cockerel he weren’t worth the crap he’d leave on my porch chair. He weren’t even at the top of his pecking order; bigger hens’d knock him right from his perch, and mating’d happen on their terms. Come to suspect half the chicks in the yard were from the neighbor’s Leghorn. But the wife, the wife she’d been reading the city paper, and come across some article on an ugly sparrow or somesuch, changed to Marlon Brando with some felt-pen make up.
Like any woman told to put up her make up sticks, she handed me the bird, then stomped on out to the barn to tart up our rooster. No sooner had she stopped blowin' the paint on his toes than he started attracting all manner of getup from the hens. They started a peckin' and a pawin' at each other til the blood ran; I had to train the hose on 'em to get em to stop. From the noises out the coop that night, the bloodlettin' continued into the moonlight, with the copulatin' starting somewhere in between; just a little paint on his chest and our rooster was like to one a them mad Roman sodomites or the next.
By morning, a new pecking order emerged, with the rooster where he belonged. Over the next week, he crowed more and more, and louder, stronger. The wife, she a told me it was testosterone makes a rooster crow, to which I chuckled and asked what it took to make a crow rooster. She didn’t laugh; couldn’t 'member the last time she laughed with me, though at times I caught her laughin' to me.
A few weeks more, she spent more and more time painting that rooster, spent more and more of our ethanol money on glosses and polish and powders with no practical use at all, cause I ain’t fool enough to think prettying a practical use. And I swear, I ain’t never a known, but her sister called, said it was something urgent, could I find her please in a hurry, that I went out in that barn. I’d a figured for all the world she was working to reshoe the horse from the noises usherin' from inside, all the while that rooster a claimin' his territory, even if only the fowl paid heed to his claim. But there she lay sprawled on a bed a hay, knickers round her ears, that vain fool bird flappin' his gold-painted wings at her nethers. They stopped, both looked at me, and not a one of us said a word, but they went back at it, and I told her sister she’d have to get called back.
That was Tuesday, and in the intervenin' days I’ve had me a think or two. Now, ya might have a wonder why my britches are in the dirt, and I’ll tell ya there’s a story there. I could have bludgeoned the sumbitch with an ax handle, but that ain’t sportin'; aside of that, the missus is a ruttin' with him for some reason, and physical prowess may factor somewheres. Rooster’s taked up my place in the peckin' order, taked up with my hen, and just last eve was eyein' my perch through the window. Now if’n I want my place restored me it’s to combat or nothin' else.
Took some crowin' to roust him from the coop, probably cause the sun ain’t rose, but now he’s standing in the dirt afore me, head to side, sizing me with just the one eye. I affixed a razor blade to the tip of my old bird with duct tape, on account a I got no natural beak. I ain’t seen him defend hisself from another rooster, so I can’t be sure where his first strike’ll be, but I ain’t fit for quittin'; he’ll walk away a capon or I will. Loser’ll grow fat and lazy, and that’ll be the end of him- good eatin', if it’s him, the wife takin' half what’s left of my dignity and land if’n it’s me. He waltzes round, with the rising sun at his back, left wing struck out towards the ground. I’m just waitin' for the chicken-livered bastard to crow, so we can get on with it.
Table of Contents
Green Thumb
Dagney Morgan nursed her third coffee of the morning, though her first still hadn't kicked in. She didn’t like being up this early, let alone at work, but her upstairs neighbor’s cat had been hunting a rat in the wall all night. She figured if she was going to be miserable, she had more practice at that in the office.
That didn't mean she disliked her job. She actually had a knack for doing paperwork, and her inner anal retentive got a thrill from filing reports away in the office cabinet. And she loved her boss, even though sometimes his voice set her on edge, particularly on mornings like this one. “Dagney?” he asked from behind her, and her shoulder tightened.
Her parents named her for Dagny Lind, a Swedish actress her father said looked exactly like her mother in Ingmar Bergman’s Crisis. She hated it, because people always assumed she was named after Dabney Coleman- or worse, started to imagine a physical resemblance.
“Dag?” Her boss, Martin Sharpe, asked again. He was older, and had a dour nature, as though he'd just stepped out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. He reminded her of Vincent Price- though maybe that was just the pencil mustache.
“Sir,” she said, her mind still on the reports she’d been trying to read.
“I keep getting pissy messages from McLoughlin’s superintendent. Have you and Nelson checked into that?”
“Uh,” she stalled, but even with the necessary caffeinated fuel, her brain engine was having trouble turning over, “refresh my memory.”
“Merek’s farm. Sits on land adjacent to the aquifer that services the district where the middle school is. If he’s abiding by the regulations, nothing should be getting past the aquitard.”
“I think he prefers to be called Aquaman, or maybe King of Atlantis- I mean, either would be more politically correct than 'aquitard'- even if we suspect he’s falling down on the job.” He had a dry, almost British sense of humor, but he didn’t even give her a smile; maybe his coffee hadn’t kicked in, either.
“Nelson swung by there last Thursday, but Merek wasn’t in,” she said, and pretended to look at the calendar on her desk, to confirm what she’d just made up. Nelson had been face down in her sofa cushions last Thursday- sleeping off a night of binge drinking that made him reek of goat cheese- which at least meant she knew she wasn’t likely to be called out on the lie.
“I need the both of you to head out there today. We can’t have that idiot spilling captan into the drinking water again- or heaven forbid something worse.”
Dagney stood up and wrapped her coat around her shoulders, while she watched him walk back to his office. She grabbed her keys and the bagel she still hadn’t started eating, then lingered a moment to look at Nelson’s empty desk, and sighed.
She called him from her car, but didn’t have the energy to feign surprise when she got no response. She put in a call to Merek, too; her father always told her showing up unannounced out past the suburbs was just asking to get shot at. It was almost another hour before her partner finally called back, and by then she was nearly to Merek’s. “What the fuck, man?” she asked.
“I fell asleep on the couch- passed out. Muriel wouldn’t let me into bed.”
“Can’t say I blame her- I can smell the booze-sweat through the phone. You never made it out to Merek’s, did you?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I’ve been on this dirt-ass road to his farm for forty-five minutes now- and Sharpe thinks you’re in the seat next to me.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did it was a little wounded puppy whimper: “… sorry.”
Her grip tightened around the steering wheel, since he wasn’t in throttling distance. “Is there anything I should know here?” she asked, straining not to raise her voice.
“Merek’s been dodging inspections, but he’s not a bad guy. Going back ten years, nothing worse than a couple fines for improper chem disposal.”
“And the captan incident last year.”
“Shit, yeah, that, too.”
“How did you forget it? They traced fungicide from the toilets in the VA hospital to his farm.”
“So? The EPA downgraded captan to ‘not likely’ a carcinogen. The sweetener in my coffee’s worse. Our veterans might be a little worse for wear, but I don’t think any of them drink from the toilets. Though I guess maybe one of their dogs… okay now I feel sad.”
“Even so, the most recent complaint comes from some kids at the middle school who were hospitalized.”
“God.”
“Yeah. And while he mi
ght have cleaned up his captan storage, his permits say he’s also got a metric shit-tonne of fertilizers,” she paused. “Heh.” Then she ramped back up, “But if any kids come down with organophosphate poisoning, no amount of me covering your ass will help.”
“Dag- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. And you should dwell on that while I’m cleaning up your mess.” She was being cruel, but it wasn’t anywhere near the first time he’d left her in the lurch; in fact, she had a hard time remembering the last time he hadn’t. His continuous fuck-ups were easily the most consistent thing in her life.
Rob Merek’s land was one of the few family owned farms left in the county. It wasn’t well kept; Merek’s father was a decent businessman but a lousy farmer, and managed to pass only the latter skill set to his son. The younger Merek had learned how to avoid scrutiny, and he made sure his pesticide license was up to date, since that was an obvious way to call attention to himself, but Dagney saw a half-dozen potential violations just driving by his grain warehouse.
She pulled up to his modest house, at least half of which looked like it was patched with old fence boards. There was no ringer, so she knocked with the flat of her palm. No response. She knocked again, louder this time. “Department of Agriculture. You’ve got an