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Something
was amiss in Road’s End.
My wife
Melanie and I sensed it about twenty minutes after we moved into our new home.
There’s something about a flock of pillaging poultry strutting through a house
you’ve just bought that doesn’t seem right. Trust me on this. We watched, jaws
dropped, as a dozen chickens bobbled through the front door of our home,
clucked up a ruckus, and scattered to every hidey-hole they could find.
We called
our new home The Inn at Road’s End. Prior to the surprise attack, we were
supervising the removal of our furniture and boxed possessions from the moving
van. The Inn, a six-bedroom, three-story house was original eighteenth century;
the chickens, as far as I could tell, were just run-of-the-mill twenty-first
century.
Come to
find out, they belonged across the street at Sadie Simms’ Coffee House and Egg
Plant, and she was genuinely apologetic about her wayward fowl. “Can’t keep ’em
in their coop,” she said to me after she stomped across the street hollering
for her hens. She was waving what looked like a white flag but turned out to be
her apron draped over the end of her broom. For a minute there, I thought she
was stopping by to surrender.
“Every time
I fix the fence, one of ’em tears it down again.” Tears it down? What’s she
raising over there?
“No harm
done,” Mel said, extending her hand to Sadie. “I’m Melanie Foster. This is my
husband, Hugh. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. …”
“Simms.
Sadie Simms. Glad you folks bought this old place. Been empty for a few months.
Would’ve been a shame to let it go to ruin.” She lunged at a hen who had
moseyed back outdoors. Sadie pounced, the chicken squawked, and I thought she
was going to miss. But Sadie proved more adept at chicken-grabbing than the hen
was at Sadie-dodging. I could tell they’d been down this road before. Five seconds
later, the hen dangled from her hand, its scrawny legs caught in the vice-like
grip of a woman who looked old enough to have fought the British. “So, you
folks retired from the military, I hear?”
The chicken
squawked.
“Shut up,
Francine.”
“Yes, Air
Force,” I said. I couldn’t take my eyes from the chicken. “I was a chaplain.
Say, is that chicken okay? It’s Francine, right?”
Sadie
raised her arm and looked the frustrated chicken in the face—one beady eye to
another. Sadie just missed getting hers poked out. Francine was a feisty one.
Sadie extended her arm a little farther and watched the hen squirm. “Yep, she’s
fine. Just mad. So what brings you to Road’s End?”
Melanie
cringed. She didn’t think much of animal cruelty and even less of eye-gouging.
Mel’s sweet that way. At any rate, she didn’t seem to be enjoying herself.
“Well, Sadie, we’ve always wanted to buy—” she ducked as Francine made a
valiant effort to disengage herself from Sadie’s clutch—“an inn and this one
seemed perfect for us. Are you sure Francine isn’t hurting?”
Sadie shook
her head and gave the hen an extra little shake just to rile her. “Nope, she’s
fine. We go through this all the time. She just needs to learn her place.” She
held Francine up to eye level again, something I wouldn’t have done, but then
I’m not a chicken-wrangler. “I’m the human, you’re the hen,” she said. “I make
the rules. You follow ’em. Got that?” She gave Francine another little shake,
and she squawked—Francine, not Sadie. That must have signified understanding on
the part of Francine, because Sadie smiled and Francine continued to dangle.
“Well, I’ve gotta go, folks. Got some baking to do. Nice meeting you. Sorry
’bout the chickens. Just send ’em on over when you’re done with ’em.” And she
was gone.
Done with
them?
Mel grinned
at me and shrugged, then turned to go back inside to finish doing whatever she
was going to do with the remaining eleven or so renegades.
Sadie
crossed the road and flung her captive over the fence. Francine crash-landed
and went into a skid— squawking and scattering dust and feathers every which
way—then turned and gave Sadie a final scolding. How does that woman sleep at night with a henhouse full of chickens
itching to peck her eyes out? Since the fence was still broken, I wondered
how long it would be before that furious, flung chicken found her way right
back here. I made sure the front door was shut.
Road’s End
is home to only 147 souls—149, counting Mel and me—and most of them haven’t
ventured outside Road’s End since Truman was in office. With few exceptions,
Mel and I are the only ones not yet collecting Social Security. Folks seem
mesmerized by us. As a result of our youthful vigor, we’re pressed into duty
for everything from chasing chickens out of our house, mending their fence repeatedly—more
of an act of self-defense than kindness—to mediating between residents who
think former Road’s Ender Bill Manning died from natural causes and those who
are sure he was murdered by his sister Winnie Wyandotte. And that was just the
first week.
I hadn’t
met Emma River, either. That came during the second week, which made me yearn
for the good old days when chasing petulant poultry from my house seemed the
worst thing that could befall me.
