Thirty Six Pullets for Miss Edna

The List

She made her list that night in the back of her math notebook, in purple pen.

On Wednesday morning she asked Orene Kesler if she could stand up at the front of the bus at the first stop and say something. Orene has driven that route for twenty two years, and she does not let anybody stand up on her bus for anything.

She let Kenzie.

I heard about it from Orene that afternoon, when she called me at the house.

“Your girl stood up there holding the rail with both hands,” Orene said. “Her voice was shaking. She said Miss Edna lost her hens and could anybody bring four pullets on Saturday. That was it. That was the whole speech.”

“What did they do?”

“Nine hands went up before I got to the next stop,” Orene said. “And then I’ll tell you something else. I’m bringing my pickup. You can’t haul nine crates of chickens in the back seat of a car.”

By Thursday Kenzie’s list had nine names on it and thirty six birds.

The two sisters from the dairy were bringing eight, four apiece, Rhode Island Reds. The red haired boy whose granddad raised pullets was bringing four Black Australorps and said his granddad told him to say they were the best layers in north Georgia.

A boy in fifth grade was bringing four from his mother’s flock, and his mother sent word that they had all had their shots, which I appreciated more than I can say. Three brothers from a family down near the river were bringing twelve between them.

Two more girls were bringing four apiece from their grandmother’s place, and the grandmother, a woman named Velda who used to work in the school lunchroom, sent along a feeder and a five gallon waterer she was not using.

That made thirty six. Nine kids, four birds each. Every one of them about eighteen weeks old, close enough to laying that Miss Edna would have eggs in the cooler again by the middle of May.

I did the math on what those pullets would cost at the feed store. About eighteen dollars apiece in our county that spring. Six hundred and forty eight dollars in birds, from nine families who mostly do not have six hundred and forty eight dollars lying around.

Nobody asked for a dime.

Hoyt and I bought the rest. Ten treated posts, two rolls of fourteen gauge welded wire, a box of fence staples, a gate, hinges, and four sheets of tin for a roof over the back half so the hens would have shade. It came to a little over four hundred dollars at the farm supply.

We had the money from our tax refund. We had been saving it to put a new back step on our own house. The old step held up fine for another year.