Free Fresh Eggs by Rob Levandoski

Sunday rubber pork chops, fried potatoes, and canned peas. Fridays they drive to the Pizza Teepee in Tuttwyler for a pepperoni and mushroom.
    Rhea’s mother made lunchmeat sandwiches for lunch, too, but not every day. Sometimes she’d make grilled cheese sandwiches. Sometimes tuna on toast sandwiches. Sometimes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sometimes she’d heat up a can of Franco-American spaghetti. There’d always be some kind of fruit, too, a banana or sliced pears or applesauce. On soup days it could be chicken noodle or beef vegetable just as well as tomato. Supper could be meatloaf or fish sticks and Tater Tots or made-from-scratch macaroni and cheese. Carrots or lima beans or asparagus or creamed corn might show up on the table. Some of her mothers choices for supper were uneatable, to be sure. But you never knew what it would be on any given night, except for Fridays, when the three of them would drive to the Pizza Teepee in Tuttwyler.
    After Lassie is praised for saving the puppies, Rhea goes to the kitchen for that sandwich.
    â€œWhat’s with Miss Lucky Pants?” her father asks as they sit at the wobbly table. “You haven’t brought in any white eggs for a couple days now.”
    Rhea plays dumb, putting her full concentration on the face she’s drawing on her bolonga with the squeeze-jar of mustard. “Maybe she’s spent.”
    â€œMaybe you’re not checking all the nests.”
    She gives the bologna slice a frown. “Maybe some of the nests are too high for me.”
    â€œThen stand on a box.”
    â€œI don’t have a box.”
    â€œI’ll get you one.”
    That night after the spaghetti, Rhea’s Toledo grandmother and grandfather arrive. They bring a big cake with them and put it on the dining room table. They put a present on the buffet.
    Gammy Betz arrives, too, along with her husband Ben and another present for the buffet. They help her other grandparents hang the balloons and crepe paper.
    For some reason, one of their regular brown egg customers shows up for the party. It’s Donna Digamy, the one who works at Marilyn Dickcissel’s dog grooming business. She sniffles all through the singing of “Happy Birthday.”
    When it is time to make a secret wish and blow out the candles, Rhea wishes for the same thing she prays for every night—for those little feathers to stop growing between her nippie nips. She knows that people are not supposed to grow feathers there, or anywhere else on their bodies. She knows sooner or later those feathers are going to give her big problems.
    The birthday wish doesn’t work any better than the prayers. Rhea wakes up itching and plucks another feather from her chest and hides it in the Nestlés Quik can.
    Again this morning the house is empty. Again this morning she eats breakfast alone. She finds her tennis shoes, puts on the pinned-up apron, and goes out to feed Captain Bates and the Buff Orpingtons. And gather the eggs.
    She finds that her father has kept his word. He’s placed a wooden box alongside the nests so she can check the top ones for eggs.
    Miss Lucky Pants has another egg under her, and Rhea, though a year older than she was yesterday at this time, faces the same old predicament: Does she listen to her father, or does she listen to her heart? Does she snatch the white eggs out from under Miss Lucky Pants, or does she let her set?
    â€œYou’re a pain in the butt, Miss Lucky Pants,” she growls as she scratches the hen’s soft breast.
    Miss Lucky Pants tips her head and stares at her with a round, unblinking eye. Rhea leaves her eggs alone.
    Only after collecting four brown eggs from the Buff Orpingtons hens does Rhea get a brainstorm. The first thing she must do is make sure her father is busy with something. She finds him in the tractor shed with Jimmy Faldstool, working on the tow motor. Their hands and forearms are covered with grease. Sweat