Free Chicken Feathers by Joy Cowley

about to swim underwater. “Dear God. Half of Semolina is here and the other half is in a fox. Let this geranium bush always have the most beautiful flowers and let the fox—let it be smart and—and funny like Semolina, and—and—”
    “And never eat chickens again,” said Josh. “Amen.”
    As they scooped the dirt into the hole, Josh imagined the prayer floating upward like a soft white feather. He thought of the Tarkah stories and vowed that never again would he tell anyone that Semolina had talked to him. Her hard cackly voice would be his biggest memory, and he wouldn’t share it with anyone. As he patted the dirt down, he said to Annalee, “Do you suppose that chickens think God is a big chicken?”
    That night, Josh was sick to his stomach. Grandma said he looked pale and maybe it was the day that had done it. Tucker agreed but wondered if Josh was coming down with something. “It could be a virus,” he said. “Just to be on the safe side, no hospital visit tonight.”
    Josh nodded. He didn’t feel like going out. His head washot, the rest of him cold, and he was so tired that there was no energy in him for sadness. For a while he sat out by the new grave, hoping to feel something. The geranium bush was in deep shadow and the dirt under it looked as it usually did when the garden had been weeded. Tomorrow he would put a stone or a cross on it so his father wouldn’t forget and dig her up. Yes, a memory stone with her name on it would be good. He went back inside and turned on the television.
    Tucker came in, showered and wearing one of his best shirts. “Next month there’s another batch of young chickens coming in. Fourteen weeks old. You want to choose one of them for a pet?”
    Josh shook his head.
    “Think about it,” Tucker said.
    Television was like a landscape rolling past a car window, of no interest to him. He got up, said good night to Grandma, who was sitting in Tucker’s chair, knitting something small and pink. For a while he stood inside the door, looking at the orange light of sunset, another of Tarkah’s eggs falling out of the sky. It was then he realized he had nothing of Semolina in his bedroom. This morning he had been careful to collectall her remains, every little feather, yet he had not kept one feather back for himself. Everything was buried. It was as though she had never been.
    He kicked off his shoes and lay on top of the bed, his hands behind his head, and although he was very tired, he did not sleep. He heard the car come back, heard Tucker coming to his room. “You awake, son?”
    “Yeah.”
    Tucker put on the light and sat on the end of the bed. He had a sheet of white cardboard stuck with photographs of Josh and Semolina and messages from Elizabeth. On top of the card, his mother had written,
The Story of the Little Red Hen.
    “She made it for you,” Tucker said.
    Josh’s eyes prickled as though they had sand in them, but he was too worn out for tears. His father must have searched for these photos and taken them up to the hospital. They’d done this together, Mom and Dad. There was a picture of him seven years old and laughing, Semolina dragging the meat out of his burger. In another, a picture he hadn’t seen before, he was asleep, arms flung out, Semolina perched on his chest, her head under her wing. Eight—no, nine photos of Semolina.
    These were better than feathers!
    “Thanks, Dad,” he said. “I’ll put it on the wall.”
    Tucker nodded and scrubbed Josh’s hair with his hand. “You okay, son? Maybe it’s time to brush your teeth and get into your pajamas. Your grandma’s a mite worried about you.”
    Josh swung his legs off the bed. “Grandma’s always worried.”
    Tucker smiled, eyes half shut. “You only just found that out?”
    Although the room was breathless warm, Josh dreamed of snow. Little white feathers were falling from the sky and piling up in the yard, soft as fluff but icy to the touch. They blew across the lawn, lay on the