Thirty Six Pullets for Miss Edna

The Supper Table

That night at supper my daughter Kenzie did not eat.

Kenzie is twelve. She is in sixth grade, and she rides Orene Kesler’s bus every morning, and every morning that bus goes right past Miss Edna’s blue cooler.

Kenzie has been buying eggs out of that cooler with her own allowance since she was eight. She leaves the four dollars in the coffee can and brings the eggs home and acts like she is doing me a favor.

“The cooler wasn’t out this morning,” she said.

“No, baby. It won’t be for a while.”

I told her what happened. I left out the part about the feathers in the ditch. I did not leave out what Lamar said, because I thought she was old enough to hear how a grown man can talk.

She sat there with her fork in her hand and looked at her plate for a long time.

My husband Hoyt was home that night, for once. He drives a grain truck in the spring and he is gone a lot of nights. He reached over and put his hand on the back of her chair.

“Mama,” Kenzie said finally. “Half the kids on my bus have chickens.”

“I know they do.”

“Like, real chickens. The two sisters from the dairy have about a hundred. The boy with the red hair, his granddad sells pullets out of his barn every spring.”

“Kenzie, those are their families’ birds.”

“I know,” she said. “But what if everybody brought four?”

Hoyt and I looked at each other across the table.

“Four what?” Hoyt said.

“Four pullets. Not grown hens. The young ones, the ones that are about to start laying. If nine kids brought four apiece, that’s thirty six.” She was counting on her fingers already. “That’s every one she lost.”

I did not say anything for a second, because I did not trust my voice.

“Where would she put them?” Hoyt asked. He is a practical man and he was not going to let her get her heart set on something that would get killed the first night. “Those dogs will be right back in that pen.”

“Then we build her a new one,” Kenzie said. “A real one.”

Hoyt leaned back in his chair. “Welded wire,” he said. “Fourteen gauge. Treated four by fours, set two foot down. And something along the bottom so they can’t dig.”

“Can you do that?” Kenzie asked him.

“I can dig the holes,” he said. “I’m hauling Saturday afternoon, but I can dig the holes Saturday at daylight before I leave.”

Kenzie looked at me.

I thought about my promise to Miss Edna. I had promised not to call the county. I had not promised anything else.

“You make your list,” I said.