Coop_ A Year Of Poultry, Pigs, And Parenting Part 10

I let myself in quietly, but my parents are both in their recliners downstairs, Dad dozing fitfully and Mom reading her Bible. I power up Dad's computer and unfold the eulogy. It is written in ballpoint, in a scraggly but readable hand, and the more I read, the more I realize there is little for me to do. I retype it anyway, stopping to bawl between lines, but in the end I alter maybe four words.

There is humor-the story about Roger teaching Jake that one end of the cigarette is hot! one end of the cigarette is hot!, and how Jake made chain-saw noises when he cut his food. The line about Jake and Jed spending their time either working, goofing off, or goofing off working. I recognize my brothers in that. There is more, but it is not mine to share. When I reach the part where he tells about Jakey whispering to the stars I bawl again, and knowing Jed will never make it through, print an extra copy for the minister. And finally I climb the stairs to bed, to one of my childhood bedrooms, and stare straight up in the dark. I am remembering that before Jane was born, I was talking to a friend about how it was when he went from one child to two. "Love expands," he said, "to fit the need." I am wondering if grief can do the same.

Jed reads the eulogy straight through. When he nears the part about the stars, tears are streaming down my face because I know what is coming, but he takes it absolutely and resolutely home. Then there is the terrible closing of the casket, and we leave the church. At the cemetery little Sidrock says loudly, Jakey drowned and now they are burying him, and you can feel the collective instinctive move to say shus.h.!.+ shus.h.!.+ but then the ebb on the heels of it as we know it is a time when the truth should be left as it is. When the service is complete and we prepare to leave, John steps to the casket and draws flowers from the bouquet, handing them to the children as they file by. I carry the vision of his fingers, thick and grease-lined, pa.s.sing the slender stems one by one to the tender hands reaching up, toward the sun beating in the sky. but then the ebb on the heels of it as we know it is a time when the truth should be left as it is. When the service is complete and we prepare to leave, John steps to the casket and draws flowers from the bouquet, handing them to the children as they file by. I carry the vision of his fingers, thick and grease-lined, pa.s.sing the slender stems one by one to the tender hands reaching up, toward the sun beating in the sky.

Our meat chickens have arrived. They came in the mail, peeping in their perforated box. In order to hit the price break, we're splitting a batch with our neighbor Terry. With the coop still not done, I have built a small crate that I have placed in the garage atop an old piece of linoleum to keep the concrete clean. With the pump house already occupied by the layers, the garage is the only s.p.a.ce available that we can seal up tight and varmint-proof. I rig a heat lamp, and first thing the next morning I discover the drawback to my plan: the things smell awful awful. I leave the door open during the day, but by day two the smell has already penetrated the cement blocks. Out of kindness Anneliese has not inquired, but I have told friends she has every right to ask: Which came first, the chicken or the coop?

We've begun to free-range the layers, dispensing with the tractor and just turning them loose. They love the new freedom. They run and swoop. They flutter and hop. They get all chesty and pushy and face each other down in pecking matches, neck feathers flared into a fright wig m.u.f.f. They scratch and chase flies and dandelion fluff. They did this in the chicken tractor too, but within a few hours everything was tramped down. I'd pull the tractor ahead ten feet and they'd be happy again, but soon everything would be flattened and I'd have to skid the whole works again. Now they have the wide world at their disposal, and they can't wait to tear it up. Two of the hens discover an anthill and scratch at it with great exaggerated motions like they're going for a major peelout. When they unearth a scatter of white eggs from the hill, their beaks jackhammer the earth like zigzag sewing machines. When I fed them apples in the tractor I had to slice the apples up to get them started, and even then they'd peck at them just off and on. Now when they range under the apple tree they drive their beaks deep into the wormholes and peck fresh white craters into the apple meal. Poor little Shake-N-Bake lags behind, wobbling as she does and having to sometimes come to a full stop before gathering herself and plunging forward again, but eventually she winds up under the apple tree, and just as I've seen her do with a cuc.u.mber before, once she picks an apple she stays with it, hanging in there even after the other chickens have charged off after gra.s.shoppers. She's smaller than the rest, no doubt due to the fact that it's harder for her to eat.

When she does chase off after the other chickens she'll get four or five good strides in and then go into a tumbling veer, like someone reached out and pushed her from the side. The thing that really gets you when it's a fun group sprint across the yard is how fully she believes that she can run with the crowd; she never gets hangdog or stops, she just collects herself and goes bounding off as if this time she'll be the smoothest bird in Eau Claire County. And it isn't always veering. Occasionally one of her legs will straighten explosively and she'll shoot a foot and a half into the air. It really is something to see. Sometimes when she's doing her dangedest to hang with the pack her earnest ping-ponging schizophrenic hopscotch is so over the top I find myself laughing out loud. I mean no disrespect, but honestly it's like watching a fast-forward version of the cla.s.sic Tim Conway bit where he plays a dentist who shoots one leg full of Novocain.

In perhaps the saddest funny moment so far, I am throwing bread on the lawn when poor Little Miss Shake-N-Bake gets overexcited, rears back to take a hefty stab at a crumb, misses, and jabs her bill in the dirt. She literally has to back up and tug it free. As penance for laughing right out loud I give her an entire slice of cinnamon raisin bread-I figure she can aim at the raisins with the rest of the slice as backstop.

When we left the church after Jake's funeral we carried a big box of cards, and they've been coming in the mail daily ever since, so on a Sunday we all gather at the farm to write thank-yous. Barbara with her tax accountant sense of organization is in charge, and she has us ranged around the kitchen table in stations to handle everything from slitting the envelopes to noting the contents to writing and stamping the notes in return. As each card makes its way through the system, we read it, often checking the return address to place the person. There are a lot of Oh! Oh!s as we recognize old familiar signatures, while other times it takes a group effort to match the name on the return address with a person. For all we would give if this day could be taken away, the net effect of all these envelopes circling is that the afternoon slides into a sustained conversation in consideration of all that is good in this world, and when the last stamp is affixed, Mom pulls out the pan and starts popping corn.

Three days later I am back at Jed's, ripping out fence line. A while back when he heard I was scavenging steel posts, Jed told me he was going to be reconfiguring the field north of his house, and I could have the posts if I'd help pull them. When he called last night to see if I could help today, we both knew it wasn't about the posts. I've got to be in Madison-four hours south of here-by evening for purposes of researching yet another writing a.s.signment, but I knew I had to do this first. We're working in the deep gra.s.s at the border of the field. The hot weather has been holding pretty much unabated-90 degrees again today, with humidity to match. The sweat is running off the bill of my cap and my s.h.i.+rt is soaked through and streaked with rust from the posts, which have been in the ground for decades. We're working smart for once. Jed is in his skid steer, and I have a chain. I sling the chain around the post, give it a couple of wraps, and then hold tension on one end while hooking the other over the skid steer bucket. You can crank and yank on posts like this all day long and get nothing for your trouble but a sprung back, but the skid steer plucks them from the earth as easy as a straw from a malt. We move quickly from post to post, all along the edge of the forty. As soon as they clear the earth, I unwrap the chain and chunk them in the bucket. We're working right out by the road, and at one point two of our longtime neighbors-Big Ed (who used to work at the feed mill) and Gerald-pull over on the shoulder and we visit. Big Ed asks me about my pigs, and I tell him about our stash of bakery bread. "Oh, that's the best thing to feed pigs," he says. "Bread and withit."

"Withit?"

"Yah," says Big Ed, his eyes twinkling. "Bread and whatever comes withit!"

The talk is light, with no mention of the trouble, but when Jed lost Sarah, these two men were always showing up just now and then at the right time, and when they drive off it makes me feel better knowing they'll be circling in the long days ahead. We go back to pulling posts. At one point we have to work around a telephone pole, and when I give it half a wrap of chain and raise a quizzical eyebrow in Jed's direction, he tilts his head and grins. It is the blessing of dumb work done close to the earth-one gritty minute at a time, we move forward.

When the last post is in the bucket, Jed says there are a few stacked out behind the shop, down where Big Mama the giant pig is living out her retirement. He'd rather not go down there, he says. The first time he fed the pig after Jake died, he found Jake's little plastic grain scoop in the dirt. He figures that's where the boy went, down to give the pig some feed like he loved to do, only this time he wandered on. I go down there myself then, and while I'm digging the posts from the weeds I'm thinking how for Jed and Leanne everything in sight has become a dreadful connotation. Months after my sister Rya died, Dad went to the bas.e.m.e.nt for firewood, and looking up at the old defunct ductwork he broke into tears, remembering how Rya used to sit beside the heat register upstairs and they would call back and forth to each other.

When I get back out to the yard, the pastor has arrived. All my usual reluctances are in place, but I have been watching this man, and he is doing good work. I shake his hand and leave grateful, knowing my brother is about to sit down and take counsel. As I drive away, I turn on the radio and learn the stock market has fallen 300 points, and very clearly I think, Whatever Whatever. The drive to Madison is long, and the hotel room when I get there seems a cube of unreality.

It is a blasting hot day when I return home-the dried clay around the hog wallow is bleached white in the sun-and the dang pigs have destroyed their only source of shade. The hutch I put together several months ago is ripped to bits, flat as the secondhand particleboard I used to build it.

I'm not sure why they chose today. Perhaps they were just bored, or perhaps overnight one of them gained the quarter pound necessary to collapse the wall during the afternoon b.u.t.t-scratching session. I was working up in the yard when I heard the rending sound of the tarp being torn in two. When I got down there, the wall I had wired to the steel posts was still standing, but the other had collapsed. My first reaction was, Hey, I'm surprised it lasted this long. It was hardly built to code, and that's what I get for roofing it with a blue plastic tarp. And pigs by nature root and push and bull against everything. It was bound to happen. But my equanimity got a little thin as I drew nearer the pen and realized: rather than running off to some neutral corner and staring back like some kid who swears it wasn't him who broke the sugar bowl, the pigs were actively-no, joyfully joyfully-finis.h.i.+ng the job. c.o.c.klebur is gnawing on a section of two-by-four. As I approach, she takes it in her jaws and, with a toss of her head, flips it across the pen like a puppy flinging a chew toy. Wilbur is snuffling around the one collapsed wall, looking to find purchase for the rim of his snout. When he finally hooks it beneath a section of particleboard, he bulldozes forward to the sounds of more tarp tearing and screws being stripped from the wood. Wilbur circles around again and pokes his nose through the tear in the tarp, then his entire head. He stands there blinking for a minute, then plunges his body forward, the tarp ripping and popping loose from its staples. Not wanting to be left out, c.o.c.klebur sprints around in a tight half circle and low-hurdles through the hole Wilbur has left.

Worried they'll cut themselves on exposed screws and also hoping to salvage as much of the material as I can, I climb in the pen and start trying to chuck remnants over the fence, but this only seems to excite the pigs more. They're on a full-bore happy rampage now, gallivanting and woofing excitedly, standing on boards I'm trying to lift, gnawing on the tarp, and generally wreaking happy havoc. Every time I try to pick up a board, they run over and put their front hooves on it, or take bites at the wood so close I can feel their breath and get s...o...b..r on my fingers. Frustrated and not interested in feeding my digits to pigs, I ball up my fist and smack c.o.c.klebur right on her wet snoot and she gives out a high-pitched grunt and jumps back a foot, but then comes boring right back in. By the time I get the last shred of the shelter thrown over the fence I'm tickled rather than upset. They are absolutely single-minded in their dedication to destroying what I had built, but they are just so playful about it all. Absolutely vandalous creatures, but gleeful in their depredations.

I have another tarp in the shed, so I grab four bungee cords and suspend it above one corner of the pen so they've at least got shade, the knuckleheads. Even as I'm walking away c.o.c.klebur is standing tippy-hoofed with her snout in the air, trying hard as she can to get a bite of the new tarp, but she is built far too low. The tarp is safe, and the fun is done.

Jane and I are back in the office. She has had a fine nap, and Anneliese has taken advantage of the time to make a grocery run. Jane sucks her thumb and beams at the ceiling, which is nothing but white texture. I get down before her and we talk some. At first she can't be troubled to unplug her thumb-she keeps her forefinger hooked over the bridge of her nose-but then she decides to talk, and her brow furrows and her gaze grows earnest, and she works her lips, but after all that it's still just gack and hack. Then she starts bicycling and making spinach faces, which means the storm is gathering and the squarelip is not far behind. Hearing the van, I gather her up. Let's go help Mom unload groceries, I say, and then I wonder when exactly it was I began calling my wife Mom.

The day we buried Jake the funeral procession was winding through the country to the cemetery when a biplane appeared in the sky. High enough that it looked like a gorgeous yellow toy, but low enough that you could see the s.h.i.+ne and polish of the fuselage, and the blue star painted on the underside of each wing. The plane was moving right to left, and crossed the road directly above the fire truck driving point. After proceeding a gracious distance, it rose slightly and banked a slow turn, then flattened out to cross again, this time left to right. And so it went for the next ten minutes and eight miles, the line of cars moving sedately down the road, the biplane tacking gracefully windward and lee. When we arrived at the cemetery the craft rose to circle in the distance. The engine noise receded to alt.i.tude.

We were walking to the back of the black Suburban containing Jake's casket when Jed squinted at the sky and nodded toward the plane. "What's the plan?" he asked me. "Not sure," I said. The biplane is owned by a friend of ours. John had given him a call. Jed looked square at me, and for a split second I saw the old reckless flash.

"Well, I hope he gives 'er h.e.l.l."

We drew out Jakey's little casket and bore him to the grave.

To the best of my recollection it has always been sunny when our family has convened at this tiny place. I don't read the sunniness as any sort of sign, just note it. It was sunny when we buried my sister Rya after her heart and lungs finally failed her little soldier spirit at the age of six. I was a junior in high school then, bound in a few short weeks for a cattle ranch in Wyoming. It was sunny when we buried Eric, just ten years old and nine years older than the doctors predicted-which is not to fault the doctors, as they failed to factor in my mother. I was at loose ends in those days, out of college but trying to find my way. And it was sunny when we buried Sarah, just feet from where Jed is standing now, facing the only death possibly worse.

The pastor gathered us in close. There would be a prayer, after which we would linger, leave the cemetery slowly, the children each with a flower. But first the pastor drew our attention back to the airplane, which had descended again and was approaching from the south on a line parallel to the cemetery fence. When the airplane drew even with us, well above the treetops and some two hundred yards to the east, the nose lifted and it began to climb a quarter circle until it was pointed straight up and then it continued on around, until it was upside down, the wheels at zenith. As the plane broke over to complete the loop, the engine stalled and went silent and remained so for a breathless pair of seconds, and then black smoke puffed from the cowling and we shortly heard the cough as the engine fired and caught and the craft carved a slow turn back to the south, nose pitched to take on alt.i.tude. There were smiles then, even laughter. Little dressed-up cousins pointing. A loop-the-loop A loop-the-loop. That was good, we thought. Imagine Jakey watching that.

The biplane shrunk in the sky then, rising lazily away. Again the engine noise faded and we turned back to the grave, prepared to pray. But back in the distance the motor modulated up a half-pitch. We turned to look, and the sun flashed from the left wingtip as the opposite wingtip dipped, and now the plane was curling back toward us, dropping swiftly. The downward arc steepened to a plummet, and looked precipitous to the point of danger-surely he was falling too fast-but still the plane descended, drifting sideways until it was approaching over the farm buildings to the south and still dropping, now nearly straight at us, and just when you thought No, too low No, too low, the wings fixed themselves dead square to the earth and now the noise came on flat and furious, the plane over the corn ta.s.sel-top high and distorted behind a heat mirage, and the roar grew and grew and the plane blasted through the s.h.i.+mmer to bellow toward us terribly vivid now, flat-out thunder on a rope, and when it was nearly upon us a gloved fist shot from the c.o.c.kpit in a rock-solid salute, and in that split second the plane twisted steeply up and left and up and left, the fist still high, and then the plane just rising up, and up, and silently up, and then nothing and with it our hearts into the white-hot sky.

CHAPTER 9.

One summer evening when the other kids got to go swimming, I had to stay home in bed. There had been some infraction. I no longer recall the offense, but I can summon with absolute clarity the sand-crackle sound of car tires departing the driveway, the soft swell of acceleration, and the fade to distance. Staring at the ceiling from beneath one thin blanket, I felt starkly alone as the sun lowered and I imagined my siblings boisterously en route to Fish Lake, their beach towels slung brightly across the seats. other kids got to go swimming, I had to stay home in bed. There had been some infraction. I no longer recall the offense, but I can summon with absolute clarity the sand-crackle sound of car tires departing the driveway, the soft swell of acceleration, and the fade to distance. Staring at the ceiling from beneath one thin blanket, I felt starkly alone as the sun lowered and I imagined my siblings boisterously en route to Fish Lake, their beach towels slung brightly across the seats.

Tonight Amy is living her own version of my past. The evening before Anneliese and I were married, we held a yard dance. A string band called Duck for the Oyster provided the music, and their caller Karen led us through the quadrilles and contras with such verve and simplicity that even an arrhythmic clomper such as I had a delightful time. We have attended several of their events since, and Amy especially loves them. This weekend they played up north, and it was our plan to attend as a family.

This did not come to pa.s.s.

A sweet girl, our Amy, but as with any developing child, there are low-level intransigencies, the c.u.mulative effect being that the dictators.h.i.+p must intervene. In the matter of gathering hay for the guinea pig, there was slumpage unabated; piano practice had become a weeping sit-down strike interspersed with spates of enervated tinkling; spelling lessons began to feel as if they were being conducted in a room stripped of everything but a chair and one naked lightbulb. Sensing that Anneliese was nearing the end of her rope (I pick up on this sort of thing, especially if she writes a note and tapes it to the toilet seat), I intervened with a series of expostulatory disquisitions blending themes of personal responsibility, the virtues of alacrity, respect for one's elders, the long-term benefits of good posture at the piano bench, and a general review of all-American gumption. Once I actually harrumphed harrumphed. I truly believed I was getting somewhere until-just as I was. .h.i.tting my stride on the delayed gratification of hard work and a job well done-Amy looked up at me through her tears, stamped her foot, and howled, "But I only want to do the FUN FUN stuff!" stuff!"

I found her logic impeccable and wished I could cut to commercial.

Despite my one-man Chautauqua act, there was no improvement. Anneliese and I talked and agreed it was time to implement measurable standards backed by that euphemistic woodshed, consequences consequences. A family meeting followed, the ch.o.r.e and school list was reviewed, and standards of performance were clearly set. We were not as forthcoming about the consequences, as it has been our experience that specific carrots generate short-term bounces evanescent as a last-minute campaign promise. What Amy couldn't know was that a Duck for the Oyster dance was the prize behind Door One. If she didn't hit the mark, she'd be staying home with me.

The critical morning dawned with hope. You root for the kid, you know. How quickly as parents we discover that it really does does hurt us more than them, and I dreaded the evening if she failed. By mid-afternoon it was clear she would fall short. Even with a gentle reminder here and there, she kept dawdling. When the time came and Anneliese began wordlessly packing Jane's diaper bag, Amy sensed that something was up. "Where are we going?" she asked. "I'm going to a dance," said Anneliese. "Oh!" said Amy quickly. "I'd better get my ch.o.r.es done, then!" Of course there was nowhere near enough time, and we broke the bad news. hurt us more than them, and I dreaded the evening if she failed. By mid-afternoon it was clear she would fall short. Even with a gentle reminder here and there, she kept dawdling. When the time came and Anneliese began wordlessly packing Jane's diaper bag, Amy sensed that something was up. "Where are we going?" she asked. "I'm going to a dance," said Anneliese. "Oh!" said Amy quickly. "I'd better get my ch.o.r.es done, then!" Of course there was nowhere near enough time, and we broke the bad news.

"But what am I going to do?"

"You have to stay home," said Anneliese quietly.

A flood of tears. And then Amy wailed, "You mean I have to stay home with grumpy old Mike? grumpy old Mike?"

Anneliese had dinner with my family at the farm that night. She says my brothers couldn't decide what tickled them more-the fact that Amy called me grumpy or old.

To see the realization set in, to see her sweet hopeful face crumple, to hear the tears that followed as Anneliese drove away...ach, it rips the heart out of me. I leaned backward against the sink as she wept and wept at the kitchen table, and it felt like I had kicked a bunny. How many years before we knew what good or damage we had done? For a while I just let her roll, then I announced that it was time to eat. She kept breaking down as we got supper ready, but I slogged on. There were brief moments of lucid conversation interspersed with extended crying jags. As we ate, the ratio slowly reversed itself, but by the time the meal was over I was shot, and proposed we just put the chickens away and head for bed. As we snuggled in for the bedtime books, Amy said, "Tell me the story about when you couldn't go swimming."

I had forgotten that I had told her the story previously. As part of one of my sermons, no doubt. And so I told it again, and we talked about why parents do what they do, and then I read her a book about a girl who loved the color pink and then I kissed her good night and in the morning it was another day.

Today when I turn out the layers, the Speckled Suss.e.x and the Barred Rock are slow to move. Rather than scooting away when I reach for them, they allow themselves to be caught. I can't see anything visibly wrong with either one, so I just leave them in the pump house and go to the office. By mid-afternoon I notice that the Barred Rock has eased her way outside. She's tentative and doesn't rejoin the flock right away, but she's clearly improved. The Speckled Suss.e.x is right where I left her, motionless except when she blinks. I place a saucer of water right beside her and she dips her beak twice, but even that movement is desultory and shortly the other chickens swoop in and stomp all over the saucer. I have no idea what the problem is, and decide to treat it with a dose of wait-and-see.

In the evening Anneliese's mother babysits while Anneliese and I go out for our third anniversary. For the past two years we have celebrated in a small cabin beside Lake Superior. This year my schedule won't allow it and the pigs and chickens make it harder to leave. We have a nice meal and then go for coffee in a strip mall. Every anniversary we review our vows, and as we go through them tonight, it isn't the sh.o.r.eside discussion in the pines overlooking Gitchigume with the waves breaking below, but at least we are face-to-face, talking about something other than diapers and chickens. (I have lately developed a persistent habit of steering all conversation toward the topics of coop ventilation, the effects of molt on the laying cycle, and personal poultry anecdotes. In honor of our love, Anneliese has placed a firm one-night moratorium on chicken stories.) This year as in the two years previous, the session splits pretty evenly between reminiscence (each line shakes loose happy snippets of memory) and the equivalent of a polite but firm visit mediated by an auditor representing the Department of Weights and Measures. It's bracing to see your promises there in black and white: "I will treat you with reverence..."

I wrote the word reverence reverence into our vows in honor of the way my father has always treated my mother. Dad taught me that reverence wasn't fawning, nor was it always delivered in hushed tones. I saw it in the goofy way he doffed his fur-lined Boris Yeltsin hat when he opened the van door for her on Sunday mornings; the way he quietly abstained when we kids teased her for not getting our jokes; the way he never failed to leave the dinner table without thanking her. And there was the reverence into our vows in honor of the way my father has always treated my mother. Dad taught me that reverence wasn't fawning, nor was it always delivered in hushed tones. I saw it in the goofy way he doffed his fur-lined Boris Yeltsin hat when he opened the van door for her on Sunday mornings; the way he quietly abstained when we kids teased her for not getting our jokes; the way he never failed to leave the dinner table without thanking her. And there was the reverence between between them: lest we be deceived, on many occasions-together and separately-Mom and Dad made sure we understood that their marriage had rough patches and disagreements, but that they had long ago promised to work it out quietly behind closed doors. It didn't hurt that they sometimes made sure to let us catch them kissing. Nothing off-putting, just a hug and peck in the kitchen or in the sheep barn during lambing. In this I believe they were extending their reverence to the children-letting us know that when we went to sleep it was in a house headed by parents joined at hip and heart. them: lest we be deceived, on many occasions-together and separately-Mom and Dad made sure we understood that their marriage had rough patches and disagreements, but that they had long ago promised to work it out quietly behind closed doors. It didn't hurt that they sometimes made sure to let us catch them kissing. Nothing off-putting, just a hug and peck in the kitchen or in the sheep barn during lambing. In this I believe they were extending their reverence to the children-letting us know that when we went to sleep it was in a house headed by parents joined at hip and heart.

Tonight in the strip mall as we revisit the other words we promised each other that day (grat.i.tude...devotion...trust...unity...), my eye is continually drawn back to reverence reverence, and how the animation of the word requires more than simple respect or careful talk. I am thinking reverence requires presence and attention, and that I must bestow reverence on my wife if I wish it to fall gently on my children. Looking up from the vows between us, I see a delicate brown fleck set against the blue of Anneliese's right eye. I discovered the fleck the first time Anneliese allowed me in close, but haven't noticed it in some time. I need to look my wife in the eye more often.

We hold hands on the drive home, and while Anneliese goes to the house I close the chickens in the pump house. They are mostly roosted and fluffed. As she always does, Little Miss Shake-N-Bake has settled in the wood chips on the floor. The struggle to roost is a challenge beyond her at the end of day. The Speckled Suss.e.x is exactly where I left her earlier. I refresh her saucer of water, turn out the light, close the door, and drop the hook in the eye. Then go in the house and to bed, and begin the fourth year of my marriage.

Mid-afternoon of the next day I look up from the desk in time to see the Speckled Suss.e.x step tentatively out of the pump house. She continually cants her head to the side and shakes it like a swimmer with water in the ear. I'm sure some poultry expert could diagnose this. I just stare at her. She steps carefully, and when she pecks at the gra.s.s she is tentative, but it seems a good sign that she's up and about.

And so it is disappointing when I open the pump house door the following morning and there she is flat on the floor, stiff as a board, dead as a nail. Well, shoot, I think. Picking the feathered corpse up by its feet, I walk down past the burn barrel and sling it deep into the ravine. Fox food. Unless the coyotes find her first, and they probably will. Ever since we began free-ranging them, I've been compulsive about counting the chickens whenever I see them. I adjust the tally in my head, take it down from a dozen to eleven.

On a humid overcast morning three weeks after the death of his son, I meet Jed in Chippewa Falls. My stepmother-in-law is letting me salvage her old pigpen, and Jed is bringing his trailer to haul the panels, which are too long to fit safely in my truck. The old pen is back in the brush and weeds, so everything is woven in the overgrowth. It takes a lot of ripping and tugging to get the panels loose, and the steel T-posts are even harder to free. We're in the middle of a month-long drought and the rock-hard dirt holds them like concrete. I am a complete doughboy in comparison to Jed, but we do have enough shared raising that we know how to hit the traces in unison. At one point we're reefing on a panel, trying to lever it free with a length of pipe, when the whole works collapses, smas.h.i.+ng my little finger and raising a walnutsized lump on my forearm. "That hurt?" he asks, chuckling gleefully. "Pretty much," I say, smiling back.

We load the panels and head on down to Fall Creek. I have some dead trees that need felling, and Jed has brought his logging gear. I have a chain saw, but a couple of these trees are monsters. In my twenty years making ambulance calls I've found more than one squashed corpse whose last act on earth was to sink a saw blade into a tree trunk. Jed has been logging every winter for years (and is furthermore a graduate of logger safety school), so it makes sense to ask for his help and stay out of the way. It takes him less than two hours to fell, limb, and section up the trees; the same task would have taken me at least two days. While he logs, I run the tractor back and forth, dragging away limbs and pulling the larger sections out into a nearby field where I can cut them into firewood lengths later.

When we're done and Jed has thrown his gear in the truck, Anneliese comes out. We talk about how he and Leanne are doing, knowing full well there's no sufficient answer. We are talking for much the same reason we have been working together this morning: there are things that have to be done, and also we are finding reasons-quite literally minute by minute-to keep moving. The word closure closure is tissue paper over a tar pit. In these early days the best you can do is find ways to stop screaming while your psyche begins the sand-grain trickle of sorting the nightmare. is tissue paper over a tar pit. In these early days the best you can do is find ways to stop screaming while your psyche begins the sand-grain trickle of sorting the nightmare.

So we talk some. And then we say seeya seeya like we always say like we always say seeya seeya-no lingering, no look of meaningful intent, just seeya. seeya. As the truck and trailer rumble out of sight around a bend in the driveway, Anneliese and I hold hands and ache for the pain we cannot absorb on behalf of those we love. As the truck and trailer rumble out of sight around a bend in the driveway, Anneliese and I hold hands and ache for the pain we cannot absorb on behalf of those we love.

I use the salvaged posts and panels to expand the pigpen. The pigs tear into the new sod, their tails spinning. I am watching c.o.c.klebur snout through crab gra.s.s roots when she pauses, dipping her head up and down. When I look in closer I see she has teased an angleworm free from the dirt and is feeding it backward into her mouth with flicks of her almost prehensile lower lip.

The soybeans didn't survive the weeds, but the sweet corn is thriving. Each day I cut and feed the pigs several stalks. They eat the cobs and chew the leaves. We have also come into another cheap pig-food bonus-our friends Kenneth and Virginia Smote have an excess of goat milk, and they have been saving it for us. Once a week we bring it home in buckets, and each day I mix it with the expired baked goods. Kenneth claims he has raised fine pork on goat milk alone, and I have promised him some pork chops in time. We don't have enough refrigerator s.p.a.ce to store all the buckets, and by the end of the week I am decanting some diabolically clotty fondue, but those pigs slurp it right down. On the downside the buckets don't seal well and we have a b.u.mpy driveway; I have noticed that on real warm days the inside of our van smells of curdled goat.

We have a number of apple trees on the property, and when the first windfalls dropped I happily gathered buckets of them for the pigs, but I have been frustrated. The first time I tipped them into the feeder, the sound of them tumbling against the plastic brought the pigs a-bounding. How disappointed I was when after a few nibbles they wandered disinterestedly away. I couldn't bear the idea of free pig food going to waste, so for a few days I took to making worms-and-all apple smoothies in the blender and stirring them in with the bread and goat milk. The smoothie technique worked, but after several days of cleaning the blender, I settled for just lobbing a few over the fence now and then. I did come past the pen one afternoon to find Wilbur gazing at me with a big red apple in his mouth, and I admit I imagined him on a sterling silver platter and said "Hold that pose" out loud.

The pigs are getting big. Jed told me I'd know they were ready to butcher when they wouldn't fit between my legs at a straddle, but (A) Jed's about five-foot-five-if he followed his own advice he'd never butcher a pig bigger than a schnauzer, and (B) you gotta be kidding. Tom, the old-timer in the valley, says four pounds of grain equals one pound of gain, but I haven't been keeping track, plus there's all the goat milk and expired cinnamon rolls. He also says any pig over 250 pounds is starting to run more to fat than meat. My brother-in-law Mark says I should just raise them as big as I can get them. As he put it, "I figure every additional inch is two more pork chops."

I ask around, and someone says there is a fellow who will come out to the farm and do the butchering. His name is Muzzy. I give him a call, ask if he'll come and eyeball the pigs, let me know if they're getting close.

My sister Kathleen and brother-in-law Mark are butchering their chickens, and I've gone to lend a hand. Mark once helped me resurrect my beloved old International pickup, so I owe him pretty much forever, and furthermore, I'm treating this as a refresher course in case we decide to butcher our own chickens this year. I haven't butchered chickens since I helped my brother John about six years ago. Mark and I wade into the chickens and each grab a bird. The things are huge and solid-I feel like I'm cradling a feathered bowling ball. Mark has rolled up four tin funnels and nailed them to a horizontal plank attached to the back of his chicken tractor. We stick the birds headfirst down the funnels. When all four funnels are occupied, Mark grabs a butcher knife, fishes out the head of the first chicken, extends the neck and with one quick motion, severs the head, and moves to the next bird. The funnels keep the birds from flapping all over creation (while the idea of a chicken running around with its head cut off tends to be used in a humorous sense, the reality is much more unnerving, and more than one farm kid recalls the freakout of zigzagging across the yard two steps ahead of a spasming two-legged gore-geyser that seems to be matching zig for zag) while also allowing the blood to drain to the ground.

When the blood is down to a slow drip and the legs stop kicking, I grab two birds by their feet, pull them from the funnel, and carry them over to where my father is heating a large pan of water over a propane burner for the purpose of scalding the birds, which loosens their feathers for plucking. The scalding is tricky-immerse the bird too long or at too high a temperature, and you begin to cook the skin and it will tear when you pluck; too briefly or at too low a temperature and the feathers fail to loosen, and plucking becomes even more of a ch.o.r.e. As to the perfect temperature for scalding, experts agree: the experts disagree. Dad finds it helps if you plunge the bird up and down slowly, which seems to increase the penetration of the hot water.

Next Dad gives the bird a turn on the automatic plucker. My brother John built the plucker himself and its main feature is a rotating drum bristling with rubber fingers. Dad lays the chicken on the drum and turns it this way and that. The fingers snag the feathers and sends them flying into a pile. As the day progresses they collect on the lawn like a soggy pink-tinted s...o...b..nk. The plucker gets about 90 percent of the feathers (lately we have been eyeballing an improved model), but the rest require manual labor. At eye level between two trees, Mark has rigged a line threaded with a series of blunt hooks. The hooks are sized so that the s.h.i.+n of the chicken will easily fit but the foot catches. Most of the remaining feathers can be plucked by hand, although we do break out the pliers now and then. At the very end we use a handheld propane torch to singe the pinfeathers, which blacken, curl, and burn away to nothing. If you hold the flame in one place too long, the skin begins to contract and you are quite literally cooking chicken. Next Mark and the neighbor lady cut the feet loose at the joint, eviscerate the birds, and put them in tubs of water to cool. A hose is placed in the tub and allowed to run at a trickle so the water stays cold and refreshes itself, rinsing away what is officially known as skack skack.

Once we're under way, by about the sixth bird or so, we establish an informal division of labor and a rhythm sets in. I stick mostly to plucking and killing. I do not like the killing part, and find the best thing is just to move decisively. There is the usual unavoidable nonmetaphorical instant of recognizing exactly what it takes to enjoy chicken dinner, but I resist the temptation to deconstruct the process further. It's miserably hot, which highlights the delight of working elbow deep in guts and wet feathers. Wasps continually alight on the chicken carca.s.ses and buzz at our ears when we shoo them. Sidrock has picked a severed head from the pile beneath the funnels, and, squatted beside a tree, he is working the beak open and closed and poking at eyeb.a.l.l.s. Jed has arrived, and before he starts plucking, he grabs a chicken foot and exposes the white ribbons of tendon with his jackknife. Then he shows Sidrock how to make the chicken claw open and close by tugging on the tendons. Sidrock is openmouthed in wonder. "Go show your mom," says Jed slyly, and the little boy tears off for the house with the claw in one hand. Flopped in the shade beneath the four-wheeler, Mark's dog is hot-mouthing a rooster head. The deep red comb has gone yellowish pale, and when the dog settles in to gnaw it from the skull, the sound reminds me of the one I hear in my own head when I am chewing gristle.

Jed joins in, working and jesting with the rest of us. But there are new lines around his eyes, and after an hour he puts down his knife, lays back across the ATV seat, puts his cap over his eyes, and sleeps. No one says anything, but we know we are seeing the absolute weariness of grief.

Forty-three chickens go through our ragtag a.s.sembly line. I am not staying for supper, but I wish I could because on the way to the car I walk past the charcoal grill and catch the scent of beer-can chicken, which is made by roasting a chicken in the vertical position with an open can of beer stuck up its hinder. A final indignity, I suppose. The whiff I catch on my way to the car makes my tummy grumble, and the stinky feathers clinging to my boots do nothing to diminish my appet.i.te.

As for our meat chickens, they are growing at an alarming pace. Within two days of delivery they were sprouting wing feathers and already they are approaching Cornish hen dimensions. It's tough to love the meat chickens. They stomp around thick-legged and flat-footed, and when I turn them out on fresh gra.s.s or give them sweet corn on the cob, they peck some, but mostly they just sit and wait for ground feed. The free bread they ignore entirely. They are nearly impossible to move in the chicken tractor, lollygagging confusedly. Rather than startle forward when the back of the tractor b.u.mps them in the b.u.t.t, they often flop over and rest quietly while it rolls over them. We gave them chicken starter to begin with, but now that they're coming on, we've switched them to hog feed, since it's cheaper than chicken feed. The one time they show life is when I replenish the feeders, at which point they trample and ram each other without mercy. Once for the sake of my own entertainment I filled a mason jar with feed, capped it, and set it in the pen just to watch them peck madly at the gla.s.s. They are clearly bred solely to generate protein, and in the first couple of weeks I had to build three different temporary boxes for them, increasing the size each time. Once we started free-ranging the layers I switched the meats over to the chicken tractor, but still, every night I have to drag them into the garage, as the chicken tractor isn't strong enough to withstand more aggressive predators, and just the other day I saw a fisher (basically a weasel on steroids) cross the driveway. When I'm gone, Anneliese has to drag them back and forth. The garage is deeply pungent, and every time I go in there I am reminded of my shortcomings. None of this would be an issue if the chicken coop was done.

The laying hens, on the other hand, are great fun. They follow me to the office in the morning and tap on the gla.s.s of the storm door. If I rattle a tin tray of feed, they come running. I catch and feed them gra.s.shoppers. They are not pets as such (their siblings, the ones that remained with our friends Billy and Margie, actually jump into your arms for cuddle time), but they are engaged and surprising and fun to watch. Sometimes when the deadlines are really closing in I wander down and let them eat feed from the palm of my hand just for the relaxation of it. I can envision a time when all a man would want is a porch, unoccupied time, and chickens in the yard.

Jane is not growing at the rate of a meat chicken, but she is holding her own. When I put her in the football hold my arm gets tired before she does. I've begun taking her along in a backpack while I'm doing ch.o.r.es. Yesterday when we approached the pigpen and the pigs did their usual woofing and galumphing, I heard a funny noise behind me, kind of a s...o...b..ry chortle, and when I craned my head I could see Jane smiling at the pigs and I realized I had just heard her very first out-loud laugh.

Nighttime, however, has not been so joyous. After settling into a groove in which she slept most the night, suddenly Jane's begun waking up and bawling. Last night after Anneliese had tried feeding her and she was crying again, I took my turn. I went through my whole repertoire of tricks-rocking, bouncing, pacing around the kitchen island sixteen times in the ambient glow of the microwave light-and nothing worked. Finally I gave her my knuckle to suck, and as she latched on I felt a slight snag and there was your answer: her first tooth breaking through.