A
Walk for Chestnuts,
continued
But
not today. On we went around and in front of the chicken house,
a chicken house far better than any the neighbors had, for Daddy
built houses and barns and silos and drew the plans for anything
he chose to build. Ours was sturdy and new, with big windows facing
east, into the orchard hill; so it was protected from wind and
open to the morning sun. Behind the screen that covered the windows,
so it was airy in good weather, were the roosts for the hens and
the rooster, an elevated stadium with the front chickens sitting
on a lower pole than the next and the next and the next. On the
left were a dozen or more open boxes with nests for the hens to
lay their eggs. Even now I could feel the peck of the cross hens
when I went to gather the eggs from under their warm, soft, feathery
bodies.
Under
the hen house on the west was the new rabbit pen with my two big
white, pink eyed rabbits. Like a lean-to on the north was the
sleeping pen for the turkey that fell off the truck earlier in
the summer and was now my pet and would be our Thanksgiving dinner.
He followed us to the gate going out into the barnyard, so called
because the barn opened onto this space and the manure pile was
there just outside the cow's stall. It was really just an enlarged
end of the lane, the common road that led up from the unpaved
road between Cedar Springs and town, an access road between us
and the farmer on the west and the owner of the woods to the north.
But I considered it mine and felt rude intrusion when the wagon
and the horses and the men going to cut wood went up this road,
opening the gate in the lane at the big cherry tree. The wagon
would groan and creak, the men would yell "haw'' and "gee"
and the horses on cold winter days would breathe white, steamy
plumes into the air as they drew their way past the pink grape
vine, the hen house and on toward the woods. Here the car was
backed out of the garage that was part of the barn and the spark
plugs cleaned. Here I went in good weather and foul to pet my
calf in the tiny stall, rubbing its sleek warm neck, feeling its
rough, sandpaper-like tongue slobber over my hand as it searched
for salt. I took care to step from one frozen lump of manure to
another without hitting one made slippery from my calf lying down.
If he had lain there long, you might just slip into a sea of that
thick, brown, smelly stuff.
next
©
Vivian S. Dixon, 2004
