“Stacey?” he called, hovering in the open kitchen doorway.
The poor failing bird held oddly still in his arms. He could feel her warmth. He could feel her heart beating.
“What is it, honey?” Stacey called back.
She was scrambling a skillet full of eggs at the stove, her back to him.
“I got a problem, Stacey.”
“What kind of problem, hon?”
Still she did not turn to look. If she had turned to look, she would have immediately seen what kind of problem it was.
“It’s Mabel. I think she’s sick.”
He took two steps into the kitchen as he said it, and his sister turned at the same moment. Stewie saw her face darken.
“Oh, honey, no. You can’t bring her into the kitchen.”
“But she’s sick.”
“Even so, though, Stewie. She’s a barnyard animal. We don’t bring barnyard animals into the kitchen.”
“Okay, I’ll take her into my room, then.”
He tried to boldly march in that direction before she could argue. It didn’t work. She was quick to argue.
“Stewie, stop. Honey, I know you’re upset. But we can’t have any of the chickens in your room. They’re not . . . you know . . . housebroken.”
“I could wrap her in an old towel, then.”
“Still, what’s wrong with the henhouse, Stew?”
“Nothing. Usually. But Mabel is sick.”
Stacey wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and took a chance by leaving the eggs unattended on the stove. She crossed the room to him.
“What makes you think she’s sick?” she asked, lightly stroking the honey-brown feathers near the back of Mabel’s small head.
“She’s just . . . I don’t know how to say it. Kind of . . . dull. She’s just not moving around very much. And her eyes aren’t bright like they should be.”
He looked into Mabel’s eye—that fine, perfectly round, black-centered disk. The bird appeared to look back at him.
“Stewie. Honey. Mabel is old. I think she’s just old.”
“Well, whatever she is, I have to help her. I’m going to take her to the vet.”
“Oh, please, Stewie. I can barely afford all the expenses around this place as it is.”
“You don’t have to pay. I’ll take her with my egg money.”
“That’ll use up an awful lot of your egg money.”
Stacey appeared to suddenly remember the scrambled eggs on the stove. She raced back and stirred them with a wooden spatula.
“I still have to do it,” he said. “I have to help her.”
“I just hate to see you lose all those savings. Especially if the vet tells you she’s just old and there’s nothing can be done about it. Then it would just be a waste of all that money you worked so hard to save.”
Stewie and his sister had a deal. He kept half of the money from his egg sales and donated the other half to help out with the family expenses. And he had saved quite a nice bundle over the past year. But it was all about to be gone, and he didn’t care. Mabel needed him.
“Wait a minute,” Stacey said. “You can’t take her to the vet this morning. You have school.”
Stewie took a deep breath and steeled himself for a fight. Not a literal one. But it was one he had to win. He felt as though his whole body had turned to stone. He would not be swayed or bested.
“I’m going to miss school. To take her to the vet. And you’re going to write me a note.”
He watched her furrow her brow and frown.
He quickly added, “Please.”
For a minute or so, she did not answer. Just dished up the scrambled eggs onto plastic plates and set two pieces of toast on each plate.
Then she said, “Go get Theo. Tell him breakfast is ready.”
It seemed she was ignoring the fact that Stewie would be going to get him with a chicken in his arms. But as he walked by her, she glanced over, and noticed. And Stewie knew she had just forgotten. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it. She closed her mouth again without saying a word.
When Stewie arrived back at the table, he sat down to eat with the hen on his lap. Mabel swiveled her head and looked around, seeming to notice the difference in her surroundings. Stewie just shoveled breakfast into his mouth, careful to avoid his sister’s eyes.
He heard her sigh deeply.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I know you’re very emotional about the hens. If it means that much to you, I’ll write a note. I’ll say you have to stay home with a sick pet. But as long as that bird is in the house, I want her wrapped in an old towel. I mean, that’s just basic sanitation, Stewie.”
Stewie drew in a long, audible breath and then let it flow out of him again. It felt as though he were breathing for the first time in hours.
“Thanks, Stacey,” he said.
Then he left the table to go fetch an old towel.
He sat in a hard chair in the vet’s waiting room, Mabel wrapped in the same towel and held carefully on his lap.
The woman next to him had a huge cat. Looked to be maybe twenty pounds or more, that cat, with a long, matted coat. The cat was in a wire carrier, but it could see Mabel, and Mabel could see the cat. And the cat had begun making a strange hunting sound in its throat. And Mabel read that sound loud and clear. She began to fuss, and cluck, and Stewie could feel her stress. He held the hen more tightly to his chest. He could feel the woman staring at his bruised eye.
“I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” he whispered near Mabel’s feathered head.
“I’ve never seen a chicken in a vet’s office,” the cat woman said to Stewie.
She was fiftyish, with carefully coiffed blonde hair, wearing a fussy-looking pantsuit with nylons at her ankles. And Stewie did not understand her. He understood what she had just said to him. But he did not understand her.
“I don’t see anything strange about it. She’s a small animal. This is a small animal vet.”
“But that’s a barnyard animal. Isn’t there a different kind of vet for barnyard animals?”
In his head, Stewie began a litany. Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me.
He tried not answering her as an option. The cat continued to break the silence with that strange staccato hunting sound in its throat. Mabel continued to be stressed out by the sound.
“I’m only asking,” the woman added.
“There are other kinds of vets who make farm calls,” Stewie said. “But they come out to see horses and cows because it’s easier to have the vet come see your horse or cow than it is to bring them in. But those are large animal vets. Mabel’s not a large animal.”
The young woman behind the counter, the vet’s assistant, looked up from her computer monitor. She seemed to have been following the conversation in a distant way, but the stress in Stewie’s voice had apparently drawn her attention.
“We don’t mind seeing birds,” she said. Loudly, into the waiting room in general. Then she smiled at Stewie.
He smiled back, and breathed a little easier.
“What’s wrong with her?” the woman asked Stewie.
He couldn’t tell if she asked out of genuine concern, or just wanted to pick at him further.
“I don’t know, ma’am. If I knew, I wouldn’t need to come to the vet. I come here because the vet knows what’s wrong with an animal better than I do. She might be sick, or she might just be old. I’m not sure.”
Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me.
“Does she lay?”
“No, ma’am. She hasn’t laid for quite a while now. Years.”
“Well, you just eat them when they stop laying.”
Stewie felt his shoulders jerk up around his ears. His face felt hot. He jumped up, holding Mabel close against his belly, and stood with his back up against the wall in the far corner of the room.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” he said, wishing he had said it much sooner.
He had been conditioned to be polite to grown-ups as long as was humanly possible. But now and then it came around to bite him, just as it had now.
“I’m only talking sense,” the woman shouted over to him.
“He said he doesn’t want to talk to you anymore,” the vet assistant said.
Stewie shot her a grateful glance and she smiled at him again.