Come Early Morning

    I awoke at 5:30 this morning. That’s not uncommon for me, I tend to get up with the sun. In the winter, I can sleep til 6:30 or 7 even…but it makes me feel guilty and sluggish and that I’ve frittered away half the day. “It’s 7:30!” I grouse to myself as I’m heading to the chicken houses. “This day is practically GONE!” Then I’ll remind myself that half the normal world is just getting up and around, or maybe not even UP at all.

  I wake up much like I am all day. I need no coffee, no caffeine, no stimulants at all. I just….wake up. One minute, I’m asleep and dreaming and then POP I’m up and I can carry on a conversation and talk and think and prattle.

  I am, from what I’ve been told, a little annoying in the morning. When I worked in surgery, I got up at 4:30, left the house at 5:30, was scrubbed in and ready to work at 6:30. My friend Angie and I rode together, alternating between driving. She would be awake, but not be talkative  til she got her cappacchino at the little quick pick we stopped at every morning in Charleston. Then she would prattle and rattle and roll right with me. We talked and laughed all day, and all the way home. She is still one of my good friends and I cherish those surgery stories with her.

 So, I got up and headed to the bathroom and put my chicken house clothes on. Often on Sunday mornings, Clint will walk them for me. But today, I was up and ready to go and didn’t have anything to do at the house before church. I like to walk to the chicken houses when I can, in the cool of the morning, smelling the dew and seeing the sun rise. No one is up with me this early Sunday morning. It’s just me and Maggie My Dog and Tika, my brain damaged heeler/hyena mix. ( I could be wrong that she is part hyena, but it would  help explain her crazy eyes and snappish  temperament.)

  I put my old tennis shoes on, the ones I wear in the chicken houses when the birds are little and they don’t throw litter down into my socks. I sat on the porch steps to do this and had a sudden, strange rush from my past.

  I am 11 years old. We live in Cottonwood, Oklahoma. It’s a tiny community with a general store that has wooden, uneven floors and old chairs for old men to sit in and talk and spit on the front porch. The little store sold gas at one time, but doesn’t now and the old gas pumps sit idle and rusty. Old signs advertising oil and cigarettes hang here and there. The cash register is one of those that had a pull down handle to ring up the final price. There’s a tiny school nearby, housing 40 children from

kindergarten til 8^th grade. It’s summer and school isn’t in session. There’s a gym and an overgrown, weedy  baseball field and a small playground.

  We sleep on mattresses on the floor in one big bedroom, all us kids sprawled out here and there. Mom and Dad’s bedroom is just off our bedroom and they sleep with the door shut, the hum of their  window unit air conditioner part of the night sounds, the crickets, the frogs, the dogs barking.

  Mom bought the mattresses  at an auction or maybe a yard sale, often there is no fitted sheet covering it, but still we sleep. We have neighbors, a family with 3 young boys. David is 14, the oldest, he is lanky, with reddish auburn hair and brown eyes. I once make a joke to him as we are sitting on my porch that I get up every morning  and make my mattress and David laughs, a big hearty laugh and tells me I’m funny. I have a crush on him, he is smart and sweet and cute and polite. But he is 14, I am 11 and I know my time here in Oklahoma will be short. I don’t know how long I’ll be here…til dad’s rig job poops out or he quits or mom takes us kids back to Arkansas. I never know. I find out later from another neighbor boy that David likes me. I am stunned by this, as I am ugly, with thick glasses and horrid hair and bad skin. The neighbor boy says David thinks I’m pretty on the inside and I ponder this, thinking this is alright by me.

  We have an outdoor toilet, which I find mortifying. I see David and his brothers outside playing ball or Frisbee and I know they will see me walk thru the yard and climb over the gate. The gate is locked with a padlock and we have no key, so we have to awkwardly climb over that old, red gate, the wood sagging and giving with my weight.  

  I sit on the porch in Oklahoma putting my tennis shoes on. They are some of Bobbie’s old ones and are still too big. Bobbie is two years younger than me, so I get her hand me ups as she was already 5’8’ when she was ten. I got her old clothes and shoes, never really growing into them but wearing them anyway. I am bony thin, and my hair is white from the sun. My eyelashes and eyebrows are blonde, my skin tending to be pink instead of tan. I see pictures of children from Ireland and I see myself sometimes, in these  ruddy, pink children.

  It’s still a little dark this morning. No one knows I’m up, none of my family. They don’t even know I do this, get up early and take off walking.

  I hitch my cut off shorts up on my bony hips and set off walking in Bobbie’s shoes, down the gravel dirt road. I can smell the pond in the distance, that smell of fishy, dirty pondwater. Bobbie’s shoes crunch the gravel. Rabbits run here and there, some of them so used to me walking these early, dark mornings they let me get within feet of them. Mockingbirds mock and call and tease all around. The air feels cool, it will be no cooler than now, I know, and I soak it up.

  I think of Arkansas and my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. We have no phones. Occasionally we write letters, but I have no paper or stamps and don’t know their address. I walk past mimosa trees, their pink, feathery blossoms…I trail my fingers over one, feeling the soft tickle. There are mimosa trees in Arkansas and it gives me comfort.

  I walk in the cool, singing to myself, telling stories (oh, dear reader. I have changed so little) writing books in my head. I think of my friend David, I cannot imagine him a boyfriend, just a friend who is a boy ( the thought of a boyfriend so foreign, so strange, so uncomfortable)  and  decide I am content with just making him laugh. Once I sing a funny song to him, a song I heard long ago and he tells me to sing it AGAIN, louder and I don’t want to, I feel shy. He says “you have a nice voice. You should sing more.” Does he know I cling to that? think of that kindness years later? I think not, but on I walk.

 I think about being pretty, on the inside. I know I am not a beauty. I have no delusions about the way I look. I wish it were different, but it’s not. I scheme about the day I can buy makeup and paint my face up like some of the women I see in town. I’m fascinated by these brightly painted women, with their cute clothes and dark, lined eyes. I think I will get a job, when I can, and buy makeup…lots of makeup and paint my face (oh, dear reader, years later….the first money I make at my first job at age 13… I DO buy makeup. Lots of it.)

  I walk and I walk. The road curves around, making a big loop. I always stand, where the road goes straight and think about walking down that road. But it is unfamiliar, with houses, with people I don’t know…so I turn left, turn down the road that will wind around and take me back to that house with the outdoor toilet, the stained couch, the unsheeted mattresses on the floor… the bookshelf filled with books I care not to read, left there by a former tenant…romance novels….mysteries…books I HATE and I think maybe I will see if we can go to the library today. I’ve read every book I’m interested in, most of them twice. There’s a limit on how many I can get, so I pick out book after book and shove  part of  them in Bobbie’s pile. She laughs at me and goes along with it. She knows I will read all 25 of these books in a week and be grousing about being bored, wanting to go back.

  I checked out one book, it was a book from the 50’s about grooming and hair and makeup. I found it so interesting and funny. I found others and checked them out, too…even one for black people, how to style hair and take care of skin… which made the librarian look at me strangely. I read about greek mythology and sign language, learning both (oh, dear reader, years later I would be at church camp and would be the only person there that had a rudimentary knowledge of sign language. A deaf girl was there that year, blonde and pretty. We conversed, she and I, in my elementary, halting sign language…dredging it up from the bottom of my brain. She found me amusing and helpful.  She stayed with me, unable to read my lips and learn my name, so she called me “The Girl that Smiles”)

  I walk and walk. The sun is coming up, the promise of the heat of the day hanging like a flag. I head home, making it up the driveway and up the stone steps to the leaning, saggy porch. I sit in the living room, quiet and still…just thinking. My mom and siblings start to stir. Mom walks past me and says “you been up long?” She knows my early to rise tendencies and trusts me to not get into anything. “not too long. Can we go to the library today?” I ask. She says maybe and heads to the kitchen. I should know not to ask anything before her coffee, but the lure of the library is too great.   

   One morning, I get up and slip off my mattress and into my waiting clothes and wander into the living room. It’s dark out and for some reason my bedroom door is shut. I open it, and the light from the living room is on. My mom sits there quietly, drinking coffee. Her eyes are red rimmed. She has been crying. I don’t ask why. I never do. I already know.

  “Where you headed?” she asks. I stammer, knowing I’ve been caught. “ummmm…..I like to get up early and walk.” then I prattle about the rabbits and mimosas and mockingbirds. She is unmoved.

  “you don’t need to go walking so early, by yourself. Wait til someone can go with you.” I don’t argue. There is no point. No one will walk with me and listen to me prattle. I am too shy to ask David even though I had shared my secret of my early walks. He opined that he would go and take a pellet gun and shoot the rabbits, maybe. They get into his mama’s garden. I was saddened at the thought of these trusting rabbits, knowing  I am not going to harm them, only to be shot by my friend….so I dropped it and never mentioned it again. Later, he tells me he got up early and walked that road and looked for me. He said he saw the rabbits, too and wanted to let me know he didn’t shoot any of them. I told him that I had been caught slipping out to walk and couldn’t do it anymore. He seemed saddened by this, but didn’t mention it again.

  He never got the chance to. One day, Daddy came home and said we were going back to Arkansas, just to visit. We’d come back and get our stuff. I gathered up a few things, leaving a green plastic star necklace hanging on a nail in our group bedroom. Bobbie left a poster on the wall she got for finishing her reader in the third grade. It was a furry, spotted baby seal. We thought it the cutest thing we’d ever seen. I ran to David’s house to tell him we were going back to Arkansas for a couple of weeks, but we’d come back. He said he’d be looking out for me and watch for our vehicle. He told how he couldn’t wait for me to come back, to start school there that fall. His friends would love me, my sense of humor.

I wonder how long he watched for us before he gave up. 

  We never went back, never got our stuff…never said goodbye to friends. Library books, never returned. Food in the fridge. Toys in the yard. Mattresses on the floor. Window unit in my parent’s bedroom. What else was left? What else from my childhood, left scattered here or there in that old house, hanging on a nail?

  I thought about that this morning, as I laced up my tennis shoes, Maggie My Dog and Tika my brain damaged Heeler/badger mix (I could be wrong about the badger part, but it would explain her temperament) I headed down the road, my shoes crunching gravel. I smelled the creek, smelling of fish and mud. I saw rabbits, ducking and running under the brush. It was cool, the coolest this day will be, I know and I soak it in. I walk chickens, picking up the dead, singing to myself, telling stories, writing my book in my head. I head home after the last chicken house and see Clint’s truck driving up the gravel road. I walk toward it and he says “woman! I would have walked chickens for you today. Give you a day off.” I smile and climb into the truck. “you been up long?” he asks. “Oh, not long. I couldn’t sleep. I like walking out here early in the morning.” I say. He smiles “I know you do, you always have.”  I smile at him and pat his arm.

  He takes me home and I shower and fix my hair and put on my makeup. I line my eyes carefully, line my lips even more so. One more coat of mascara. I press the powder into my face. My eyeshadow, brown and gold, matching my dress, my hat. I love my hat, it is tan and has a wide black ribbon and black flower. It has a small brim and looks vintage. Clint tells me I look pretty and I kiss him. “You look handsome.” I say, smiling, flirting a tiny bit, lowering my eyes.  He kisses me and the memories of  early walks and mattresses on the floor and waiting, wondering friends  disappear like a rabbit into the brush. Like the dew after sunrise.( Oh, but dear reader. The memories are there. Like a poster on the wall. Like a necklace on a nail. Waiting for me to come back, come back and retrieve them. I can’t and I shan’t. )

 

Sunflowers and Stinky Compost

  Small caveat, dear reader. I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, when my chickens were big. That flock is gone now, weighing in at an average weight of over 7 ½ pounds at 60 days. I got new baby chicks yesterday and didn’t have time to write in between. So, here’s a sort of oldy and hopefully a goody. J  

It’s been very hot and the chickens are very big. Always, in the back of my head…the thought of the disaster that could happen. The water line breaks, flooding the house. The fogger pump goes out and 26,000 chickens die from the heat. The power could go out.  The wells could give out. I check them every hour during the daylight, praying and worrying.

  And, oh the buzzards.

They circle and land near the composter, ripping apart the dead and stringing feathers and chicken feet all around.

  It’s gross. So, to avoid that, we cover the dead birds with a mixture of old chicken litter and composted dead chickens. It’s disgusting, smelly stuff, but is better than a pile of dead, rotting chickens in 95 degree heat.

  People will often call and want a truckload of compost. It is the best fertilizer around, but lawsy lord have mercy!!  It stinks and often still has bits of bone, feathers, and feet with the claws still attached.  

  I’ve been picking up a lot of dead chickens, not uncommon this time of year. Clint has been able to help me a day or two here and there, but mostly it’s my job. So I get out there early as I can, bypassing my morning workout to walk the chickens in the relative cool of the morning. Clint told me I should hire some teenage boys to come and help me. I guess I could, but what else I gotta do? I say to him. If it takes me all day, it takes me all day. It’s my job.

  The mortality was down today and I was grateful. Only about a hundred in all three houses combined. That’s still higher than I like, but I’ll take it. I have to dump the dead in between each house, making 3 trips total to the fly ridden, stinky composter. The tractor is parked nearby, Clint coming home each night and covering them. I can drive the tractor, but as my history will show, I have a penchant for ripping boards down and being destructive in general with the front end loader. I try to be very careful, but I have this fear always that I’m going to tear something really important up and Clint will have to come home and fix it. I hate to give him more work to do and that’s what was on my mind as the tractor started easily and I shifted in into low (granny) gear and pulled with all my might, leaning hard to turn the steering wheel. This old tractor is just a TRACTOR , it isn’t for show or comfort, it is for WORK and WORK only, so there is no such thing as power steering. I feel my arms strain to turn this wheel. The seat is too far back for me to sit all the way into it, so I perch on the edge and turn the wheel while trying NOT to mash down on the clutch or brake.

  I pulled forward into the first bin of the composter, full of dark litter/dead chicken/maggot/unknown bug substance. I lower the front end bucket, then scoop it upward while backing out. I pull forward toward the dead chickens, white and large,  pale yellow bony chicken feet sticking out here and there. I raise the bucket and un-scoop the compost on top of the white feathers, covering up their bodies, no feet sticking out now.

  I back out slowly and decide I really need another load. I repeat the above process, covering most of the dead, leaving only a few showing.

  But, I shall stop now…I have done good work and haven’t broken anything. It’s good enough for today and Clint can bypass this little job tonight. I’ll try it again tomorrow, perhaps I’ll get better and take the job away from him completely.

  See? That’s what I do. I make people feel like they aren’t needed. I don’t mean to do that, I just swell up to fill whatever space I’m put in. I just DO things. I think about a conversation I had the other day with a friend who is like a sister to me. She has a new boyfriend, a much better man than her husband and they got into their first argument the other day. Why? I asked but I knew the answer before she spoke. She had tried and tried to figure out how to get this kid to ball practice and this kid to the dentist and this kid picked up from school and this kid a sitter. (she’s got 4)

  The new boyfriend YELLED at her and said “WHAT AM I?? CHOPPED LIVER?? I can help you, you know!!”

  This had never occurred to my sister/friend, that she couldn’t do it all by herself and that people will help you.

  I’m not so much like that anymore, I was years ago…now I just don’t think to ask for help. I think I can do anything and am stunned when I can’t.

  When we first got the chicken houses, I didn’t even drive the tractor, I just piled the birds up by the door and Clint hauled them off when he got home.

  One day, I thought “this is stupid” and I drove the tractor down there and hauled them myself. Before long, it became old hat and I branched out during cold, cold frozen winters. I would take hay on the tractor to the cows…it was so cold and the wind so strong…I would bundle up and take one bale at a time, making 3 trips to hay the cows, the wind blowing the occasional piece of dry hay into my eyes off of the big round bale. I was afraid to take 2 at a time, one on the front, one on the back, it scared me. But I could take one, and then when Clint came home, he wasn’t driving around in the dark AND cold, haying the cows.

  But today wasn’t cold, it was HOT and the compost STINKS. I didn’t break anything on the tractor and I did it by myself.

  I think about compost.

It is stinky and horrid and terrifying, filled with maggots and bugs and dark beetles, attracting possums and raccoons and rats and coyotes and feral cats and stray dogs.

  But it grows the best garden, bright tomatoes and green okra, yellow squash and speckled zucchini.

I think of my life, of compost I have been handed in the form of people in charge of me, my safety, my comfort, my sense of self.

  So much compost. Stinky, horrid compost. Fly blown and rotten.

But, here have I, in my garden now…my life…blooming with my husband and my children and their spouses. Blooming away. Bearing fruit. Rising up toward the sun, to feel it on our faces, all together, my family, laughing on Sunday afternoons after church, our plates sitting on the floor to be picked up after stories, giggles, teasing, and naps on the couch. Shhh. I’ll get those dishes later, I say. They’re asleep. Let them rest, my grown children, my handsome husband. Shhh. They are tired and comfortable, full bellies and cool fans beckon, they stretch out here and there on couches, on beds.

 So, so much compost I’ve have shoveled my way. Oh, but dear reader. The compost I have had handed to me in my past  has fertilized me like no clean, cushy former life could have.

  And so, I leave this writing, to go to the chicken houses and check the water, check the power, check the chickens, check the temps, check the fogger pumps.

  I’ll glance at the composter as I leave house 3, a few buzzards lighting there, confused. They can smell the death, the rotting chickens…but because of the compost, they cannot get to them.

  The buzzards, always there, always circling, waiting for a spot that is uncovered and vulnerable. They best fly on.

 I turn my face to the sun like a sunflower (oh, aren't we all sunflowers at heart?)  and drive home.

Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed

  Maggie  My Dog is my constant companion, riding beside me on the Kubota back and forth from the chicken houses. She is brown, with a compact build and intelligent eyes. She is part Pit Bull/part… something else.  Ten years ago, Tara picked her out at the Humane Society in Fort Smith from a litter that had just been dropped off.  Maggie  pawed at the glass when she saw Tara, and leapt and jumped and kissed her when we took her into a small room to get to know her. She bubbled with joy and excitement, but would also snug up to be petted, looking up at you with those eyes. She looks at me sometimes like she wants to say something…she just can’t quite get the words out.

  She is sweet and gentle, wonderful with children…never snapping or getting grumpy. She barks when people pull up in the driveway, hair standing up on the back of her neck, putting them back  into the truck sometimes.

  I’m okay with that. I think about that power, too…often wishing I could weigh 45 pounds and still be able to bare my teeth and bark and run someone off.

  Maggie is also…a killer. If a small animal makes an appearance at the chicken houses...they are killed, shaken, ripped apart. A cat. A raccoon. A possum. A rabbit.

  She doesn’t kill chickens…she got a spanking for killing one in her youth, when we first built the chicken houses and let her come inside. Maggie never forgot that and now…even if I sic her on a chicken, she will act like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, looking away and…I SWEAR….whistling. doo de doo….doo de doo. I’m not listening. I’m not listening, her face seems to say.  

  She chases hawks and buzzards away from the composter. She runs unabashedly at coyotes, snapping at their heels. I often wonder what she would do if she caught a coyote...maybe it’s best she doesn’t.

  She runs the cows away from the feed bins at the chicken houses, but only if I’m there. I’ve often driven up on the Kubota and seen her lying around with Tika, my brain damaged Blue Heeler, cows milling about nibbling on the green grass near the cool cell pads. They leak water and there’s always grass there even if there isn’t anywhere else. She will jump up when she hears me and just clear the way, barking and snapping. Tika, being a Heeler, will jump up to and bite their back feet, pushing them forward. Maggie isn’t quite as talented and usually turns them in circles til they run off. She is worthless when working cattle, but she thinks she’s really doing something.  

  But, mostly…Maggie is a killer of squirrels. Oh, how they taunt her! Jumping into the tree at the last second, running around it, up and down, back and forth, spinning Maggie all around until she gives up.

I do believe squirrels are her favorite.

 I got done with chickens yesterday and Maggie took her place beside me on the seat. She sits most regally, facing forward, leaning in to the curves. People drive past and see her, sitting there beside me, her proud head up. They wave and kids point.

  Maggie has a habit of deciding to jump off while I’m still driving, standing up on the seat on four legs, timing the ground so she can hit it running. The first few times she did this, she bit the dirt and was sent rolling. Now, if she perks up and stands, I immediately slow and so she can leap off without injury. I usually then stop driving, often killing the Kubota to see what she’s running after.

 It was that elusive squirrel that she chases almost every day. But, this time…instead of running up a tree, it ran up a light pole in Trevor and Mykka’s driveway. Mykka and Trevor’s dogs came running when they heard Maggie’s short yip yip and soon, the whole pack was gathered around the light pole.

  The squirrel ran around, up and down, barking and chattering at the dogs. His tail was fuzzed up and he never stopped moving. I watched him run up the light pole, safely away from the dogs. I figured he would tire them out, wait til they left, then go to his tree.

  That’s when the squirrel did a very squirrely thing. To my horror, the squirrel turned and ran DOWN the light pole, right into the waiting pack of dogs. It tried to make a mad dash toward it’s tree, but Maggie was too quick. While the other dogs stood there stunned, Maggie jumped on the squirrel, bit it, shook it hard and killed it DEAD. She sniffed it for a second or two, then, tongue hanging out...seeming to grin…she hopped up on the seat and looked at me. She then tried to lick my face, me shooing her away. I had seen that dog chew on a dead chicken, then kill a squirrel that morning already. Good heavens. No THANK YOU. I petted her and told her I was proud and she seemed pleased.

  I looked over to see Jake, Trevor’s dog…he looks just like a coyote and often I’ll tell them he fools me at least once a day. I cannot believe someone doesn’t shoot him, but they don’t…anyway, he had picked up the squirrel’s limp body and was trotting around, playing catch with himself, throwing the squirrel up in the air and snatching it on it’s way down.

  I drove home, Maggie sitting righteously beside me on the seat and I  pondered that stupid squirrel.

  He was safe. Why didn’t he just stay THERE? He jumped INTO the pack of dogs.Why?

 Then it hit me.

   Squirrels always want to go HOME at the slightest danger. Go to THEIR  tree, THEIR branch, where they feel comfortable. Even if it would be safer to stay put. That’s why squirrels will run UNDER your car when they are safely on the side of the road. They have an instinct to go to their comfort zone, their home…no matter how unsafe the trip may be…no matter that running away would be the best thing to do…no matter…no matter.

  I’ve done that.

I’ve gone back, I’ve thrown myself to the pack with abandon to try to go to the place I knew, the place I KNOW, the place that is MY place… place I’ve been put…the role I was supposed to play.…no matter how deadly or painful. No matter that I would do better to stay up on the light pole, tail fuzzed up and chattering a warning at the waiting pack below. No matter.

  I THREW myself and THREW myself into that pack of teeth and growling ghashingness …only to be shocked and STUNNED when I got hurt and torn, then played with like a chew toy.

So, I shall stay up here…close to the Light. Where it is safe, and my home is lovely with peace and harmony.

  There are no snarling dogs in my life anymore, waiting for me to throw myself  toward them, offering myself as a sacrifice.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Think about that, dear reader.

Think about trying to get back to someone or something…even though it will HURT you, KILL you inside.

Don’t do it.

Stay put.

Up by the Light, where you are safe and can perch and watch the slightly chubby 41 year old Poultry Princess fly by on her orange Kubota, her dog sitting queenishly beside her, looking forward.

You don’t have to try to get Home. You can be safe and not have your heart torn to bits and pieces. Be bright eyed and bushy tailed and safe.

Don’t be a squirrel. J