Hens and Chickens (31 page)

Lila retrieved Maude’s four dozen eggs from the cold storage room, and wound her way expertly back up the spiral staircase. She discovered that Rebecca had invited Maude inside while she waited, and Lila removed her offensive-smelling Muck™ boots before entering the cozy kitchen. She wasn’t surprised to discover that the two older women were already knee-deep in conversation over a steaming cup of tea.

“And then Bruce said he’d email for sure when he found out,” an exuberant Maude informed Rebecca. “He’s on Skype with Grayden but he hasn’t said anything to
him
yet.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t want to get his son’s hopes up only to be disappointed,” said Rebecca.

“Oh, no!”

“Here they are,” said Lila, setting the four gray cartons of eggs on the counter.

“Thanks, Sweetie,” Maude replied to Lila, barely skipping a beat. “He never writes like that unless he’s sure about it,” she continued confidentially to Rebecca. “I think Bruce is coming home from Afghanistan, this time for good!”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful!” cried Rebecca. She was grateful her little chick was still in the nest and not off at war in the trenches of a foreign country, like Maude’s son Bruce Gilpin.

Lila automatically tossed a stick of pine into the wood cookstove. The black cover
chinked
as she returned the cast iron round to its nest on the stovetop, and a sliver of gray smoke escaped and permeated the kitchen. The sound, the scent, the impending thunderstorm were all unnoted by the two women setting at the table.

Lila realized she was invisible as well. She smiled as she conceived that the two older women were much like her brood hen, lost in a world of their own, a world in which the hatching, raising and rearing of chicks was paramount. Normally, Lila, who was in a different stage of womanhood in her young life, would shrug this off. Now, however, she contemplated them with a growing sense of wonder and longing.

She thought of Mike Hobart and felt an ache deep inside her, an ache that only he could fill. The yearning grew like a vine, thrusting itself up from her womb to her heart.
Someday? Someday!
 

I WILL get beyond this!
she told herself.
I WILL have a normal life someday!

Lila thought of what I had said to her about her real father. Sadly, she shook her head.
That will never happen. I’ll never be able to talk with him again.

But, if only I could! How much I would have to tell him!

“I’m bringing Grayden over after school, Lila,” said Maude, interrupting Lila’s reverie. “He wants to do some more target practicing, if that’s alright with you, Sweetie.”

This turn in the conversation dispersed Lila’s doldrums. “It’s more than alright! I saw that fox again yesterday, so I’m glad Gray’s coming!” Lila heard a rumble of thunder and glanced out the window at the darkening sky. “But it could be pretty nasty this afternoon,” she added.

“Well, I won’t bring him if it’s raining, or if it’s thundering or lightning at all.”

“Oh, no; that wouldn’t be safe,” agreed Rebecca. “We haven’t lost any more hens since he’s been target practicing, though, and we
do
enjoy having Gray around!” She twisted in her chair toward Lila. “Would you like a cup of tea, dear? Maude and I are having a nice little chat.”

Lila hesitated. She wanted to pull up a chair and join the two mothers, but she didn’t feel comfortable crashing the party just yet.
Someday!

“I’ve got to finish my chores,” she replied. “I’m behind schedule—I haven’t even collected all the eggs yet.”

Rebecca laughed. “I didn’t know we
had
schedules around here! I thought that’s why we left corporate America!”

Lila grinned wryly. “You’re right, as usual, Becca. I think I’m almost as tough a boss on myself as Joe Kelly was to us at Perkins & Gleeful.”

“That’s probably why he fired
me
not
you
!”

The three women laughed roundly. Despite their entreaties, Lila returned to the hen pen to finish her chores. Rebecca refreshed her guest’s tea, and the two women continued their conversation. After all, Rebecca had not yet had her turn to crow about her own little chick!

Maude, a grandmother as well as a mother, understood the requisite give and take among brood hens. “When does Amber finish school?” she asked, politely.

“May 24
^th
– she’s got two more finals and one paper to write, and then she’s done. I can’t wait!”

“Is your daughter looking forward to the summer here? I would think it’s quite a change from where you lived in Boston.”

“We used to live in Roxbury,” Rebecca corrected lightly; “but you’re right, it’s very different! Amber is the one that got us into this whole organic thing, though, so she can’t wait to get here and become one of
The Egg Ladies
permanently!”

“I thought she looked right at home during the picnic. She’s such a pretty girl!”

Rebecca’s feathers fluffed up with motherly pride. “Amber
is
lovely, if I do say so myself!” She was about to remark how glad she was that Amber was thin where she herself was plump, when she recalled Maude’s rotund figure—and stopped just in time. “I love her waist-length hair,” she added, instead. “I’m glad she never cuts it.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, not yet! She’s much too young—she’s only 21.”

“I was married by the time I was her age,” said Maude, succinctly.

Rebecca paused a moment for a quick mental calculation. “Me too!” she exclaimed, laughing in wonderment. “But things seem so different these days.”

“My son Bruce got married young. He was 19 when Grayden was born so he’s 34, now.”

Both mothers were silent a moment, reflecting upon the merits of their own special chicks. And if the truth were known, both were experiencing very similar thoughts.

I’m glad Amber is too young for Bruce Gilpin!
Rebecca thought.
Otherwise, an Afghanistan war veteran might appear very romantic!

While Maude was thinking,
I’m glad Bruce is too old for Amber Johnson!
Otherwise, a pretty young girl like her might seem very attractive! 

“I don’t regret that Bruce had Grayden for a minute,” Maude said, finally; “but I wish he hadn’t married the boy’s mother!”

Rebecca was slightly shocked at this pronouncement from the old-fashioned Maude. “They’re not still married now?” she asked. She knew very little about Bruce Gilpin’s history.

“No, no. She’s gone through two other men since him, and had a child with each of them. When she moves on, she leaves the children behind.”

“Oh, my!”

“Bruce has primary physical custody of Gray, but of course we’ve practically raised him since Bruce joined the Guard after 9-11. Would you like to see a picture of Bruce?”

Without waiting for a reply, Maude
clicked
open the gold locket she regularly wore around her neck, and proudly held up the color photo of her son that was framed inside.

Rebecca leaned forward to admire the dark visage of Bruce Gilpin in his military garb. “He’s very handsome,” she said, truthfully.

“He takes after my side of the family,” explained Maude. “He looks just like my younger brother, Peter. There’s not a Gilpin bone in his body!”

Rebecca realized that the conversation had switched back to Maude’s chick, and she smiled inwardly.  She, too, understood the necessary give and take of brood hens!

By the time Lila completed her egg collecting, cleaning and sorting, Maude had departed. She found Rebecca in the dining room, where her motherly friend was already back at work on her latest sewing project. A bolt of burgundy cloth was unrolled on the dining room table and Rebecca was pinning a rectangular paper pattern onto the stiff cloth.

Lila switched on the light over the dining room table. “Want some light?”

“Tharmnks!” mumbled Rebecca. She straightened up, and removed several straight pins from her mouth. “I wondered why I was having trouble seeing today.”

“It’s dark out—that storm will be here before we know it. Is Maude still planning on bringing Gray over after school?”  

“Unless it’s raining. Maybe the storm will pass us by?”

Lila shook her head. “I don’t like the way the wind is whipping. It blew out one of the window panes in the hen pen.”

“Did you get it fixed? Should we call Wendell?” Rebecca asked anxiously.

“I patched the glass back in with some putty. Those windows will eventually need to be replaced, though.”

“Will it cost very much? I have some extra money, if you need it,” Rebecca offered.

Lila regarded her friend with surprise. “I thought you saved all your unemployment money for Amber?”

“This is
extra
money. I’ve been doing some sewing,” she said, indicating her work. “This is a set of dining room curtains for Miss Hastings and I sewed a tablecloth and napkins for Maude. Plus I hemmed three pair of pants for Ralph and sewed up two holes in his shirts.”

“You are really into this homesteading thing aren’t you!”

“I love to sew,” Rebecca said simply, her pretty blue eyes glowing. “Fortunately for me, it seems that nobody
else
does! I was saving the money for Amber’s school books next year, but if we need it …”

“We don’t need it, thanks. We’ve barely touched my mother’s life insurance money, and the eggs are selling really well.”

At the mention of Lila’s mother and the money her daughter had collected from her awful death, Rebecca shuddered. Her pretty face clouded over. She pictured a woman not much older than herself sitting down to write that last terrible letter to her daughter. What must she have felt as she sat there – hand trembling, tears falling! – knowing that she was giving her own life so that her young chick would have a safe, new life!

But Rebecca knew, with the true instinct of a brood hen, that there was nothing she herself would
not
do to save her own baby chick!

Chapter 29

Tinkerbell Redux

Later that same muggy afternoon, Mike Hobart was wrapping up work on his post and beam barn – daydreaming about his sweetheart and wondering how Lila had liked the
papier-mâché
chickens – when his phone identified an in-coming call from Gray Gilpin.  The handsome carpenter was packing his tools neatly into the stainless steel tool box on the back of his truck, but he stopped to answer the call. At first, because of poor cellular reception, Hobart had difficulty understanding the teenager. A thunderstorm threatened, plus he was working in a remote field in Troy.

“Gray? I can barely hear you,” he said, speaking loudly although he knew it wouldn’t make much difference. “Hold on, buddy, I’ll get up in my truck.”

Hobart swung his muscular frame up into the bed of his pickup, and from the extra height was able to net better cell reception, enough to distinguish a faint sob on the other end of the line. “Gray, are you OK?” he asked, worriedly.

“I shot Tinkerbell!” the boy cried. “I can’t find him! I’m in the woods and I think I’m LOST!”

Hobart, standing in the bed of his truck, felt as though someone had whacked him in the gut with his wooden-handle spade. Momentarily dumbfounded, he sank down onto the side of the truck bed. Gray Gilpin, the darling of his grandparent’s eye, was somewhere lost in the Sovereign woods! And he claimed to have shot the white deer?!

“Stay calm—it’s gonna be OK, buddy!” Hobart instinctively reassured the teenager. “Tell me what you see around you.”

The woods behind the old Russell homestead edged up against a wilderness area the size of a small city. Much of the heavily forested area was owned by the town of Sovereign, which had acquired nine large woodlots, hundreds of acres each, through tax liens during the Great Depression. Timber was harvested over the years and the area was open to public use, including hunting. Mike Hobart had become familiar with the wilderness area during his first year at Unity College, before his “Aldo Leopold” moment in the very same woods.

“Tell me what you see, buddy!” Hobart repeated, standing back up in his truck bed as his mind went into high gear. He put his left hand over his opposite ear so that he could hear the teenager better.

“Well, I see a lotta trees …”

“What kind of trees?” said Hobart, glancing around at the hardwoods that lined the seven-acre field in which he was working. “Poplars? Birch? Pine trees? Do they have leaves on ‘em?”

After a few minutes of similar questioning, Hobart was able to picture in his mind with a fair amount of accuracy the area from which Gray Gilpin was calling. “OK, now
stay put
, buddy!” he said. “I know where you are and I’ll be there in about 20 minutes. Whatever you do, if you see Tinkerbell
don’t
go near him, O.K?”

“Grandpa is gonna be REALLY MAD at me!” Gray sobbed. “I didn’t mean to kill Tinkerbell; it was an accident!”

“It’s gonna be OK!” Hobart repeated, jumping down from the bed of his truck onto the matted grass in the field. “No one’s gonna be mad at you, Gray. Just don’t go near that white deer!” He flipped his phone shut, hopped into his truck and roared the pickup to life.

As Hobart swung onto Route 9/202, his own misbegotten hunting incident, now more than a decade old, flashed through the handsome carpenter’s mind. He shuddered at the imminent danger facing Gray, not from the pending spring thunderstorm, but from a dying deer with a fairytale nickname! Hobart knew from personal experience just how dangerous a wounded deer could be, how deadly those hooves could slash. Unwittingly, Gray Gilpin could be sliced to death by Tinkerbell in a matter of seconds!

Hobart sped north up the black-topped road, contemplating as he drove whether or not he should alert Gray’s grandparents. It was a dicey call. He knew that the moment Ralph and Maude were told the news that their grandson was lost in the woods both of them would become overwrought. Their anxiety would not only slow Hobart down, but also might lead Ralph to insist on accompanying the carpenter into the woods in search of Gray.