by Richard Pounder
It’s summer break from college. I’m living with my girlfriend, Anne, at her farm in Pocomoke City, Maryland instead of visiting my home in Pittsburgh because guys at her job kept trying to fuck her last summer.
She works as a waitress at a beach restaurant called Mr. Bello’s. That’s where it happened. Anne says it wasn’t her fault, and I mostly believe her.
I’m going to try to get a job there as a busboy. Until then, I will be helping out around here.
Anne’s dad, Ed, is a chicken farmer. We can’t stay at her real house while we’re here. We could, but I’d rather not stay in a house with Ed because he gets drunk a lot and starts swinging at people.
The only other option is staying with Ed’s cousin, Billy.
Billy lives in an old camper in the woods between Aunt Linda’s backyard and the township dumpsite.
No electricity. I don’t know how I’m going to charge my phone. What if Anne needs to text me while she’s at work?
Billy has three teeth. His voice is gravelly.
Me and Anne stand there. Billy has a twin bed, a hotplate, a pair of tall rubber boots, a coat hanging from a lamp. A few dishes. A toilet. A sink.
Kitchenette grease sits in the humidity. Billy’s BO.
“Gon’ need yer help in the chicken house tomorrow,” he says in front of my girlfriend. I say okay.
At 5:00 AM I meet Ed and Billy in front of the two long chicken houses. It’s dark, but you can see all the stars in Pocomoke. Anne’s still asleep.
“Too early for ya?” Billy says, steaming Styrofoam cup in hand.
I have to wear rubber boots that go all the way up to my knees.
Ed is hunched over, vomiting pink. He drank eighteen shots of Jose Cuerva last night. His pancreas pokes out like he’s pregnant.
Air blasts out vents of the sides of the building, spraying ammonia in my eyes.
When I squint, Billy laughs. He says his son, Little Billy, is my age, works at a Wal-Mart. Hasn’t seen him in years. Doesn’t care to, neither. He doesn’t like how Little Billy failed out of Air Force Basic Training and wears skinny jeans.
He smacks my shoulder. “Ya ready?”
“Yep!” I try my best.
He laughs again.
Ed opens the chicken house. He flips some switches on a control panel mounted to the wall. “Fuckin’ piece-a-shit.”
“Come here,” Billy says to me.
I follow him through another door.
They aren’t baby chicks. Definitely not full-grown either. Tens of thousands, clucking.
Billy hands me a bucket, raises his voice over the clucks. “Gotta walk through, pick up the dead. I’ll go do one house; you guys do this one.”
“Pick up the dead?”
“Yep.”
“Whattaya mean?”
“You just fuckin’ walk through, aisle-by-aisle. You see a fuckin’ dead chicken, pick it up, throw it in the bucket.”
I nod. “Alright.”
“You want gloves?”
Billy’s not wearing gloves.
“I’m good.”
Billy just stands there and watches.
I walk slowly, lifting my feet high, looking carefully before landing each step. The chickens scatter every time I step forward.
“Watcha don’t step on ’em,” Billy says, arms folded, leaning against a wall.
“Uh-huh.”
I make it all the way down the first aisle without a dead chicken. Maybe there are days with no dead chickens.
“What are you doin’ up this early?” I hear Billy yell as I turn down the next aisle.
I look up. Anne stands in the doorway. Short Soffe shorts and tank top.
“Morning, babe!” she says.
“Hey.”
Billy chuckles under his breath.
I see it. A dead one. I glance to see if Billy’s watching. Finally, he’s not. He’s lighting a cigarette.
I rush past the dead chicken. A few moments pass. I keep walking.
“Hold up! Wait a minute!”
“Huh?” I turn around.
“Missed one.”
“I did?”
“Yup.”
Fake chuckle. “Oh.” I stand there.
“You gone get it?”
“Where is it?”
Ed comes in. “Annie!”
“Boy missed a dead one, Ed,” says Billy as he walks toward the dead chicken. I finally catch a deep breath. He’s going to get it himself.
“Oh yeah? That’s alright. Just go back, pick it up, that’s all.” He looks at me seriously for several moments then laughs. “I’m just kidding. You don’t have to.”
I grin, but I can tell the rest of my face doesn’t match.
“I got it,” I say.
I get there before Billy, pick it up, toss it in the bucket. THUD.
I look at Anne. She’s watching. Everything in me tingles.
I keep walking.
There’s a chicken limping.
I walk past it.
“Gotta get ridda him, too!” Billy shouts over the roaring fans. Feathers swirl through the burning air.
“How?”
“Gotta kill it. Waste of feed.”
I laugh and keep walking.
“I’m serious.”
“Oh. What do I do?”
“Lemme show you.”
Billy drops his cigarette in the middle of the chicken house floor, stomps it out, walks over. He picks the limping chicken up by the neck, winds up, and slams the chicken against the nearest wall. He tosses it in my bucket. “That’s all. Just do that.”
“Okay.” I try to keep my voice steady.
I rush through the rest of the house, praying really hard that there are no more injured birds.
But there is. I figure it’s not worth hesitating. They’re all watching.
I pick it up by the neck, just like Billy showed me. Its neck squirms in my hand like a snake, and it squawks a lot. That’s how I know I’ll able to do it. To make the awful squawking stop.
Plus, they’re all just going to stare at me until I do it anyway. I slam it against the wall. The squawking doesn’t stop. I didn’t do it hard enough. I do it harder. The squawking stops.
I want to throw up, and I feel a tingling buzz at the same time. I look at Anne. Her smile makes the throw up part go away.
Ed looks at Billy. “See that?”
“Took a while,” Billy says.
“Now, he did good.”
I kill two more chickens by the time I’m done with that house.
Billy asks if I want to help him in the other house since Ed needs to lie down.
I say sure.
We walk through the second house, looking left and right, scanning for any limps or crooked wings.
Each time I have to do it, it gets easier. Still, I hate doing it. It makes me feel like I’m hurting God. It would be one thing if we were going to eat them. But they were never going to make it to the processing plants anyway. They would just get fat off feed and end up in the flesh glacier behind the two houses anyway, turkey buzzards picking at them.
“I’ve never killed one before,” Anne says, walking next to me and Billy.
“He’s never made you help?”
“Oh I help every year. I just can’t do that.”
“So, what do you do?”
“Just toss it in the bucket.”
“Isn’t that worse?”
“I figure they’re suffering on the dirt floor here, or they’re suffering in the bucket. What’s the difference? All I’m doing is moving them.”
“Who gives a shit?” chimes Billy, cackling, cigarette dangling.
We dump the buckets of dead or dying chickens into the back of an old pickup. Billy backs up to the compost pile.
It’s 93 degrees now. Humid. Chicken shit-ammonia air in every breath. It burns my lungs.
Me and Billy stand on each side of the bed and toss handfuls of chickens into the massive compost pile. The buzzards wait in the surrounding trees.
Anne stays in the AC. I don’t blame her.
Billy grabs three chickens at a time in each hand, by the talons. I try to keep up. I can manage one in each hand.
I look back at Anne. She’s texting. Probably her mom or her boss or something. I look at Billy. He never thinks about stuff like that. He’s probably thinking about taking a nap and sipping coffee and smoking by the fire later.
Watching her causes me to slow down.
“You alright?” growls Billy.
I pick up the pace. “Yep.” I toss a few more handfuls, look back at Anne. She’s still texting.
The buzzards lean forward.
Richard Pounder is a writer based in Philly. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Bending Genres, Maudlin House, Expat Press, BULL, Some Words, and elsewhere. You can follow him on X: RichPounder150