Thirty Six Pullets for Miss Edna

Every so often she would call out to one of the kids. “Honey, you need a glass of tea.” “Baby, get out of that sun a minute.”

She made three pitchers of sweet tea that afternoon. She would not let any of us help her carry them.

Around three, one of the kids asked me what was going to keep the dogs from just digging under again.

It was a good question. I had been thinking about it all day. The plan was to bury the welded wire six inches down and then lay a skirt of it out flat along the outside, staked into the ground, so a dog that started digging would hit wire.

We did not have enough wire for the skirt. I had miscounted at the farm supply. We had enough to go around the run and that was all.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “We’ll bury what we’ve got and I’ll come back Monday.”

Across the road, I saw Lamar come out of his house and walk out to his barn. He did not look at us. He went in and pulled the door half shut behind him.

Thirty Six Names

By five o’clock the run was standing.

Sixteen by twenty four feet of bright new welded wire on treated posts, with a tin roof across the back half and a gate that swung true and latched with a click. Hoyt’s posts did not move an inch when I leaned on them.

We carried the crates in one at a time and opened them inside the run.

Thirty six pullets came walking out onto fresh straw, blinking, and started scratching like they had been looking for that straw their whole lives.

The four old hens came out of the coop house and looked at the new birds like they owned the place, which they did.

Miss Edna stood up off her step with the red hen still in her arms and walked over to the gate. She looked at the run for a long time. The kids got quiet behind her.

Then she did something I did not expect.

“Come here, honey,” she said to the smallest of the river brothers. “Which one of these did you bring?”

He pointed to a black pullet with a little white fleck on her neck.

“What’s your name?” she asked him, though she knew it. She has known every child on that bus since they were babies.

He told her.

“Then that’s her name too,” Miss Edna said. “She’s yours. You come see her whenever you want.”

She went down the line. Every child. She had each one point out a bird they had carried, and she named that bird for that child, and she said the name out loud twice so she would not forget it.

Kenzie was last. Miss Edna lifted up the red hen she had been holding all afternoon.

“This one’s Kenzie,” she said.

My girl, who is twelve and thinks she is too old to cry in front of anybody, put her face down into Miss Edna’s cardigan and stayed there.

I had to go stand by the truck for a minute.