Fresh Eggs (24 page)

For a few minutes he listens to a man with a pipe and a seersucker coat talking to the television cameras. He wonders if the man knows that the name of his coat comes from an old Persian word,
shíoshakar
, meaning milk and sugar. The Hindus stole the word to describe the light, bumpy fabric they wore to keep from boiling in the liquid heat of India. They passed it on to the British and the British passed it on to the Americans. And now here is this bumpy-coated American in front of the cameras, thinking he knows everything, but knowing nothing. How is it, Pirooz wonders, that these Americans have conquered the world so easily when they know nothing about it? He knows the answer, of course. It is because they are blissfully ignorant. The tactic of all barbarians.

Now Dr. Pirooz Aram meanders through the crowd, wishing he hadn't driven here this morning, wishing he had worn something a little less flashy. More people are looking at him than at the house. Perhaps they think he is the captain of the flying saucer.

He wants to mind his own business, to see for himself what greed and stupidity have done to the beautiful swan named Rhea. But the words flying between the two men standing next to him wriggle into his ears.

“It's all a publicity stunt,” one of the men says. “You've been had, Sam.”

“I wish it was a stunt,” says the man named Sam. “But the poor girl is covered with feathers all right.”

Suddenly Pirooz finds himself in the conversation. “Why do you call her poor? She is very rich.”

The man named Sam shakes his head impatiently. “I don't mean poor as in not having any money. I mean poor as in pitiful.”

Pirooz bubbles with anger. “Sir! My English may have an accent, but I know that poor has two meanings. And I know which one you meant. And when I said
rich
I did not mean money either. She is rich in her beauty, inside and out. No one needs to pity her.”

“You know her then?” asks Sam.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

Pirooz wishes he had kept his mouth shut. “Sort of is all you're going to get.”

The man named Sam yawns and starts talking to his friend about Ohio State's chances of beating Michigan. Knowing and caring nothing about the crazy American game of football, Pirooz is about to resume his meandering when the man named Sam asks him, “How does something like this happen? Growing feathers? Exposure to toxic chemicals, maybe?”

“There are many things more toxic than chemicals,” Pirooz says.

“Such as?”

“Such as living on a concentration camp for chickens.”

“She's allergic to chickens?”

“To the way they are forced to live perhaps.”

“A psychological allergy you mean?”

Pirooz nods and shrugs at the same time. “Perhaps a spiritual one.” He says this knowing that he shouldn't. Not for Rhea's sake. Or his own. She was his patient, his friend. A doctor cannot discuss a patient's problems. And a friend should never betray a friend. No tippy-toeing. But these two barbarians are so incredibly ignorant. He tells them of St. Francis's wounds, of the stigmata suffered by so many others. “They bleed from their hands as if the Romans had crucified
them
.”

“Can my Toledo grandmother really make me live with her?” Rhea asks Gammy Betz as they shuffle through the dark. They have a flashlight but they're not using it. It's ten o'clock but the road in front of the farm is still crowded with police cars and television crews.

“Of course she can't.”

“If I had to go live with anybody it would be you.”

“And if I had to have somebody live with me it would be you.”

They reach the chicken coop. A nervous cluck works it way up the perches when the latch rattles. Rhea pulls the door open just an inch. “It's only me and Gammy,” she says. The chickens relax.

Rhea clicks on her flashlight now and moves the beam from face to face. Sideway eyes beam back like buttons of neon. “Your old Buff Orpingtons are all gone,” Rhea tells her grandmother.

“Nobody lives forever,” Gammy Betz says, “but there's more than a little Orpington in these new girls.” The beam reaches the big head of a rooster. “And who is that ugly cuss?”

“Mr. Shakyshiver. He took over sperm duty when the coyotes killed Blackbutt.”

Gammy Betz laughs, surprised and delighted by her granddaughter's maturity. “Sperm duty?”

Rhea laughs back, embarrassed but proud that she is old enough to say adult things to her grandmother. She washes the flashlight across the empty bottom perch to make sure it is free of manure. They sit, side by side. Rhea hands her grandmother the flashlight and takes her book from the big pocket on the bib of her overalls. She'd told her grandmother what it was about when they were in her room, just before her Toledo grandmother stormed in and promised she'd get her out of
this hell hole
just as soon as she could. So Gammy Betz is up to speed on the story about the cowardly birds following the Hoopoe through the seven valleys. Rhea reads:

“
Next comes the Valley of Bewilderment
,

A place of pain and gnawing discontent
—

Each second you will sigh, and every breath

Will be a sword to make you long for death
.”

Gammy Betz and the chickens listen without a single cluck as the poem rhymes on and on, to a story about a princess:

“
A great king had a daughter whose fair face

Was like the full moon in its radiant grace
,

She seemed a Joseph, and her dimpled chin

The well that lovely youth was hidden in
—”

In this poem the king brings a young slave into the court. The slave is so incredibly handsome that when he goes to the market, crowds gather around him just to see his face. It is only a matter of time before the princess sees him:

“
One day the princess, by some fateful chance
,

Caught sight of this surpassing elegance
,

And as she glimpsed his face she felt her heart
,

Her intellect, her self-control depart
—”

Rhea closes the book and wedges it between her knees. “Gammy, did I ever tell you about Joon?”

Calvin Cassowary opens the screen door just wide enough for Jimmy Faldstool to slide that morning's
Gazette
into his hand. Jimmy salutes and heads for the layer houses.

Calvin unfolds the paper. The headline across the top screams:

S
TIGMATA
!

The smaller headline under that asks this:

D
ID
D
AUGHTER GROW FEATHERS
O
UT OF
S
YMPATHY FOR
D
AD
'
S
C
HICKENS
?

“This is all I need,” he says calmly, before kicking the screen door and screaming, “SON. OF. A. BITCH!”

The story quotes a knowledgeable unnamed source who claims that the horrible treatment of the farm's chickens may be responsible for Rhea's condition. The story also quotes a Cleveland dermatologist, a Dr. Kimberly Kolacky, who cautions that while she has never met the Wyssock County girl, or studied her particular case, it is a well-documented medical fact that “psychological distress can have physiological manifestations.”

The story also quotes Brother Edward Nogasto, adjunct professor of comparative religion at Lewis Lutwidge University: “Obviously I can't say whether this girl's feathers are a stigmatic reaction, but the cases of Christians bleeding from their palms and feet—usually middle-aged women in England and teen-aged girls in South America—are quite genuine.”

Bob Gallinipper crumples his
New York Times
into a ball, the entire paper. “Dinky!” he screams to his secretary: “Get Norman Marek on the horn—pronto!”

Scott Snitzen, national president of Animals Are People Too, the AAPT, is in his kitchen making a broccoli, cauliflower and peanut stir fry when Brenda Berdache, his Midwest coordinator, calls. “You see the CBS News?” she asks.

“Nada. Dan Rather gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

And so Brenda tells him what she saw: “Well, they did this story on this girl from Ohio, who—”

Fifteen minutes later an AAPT ACTION ALERT is being faxed all over the United States and Canada.

All night the low rumble-hum of the window fan helped Rhea sleep. Now it wakes her up. She squeaks across the floor and turns it off. Closes her eyes and listens to the quiet.

It is only seven but already the AAPT is demonstrating. They showed up three mornings ago. Twenty or thirty of them. Their signs say SAINT RHEA. When the television crews turn on their cameras they begin their chant:

Free Rhea! Free the hens! Free Rhea! Free the hens!

She puts on her sweatshirt and overalls and squeaks down to the kitchen. The man in the uniform leaning against the refrigerator smiles grimly at her. She smiles grimly back. She goes to the cupboard where the cereal boxes are kept. The man in the black and blue uniform is not just a deputy, but Sheriff Skip Affenpinscher himself. Rhea knows that because yesterday when he came to the door Donna said, “Come in, deputy.”

And he tugged on the brim of his black cowboy hat and corrected her, “Sheriff Skip Affenpinscher, Mrs. Cassowary.”

Rhea chooses the box of miniature shredded wheats.

“The point is this,” the sheriff says to her father. “We've got to tie this old shoe and walk on.”

“I didn't invite these TV people,” her father says. “And I sure as hell didn't invite those animal rights nuts.” He is sitting at the table in the breakfast nook. He practically lives there now. It has become his cage.

The sheriff moves from the refrigerator to the stove so that Rhea can get the milk. “You are somewhat responsible, Mr. Cassowary.”

“Judge and jury, are we sheriff?”

Her father's hostility makes Rhea miss her bowl. Milk runs under the toaster, drips off the countertop.

The sheriff holds up his hands in surrender. “Whatever legal problems you have are between you and Children Services. My only concern is keeping the road clear. So anything you can do to help us out.”

“I could set my chickens free,” Calvin says. “How would that be? How would you like 810,000 hens running all over the county?”

Sheriff Skip Affenpinscher leaves, the old shoe still untied. Only now does her father acknowledge Rhea's presence at the table. “What's up, buttercup?”

The downstairs toilet flushes and Norman Marek appears in the kitchen, still making sure his zipper is zipped. “This AAPT thing completely changes the complexion of this thing,” he says to Calvin. To underscore how completely he now spells the word out. “C-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y.”

“Is this where Bob evokes the Good Citizen Clause in my contract?”

Norman Marek blanches as white as a Grade A Leghorn egg. Then he laughs and makes his hands into imaginary six-shooters. He fires away. “You are a funny man, Cal. F-u-n-n-y. Of course we're not going to invoke the Good Citizen clause. Bob's ridin' to your rescue, Cal.”

“Raising prices, is he?”

Norman Marek twirls his imaginary six-shooters and puts them in his imaginary holsters. “Better than that.” He explains how the AAPT has been a burr in the poultry industry's saddle for years. Crying about treatment of laying hens and broilers. Scaring the holy hell out of people about diseases. Turning people into celery eaters. Costing Bob Gallinipper millions. “So Bob and the other poultry bigwigs—pork and beef bigwigs, too—are fighting fire with fire. They've created their own public interest group. The PAAT. People Are Animals, Too. Turn the words around. Turn the debate around. Those kooks out there want people to believe animals have feelings. So we say: No way, José. Not only aren't animals people—people
are
animals. And all animals eat other animals. That's the way the Almighty wants it. Vegetarians are nothing but malnourished malcontents who worship wind chimes.”

Rhea watches the headache gathering on her father's brow as Norman Marek pulls out his six-shooters and starts firing away again.

“Bob's pouring big bucks into PAAT,” says Norman. “Studies. Lawsuits. Campaign contributions. Proactive advertising. Counter-picketing.”

Rhea watches the headache spread to her father's temples.

“No, Norman,” Calvin says. “Not more picketers.”

“They'll be here about nine,” says Norman.

Rhea puts her bowl in the sink and goes to the living room to watch TV. Donna is in her rocking chair, head bent over the ledger book spread across her knees, Kleenex in one hand, pencil in the other. A live shot of their house fills the TV screen. A wild-eyed reporter is trying to shout over the chanting.

Free Rhea! Free the hens! Free Rhea! Free the hens!

Weird, Rhea thinks. I'm inside that house right now.

At nine the demonstrators from PAAT arrive, blowing the horns of their pickups, gathering with their American flags and their bullhorns and their cardboard signs. The signs are hand-made but they all say the same thing:

STAND PAAT WITH CAL

As soon as the cameras swing their way, the PAAT people begin to chant:

Eat eggs! Eat meat! Stand pat! Or taste defeat!

At noon Michael Rood III arrives to update Donna and Calvin on the homeowners' association lawsuit as well as the effort by Children Services to place her in a foster home. When Rhea comes into the kitchen to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich all three of them smile grimly at her and she grimly smiles back.

At two o'clock, a strange man in a no-nonsense gray suit strides confidently into the kitchen and introduces himself as Bartholomew Gumboro, president of Gumboro Brothers Development. “We're prepared to offer you well above market,” he tells Calvin, who is still seated at the table. “And we'll eat the entire cost of disposing of your flock and the manure. You and your family can walk away clean and free and rich.”