The Chicken Story...

Crammed into an upstairs attic space on a bare mattress tossed on the wooden floor under a curtainless window, it was hard to sleep in today.  The heavenly aroma of country ham simmering in a well-oiled frying pan lured me down the squeaky stairs.  A portrait of Jesus too large for its place on the wall hung at the entrance hall blessing all who entered this white wooden house, too close to a busy highway and barely kept warm by an old woodstove.  Above the dining table spread an expansive print of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.  Jim and Tammy Faye preached from the TV, the poor alignment of the rabbit ears distorting their black and white messages but Grandpa still watched in his overstuffed chair, humming a verse of Johnny Cash’s “Praise the Lord and Pass the Soup”.  His hearing aids occasionally chimed a quiet chorus.  Her cup half full of black coffee balanced on the counter beside her Bible and cassettes of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, Grandma occasionally joined in.  Full of divine grace and Jesus, Grandma rose to prepare the Sunday morning breakfast. 

This weekend we had loaded up the car and headed east to visit Mom’s side of the family.  Much effort had been required to get here, to leave the grass and horses taken care of and the house secure, and to load family and stuff into one car.  The journey was long and boring and the stay would once again be too short.  We did not see them often so our visits had the awkward and unfamiliar feel of a reunion.  But the unconditional love of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins waited faithfully for us in what always seemed like another world.

The screen door creaked as Grandma tossed the used grease from the pan and a handful of feedcorn out the back door.  A clothesline dried towels and a few clothes in the scarce breezes from a stagnant pond, partially blocking the view of the trailer park beyond.   The chicken coop propped up the hog pen as the animals within stirred haphazardly.  The moon-shaped cut-out in the plank door identified the old outhouse beyond and invited anyone who needed to go.  A willow tree strained to grow in the dirt backyard while a few plants celebrated in the vegetable garden.  Against this country backdrop, hungry chickens gathered ceremoniously, responding to this rural ritual with clucking and scratching, yearning for a bit of corn.  “Wiley!” she commanded.  “Get up and get us a chicken!” 

Grandpa averted his beady blue eyes from the evangelism before him and easily rose from his seat.  A surviving twin, his small but wiry musculature hidden by his blue overalls was no match for Grandma.  She was a large, spectacled and strong-willed Christian woman, gray hair pulled back in a thick bun with a dip of snuff pinched between her cheek and gum.  Empty Maxwell House coffee cans were placed in the house strategically just for her to spit in.  Big black shoes, a big billowy dress and a big, flour-stained apron veiled her physique.  Although my grandparents seemed to me a mismatched couple they must have had a deep and private faith that kept them together their entire lives.  They didn’t have much but they loved Jesus, they loved each other and you could feel the love they had for us.  But if they’d ever tussled, she’d have whupped him.

Before we called her Mom she was named Viona Christine Hairr.  Her parents were tenant farmers; poor, uneducated and with lots of kids. The Hairrs had nine children and Mom was the next to last.  Their strict and harsh childhoods were marked by picking cotton and tobacco in the fields to earn their keep.  They walked to school, if they went at all, barefoot on sandy, dirt roads.  They did without.  They were hard workers and became wives, husbands, farmers, painters, plumbers, builders and musicians.  They could all sing but none better than Christine.  Her voice and beauty became her ticket to a better life and winning pageants led her to Charlotte and to my dad.  But she never forgot her past and persisted in passing those values on to her family.  So we worked hard.  We went to church.  And we went to reunions.

The screen door slammed shut.  Through a cracked windowpane, I watched Grandpa step effortlessly from the crooked porch onto the cinderblock step below and out into the chaos of chickens.  Shadowing a big white one, he pursued his target.  As nimbly as Jack jumping over a candlestick, Grandpa seized it in both hands.  The fowl squawked and cackled and flapped and pecked.  While the other poultry exploded away, Grandpa clutched the chicken’s feet in one hand, snatched a bucket with the other and shoved the yard bird in.  Trapped and stunned, the chicken poked his head out just as Grandpa turned the bucket upside down and smashed it to the ground. 

While the pigs squealed and the chickens cheered for their fallen comrade to fight harder, I moved closer to the windowpane, but now watched with one eye closed.  His head still sticking out from under the edge of the bucket, the bird cried out for help.  I should not have been surprised to see Grandpa attacked by a mob of farm animals defending their friend.  But with round one now a tie, Grandpa was not about to lose round two.  No help for the bird arrived.  He commenced to stomping on the bucket, over and over again.  The bird closed its eyes.  So did I. 

Grandma, disturbed from making her biscuits by the devilish clatter in the yard, clapped her hands against her apron, turned in a puff of flour and bolted outside.  “Wiley!”  Grandpa backed away.  Swooping in past Grandpa like a pelican into a school of fish, she pushed the bucket away and for one grateful moment the chicken looked at her.  Then with one hand, Grandma gripped today’s dinner by the neck and swung it around a few times like the handle of a jumprope.  The bird went limp.  She  glared at Grandpa, who like me was speechless.  We both gaped at her as she returned to her kitchen, chicken in hand and began ripping its feathers off.  Then with her sharp knife, Grandma deftly cleaned and prepared it for her frying pan.

We gathered around the supper table, now covered in a Sunday buffet of country home cooking, farm-grown vegetables, coconut cake and sweet tea, prepared as an offering and joined by our loving cousins and aunts and uncles.  A reunited, extended Southern family with one foot in the past and the other in the future, we prayed under the watchful eyes of Jesus and His disciples.  

And then we ate that chicken.