Free Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

Franchette thought Ramer might be easing up toward the old hen, seeing as how he was going to be a father himself in a few months’ time, but that hope had ended today. He must have been planning it for a couple of days, since he put the wooden crate on the front porch and the gun by the front door.
    He hadn’t said anything else after the first outburst. He just grabbed the half-eaten toast from Franchette’s plate and walked out into the yard. Franchette watched him from the window. He stood there stock-still in his work clothes, no coat or gloves, and waited for the hen to come closer. Then he threw down a piece of bread. The hen cocked her head at him, like she didn’t like what she saw. She bustled away toward the trees, but her chick hadn’t learned better. It came up to see what had fallen. Ramer tossed a smaller piece of bread and backed up toward the porch. The chick followed him at a careful distance, gulping down bread crumbs, until Ramer was on the porch, tossing crumbs into the flower bed by the steps. The hen came a few yards out of the trees and shrieked ather baby, but it was too dumb or too hungry to hear her. Finally, Ramer dumped the rest of the bread crumbs into the flower bed and eased the wooden crate toward the edge of the porch. When the chick bent down to peck the bread, he leaned out and slammed the crate down on top of it. Franchette put her fist in her mouth to keep from yelling at him to let it loose. She thought he would wring its neck then and there, but instead he got up and slammed into the house.
    “What did you want to do that for?” she asked when he got inside.
    “You’ll find out,” he said without looking at her. He was watching the crate.
    The chick had found it couldn’t get out, and was flapping around inside, screaming in terror. You could see it through the wooden slats, thrashing against the top and sides. The hen could see it, too. She answered its cries with distressed sounds of her own and edged nearer the box. Every step or so, she’d cock her head and look up at the house where Ramer waited, and she’d back up a few feet, but the chick’s cries always pulled her closer. It took a good five minutes for her to get to the crate. The chick’s cries were coming louder than ever, and she circled the crate, peering in at it and screeching.
    Ramer picked up the gun and eased open the door.
    “Oh, Ramer, don’t!” Franchette whispered, grabbing his sleeve.
    “I guess that settled it,” he said, grinning at her, and he was gone.
    She wished she had gone back to the kitchen and not watched Ramer level the gun at the frantic hen. The hen had looked away from the crate when he came out; she had to have seen the gun, but she stayed there by the crate as if it didn’t matter. He got her with one shot. The chick was still shrieking inside the crate when Ramer picked up its mother’s body and carried it off to the shed to dress it out. He would scald off the feathers and gut it, and thenhe’d bring it to the house for Franchette to cook. Franchette knew that if she ever tried to eat that hen, she’d never be done with vomiting, but that wasn’t why she had run.
    It was the way Ramer had grinned when he said “I guess that settled it.” It had puzzled her for a while, trying to think what it reminded her of. She had been setting the kettle on to boil when it came to her. After she’d asked for the want ads that time, and then gotten Della to ask her uncle if he could use another waitress, Ramer had told her to wait till after Christmas to start to work, and she’d been happy that he’d taken it so well. It had almost been like old times again for a couple of weeks. Ramer had been so loving again. He’d thrown away her birth control pills, because they cause cancer, he said. And he told her he’d use something to make it safe. He never had, though. And when around Christmastime, she’d known she was pregnant, he smiled just that same funny way, and said that