The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (12 page)

“Say,” Ernie said, demanding John’s attention. “What d’you think of the idea? Start a battery chicken farm when you finish school, and hire
one man
to run it. You could take another job in Chicago or Washington or wherever, and you’d have a steady
separate
income for life.”

John was silent. He couldn’t imagine owning a battery chicken farm.

“Any bank would finance you—with a word from Clive, of course.”

Clive was John’s father.

Helen was looking down at her plate, perhaps thinking of something else.

“Not really my lifestyle, I think,” John answered finally. “I know it’s profitable.”

After dinner, Ernie went into the living room to do his reckoning, as he called it. He did some reckoning almost every night. John helped Helen with the dishes. She put a Mozart symphony on the record player. The music was nice, but John would have liked to talk with Helen. On the other hand, what would he have said, exactly?
I understand why you’re bored. I think you’d prefer pouring slop for pigs and tossing grain to real chickens, the way you used to do
. John had a desire to put his arms around Helen as she bent over the sink, to turn her face to his and kiss her. What would Helen think if he did?

That night, lying in bed, John dutifully read the brochures on battery chicken farming which Ernie had given him.

. . . The chickens are bred small so that they do not eat so much, and they rarely reach more than 3 1/2 pounds . . . Young chickens are subjected to a light routine which tricks them into thinking that a day is 6 hours long. The objective of the factory farmer is to increase the original 6-hour day by leaving the lights on for a longer period each week. Artificial Spring Period is maintained for the hen’s whole lifetime of 10 months . . . There is no real falling off of egg-laying in the natural sense, though the hen won’t lay quite so many eggs towards the end . . . [Why, John wondered. And wasn’t “not quite so many” the same as “falling off”?] At 10 months the hen is sold for about 30¢ a pound, depending on the market . . .

And below:

Richard K. Schultz of Poon’s Cross, Pa., writes: “I am more than pleased and so is my wife with the modernization of my farm into a battery chicken farm operated with Muskeego-Ryan Electric equipment. Profits have quadrupled in a year and a half and we have even bigger hopes for the future . . .”

Writes Henry Vliess of Farnham, Kentucky: “My old farm was barely breaking even. I had chickens, pigs, cows, the usual. My friends used to laugh at my hard work combined with all my tough luck. Then I . . .”

John had a dream. He was flying like Superman in Ernie’s chicken barn, and the lights were all blazing brightly. Many of the imprisoned chickens looked up at him, their eyes flashed silver, and they were struck blind. The noise they made was fantastic. They wanted to escape, but could no longer see, and the whole barn heaved with their efforts to fly upward. John flew about frantically, trying to find the lever to open the coops, the doors, anything, but he couldn’t. Then he woke up, startled to find himself in bed, propped on one elbow. His forehead and chest were damp with sweat. Moonlight came strong through the window. In the night’s silence, he could hear the steady high-pitched din of the hundreds of chickens in the barn, though Ernie had said the barn was absolutely soundproofed. Maybe it was “daytime” for the chickens now. Ernie said they had three more months to live.

John became more adept with the barn’s machinery and the fast artificial clocks, but since his dream he no longer looked at the chickens as he had the first day. He did not look at them at all if he could help it. Once Ernie pointed out a dead one, and John removed it. Its breast, bloody from the coop’s barrier, was so distended, it might have eaten itself to death.

Susan had named her kitten “Bibsy,” because it had a white oval on its chest like a bib.

“Beansy and now Bibsy,” Helen said to John. “You’d think all Susan thinks about is food!”

Helen and John drove to town one Saturday morning. It was alternately sunny and showery, and they walked close together under an umbrella when the showers came. They bought meat, potatoes, washing powder, white paint for a kitchen shelf, and Helen bought a pink-and-white striped blouse for herself. At a pet shop, John acquired a basket with a pillow to give Susan for Bibsy.

When they got home, there was a long dark gray car in front of the house.

“Why, that’s the doctor’s car!” Helen said.

“Does he come by just to visit?” John asked, and at once felt stupid, because something might have happened to Ernie. A grain delivery had been due that morning, and Ernie was always climbing about to see that everything was going all right.

There was another car, dark green, which Helen didn’t recognize beside the chicken factory. Helen and John went into the house.

It was Susan. She lay on the living room floor under a plaid blanket, only one sandaled foot and yellow sock visible under the fringed edge. Dr. Geller was there, and a man Helen didn’t know. Ernie stood rigid and panicked beside his daughter.

Dr. Geller came towards Helen and said, “I’m sorry, Helen. Susan was dead by the time the ambulance got here. I sent for the coroner.”

“What
happened
?” Helen started to touch Susan, and instinctively John caught her.

“Honey, I didn’t see her in time,” Ernie said. “She was chasing under that damned container after the kitten just as it was lowering.”

“Yeah, it bumped her on the head,” said a husky man in tan workclothes, one of the delivery men. “She was running out from under it, Ernie said. My
gosh
, I’m sorry, Mrs. Hanshaw!”

Helen gasped, then she covered her face.

“You’ll need a sedative, Helen,” Dr. Geller said.

The doctor gave Helen a needle in her arm. Helen said nothing. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes stared straight ahead. Another car came and took the body away on a stretcher. The coroner took his leave then too.

With a shaky hand, Ernie poured whiskeys.

Bibsy leapt about the room, and sniffed at the red splotch on the carpet. John went to the kitchen to get a sponge. It was best to try to get it up, John thought, while the others were in the kitchen. He went back to the kitchen for a saucepan of water, and scrubbed again at the abundant red. His head was ringing, and he had difficulty keeping his balance. In the kitchen, he drank off his whiskey at a gulp and it at once burnt his ears.

“Ernie, I think I’d better take off,” the delivery man said solemnly. “You know where to find me.”

Helen went up to the bedroom she shared with Ernie, and did not come down when it was time for dinner. From his room, John heard floorboards creaking faintly, and knew that Helen was walking about in the room. He wanted to go in and speak to her, but he was afraid he would not be capable of saying the right thing. Ernie should be with her, John thought.

John and Ernie gloomily scrambled some eggs, and John went to ask Helen if she would come down or would prefer him to bring her something. He knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Helen said.

He loved her voice, and was somehow surprised to find that it wasn’t any different since her child had died. She was lying on the double bed, still in the same clothes, smoking a cigarette.

“I don’t care to eat, thanks, but I’d like a whiskey.”

John rushed down, eager to get something that she wanted. He brought ice, a glass, and the bottle on a tray. “Do you just want to go to sleep?” John asked.

“Yes.”

She had not turned on a light. John kissed her cheek, and for an instant she slipped her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek also. Then he left the room.

Downstairs the eggs tasted dry, and John could hardly swallow even with sips of milk.

“My God, what a day,” Ernie said. “My God.” He was evidently trying to say more, looked at John with an effort at politeness, or closeness.

And John, like Helen, found himself looking down at his plate, wordless. Finally, miserable in the silence, John got up with his plate and patted Ernie awkwardly on the shoulder. “I am sorry, Ernie.”

They opened another bottle of whiskey, one of the two bottles left in the living room cabinet.

“If I’d known this would happen, I’d never have started this damned chicken farm. You know that. I meant to earn something for my family—not go limping along year after year.”

John saw that the kitten had found the new basket and gone to sleep in it on the living room floor. “Ernie, you probably want to talk to Helen. I’ll be up at the usual time to give you a hand.” That meant 7 a.m.

“Okay. I’m in a daze tonight. Forgive me, John.”

John lay for nearly an hour in his bed without sleeping. He heard Ernie go quietly into the bedroom across the hall, but he heard no voices or even a murmur after that. Ernie was not much like Clive, John thought. John’s father might have given way to tears for a minute, might have cursed. Then with his father it would have been all over, except for comforting his wife.

A raucous noise, rising and falling, woke John up. The chickens, of course. What the hell was it now? They were louder than he’d ever heard them. He looked out of the front window. In the pre-dawn light, he could see that the barn’s front doors were open. Then the lights in the barn came on, blazing out on to the grass. John pulled on his tennis shoes without tying them, and rushed into the hall.

“
Ernie!—Helen!
” he yelled at their closed door.

John ran out of the house. A white tide of chickens was now oozing through the wide front doors of the barn. What on earth had happened? “Get
back
!” he yelled at the chickens, flailing his arms.

The little hens might have been blind or might not have heard him at all through their own squawks. They kept on flowing from the barn, some fluttering over the others, and sinking again in the white sea.

John cupped his hands to his mouth. “Ernie! The
doors
!” He was shouting into the barn, because Ernie must be there.

John plunged into the hens and made another effort to shoo them back. It was hopeless. Unused to walking, the chickens teetered like drunks, lurched against each other, stumbled forward, fell back on their tails, but they kept pouring out, many borne on the backs of those who walked. They were pecking at John’s ankles. John kicked some aside and moved towards the barn doors again, but the pain of the blunt beaks on his ankles and lower legs made him stop. Some chickens tried to fly up to attack him, but had no strength in their wings.
They are insane
, John remembered. Suddenly frightened, John ran towards the clearer area at the side of the barn, then on towards the back door. He knew how to open the back door. It had a combination lock.

Helen was standing at the corner of the barn in her bathrobe, where John had first seen her when he arrived. The back door was closed.

“What’s
happening
?” John shouted.

“I opened the coops,” Helen said.

“Opened them—why?—Where’s Ernie?”

“He’s in there.” Helen was oddly calm, as if she were standing and talking in her sleep.

“Well, what’s he
doing
? Why doesn’t he close the place?” John was shaking Helen by the shoulders, trying to wake her up. He released her and ran to the back door.

“I’ve locked it again,” Helen said.

John worked the combination as fast as he could, but he could hardly see it.

“Don’t open it! Do you want them coming
this
way?” Helen was suddenly alert, dragging John’s hands from the lock.

Then John understood. Ernie was being killed in there, being pecked to death. Helen wanted it. Even if Ernie was screaming, they couldn’t have heard him.

A smile came over Helen’s face. “Yes, he’s in there. I think they will finish him.”

John, not quite hearing over the noise of chickens, had read her lips. His heart was beating fast.

Then Helen slumped, and John caught her. John knew it was too late to save Ernie. He also thought that Ernie was no longer screaming.

Helen straightened up. “Come with me. Let’s watch them,” she said, and drew John feebly, yet with determination, along the side of the barn towards the front doors.

Their slow walk seemed four times as long as it should have been. He gripped Helen’s arm. “Ernie
in
there?” John asked, feeling as if he were dreaming, or perhaps about to faint.

“In there.” Helen smiled at him again, with her eyes half closed. “I came down and opened the back door, you see—and I went up and woke Ernie. I said, ‘Ernie, something’s wrong in the factory, you’d better come down.’ ” He came down and went in the back door—and I opened the coops with the lever. And then—I pulled the lever that opens the front door. He was—in the middle of the barn then, because I started a fire on the floor.”

“A fire?” Then John noticed a pale curl of smoke rising over the front door.

“Not much to burn in there—just the grain,” Helen said. “And there’s enough for them to eat outdoors, don’t you think?” She gave a laugh.

John pulled her faster towards the front of the barn. There seemed to be not much smoke. Now the whole lawn was covered with chickens, and they were spreading through the white rail fence on to the road, pecking, cackling, screaming, a slow army without direction. It looked as if snow had fallen on the land.

“Head for the house!” John said, kicking at some chickens that were attacking Helen’s ankles.

They went up to John’s room. Helen knelt at the front window, watching. The sun was rising on their left, and now it touched the reddish roof of the metal barn. Gray smoke was curling upward from the horizontal lintel of the front doors. Chickens paused, stood stupidly in the doorway until they were bumped by others from behind. The chickens seemed not so much dazzled by the rising sun—the light was brighter in the barn—as by the openness around them and above them. John had never before seen chickens stretch their necks just to look up at the sky. He knelt beside Helen, his arm around her waist.

“They’re all going to—go away,” John said. He felt curiously paralyzed.