Free Choke by Kaye George

color.
    Chained in the side yard, the Wilson’s ancient Rottweiler growled, then barked, as she tried to sneak by. He set off the pair of beagles next door, and they passed the relay baton off to Lacy, the cute little cocker spaniel in the next block. In every yard, people sitting sipping sweet tea or beer raised a hand in greeting.
    Maybe they couldn’t see who she was. After all, it could be that they were just being neighborly because someone was passing by, someone they’d never be able to ID in a lineup, she hoped.
    The block before her house, all fell quiet. No one was about, and no dogs were chained in the yards. But the trailer she came to before hers harbored a vicious, dark Brahma hen named Larry Bird. She had been given the name when she was just a young chick, and a wrong gender had been determined. By the time she started laying eggs, the name had become stuck. The feisty fowl was usually in a somewhat flimsy pen behind the trailer, but it must have escaped tonight. That was not an unusual occurrence.
    Larry Bird rushed at Immy’s ankles without a warning cluck, nipped and drew blood. As chickens go, she was enormous, Brahmas being one of the larger breeds of fowl.
    “Shoo, shoo,” Immy whispered as urgently as she could without shouting. She flapped her hands at the menace, but Larry kept coming, ducking and darting, nipping one of Immy’s ankles. Immy jumped onto the lowest branch of the magnolia tree in the neighbor’s front yard and kicked down at her to make her go away, but Larry only bit at her flip-flop. Her leap had shaken one off. The chicken ran back in the direction of its pen with her flip-flop prize.
    “You damn Larry Bird,” she yelled, then cringed, hoping no one had heard her. She waited a few minutes, but the hen didn’t return. Should she go after it and retrieve her footwear, or should she go to her home and get her sneakers?
    She decided not to walk through chicken droppings with one bare foot—one bleeding bare foot. She jumped down and dashed safely to her own trailer.
    Once inside, she sank onto the welcoming plaid couch. It didn’t seem old and worn out in the darkness. It seemed heavenly and smelled like home. Her head fell back, and she closed her eyes. She mustn’t fall asleep, though. She had to snatch some clothes and be back by the time Baxter returned to Cowtail from Wymee Falls with her disguises.
    She tugged two suitcases out from under Hortense’s bed, opened drawers in both bedrooms, and threw clothing into them for her and her mother, flinging aside items she didn’t think they would need. She stuck a few things in for Drew, too. Not wanting anyone to know she was there, she left the lights off and worked in the dark.
    It was hard finding a pair of shoes. She crawled around on the floor of her tiny closet, trying to match two of them. For the first time in her life, she wished she were like her mother, who lined her shoes up neatly every night instead of kicking them into the closet. Immy owned two more pairs of sneakers besides the ones she had with her at the motel, a worn-out pair she was saving in case she ever did yard work or perhaps painting, and a white pair she saved in case she wanted to go someplace special and have clean, white shoes. They were the same brand and style, one pair new and one old. Without light, however, she couldn’t tell which was which, so she picked up both pairs, put two shoes on after pulling on a pair of socks, and tossed the other two into the suitcase. In the process, most of the closet floor got emptied out into the room.
    Ready to exit, she remembered her phone charger. She usually kept it in a kitchen drawer but not a specific one. She opened the junk drawer and spread her palms atop the items, but she wasn’t able to feel the charger. She pulled the contents out: hammer, screwdriver, pair of pliers, wine opener, and about forty dry ballpoint pens, piling the contents onto the counter. No phone charger. The next drawer