Grunting and puffing, she dragged her towsack around to the chopping block that stood between the barn and the woodshed. Just inside the woodshed door she found Billy Richardson's Son House hanging on a couple of pegs, its rubber glove snugged neatly down over the blade. She took it and went back out.
"Now Lord," she said, standing over the towsack in her dusty yellow workshoes and looking up at the cloudless midsummer sky, "You have given me the strength to walk up here, and I'm believin You'll give me the strength to walk back. Your prophet Isaiah says that if a man or woman believes in the Lord God of Hosts, he shall mount up with wings as eagles. I don't know nothin much about eagles, my Lord, except they are mostly ugly-natured birds who can see a long ways, but I got three broilers in this bag and I should like to whack off their heads and not m'own hand. Thy will be done, amen."
She picked up the towsack, opened it, and peered down. One of the hens still had her head under her wing, fast asleep. The other two had squashed against each other, not moving much. It was dark in the sack and the hens thought it was nighttime. The only thing dumber than a broody hen was a New York Democrat.
Abagail plucked one out and laid it across the block before it knew what was happening. She brought the hatchet down hard, wincing as she always had at the final mortal thud of the blade biting through to wood. The head fell into the dust on one side of the chopping block. The headless chicken strutted off into the Richardsons' dooryard, blood spouting, wings fluttering. After a bit it found out it was dead and lay down decently. Broody hens and New York Democrats, my Lord, my Lord.
Then the job was done and all her worrying that she might botch it or hurt herself doing it had been for nothing. God had heard her prayer. Three good chickens, and now all she had to do was get home with them.
She put the birds back into the towsack and then hung Billy Richardson's Son House hatchet back up. Then she went into the farmhouse again to see what there might be to eat.
She napped during the early part of the afternoon and dreamed that her company was getting closer now; they were just south of York, coming along in an old pickup truck. There were six of them, one of them a boy who was deaf and dumb. But a powerful boy, all the same. He was one of the ones she would have to talk to.
She woke around three-thirty, a little stiff but otherwise feeling rested and refreshed. For the next two and a half hours she plucked the chickens, resting when the work put too much misery into her arthritic fingers, then going on. She sang hymns while she worked - "Seven Gates to the City (My Lord Hallelu')," "Trust and Obey," and her own favorite, "In the Garden."
When she finished the last chicken, each of her fingers had a migraine headache and the daylight had begun to take on that still and golden hue that means twilight's outrider has arrived. Late July now, and the days were shortening down again.
She went inside and had another bite. The bread was stale but not moldy - no mold would ever dare show its green face in Addie Richardson's kitchen - and she found a half-used jar of smooth peanut butter. She ate a peanut butter sandwich and made up another, which she put in her dress pocket in case she got hungry later.
It was now twenty to seven. She went back out again, gathered up her towsack, and went carefully down the porch steps. She had plucked neatly into another sack, but a few feathers had escaped and now fluttered from the Richardsons' hedge, which was drying for lack of water.
Abagail sighed heavily and said: "I'm off, Lord. Headed home. I'll be going slow, don't reckon to get there until midnight or so, but the Book says fear neither the terror of night nor that which flieth at noonday. I'm in the way of doing Your will as best I know it. Walk with me, please. Jesus' sake, amen."