Show me what to do with the chickens and I’ll take some shifts with them. Give you a breather, I’d offered the other day. It was a desperate move on my part. I could think of a thousand things I’d rather do to reclaim my marriage besides clean up chicken shit, but all my efforts with Elsa were failing. Whether it came from pride or shame, she allowed only Mary to help her with most tasks, and whenever I asked her how she felt the answer was the same. “Fine, fine.” So chicken shit it was. Although she raised her eyebrows when I made the suggestion, Mary agreed.
Since school started I’d been sleeping in on Saturday mornings, but even after grading papers late into the night I staggered out of bed at 5:30 today and trudged along behind her through the yard, which wasn’t even touched by the gray before dawn.
She showed me how to collect, wash, and store the eggs, how to clean up the excrement, and how to replace the straw as needed. We fed them while they lurched around and pecked at our boots, following us with their blank, beady stares. She lectured about how to look for disease and sickness and then she picked up one of the hens and carried it to the back of the main barn and killed it.
I didn’t even realize what was happening until Mary had the knife in her hands.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Her voice was matter-of-fact. The blade flashed pink from the sunrise and the bird struggled to free itself from her grip.
“Is it sick? What’s wrong with it?”
The bird’s eyes were rolling frantically now and I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.
“Nothing’s wrong with it. Winifred’s coming over for dinner tonight.”
And with that she severed the bird’s head from its body and blood spewed onto the ground. The body flopped and rolled, as if unaware of its own death and frantically trying to recover the piece it had lost. I stumbled backward until I ran into the barn wall. If there’d been anything in my stomach, I would have heaved it right over that fountain of blood. Mary went to a nearby hose and washed off the knife like she’d been slicing a birthday cake, angling it to one side and then the other until I could see her face in the blade.
The bird bounced over to me and I ran away from it, which made Mary roll her eyes.
“It’s just a chicken, Peter. You don’t run away from them in the grocery store.”
“They don’t run at me in the grocery store!” I yelled.
“I’ll probably roast it with some potatoes, but I’ll throw on something separate for you.”
I didn’t answer. She stood on one side of the headless chicken and I stood on the other without any idea how to respond to her polite offer to make me a vegetarian meal.
The thing was, most of my friends would have been impressed. Chick’s got brass balls, I could hear them saying. Even when she’d outmaneuvered them with her easy logic on whatever issue being debated at the bar—raising minimum wage or the literary effect of Harry Potter on the millennials—she always bought them a beer and made them laugh in the end. If I told them about what happened today, they would’ve raised her status to legendary.
I didn’t know why it bothered me so much. I’d probably seen Mary eat a hundred chicken wings during those times at the bar. Would I be okay with my wife eating dead animals if she couldn’t bring herself to kill them? It was ludicrously hypocritical. I knew that. But that damn chicken’s eye wouldn’t go away. It stared up at me from the lifeless head, surrounded by a pool of its own blood.
Someone laughed in the living room and then I heard footsteps on the stairs. Mary appeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb, mirth infusing her features.
“I found an Old Maid card set and thought it might be fun. Then Winifred said there were too many old maids in the room already.”
“They’re old widows, not old maids.”
“True.” She shrugged and grinned. “Do you want to play?”
“I don’t know that game.”
“It’s easy. Even Mom can handle it, I think.”
“No, I don’t feel like playing.”
“What’s the matter?” Mary came into the room and sat on the edge of the desk next to me. She brushed some hair out of my eyes.
“Nothing.” I pulled back.
“Are you still upset about the chicken?”
“You could have at least warned me beforehand.”
“Oh, come on, Peter.”
I pushed away from her dismissive tone and paced the edge of the room. “It didn’t bother you even a little, did it?”
“What do you want me to say? This is how I was raised.”
Everything about her demeanor told me I was the one with the problem. I was the aberration in the room. After seven years she either didn’t understand my moral choices or she didn’t give a shit. I shook my head and picked up a book on top of a stack by the window, turning pages like there was something important inside, if only I could find it.
“You’re not coming down?” I could hear the hurt in her question and I didn’t care.
“No. I think I’ll pass on the exciting card game with the seventy-year-olds.”
“Would it kill you to be part of this family?”
I advanced on her, jabbing the book in the direction of the barns outside the window. “What do you think I was doing this morning? You think I was collecting eggs and hauling straw bales for fun?”
“No, I know you hated every second of it. You couldn’t have made it more obvious if you tried.”