Free A Murder of Crows by Jan Dunlap Page A

grain and flapping their imaginary wings. The rooster cry was coming from a short freckled boy who had jumped up on a chair and was currently stretching his neck as far upwards as humanly possible.
    “The farmer’s wife is coming to gather eggs,” Mr. Wist announced to his subjects, who began to scurry around the stage, clucking and bumping into each other. The rooster-boy crowed even louder.
    “It looks like the hallway outside my classroom when the first bell rings for class,” Boo said. “Do you think we could get this guy to hypnotize my students to study more?”
    Before I could answer him, a loud crash came from the stage, followed by a cacophony of chicken noises. The rooster picked himself up from the floor, crowing repeatedly in agitation as he shook out his arms.
    Mr. Wist, now laying beneath the rooster’s overturned perch, was out cold.
    The other seven students continued to squawk in confusion, then abruptly leapt from the stage and fled out the auditorium doors.
    “Is this part of the act?” Boo asked.
    Up on the stage, Mr. Lenzen made a beeline for the prone hypnotist. In the packed audience, students shifted uneasily in their chairs, while faculty members asked them to remain seated. From outside the auditorium, I could hear wild clucking. I turned to Boo.
    “How are you at rounding up chickens?” I asked. “Unless I’m mistaken, until Mr. Wist gives them the release word, those kids are going to think they’re hens in a barnyard.”
    “I grew up on a farm,” Boo said, already moving toward the closest exit. “If I can wrestle steers, I can catch a few student-sized chickens.”
    Wrestle … steers?
    I followed him out the door and spotted three of the hypnotized students making a turn into the girls’ locker room down the corridor.
    “You take them,” Boo said, pointing at the disappearing students. “I saw the other kids head towards the cafeteria.” He took off in that direction at a run, his arms pumping smoothly like big pistons.
    Boo Metternick, Savage’s own steer wrestler, catcher of hypnotized chickens, and physics teacher.
    Aka … the Bonecrusher.
    “Yup. You’re the man, all right,” I said under my breath to his retreating form. “I am so going to get you on my lunchroom shift.”
    I turned and jogged down the hall to the locker room door.
    Seeing the word “Girls” stenciled on the door gave me only a moment of hesitation. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to enter the girls’ facilities at Savage High in the course of my counseling duties, but it still tugged a tiny bit at my sense of propriety. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t think men belonged in the girls’ locker room.
    At the moment, though, I supposed I could consider it less a girls’ locker room and more a chicken coop.
    A henhouse?
    Talk about politically incorrect. Our female coaching staff would tar and feather me if I ever let that one slip. And then Mr. Lenzen would get into the act. He’d probably suspend my coffee machine privileges.
    Ouch. A day without school coffee was a day without … school coffee.
    Something to think about there …
    A loud cackle came from the other side of the door, focusing my attention back to the problem at hand. There were really big chickens in the locker room.
    “It’s Mr. White, and I’m coming in,” I called out before I pushed on the door to open it.
    It wouldn’t budge.
    From the other side came the sounds of shrill squawking.
    I put my shoulder against the door and pushed.
    Again, it wouldn’t budge.
    Again, more squawking. Louder this time.
    Great. I was probably the first counselor in Savage High School history to be stymied by students who thought they were chickens barricading a door.
    I needed another tactic.
    “Oh, my,” I said loudly, hoping that the power of suggestion would work as well for me as it had for our illfated hypnotist. “What do I have here? Grain, and lots of it. I bet hungry chickens would just love to eat this