Part I
He wore a frayed straw hat and when he took it off it was always with his left hand. When it was hot outside he would pinch the brim of that hat and remove it while he used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. He let the hair of his eyebrows grow long and trimmed the outer edges of them to display deep-running crow’s feet. No man could see his true age and some speculated that he did not have one. The Chicken Whisperer had a face that told a story, a soft sandy story, which bridged the gap between man and time. Between farmer and fowl. He often traveled alone but was never out of place as he wandered the gravel lanes of the American Midwest.
His presence sung of hope and its legitimacy. There was rarely ever an unkind word spoken of the Whisperer. He was most often greeted, on a creaky front porch or the weedy berm of a long dirt road, with a kind word and the occasional offering. He could not accept payment for his gift but the Whisperer wanted for nothing. There was an infrequent occasion when the presence of this soft-spoken spirit was observed with anguish.
There were times when the Whisperer was accompanied by “his shadow”. A shadow that took the form of another man, wore simple clothing, and never spoke. A man none could distinguish from another save that he always wore a great shell necklace and, when he was with the Whisperer, walked directly behind the savior with a solemn gait.
Part II
I was 13 when I first heard of him. It was another ten years before I caught the apparition in the corner of my eye. My brother and I were picking buckets of green peppers in a field that our uncle was going to rotate into a pumpkin patch. We were sitting in the bed of an old International pickup sipping beers and eating our lunch. Frank was going on and on about Maria, some girl who worked at the Walmart, and how she drove him crazy down at the creek last weekend. He chewed at every word as he talked, in explicit detail, of the tiny denim cut-off shorts she wore and closed his eyes to describe the lighter parts of her bronze skin that peeked out from underneath her swimsuit top.
“Jeez Frank! What is with you and this girl? It’s like every damned day with you.” In truth it wasn’t so bad to listen to him obsess. He had a way of using these little stories to remind everyone that summer would soon turn to fall.
“I think I love her. I want to fall in love with this one John. I want to take her down to the bootjack.”
“You mean the same patch of weeds you and “what’s her name” rolled around in last summer? You remember that don’t you? This IS the same bootjack where you picked up all that poison oak with your ass isn’t it?”
“Fuck you John! You just don’t want to be happy for me. I’m in real love. Deep love that is gonna last forever and you can’t stand it!”
“You’re just tired of rubbin’ your pud up against the mattress.” I tossed my beer can toward the front of the pickup bed and reached into the cooler. Turning. Ready to volley another series of rational assaults on young love. I caught something lurching in the distance behind my brother.
Part III
Fighting back from the instinct to hide behind my younger brother I peered into the horizon. The thing was too big to be a black bear or a deer. It was too short to be a horse. It drew up dust with each step as it scuttled along the Middle Creek road.
“Hey Frank? Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“Out there on the road. What the hell is that thing?” I stood and supported myself against the quarter panel of the pickup as my mind raced to find a memory with which to categorize this shuffling beast. It was a rare occasion to see something that didn’t “fit” on the farm and usually, if it took too long to identify it, the best idea was to choose survival over investigation.
“I think that…well…I think it’s a person John.”
It had made its way to the hairpin turn that mirrored the bootjack. I became aware, as the image rotated, that it was not just one person but two. Two men who appeared to be walking impossibly close to one another.
“You think the littler one is gettin’ pulled by the other one?”
“Yeah. That might be right. They could be doin’ some sort of weird exercise or somethin’ too.” On one footfall it seemed as if they may be separate people and on the next they appeared to be conjoined.
“Do ya think they might be like…one of those twins that get connected together before they’re born?”
“It’s certainly possible….but…..John? Just what the hell would a couple of twinned guys be headed up to the Baker ranch for?”
Part IV
We spent the rest of the afternoon filling five-gallon pails with peppers and green beans while arguing the merits of John’s new relationship and the practical difficulties of being physically attached to another human being. With what we had loaded by 3:30 we hopped in the pickup truck and made our way out of the field. I stopped the truck at the field’s hinterland with the dirt road.
“Hey. You wanna see how far those guys made it up the road?”
“What?”
“Let’s see how far they made it. Couldn’t have been far.”
“What do we do if we see them?”
“Maybe we could talk to ‘em. Maybe you could tell them one of your ‘Maria’ stories.”
“Eat shit.”
Turning right we drove off in the opposite direction of the wandering men.
Part V
“He’s probably gone up to the Baker ranch to fix their stock. Old Marv Baker had said somethin’ bout how his hens were goin’ bad.” Despite the heat Pap had his legs wrapped in a throw blanket and he was sipping a cup of coffee. “I seen him do it once when I was ‘bout your age ya’ know. He can turn ‘round a whole bad flock. They say he is talkin’ to ‘em some how. Looked more like some kind of dancin’ to me. Like some sort of slow dancin’.”
“What is with the little one Pap?” John handed him a brick of cured tobacco.
“The little what?”
“There was a man with him Pappy. A smaller man and they walked real close together.”
“You say he wasn’t alone! You say’n you saw the one that walks with him?” Pap leaned back and gnawed nervously at the block of tobacco leaves.
“Who is he Pap?”
“I hope you boys were seeing things. Oh Lord, I pray for Marv’s sake that you kids are foolin’ around”.
“What is it Pap? What’s wrong?” Our grandfather was leaning back now. His eyes tossed back examining this mysterious transgression.
“You boys stay away from the Baker ranch tonight. You don’t go down there! Do ya hear? It ain’t no good when he walks with the one who wears the shells. You boys stay clear the hell away from that chicken dance! Do ya hear?”
Part VI
“Do you think Pap is gonna be pissed?” My brother’s apprehension was spoken in earnest.
“No he isn’t Johnny. And do you know why?” I turned over the ignition to the old pickup. “Because we aren’t going to tell him. Are we John?” The pickup eased out from the shadow of our barn and puttered along the moonlit path to the road.
“Yeah. Yeah, sure. You don’t have to talk to me like that ya’ know?”
It was clear, after we pulled up to the two-story barn on the Baker property, that we weren’t the only people interested in seeing the Whisperer work his magic. An unnatural amount of light leaked from the seams of that rickety structure. We parked the truck, and without a word to one another, my brother and I moved toward the crowd. We meandered in the light.
There were many congregated outside the entrance to the barn. Some toyed with cigarettes and puffed smoke rings into the despondent malaise. Some chittered, others chattered, and the great barn continued to spit light and speech out into the air.
One’s eyes needed time to adjust to the interior event. Making my way to the front of the crowd I pushed cordiality aside along with the onlookers before me. In the center of it all the excitement, the disillusionment, and the wailing two men stood with three score of chickens in a short-topped fence.
The travelers were ever so close to one another as they drifted amongst the shivering brood. The first thing one noticed was how each head pivoted from and rode the other while maintaining a careful respect in the spaces of their closing proximity. One would avert while the other chased it from the incidental interstice of gaze.
The features of the Whisperer had been carved in soap and stone. A great beacon gaze illuminated the living while delivering guidance to only the most receptive of chickens. It was a sweeping gaze. Lips of the Whisperer flew, jittering and shaking, in a pattern that mimicked a breathless sort of speech. It seemed that, once a chicken broke from it’s pecking and happened upon that great gaze it would soon become mesmerized.
The Whisperer did not speak so much as impart a pattern upon the chicken. There seemed to be a connection, an understanding, as the recipient wandered off. Some shook the interaction from their back as a songbird whets its wings in a puddle of water. Others made attempts at passing. Eliciting cooperation amongst the other chickens.
Features of the one with shells were fashioned, with great calculation, from metal and glass. His were the eyes of one who hunts. They dawdled amongst and around the feathered frenzy. While the Whisperer sought recognition from a chicken the other assorted his flock with distraction. His work was unburdened by, yet dovetailed to, the word of the Whisperer.
The shells around his neck would rise to support the back of the Whisperer. He carried at his side a coiled, poultry-sized bullwhip. A poultrywhip. He could attach the shells from his necklace to the end of that whip. It was a whip to brand with and a whip to punish.
Part VIII
And so they danced. The soft one planting sweet little chicken thoughts. Watching some of his thoughts flourish and others die on the vine. The hard one cracking his tiny whip and marking each of the distracted. Driving identities into flesh with the tip of a lukewarm shell.
There was a familiarity in this ritual. Many among the observant had expressed dismay but not a one seemed to be, in a truer sense, shocked by what they saw. We watched, we understood, and as our lips twitched with the leaning in of the Whisperer our right hands searched for the leather knot of the whip. We would soon lose ourselves in the straw piles of that roost.
It was at the very floor of this pit of chickeness that the feed of confusion was so easily consumed. A cock, presumably a cock of some regard, had simultaneously received the word along with the whip. The significance of this was imperceptible to the human eye and yet it washed a chaotic bath over every chicken left standing. In very little time a chicken attempted a passing of the word and was quickly trampled by those who had already been marked. It was atop the pulp of this word-passer that the chickens began organizing themselves by the mark of their punishments. Coquina migrated to the northeast. Chitons in the opposite direction. A great herd of permeated Tusk Shells stood in the middle as the Bivalves hovered around the feet of the oppressor and savior. The groups huddled in a tentative peace while, with futility and fervor, the Whisperer and the Other continued their craft.
Part IX
They huddled and we watched. We drooled upon and pulled at the knuckles of our hands. Space leaked from the slatted walls of the barn as we crowded in and hovered above the downy crust of these newly gated communities. The avian accord was to be short lived. Bivalves threw tiny talons at those who had strayed beyond the geography of their group in order to receive the word of the whisperer.
A Coquina, attempting a pass between Chitons and Tusk Shells, was intercepted, accosted, and torn to pieces. Her head was passed between the two groups as they argued for the credit of the fatal stroke.
And the Whisperer stopped whispering. And the Other quickened the pace of his whip. And the hand held fast and reached back a little further and came down with more and more celerity and the chickens….the chickens began to fight back against the whip. They had lost their newfound ability to discriminate. Their hysteria striking chicken kicks at Whisperer and Whip-wielder alike.
And, upon each bashing stroke of the whip, the Other was perceived to melt into the back of the Whisperer. To eat and become his very flesh. And the aggregate of their top-halves tilted and whirled as the foursome of their legs began trampling Coquina, Chiton, Tusk Shell and Bivalve alike.
Part X
And the flock began to move in unison. Swimming in a serpentine sprint away from each deadly footfall of the great beast. The sick and the young falling behind, tumbling, many crushed underfoot. And so, the beast continued.
The feet of those who watched began to cross the arena threshold. The soles of some sought merely to inhibit their escape. There were others who entered the ring to crush chickens for themselves. We all rolled in and lost focus of the torment. Our arms held up to wrap around the shoulder of one next to us. For the first time we looked to one another. We were jubilant. And we passed a smile and a kind word. And we stomped and stomped and stomped.
Speech passed above while the good feet bounced and pressed down through the crust and into the earth. I found Roy Kilmer. He asked my brother and I how many buckets of green peppers we had harvested earlier today. The crowd began to disperse in small conversational groups.
I continued talking my way out into the milk silk moonlight. I had a smoke and made a promise to help Mr. Kilmer move his irrigation pipe out of his patch of snow peas. Beetles had blighted the crop and it was pointless to continue irrigation.
“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.” --Ecclesiastes 9:5
--The End
