The Lost Landscape. Joyce Carol Oates

I didn’t roll in the dust as frequently as they did, in their (mostly futile) effort to rid themselves of mites. It wasn’t just that Happy Chicken was young (for there were other chickens as young as I was, hatched from eggs within the year) but I was also far more intelligent, and more handsome; your eye was drawn to me, and only to me, out of the flock; for you could see from the special gleam in my eyes and the way in which I came running before the little girl called me, that I was a very special little chicken.

      The yard between the barn and the farmhouse was cratered with shallow indentations in which chickens rolled and fluttered their wings like large demented birds who’d lost the ability to fly. Sometimes as many as a dozen chickens would be rolling in the dirt at the same time as in a bizarre coordinated modern dance; but the chickens were not coordinated and indeed took little heed of one another except, from time to time, to lash out with a petulant peck and an irritated cluck. When not rolling in the dirt (and in their own black, liquidy droppings) these chickens spent their time jabbing beaks into the dirt in search of grubs, bugs. Stray seeds left over from feeding time, bits of rotted fruit. Their happiness was not the happiness of Happy Chicken but a very dim kind of happiness for a chicken’s brain is hardly the size of a pea, what else can you expect? This was why Happy Chicken—that is, I—was such a surprise to the family, and such a delight.

      My comb was rosy with health, erect with blood. My eyes were unusually alert and clear. But each eye on each side of the beak, how’d you expect us to see coherently? We see double, and one side of our brain dims down so that the other side can see precisely. That’s how we know which direction in which to run, to escape predators.

      Most of the time, however, most chickens don’t. Don’t escape predators.

      Sometime, they’re so dumb they run toward predators. They do this when the predator is smart enough to freeze. They can’t detect immobility, and they can’t detect something staring at them.

      I was not really one of them. To be identified as special, and recognized as Happy Chicken, meant that, though I was a chicken I was not one of them. And particularly, I was not a silly stupid hen.

      SOMETIMES—AT SPECIAL TIMES—UNDER CLOSE adult scrutiny and always held snug in the little girl’s arms—Happy Chicken was allowed inside the farmhouse.

      No other chicken, not even Mr. Rooster, was ever allowed inside the farmhouse.

      Never upstairs but downstairs in the “wash-room” at the rear of the house—a room with a linoleum floor that contained a washing machine with a hand ringer, and where coats and boots were kept—this is where the little girl Joyce could bring me. But always held gently-but-firmly in her arms, or set onto the floor and held in place, in the wash-room or—a few special times—in the kitchen which opened off the wash-room, where the Grandmother spent most of her time. Here, the little girl was given scraps of bread to feed me, on the linoleum floor.

      And here, I was sometimes allowed up in the little girl’s lap, to be fussed over and petted.

      The other chickens would’ve been jealous of me—except they were too stupid. They didn’t know. Even Mr. Rooster didn’t understand how Happy Chicken was privileged. Sometimes Mr. Rooster stationed himself at the back door of the farmhouse, clucking and preening, complaining, fretting, fluttering his wings, insisting upon the attention of everyone who went inside the house, or came outside, shamelessly looking for a treat, and when he didn’t get a treat, squawking indignantly and threatening to peck with his sharp beak.

      The little girl was frightened of Mr. Rooster, and hurried past him. The Mother and the Grandmother shooed Mr. Rooster away, for they were frightened of him, too. The Grandfather and the Father laughed at Mr. Rooster and gave him a kick. They thought it was very funny, a goddamn bird trying to intimidate them.

      Sometimes Happy Chicken was allowed in the wash-room overnight, in a little box filled with straw, like a nest. And little Joyce petted me, and fussed over me, and fed me special treats.

      Happy Chicken! You are so pretty.

      . . . you are so nice. I love you

      Happy Chicken. I love you.

      The little girl whispered to me, that no one else could hear. The little girl had many things to tell me, all kinds of secrets to tell me, whispered against the side of my head where (the little girl supposed) I had “ears”—and when I made a clucking noise, the little girl spoke to me excitedly, for it seemed to the little girl that I was talking to her, and telling her secrets.

      What are you and Happy Chicken always talking about, the Mother asked the little girl, but the little girl shook her head defiantly, and would not tell.

      (Sometimes, there was an egg or two discovered in Happy Chicken’s little nest. The little girl took these eggs away to give to the Grandmother for they were special Happy Chicken eggs not to be mixed with the eggs of the hens out in the coop.)

      (Yet still, though Happy Chicken produced eggs, it seemed to be taken for granted that Happy Chicken was a boy-chicken. For always, Happy Chicken was he, him.)

      The little girl was given a gift of Crayolas! At once the little girl began drawing pictures of me on sheets of tablet paper. Russet-brown was the little girl’s favorite Crayola crayon, for this was the color of my beautiful red-brown feathers. The little girl drew and colored many, many pictures of me, that were admired by everyone who saw them. With the help of the Mother, the little girl carefully printed, beneath the drawings

      HAPPY CHICKEN

      Sometimes, visiting relatives would peer at the little girl and me from the kitchen doorway, as the little girl sat on the floor beside my box drawing me, and I was tilting my head blinking and clucking at her.

      The little girl would overhear people saying Is that just a—chicken? Or some special kind of guinea hen, that’s smarter?

      For it had not ever been known, that a “chicken” could be a pet, in such a way. At least, not in this part of Erie County, New York.

      Between a chicken and a little girl there is not a shared language as “language” is known. Yet, Happy Chicken always knew his name and a few other (secret) words uttered by the little girl and the little girl always knew what Happy Chicken’s special clucks meant, that no one else could understand and so when the Mother, or the Father, or any adult, asked the little girl what on earth she and the little red chicken were talking about, the little girl would repeat that it was a secret, she could not tell.

      Sometimes, at unpredictable moments, I felt an urge to “kiss” the little girl—a quick, light jab of my beak against the girl’s hands, arms, or face.

      And the little girl had a special little kiss on the top of the head just for me.

      I WAS A YOUNG chicken less than a year old at this time in the little girl’s life when she hadn’t yet learned to run on plump little-girl legs without tripping and falling and gasping for breath and crying.

      If the Mother was near, the Mother hurried to pick up the little girl, and comfort her. If the Grandmother was near, the Grandmother was likely to cluck at the little girl like an indignant hen and tell her to get up, she wasn’t hurt bad.

      If the Father was near, the Father would pick up the girl at once, for the Father’s heart was lacerated when he heard his little daughter cry, no matter that she hadn’t been hurt bad. (But the Father was not often nearby for he worked in a factory seven miles away in Lockport, called Harrison Radiator.)

      But always if an adult wiped the little girl’s eyes and nose the little girl soon forgot why she’d been crying even if she’d bruised or scratched her leg—the little girl cried easily but also forgot easily.

      When you are a little girl you cry easily and forget easily.

      Nor is it difficult to appear happy when you are a young chicken and without memory as the smooth blank inside of an egg.