Thirty Six Pullets for Miss Edna

Setting the Panels

He set them himself. He would not let anybody help him at first.

He laid the first panel flat along the outside of the long side, tight against the bottom of the welded wire, and clipped it on every eighteen inches. Then he drove stakes through it into the clay, one every four feet, with a hand sledge he had brought in the bucket.

I watched him work. He knew what he was doing. He had been setting things into Georgia clay his whole life.

After a while the red haired boy picked up the end of the second panel without asking and started dragging it toward the other long side.

Lamar looked at him. Then he picked up the other end.

They set the second panel together. Then the father who had stayed went to his truck and came back with a third panel he had in the bed, and some more stakes, and the three of them did the back.

The kids sat on the porch steps and drank tea and watched.

When it was done, Lamar stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. His face was red. He did not look at any of the kids.

“I’ll pen the dogs,” he said. To Edna. Only to her. “I’ll put the cable back up. Tomorrow.”

“I know you will,” she said.

He nodded. Then he said, very low, so that I almost did not hear it, “I’m sorry about your birds, Edna. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

“No,” Miss Edna said. “You shouldn’t have.”

That was all she said about it. She did not make it easy on him and she did not make it hard.

Then she said, “There’s tea.”

Lamar stood there a second. Then he went up on her porch and sat down in the other rocker, the one that used to be her husband’s, and she poured him a glass.

Sunday

The next morning was Sunday. Hoyt was home by then, and we drove past Edna’s on the way to church.

Lamar’s two yellow dogs were back on a cable run between the two pecan trees. The cable was new. The stakes were new. Somebody had been out there at daylight.

The dogs were lying in the shade watching the road, the same as they used to when his wife was alive.

At church, Miss Edna sat in her pew on the left side, third from the front, where she has sat for sixty two years. Kenzie went and sat with her instead of with us. I let her.

When we were walking out after, I saw Lamar’s truck in the gravel lot. He had not been to church since the funeral. He was standing by his tailgate, not talking to anybody, but he was there.

Miss Edna walked over to him on Kenzie’s arm and said something I did not hear. He nodded.

Monday

On Monday morning, Orene’s bus came down our road at 7:05 like it always does.

I was in my truck behind it, on my way to the poultry house. I saw the bus slow down at the end of Edna’s drive the way it had not slowed down in a week.

The blue cooler was back out at the end of the gravel.

There were only a dozen eggs in it that morning, from the four old hens. The pullets would not lay for a few more weeks. But the cooler was out, and the coffee can was sitting on top of it with the slot in the lid.

And taped to the front of the cooler was a new sign.

The old sign had faded so bad over the years you could not read it anymore. This one was on a piece of white poster board, in purple marker, in handwriting I would know anywhere.

It said Miss Edna’s Eggs, Four Dollars a Dozen, Laid by Thirty Six Good Girls and Four Old Ladies.

Kenzie had made it Sunday afternoon at our kitchen table, and had made me drive her over before dark to tape it on.