Chicken And Fire

Living down south when I was eight was my first experience with culture shock as I may have mentioned in “Fish And Occasional Torture”. My uncle and his family were the touchstone of familiarity with the life we were used to, so we showed up on their farm quite a bit in the year we lived down there.

One day I was in the chicken coop with my cousin Patrick. He showed me this scrawny young chicken that he tossed up in the air to make it flap its wings for a smooth landing. He told me he was “making it fly”. Having no idea of our cruelty, I joined him in helping the chicken to “fly”.

So, two unthinking boys took turns throwing this poor chicken up in the air to see him flutter back to earth. Wouldn’t you know it? On my turn, this chicken keels over and dies.

I may have feared the instability of my cousin Billy, but now that I had done wrong, I was in fear of my muscular Uncle Bill. After all, his anger would be justified.

As an aside, let me tell you that Uncle Bill was wild in his own way. He had traveled with my Mom and me on one occasion where some guys in a car dogged us. It was night time and my uncle was dozing in the passenger’s seat and Mom was getting scared as this car of men kept even with us and were probably checking her out.

Uncle Bill woke up and found out what was happening and asked, “Where’s my gun?”

It was packed under a bunch of stuff in the back of the station wagon we were in, so Uncle Bill waited for the men to come even with his side of the car. He had told her to stay in the left lane for this purpose.

Now, I was wide-awake and watching this event unfold as the car pulled even with us. Uncle Bill leaned out the window so far that his belt buckle could have scraped the paint on our station wagon. He extended his arm and pointed his finger like a gun directly at the driver in the offending car. They dropped back, and we never saw them again.

Now, I had killed one of my uncle’s chickens, and for some reason, I could only hear my uncle in my mind say, “Where’s my gun?”

Naturally Patrick and I were scared, so like the two lame brained boys we were, we left the chicken where it was and left the chicken coup.

I was shaking with fear as we were interrogated and Patrick confessed we had been playing with the chicken. Uncle Bill made us bury the chicken in his cornfield while my family and his watched. I never felt so low before in my life.

For years afterward, I lived with such statements as, “Remember when you killed the chicken?” and “Did you kill the chicken or did Patrick?” Now, thirty-two years later, I think I can talk about it without too much difficulty. Just don’t bring it up first.

In the summer, my cousin Debbie led our little brothers Patrick and Bold One and me into the woods of their property. There, she taught us about watching for cotton mouth snakes and showed us what poison oak looked like as we followed a rippling creek in our bathing suits. It was very enjoyable to walk in the creek and be cool in the water, because usually I was sweating all the time in the Tennessee summer.

I expressed really liking that jaunt in the woods to my uncle and aunt. They thought I would like to spend the night out in the tent back there with my cousin Billy. It was the weekend and I was willing and so were my parents.

Billy was also in agreement. He was serenely discussing setting up the tent and a couple of cots. I was thinking this could be a pleasant outing with Billy.

That night, he led me out to the tent in the dark with a flashlight. He had the tent and cots all arranged and even had a small kerosene lamp on some sort of box with a radio. We settled in and talked.

At one point the lamp went out and he dug out some matches in the dark to light it. After it was lit, he began flicking lighted matches across the tent. They would go out on the tent floor, but I asked him if the tent could catch on fire. He said no as he continued to flick the lighted matches and I grew more tense.

The next match managed to set the whole book on fire and Billy flung it from himself. It landed on the floor and set it on fire. I was by the door of the tent and watched Billy laugh evilly in the light of the lamp and the new fire. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he would have turned into the Devil himself because he creeped me out so bad. I was out of the tent and several yards away before I saw him calmly putting the fire out.

It took him ten minutes to convince me to come back into the tent. For the rest of the night, I wouldn’t let him light anything and made him use the flashlight.

The next morning, I got up and saw a four-inch hole burned into the floor of the old canvas tent, but there were other holes in the floor as well. At least those didn’t seem to be burnt.

When Billy got up, we walked back to the house. He showed me Uncle Bill’s gun range on the way and bragged about his own ability. My uncle would put twigs in the holes of his old shots so he could see where the new ones were. I thought that was pretty clever.

When we got to the farmyard, he led me into that dreaded chicken coup to gather eggs. Then he fixed me breakfast.

Sometimes Billy could scare me to death, but I think I sensed he had some good deep down in his heart. He just seemed to have a devious streak that made me doubt his sanity at times.