Free Fresh Eggs by Rob Levandoski Page A

is dripping off their chins. “Are you real busy right now?” she asks.
    â€œGo play,” her father says.
    â€œOkay,” she says. She runs to the cement block building behind the layer houses. Before going inside she turns and makes sure neither her father nor Mr. Faldstool are watching. This building is the egg house, where the collected eggs are graded and candled and put in heavy cardboard cases for shipping to Gallinipper’s. She opens one of the cases and takes out one white egg. She puts it in her apron. Then she takes another egg from another box and another from another.
    She goes back to the tractor shed. “I collected Miss Lucky Pants’s white eggs today,” she tells her father. “Thanks for the box.”
    â€œGo play,” her father says.
    Rhea’s deceit lasts only three weeks.
    On the same day she and her father are supposed to go to the Wyssock County Fair she discovers that Miss Lucky Pants’s eggs have hatched. One chick has already fallen out of the high nest and two of the Orpington hens are fighting over its body. Rhea chases the hens away and puts the mangled chick in the pouch of her apron. She steps on the box and looks in the nest. Miss Lucky Pants proudly rises and spreads her wings. Peeping among the broken egg shells are six healthy chicks.
    Rhea breaks the news to her father when they are sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic outside the fairgrounds. This is the day country singer Louise Peavey performs in the grandstand, right before the demolition derby. So there are lots of cars funneling into the fairgrounds today. For some reason, her father has brought Donna Digamy with them.
    â€œGuess what, Daddy,” Rhea says from the back seat.
    She has to say it three times before he answers, “What?”
    â€œMiss Lucky Pants has babies.”
    Donna Digamy rests her chin on the back of her seat and sniffs a trickle of mucus back up her nostril. “Isn’t that neat! How many?”
    â€œSeven,” Rhea says, “but one fell out of the nest and died already.”
    â€œSo you’ve got six?” Donna Digamy asks.
    â€œThat’s right,” says Rhea, “seven minus one is six.”
    Their day at the fair goes well enough. They eat French fries drenched with vinegar. They eat deep-fried pieces of dough called elephant ears. They walk through all the animal barns. In the cattle barn the cows are standing with their heads facing the wall and their ugly butt-holes facing the people walking along the center aisle. In the pig barn all the pigs are asleep. In the sheep barn all the sheep are asleep. In the goat barn a ram with curly horns bites a button off Rhea’s flannel shirt. In the rabbit house the rabbits are asleep.
    In the poultry barn the chickens are crowded into cages, just like the Leghorns in the layer houses. The cages are plastered with ribbons, red ones and white ones and blue ones. “What’s all those ribbons for?” Rhea asks.
    â€œFor first, second and third place,” her father explains.
    â€œFor running a race?”
    â€œFor looking healthy.”
    Rhea stands on her toes and looks in the cages. Yes, these chickens do look healthy. They have their beaks and their combs. They have all their feathers. They’re clean. They’re calm. And some are very fancy. “What kind of chickens are these with the feathers on their feet?” Rhea asks her father. There’s a big blue ribbon stuck to the cage.
    â€œChochins.”
    â€œHow come we don’t have any of those?” Rhea asks.
    â€œThey’re just for show. A lot of food and poop for nothing.”
    In one cage Rhea sees an enormous black rooster with a white face and huge droopy waddles. “That one looks like Captain Bates.”
    â€œThat’s a Black Spanish,” her father says. As they walk down the aisle, he tells Donna Digamy the story about Maximo Gomez, how Chuck Cowrie bought the rooster