The Lost Landscape. Joyce Carol Oates

dawns, the little girl was wakened by Mr. Rooster’s cries. Through her life to come, long after she’d grown up, and gone away from the farmhouse on Transit Road to live, she would wake to the faint, fading cry of a rooster just outside in the dark-before-dawn.

       Is a rooster a harbinger of the Underworld? Does a rooster wake you so that you have no choice but to follow him into the Underworld?

      After she’d become an adult older than the Mother and the Father of her early childhood, and the little scabs and scars caused by the rooster’s beak had long faded from her knees, frequently she would find herself touching her knees like Braille, when she was alone.

      Very often, in bed. In the bright pitiless light of a bathroom she would examine her knees frowning and baffled, her childhood scars had so vanished as if they had never been . . . It is hard to disabuse yourself of the superstition that your skin is indelibly marked since childhood in a way known only to you.

      Upsetting to remember how Mr. Rooster would single out a hen for no reason—(had she disrespected him? taunted him? dared to eat something meant for him?)—peck and jab at the terrified bird until she began to bleed, and chase her until she seemed to fall, or to kneel, before him. And then, Mr. Rooster might have mercy on her, and strut away. But a scab would form shiny and bright as a third eye on the hen’s head, that would attract the attention of another hen, and so soon—for some reason—(the little girl could not understand this, it frightened her very much)—this hen would peck at the afflicted hen, and soon another hen would hurry over to peck at the afflicted hen, and another, and another; and sometimes Mr. Rooster, attracted by the squawking, might return for the coup de grâce—a series of rapid beak-stabs until the poor afflicted hen was bleeding, fallen over and unable to right herself beneath the frenzy of stabbing beaks . . . And hearing the barnyard commotion the Grandmother would hurry out of the house scolding and shooing with the intention of rescuing not the struggling live hen but the limp hen-corpse for the Grandmother’s own purposes.

      In her harsh guttural speech the Grandmother would curse the chickens and the rooster. Much of the Grandmother’s speech had a sound of chiding and cursing. And the Grandmother would take up the limp blood-dripping hen-corpse into the kitchen and boil a pan of water on the stove and drop the hen-corpse into it, so that the feathers could be plucked more easily.

      At these times the little girl had run away and hid her eyes.

      The Mother would say to her, Don’t pay any attention, help me in the kitchen, sweetie!

      Mostly the little girl would not remember such things. The little girl’s memory of the farm on Transit Road was very selective like the colander into which the Grandmother dumped boiling water containing her thin-cut noodles, made out of the Grandmother’s noodle-dough, that trapped just the noodles but strained away the liquid.

      In later years recalling with a fond smile very little of the farm, the barnyard, the flock of Rhode Island Reds—just, me.

      THE LITTLE GIRL WAS so excited! She was five years old.

      This was the summer the little girl was allowed to help the Grandmother collect eggs from the hens’ nests in the chicken coop (where the chicken droppings were so smelly, you had to hold your breath especially after a rain) and soon then, the little girl was allowed to feed the chickens by herself, twice a day, their special chicken-feed. Like tiny pebbles the chicken feed seemed to the little girl, seized in handfuls to toss to the chickens; to get the seed you lowered a tin pie pan deep into the feed-sack, itself contained inside a larger, canvas sack to keep out rats and mice.

      So exciting! Almost, the little girl wetted her panties, with anticipation.

      And when she began to call to the chickens in her high, quavering voice as the Grandmother had taught her—CHICK!-chick-chick-chick-chick-CHI-ICK!—chickens came rushing in her direction at once, and made the little girl feel very special—very powerful. It was not ever the case that the little girl felt powerful—nor could the little girl have defined the sensation, at the time; but calling CHICK!-chick-chick-chick-chick-CHI-ICK provoked such a feeling in her, set her heart to pumping and a warm, rich sensation coursing through her veins, the little girl felt very special, and very proud.

      Oh, she could see—(for she was a quick-witted, smart little girl)—that the chickens were oblivious of her, in their greed to devour seed they took not the slightest interest in her, or in their surroundings; yet still it seemed to the little girl that the chickens must like her, and knew who she was, for they came so quickly to her, colliding with one another, scolding and fretting, pecking one another in a frenzy to get to the seed the little girl tossed in a wide, wavering circle.

      The Grandmother had instructed the little girl to distribute the seed as evenly as she could. You did not want all the chickens rushing together in a tight little spot, and injuring themselves. The little girl understood that she had to be fair to all the chickens, not just a few.

      But the largest and most aggressive chickens rushed and pecked and beat away the others no matter how hard the girl tried.

      Of course, Joyce Carol always fed me, specially. In a safe little area, by the side of the house. This was Happy Chicken’s special meal, which was served ahead of the general feeding. If other chickens noticed, and ran clucking to this meal, the little girl stamped her feet and shooed them away.

      Though he might have been prowling out in the orchard, soon there came Mr. Rooster running on his long scaly legs. Mr. Rooster could hear the Chick-chick-chick! call from a considerable distance. He pushed through the throng of clucking chickens knocking the silly hens aside and gobbled up as much seed as he could from the ground. Sometimes then pausing, looking up with a squint in his yellow eyes, and made a decision—(who knows why?)—to rush at the little girl and jab her bare knee with his beak.

      So quickly this assault came, when it came, the little girl never had time to draw back and escape.

      Ohhh! Why was Mr. Rooster so mean!

      The little girl was always astonished, the rooster was so mean.

      The rooster’s beak was so swift, so sharp and so mean.

      Worse yet, the rooster sometimes chased the little girl, trying to peck her legs. If the Grandmother saw, she shooed the rooster away by flapping her apron at him and cursing him in Hungarian. If the Grandfather saw, he gave the rooster a kick hard enough to lift the indignant bird into the air, squawking and kicking.

      It was one of the mysteries of the little girl’s life, why when the other chickens seemed to like her so much, and her pet chicken adored her, Mr. Rooster continued to be so mean. It did not make sense to the little girl that Mr. Rooster devoured the seed she gave him, then turned on her as if he hated her. Shouldn’t Mr. Rooster be grateful?

      The Mother kissed and cuddled her and said, Oh!—that’s just the way roosters are, sweetie!

      Plaintively the little girl asked the Grandmother why did the rooster peck her and make her bleed and the Grandmother did not cuddle her but said, with an air of impatience, in her broken, guttural English, Because he is a rooster. You should not always be surprised, how roosters are.

      THE LITTLE GIRL WANDERED the farm. The little girl was forbidden to step off the property.

      There was the big barn, and there was the silo, and there was the chicken coop, and there were the storage sheds, and there was the barnyard, and there was the backyard, and there were the fields planted in potatoes and corn, and there was the orchard and beyond the orchard a quarter-mile lane back to the Weidenbachs’ farm where there were big nasty dogs that barked and bit and the little girl did not dare to go. In these places chickens wandered, and also Mr. Rooster, in their ceaseless scratching-and-pecking for food, though it was rare to see a chicken in one of the farther fields or in the lane. Happy Chicken only accompanied the little girl if she called him to these places, or carried him snug and firm in her arms.

      The little girl placed me on the lowermost limb of the lilac tree by the back door of the house,