched, wide-eyed, but still fearful, while her father positioned his fingers behind the chick's neck. With a flick of his thumbs, he quickly separated, internally, the chick's head from its spine. He'd said it would be instant death, but the little chick was still moving its legs afterward, and Kate couldn't watch anymore. She turned away, her eyes filling with tears, and bolted from the building.

“Kate!” her father called.

But Kate didn't stop. She ran back across the yard between the tractor sheds and sprinted between the rows of soybeans all the way down to the river where she sat for a long time, alone, on the fallen locust.

That night, when she and J.T. crawled out onto the roof
outside her brother's bedroom window, J.T. confessed how much he hated the culling, too. He said he didn't blame her for running away and gave her a cinnamon-flavored honey stick he'd gotten at Brady's house the day before. He only had the one stick. Funny how she recalled those little details. Maybe it was because after he gave her the honey stick, J.T. promised her, “You won't ever have to do that culling, Kate. I'll do it for you.”

Kate had cherished the promise that protected her, even though they never mentioned it again. The promise occupied a special place deep in her heart. Her brother had gone on to say that he'd only watched the culling because he wanted to help. “Dad hasn't been feeling well,” J.T. had told her. Looking back, Kate wondered if that was the beginning of her father's illness.

But now that her father was gone and J.T. wasn't there to honor his promise, Kate didn't have a choice. She couldn't run from the chicken house crying. She couldn't leave it to her brother or her uncle Ray. She had to prepare herself.

But
how
?

She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what she needed to do—like watching a movie in her head. She would take a big breath and walk into the first house. No crying, because that would make it hard to see the chicks and tell which ones were smaller, or crippled, or different somehow. She would stand as she did the killing, then drop the dead chick in the bucket.
Kill, the
n drop
. If she moved quickly, she could have it done in an hour.

The phone rang. Kate opened her eyes and undid her fists. She had rolled her fingers in so tightly there were little half-moon marks from her fingernails in the skin of her palms. The
phone rang a second time, and Kate got up to answer. It was Aunt Helen saying she'd be right over with Kerry and a casserole she'd made for the girls' dinner. Kate was glad for the distraction and rushed into the kitchen to set places at the table for dinner. She filled two glasses of water and buttered two pieces of bread. She swept the floor and fed Tucker and Jingles and made a note that they needed dog food and milk at the store. She even ran down to the shed with a carrot and some lettuce to feed Hoppy.

Back in the house, she could have gone back to imagining her task, but instead she stood by the front window watching for Aunt Helen's van. When they arrived and Kerry rushed off to find the cat, Kate told Aunt Helen all about the accident and what the doctor said. Aunt Helen gave her a hug and tried to get her to pack some clothes and go home with her, but Kate shook her head. “I have to do J.T.'s chores,” she said. “I've got to do the culling before the company people come tomorrow afternoon.”

Aunt Helen tried to smile, but she looked worried. “You're a brave girl,” she said.

Kate knew better. She was not brave. Not by a long shot.

Her worried face must have prompted her aunt to have a change of heart and not allow the girls to stay alone after all. She set the casserole she'd made into the refrigerator and told the girls to gather their things. “You can do the culling in the morning,” she said to Kate. “I'll get you back early.”

Kate and Kerry rushed upstairs to pack pajamas and toothbrushes. Kate also grabbed her backpack, and Kerry carried a stuffed lion under her arm.

At Aunt Helen's house, everyone except for Uncle Ray, who was still in bed recovering from his surgery, sat down to eat macaroni and cheese. Kate's three little girl cousins were cute and she adored them, but their questions exhausted her:
When
is J.T. coming home?
Does he have a nice
doctor? What happen
ed to J.T.'s leg? Di
d it have blood?

Aunt Helen finally cut them off and opened a tin of cookies that she'd made. Then, when the girls went upstairs to take their baths and go to bed, Kate tucked sheets and a blanket into the living room couch and settled in for the night. Kerry was supposed to sleep upstairs, sharing a bed with her cousin Annie, but soon she was in a sleeping bag, down on the floor beside Kate on the couch, the two of them holding hands, and Aunt Helen let her stay.

Early the next morning, Uncle Ray came downstairs in his bathrobe, his arm in a sling, and sat in the living room armchair while Kate finished folding the sheets she had slept on.

“I know you've got to do the culling this morning,” he said. “And I know it's going to be hard for you, Kate. Try not to think about it too much. Pretend you're a robot. That's what I do.”

Kate sat with the gathered blanket on her lap and looked at her uncle. It had never occurred to her that the culling had bothered him, too. Uncle Ray reached over and touched her knee. “You need to do it for your family, Kate. You've got to help out for a while, now that J.T.'s down and I'm laid up.”

She nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Don't worry, Uncle Ray.”

“That's the girl.”

After Aunt Helen dropped the two girls off at the house, Kate
busied herself with chores and continued putting it off as long as she could. She fixed a lunch for Kerry and helped her pick out clothes for school. She combed out and braided Kerry's long hair. She fed the dog and the cat, and walked her little sister down the driveway to wait for the bus.

“It's going to be a nice day,” Kate said as she took in a big breath of fresh morning air. She hoped to draw in some strength, too, as she surveyed the blue sky and the bright sun rising in the east beyond wide, harvested cornfields full of feasting geese. “If you want, Kerry, after school we'll carve those pumpkins.”

“Yay!” Kerry approved. “And Grandma's coming home with Mommy! They're going to make an apple pie! Grandma said I could help. But we'll do the pumpkins first, okay?”

“You got it,” said Kate.

Kerry's agenda for the day was far simpler. Kate envied her innocence.

The bus appeared, its brakes wheezing, and rumbled to a stop in front of them. “Have fun at school!” Kate told her sister. She smiled and blew a kiss when Kerry waved back through the window.

As the bus pulled away, a dark, sinking feeling took hold again. Kate would be missing school again because of the chore that lay ahead. And there was no more putting off what needed to be done.

*

By two o'clock, it was all over. The culling, the visit from the company inspector, everything. When Kate's mother had called just after one
P
.
M
. with the good news that J.T. was awake and doing well and that Grandma had arrived at the hospital, too,
Kate was able to offer her own positive report on the farm.

But she was struggling mightily with what she had done.

After hanging up the phone, Kate retreated to her bedroom and picked up her journal. There was an hour before Kerry came home. Maybe writing would help:

I did
a terrible job with
the culling today. G
uess I'm not very go
od at playing God, d
eciding who lives an
d who dies. When I w
alked into the first
chicken house with
the flashlight in on
e hand and the bucke
t in the other, I wa
s already struggling
. There was a dim li
ght over the feeders
, so that's where I
started. The chicks
were only two weeks
old, still fuzzy and
starting to get whi
te feathers. The fir
st one, which I chos
e because it was sma
ller than the others
, seemed almost glad
to be picked up.

I
held that little chi
ck in my hands, then
I put my thumbs beh
ind its head. The te
rm “cervical disloca
tion” stood up in my
mind like a billboa
rd. “Instant death,”
Dad said. “They don
't know what's comin
g.” But I remembered
what I'd seen.

“I'm
so sorry,” I told t
hat little chick. Th
en I squeezed my eye
s shut, so I couldn'
t witness what I had
to do.

Only I could
n't do it.

I could n
ot do it.

I hung my
head and sat down in
the middle of all t
hose chicks with tha
t little one in my h
ands, and I cried wh
ile chicks hopped up
on my legs and all
over my arms. I didn
't care that I was s
itting in chicken ma
nure. I let the litt
le chick go, then I
put my head in my ha
nds and cried. I tho
ught if I cried hard
enough, I could shu
t the whole thing ou
t.

But I couldn't sh
ut it out. I was stu
ck.

What happened ne
xt is I got scared.
Scared of what my mo
ther
would say and
how she'd react. Sca
red of what the comp
any people would do
when they came. Scar
ed of how disappoint
ed J.T. and Uncle Ra
y and everyone else
would be in me. The
fear made me brave.
I stood up and colle
cted all the smaller
chicks, the ones wi
th broken legs, the
ones that looked off
, and I put them in
the bucket. I had tw
enty of them in ther
e, climbing over eac
h other and scratchi
ng the sides to get
out. I thought that
if I took them to th
e outside water spig
ot I could turn the
water on them fast a
nd they'd drown real
ly quick. Somehow, t
hat seemed better th
an using my bare han
ds.

I put a few more
chicks in the bucke
t. I had twenty-thre
e. I had to keep cou
nt and write the num
ber down. I carried
them outside to the
water spigot and tur
ned on the water. I
lifted the bucket—bu
t I didn't put it un
der the spigot right
away. I held it wit
h the water spurting
out, some of it get
ting my shoes wet an
d spraying mud all o
ver my legs. The buc
ket grew heavy. Fina
lly, I turned the wa
ter off, because I h
ad an even better id
ea.

Back inside the
chicken house, I had
seen this cardboard
box. Gently, I dump
ed the chicks into t
he box. I gathered m
ore chicks, too, unt
il I had thirty. I f
olded the top of the
box down over them—
then I carried the b
ox across the field
to the chicken coop
next door.