Thirty Six Pullets for Miss Edna

Telling Edna

I went over Thursday evening, before dark, to tell Miss Edna what was coming. I thought she ought to know. I also thought she might tell me no.

She was on her porch shelling the last of her pantry butter beans into a pan. Her four hens were scratching in the dirt by the coop house, and she had shut them back in every afternoon by four o’clock since Tuesday.

I told her about Kenzie and the bus. I told her about the list and the nine kids and the thirty six pullets. I told her about Orene and the pickup and Hoyt and the posts.

She stopped shelling. She held one bean pod in her fingers and did not move.

“Thirty six,” she said.

“One for every one you lost.”

“Those children’s families can’t afford that, Shea.”

“They already decided,” I said. “Nobody’s taking it back now. You’d break nine hearts on that bus.”

She put the bean pod down. She looked across the road at Lamar’s place, where both yellow dogs were lying in the shade of his carport.

“I don’t want this to be a fight,” she said. “I don’t want those children standing in my yard throwing it in that man’s face.”

“It won’t be,” I said. “We’re building a chicken run. That’s all. We’re not going to say one word to him.”

She thought about it a long time.

“All right,” she said. “Then I’ll make tea.”

Saturday Morning

Hoyt was out there Saturday at first light with the post hole digger. I went with him and held the posts while he tamped.

He set ten posts in a rectangle sixteen feet by twenty four, two feet down in that red clay, with a dog leg at the front for the gate. He checked every one with a level. He does not do anything halfway.

Then he wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at the old chicken wire pen, sagging and torn at the corner.

“Pull this down before the birds get here,” he said. “Don’t want them getting confused about which one’s home.”

He kissed me on the forehead, climbed in his truck, and left to load grain at nine. I stood there with the posts and a pile of wire and four hours to get ready.

Miss Edna came out with a glass of tea and stood by me.

“He does good work,” she said.

“He does.”

“My husband set those old posts,” she said, looking at the cedar ones. “In ’94. He’d be glad of the new ones. He never did like that chicken wire, he just never got around to changing it.”

I spent the morning pulling down the old pen and rolling up the wire. Miss Edna raked out the coop house and put down fresh pine shavings, and I could not stop her, so I did not try.

Across the road, Lamar’s truck was in the carport. Every now and then I saw his kitchen curtain move.