Free-Range Time

For sale, near the intersection of Skylark & George there was a broke-down blue van.  A hand-painted stripe at belt height in florescent green, head to tail light, all the way down the side, made it different than Grumpa's.  White chickens fed under it.  Needle grass grew up tall against black flat tires.

I stopped to watch once.  Drove past going thirty-five, then turned around on the gravel shoulder to watch.  My orange hazards flashed.

With my mind, I could smell dust, although here the grass was lush.  
I could smell the diesel fuel on the hands of my grandfather.  I heard the low of mama chickens, like hoarse Grandmas, saying "wwwait, wwwait, wwwait" to young chicks.  
She'd teach them with her head always cocked, be ready, hit the bulls eye bug, fill your craw.  

I knew the inside of the craw.  The grains so clean and tight:  millet, barley and undigested split wheat.  It's a decadent sight-like a French salad or Grecian yogurt topping.  I could feel the soul of the chicken (not in a mystical way), but in this way, as if:

         -she'd been plucked up, off the free range, and gathered into my arms, her legs crossed in a most uncooked chicken-like way.  Alive with eyes that closed easy when I stroked the feathers from behind the eye to the neck of her.  I suppose it was unnatural in every way, but she adored it.  They all did.  They would sleep like a cat in a calm girls' arms, rousing only at the sound of a buzzing thing, a bug, or a quick "Cah!" from a chicken that was pecked by a peer.  If, from the tip of her beak, you stroked down her neck to her breast, she would tip her head, beak up, in indulgence.  Her eyelid skin was near translucent, baby feathers, soft and tiny like trees in a desert viewed from a plane.  You could touch that, but after she'd roll her eye at you.

          -you could lift her out of your arms and throw her into the air and she'd fly fifteen feet, land like a pro, and ruffle.  You could crawl over her on all fours, domineeringly, and she'd hug the ground submissively.  You could hold her between your ear and your shoulder and she'd move your hair out of the way with a closed beak to settle in, and you could hear her breathe.  You could hug her like a friend you were so glad to have and she would let out a sound something like a chicken does when they bound around against the air and ground--like chickens do with their heads cut off.  I didn't squeeze her so tight. 

          -before they all had feathers though-when they were yellow fuzz; when they could only "peep" not "wwwait" or "cah," I would kneel on the floor of the chick house under the warmth of the heat lamp and gather up arm loads of them.  Two hundred, three hundred, five or more, they were an unlinked feather boa.  They would land in straw, take to tiny feet and cock their heads all together looking at me with an eye.  

            -grandpa would call me.  (I can almost hear him.  What did he say?).  It would be time to go to town soon.  We'd sit across the bench seat of ol' blue like we were a baseball team:  tight together, sweaty, and not sure we were happy with sitting the bench.   I'd sit next to Grumpa; I wasn't scared.  He wasn't smelly to me.  I took my seat with some honor attached to it, and some fear.  We all knew after thirty-five miles of dirt road he'd buy "us kids" a root beer at Rusty's bar and we'd drink it from the bottle and talk nonsense.

I touched the flashers of my car--turned them off.
I'll take a picture of this van one day with all these chickens; just to have it.  Some morning-on purpose-earlier than now, when just the chickens are up--gulping down tiny flies playing in the morning; when people, still inside, sip coffee out of thick-lipped porcelain mugs and ingest their news for breakfast.  That's the best time--I'll take my picture in untouched free range time then, so I can remember it all just the way it was.

Next time:
The van sold.
The chickens were gone.
And so was time.