Free Fresh Eggs by Rob Levandoski Page B

from a brothel owner in Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. No matter how fancy the chickens are, they all make Donna Digamy sneeze. So they leave the chicken barn and go to the midway and ride the belly churning tilt-the-whirl and pay fifty cents each to see the world’s smallest horse.
    â€œYou should get one of these for Rhea,” Donna Digamy says to Calvin, who’s holding Rhea up so she can scratch the tiny horse’s big head.
    Rhea sees the anxiety on her father’s face and answers for him. “A lot of food and poop for nothing,” she says.
    That night Calvin goes with Rhea to the chicken coop. While she feeds the Buff Orpingtons, he places Miss Lucky Pants and her six chicks in a cardboard box. “This never should have happened,” he says.
    â€œBut it did,” Rhea says, shrugging the way her mother used to shrug.
    â€œAnd now we’ve got all these worthless chicks.”
    â€œYou’re not going to make them live in that box, are you?”
    â€œWe’re going to make a pen for them in the old cow barn—until they’re big enough to join the others.”
    Worry wrinkles Rhea’s face.
    â€œNot with the Leghorns,” he says. “In here with your grandmother’s Buffs. We can’t send Gallinippers any of the eggs from these little half-breed buggers.”
    â€œWe can’t have that,” says Rhea.
    â€œNo we can’t. And we can’t have any more of your sneaking and lying either.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œAre you, Rhea? If you can’t live up to your end of the bargain, Captain Bates is Sunday dinner.”
    Her father carries the box to the cow barn. The cows have been gone for years but the barn still smells like cows. Rhea sits on an old bale of straw and watches as her father untangles a roll of rusted chicken wire—fencing with holes so small even tiny chicks can’t crawl out—and makes a pen in the corner. He sets the box with Miss Lucky Pants and the chicks inside the pen. He reaches into his pants pocket and takes out his jackknife and cuts a rounded door in one end of the box.
    â€œIs that their little house?” Rhea asks.
    â€œUh huh. That’s their little house.” Calvin scoops Rhea off the bale and makes a swing out of his arms. “Now you’ve got to understand, some of your chicks are probably going to die. Some always do. But if you keep them fed and watered, most will grow up fine. And then we’ll have a few more worthless chickens. Okay, pumpkin seed?”
    Rhea swings back and forth in her father’s arms. Her chest is itching, but she doesn’t dare reach down her shirt and pluck the little feather that’s surely growing there. “Okay, pumpkin seed,” she says.
    And so Rhea begins taking care of Miss Lucky Pants and her six chicks.
    Unlike the chicks stuffed in the trays at the hatchery they visited in Gombeen, these chicks have room to run around. And they do. They run and hop and peck at everything. Miss Lucky Pants teaches them how to drink water from the shallow clay bowl and how to peck at the mash in the metal tray. She also teaches them how to preen —clean and smooth their tiny feathers with their tiny beaks.
    Although she was born in a metal hatching drawer, Miss Lucky Pants is a wise and attentive mother. When her chicks peep that they’re getting cold, she spreads her wings and lets them scramble under her.
    One of the chicks dies—Rhea’s father said that might happen—but the other five keep eating and growing. Rhea spends as much time as she can in the old cowless cow barn, squatting outside the chicken-wire pen, watching and worrying. The chicks lose their silky yellow feathers and start growing stiff white adult feathers. They start to grow their own wings and pretty soon they are too big to fit under Miss Lucky Pants.
    Rhea knows she shouldn’t name the chicks. Or make pets out of them. Her father