Free The Woefield Poultry Collective by Susan Juby Page A

good. Like I was enjoying my second trip to town in three days.
    He headed to the store, walking in front of me. Guy stumps along at a pretty good pace. I mean, considering how wrecked he looks. He motored along, hunched over, leaving that funny wood smoke and old man BO trailing behind him. I didn’t take it the wrong way that he didn’t even wait for me. I just kept walking. Determined to be of service. That’s what I was. I kept having to break into a run in order to catch up with him, which made me feel like an asshole.
    Once we got in the store I figured I’d follow him around. Maybe push one of those big orange carts. I would be the steady helper guy. I bet Clint Eastwood is surrounded with steady helper guys, who all spend their free time cowboying on the open range and shit when they aren’t on set. Anyone who recognized me would probably be scared off by Earl’s hostile demeanor and not say anything. In truth, once we got there my worries eased some. Partly it was the drinks I’d had before heading out and partly it was the size of the place. Even if every singleperson from my high school worked there, there was a chance we’d never run into each other. After a minute or two, part of me started wondering if maybe some of the other contractor/manager-type guys would look at Earl and envy him for having someone like me on his crew. Someone reliable, a real up-and-comer.
    But Earl fucked off down an aisle as soon as we got inside and I got sick of trotting after him. Screw this, I thought. Earl is no Clint Eastwood and I’m not his assistant.
    Still, I was fascinated by the whole Home Depot experience. There was an aisle with nothing but brooms and Swiffers and mops. Another aisle with just rakes and shovels. One of drills and another that was just pieces of plywood. The lightbulb section was off the hook. I seriously had no idea how many types of bulb your average homeowner has to choose from. Between the cosmetic lights and the colored lights and the tubes and the weird ones that look like lollipops, I could have spent two hours in there. I was reading a pamphlet about the benefits of compact fluorescents when a clerk came up to me. She was eighteen or nineteen and pretty cute.
    She looked like a girl you could talk to, you know, not all made up and hair done et cetera. She had on this semi-Western-looking checked shirt, not the affected kind, but more like maybe she actually rode around on her horse when she wasn’t working at Home Depot. Her body was mostly obscured by the apron, but I liked what I could see. To be completely honest, I’m not exactly a masterful judge of woman flesh, as my personal history probably indicates.
    She asked me if I was interested in CFLs.
    Normally, I hate it when people use acronyms because they only do it to exclude you and show how smart they are, but I decided to let it go this time.
    “Are people
into
CFLs?” I asked. She smiled. Her teeth were covered with those semi-invisible braces. That kind of sealed the deal for me.
    “Some are. People who care about global warming and responsible energy use.”
    “Oh, those bastards,” I said.
    She laughed and pushed up one of the sleeves of her shirt. Her forearm wasn’t tattooed, which was cool. Even in my darkest blackout hour I have never wanted to get a tattoo.
    “You want to plug one in? Check the quality of the light?” asked the girl, waving one of the twisty bulbs at me. I realized we were flirting and that it was fucking excellent. I guess the drinks made me just relaxed enough that I could talk to her without being too self-conscious. I had this vision of the two of us holding hands or getting into some light petting behind shower curtains or up in the fencing aisle or some shit. They say the simple and clean-cut girls are the wildest. But I realized she wasn’t being suggestive. She actually wanted to demonstrate the bulb. She screwed it into a small lamp that they had sitting on the shelf for that purpose, and