Brawk-Brawk-Brawk!

Eggs scare me. Chickens, too. And buddy, you can laugh at that all you want, but I’m being dead serious here.

It started in the sixth grade with eggs. And a snake. And the baker brothers.

The Baker brothers’ names are Matt and Mike, but even now I can’t tell you which one’s which. You never see one without the other. And even though they’re not twins, they do look and sound pretty much the same, and they’re both in Lynetta’s class, so maybe one of them got held back.

Although I can’t exactly see a teacher voluntarily having either of those maniacs two years in a row.

Regardless, Matt and Mike are the ones who taught me that snakes eat eggs. And when I say they eat eggs. I’m talking they eat them raw and sell-on whole.

I probably would’ve gone my entire life without this little bit of reptilian trivia if it hadn’t been for Lynetta. Lynetta had this major-league thing for Skyler Brown, who lives about three blocks down, and every chance she got, she went down there to hang out while he practiced the drums. Well, boom-boom-whap, what did I care, right? But then Skyler and Juli’s brothers formed a band, whis they named Mystery Pisser.

When my mom heard about it, she completely wigged out. “What kind of parents would allow their children to be in a band nmaed Mystery Pisser? It’s vile. It’s disgusting!”

“That’s the whole point, Mon,” Lynetta tried to explain. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just to get a rise out of old people.”

“Are you calling me old, young lady? Because it’s certainly getting a rise out of me!”

Lynetta just shrugged, imply that my mom could draw her own conclusion.

“Go! Go to your room,” my mother snapped.

“For what?” Lynetta snapped back. “I didn’t say a thing!”

“You know perfectly well what for. Now you go in there and adjust your attitude, young lady!”

So Lynetta got another one of her teenage time-outs, and after that any time Lynetta was two minutes late coming home for dinner, my mother would messenger me down to Skyler’s house to dray her home. It might have been embarrassing for Lynetta, but it was worse for me. I was still in elementary school, and the Mystery Pisser guys were in high school. They were ripe and ragged, raging power chords through the neighborhood, while I looked like I’d just gotten back from Sunday school.

I’d get so nervous going down there that my voice would squeak when I’d tell Lynetta it was time for dinner. It literally squeaked. But after a while the band dropped Mystery from this name, and Pisser and its entourage got used to me showing up. And instead of glaring at me, they started say stuff like, “Hey, baby brother, come on in !” “Hey, Bryce boy, wanna jam?”

This, then, is how I wound up in Skyler Brown’s garage, surrounded by high school kids, watching a boa constrictor swallow eggs. Since I’d already seen it down a rat in the Baker brothers’ bedroom, Pisser had lost at least some of the element of surprise. Plus, I picked up on the fact that they’d been saving this little show to freak me out, and I really didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

This wasn’t easy, though, because watching a snake swallow an egg is actually much creepier than you might think. The boa opened its mouth to an enormous size, then just took the egg in and glub! We could see it roll down it throat. But that wasn’t all. After the snake had glubbed down three eggs, Matt-or-Mike said, “So, Bryce boy, how’s he gonna digest those?”

I shrugged and tried not to squeak when I answered, “Stomach acid?”

He shook his head and pretended to confide, “He needs a tree. Or a leg.” He grinned at me. “Wanna volunteer yours?”

I backed away a little. I could just see that monster try to swallow my leg whole as an after-egg chaser. “N-no!”

He laughed and pointed at the boa slithering across the room. “Aw, too bad. He’s going the other way. He’s gonna use the piano instead!”

The piano! What kind of snake was this? How could my sister stand being in the same room as these dementos? I looked at her, and even though she was pretending to be cool with the snake, I know Lynetta --- she was totally creeped out by it.

The snake wrapped itself around the piano leg about three times, and then Matt-or-Mike put his hands up and said, “Shhh! Shhh! Everybody quiet. Here goes!”

The snake stopped moving, then flexed. And as it flexed, we could hear the eggs crunch inside him. “Oh, gross!” the girls wailed. “Whoa, dude!” the guys all said. Mike and Matt smiled at each other real big and said, “Dinner is served!” I tried to act cool about the snake, but the truth is I sarted having bad dreams about the thing wallowing eggs. And rats. And cats. And me.

Then the real-life nightmare began.

One morning about two weeks after the boa show in Skyler’s garage, Juli appears on our doorstep, and what’s she got in her hands? A halfcarton of eggs. She bounces around like it’s Christmas, saying, “Hiya, Bryce! Remember Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter? Eunice and Florence?”

I just stared at her. Somehow I remembered Santa’s reindeer a little different than that.

“You know … my chickens? The ones I hatched for the science fair last year?”

“Oh, right. How could I forget.”

“They’re laying eggs!” She pushed the carton into my hands. “Here, take these! They’re for you and your family.”

“Oh. UH, thanks,” I said, and closed the door.

I used to really like eggs. Especially scrambled, with bacon or sausage. But even without the little snake incident, I knew that no matter what you did to these eggs, they would taste nothing but foul to me. These eggs came from the chickens that had been the chicks that had hatched from the eggs that had been incubated by Juli Baker for our fifth-grade science fair.

It was classic Juli. She totally dominated the fair, and get this --- her project was all about watching eggs. My friend, there is not a lot of action to report on when you’re incubating eggs. You’ve got your light, you’ve got your container, you’ve got some shredded newpaper, and that’s it. You’re done.

Juli, though, managed to write an inch-thick report, plus she made diagrams and charts --- I’m talking line charts and bar charts and pie charts --- about the activity of eggs. Eggs!

She also managed to time the eggs so that they’d hatch the night of the fair. How does a person do that? Here I’ve got a live-action erupting volcano that I’ve worked pretty stinking hard on, and all anybody cares about is Juli’s chicks pecking out of their shells. I even went over to take a look for myself, and --- I’m being complelety objective here --- it was boring. They pecked for about five seconds, then just lay there for five minutes.

I got to hear Juli jabber awaay to the judges, too. She had a pointer --- can you believe that? Not a pencil, and actual retractable pointer, so the could reach across her incubator and tap on this chart or that diagram as she explained the excitement of watching eggs grow for twenty-one days.

The only thing she could’ve done to be more overboard was put on a chicken costume, and buddy, I’m convinced --- it she’d thought of it, she would have done it.

But hey --- I was over it. It was just Juli being Juli, right? But all of a sudden there I am a year later, holding a carton of home-grown eggs. And I’m having a hard time not getting annoyed all over again about her stupid blue-ribbon project when my mother leans out from the hallway and says, “Who was that, honey? What have you got there? Eggs”

I could tell by the look on her face that she was hot to scramble. “Yeah,” I said, and handed them to her. “But I’m having cereal.”

She opened the carton, then closed it with a smile. “How nice!” she said. “Who brought them over?”

“Juli. She grew them.”

“Grew them?”

“Well, her chickeds did.”

“Oh?” Her smile started falling as she opened the carton again. “Is that so. I didn’t know she had… chickens.”

“Rember? You and Dad spent an hour watching them hatch at last year’s science fair?”

“Well, how do we know there’s not … chicks inside these eggs?”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m having cereal.”

We all had cereal, but what we talked about were eggs. My dad thought they’d be just fine --- he’d had farm-fresh eggs when he was a kid and said they were delicious. My mother, though, couldn’t get past the idea that she might be cracking open a dead chick, and pretty soon discussion turned to the role of the rooster --- something me and my Cheerios could’ve done without. Finally Lynetta said, “If they had a rooster, don’t you think we’d know?” Don’t you think the whole neighborhood would know?”

Hmmm, we all said, good point. But then my mom pipes up with, “Maybe they got it deyodeled. You know --- like they de-bark dogs?”

“A de-yodeled rooster,” my dad says, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. Then he looks at my mom and realizes that he’d be way better off going along with her de-yodeled idea than making fun of her. “Hmmm,” he says, “I’ve never heard of such a thing, but maybe so.”

Lynetta shrugs and says to my mom, “So just ask them, why don’t you. Call up Mrs. Baker and ask her.”

“Oh,” my mom says. “Well, I’d hate to call her eggs into question. It doesn’t seem very polite, now, does it?”

“Just ask Matt or Mike,” I say to Lynetta.

She scowls at me and hisses, “Shut up.”

“What? What’d I do now?”

“Haven’t you noticed I haven’t been going down there, you idiot?”

“Lynetta!” my mom says. Like this is the first time she’s heard my sister talk to me or something.

“Well, it’s true! How can be not have moticed?”

“I was going to ask you about that, honey. Did something happen?”

Lynetta stands up and shoves her chair in. “Like you care,” she snaps, and charges down to her room.

“Oh, boy,” my dad says.

Mom says, “Excuse me,” and follows Lynetta down the hall.

When my mother’s gone, my dad says, “So, son, why don’t you just ask Juli?”

“Dad!”

“It’s just a little question, Bryce. No harm, no foul.”

“But it’ll get me a half-hour answer!”

He studies me for a minute, then says,”No boy should be this afraid of a girl.”

“I’m not afraid of her… !”

“I thinks you are.”

“Dad!”

“Seriously, son. I want you to get us an answer. Conquer your fear and get us an answer.”

“To whether or not they have rooster?”

“That’s right.” He gets up and clears his cereal bowl, saying, “I’ve got to get to work and you’ve got to get to school. I’ll expect a report tonight.”

Great. Just great. The day was doomed before it had started. But then at school when I told Garrett about what has happened, he just shrugged and said, “Well, she lives right across the street from you, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So just go look over the fence.”

“You mean spy?”

“Sure.”

“But … how can I tell if one of them’s a rooster or not?”

“Roosters are … I don’t know … bigger. And they have more feathers.”

“Feathers? Like I’ve got to go and count feathers?”

“No, stupid! My mom says that the male’s always brighter.” Then he laughs and says, “Although in your case I’m not so sure.”

“Thanks. You are giving me big-time help here, buddy. I really appreciate it.”

“Look, a rooster’s going to be bigger and have brighter feathers. You know, those long ones in the back? They’re redder or blacker or whatever. And don’t roosters have some rubbery red stuff growing off the top of their head? And some off their neck, too? Yeah, the rooster’s got all sorts of rubbery red stuff all around its face.”

“So you’re saying I’m supposed to look over the fence for big feathers and rubbery red stuff.”

“Well, come to think of it, chickens have that rubbery red stuff, too. Just not as much of it.”

I rolled my eyes at him and was about to say, Forget it, I’ll just ask Juli, but then he says, “I’ll come with you if you want.”

“Serously?”

“Yeah, dude. Seriously.”

And that, my friend, is how I wound up spying over the Baker’s back fence with Garrett Anderson at three-thirty that afternoon. Not my choice of covert operations, but a necessary one in order to report back to my dad that night at dinner.

We got there fast, too. The bell rang and we basically charged off campus because I figured if we got to the Baker’s quick enough, we could look and leave before Juli was anywhere near her house. We didn’t even drop off our backpacks. We went straight down the alley and started spying.

It’s not really necessary to look over the Bakers’ fence. You can see almost as well looking through it. But Garrett kept sticking his head up, so I figured I should too, although in the back of my mind I was aware that Garrett didn’t have to live in this neighborhood --- I did.

Te backyard was a mess. Big surprise. The bushes were out of control, there was some kind of hodgepodge wood-and-wire coop off to one side, and the yard wasn’t grass, it was highly fertilized dirt.

Garrett was the first to notice their dog, sacked out on the patio between two sorry-looking folding chairs. He points at him and says, “You think he’s going to give us trouble?”

“We’re not going to be hear long enough to get in trouble! Where are those stupid chickens?”

“Probably in the coop,” he says, then picks up a rock and throws it at the mess of plywood and chicken wire.

At first all we hear is a bunch of feathers flapping, but then one of the birds comes fluttering out. Not very far, but enough so we can see it’s got feathers and rubbery red stuff.

“So?” I ask him. “Is that a rooster?”

He shrugs. “Looks like a chicken to me.”

“How can you tell?”

He shrugs again. “Just does.”

We watch it scratching at the dirt for a minute, and then I ask, “What’s a hen, anyway?”

“A hen?”

“Yeah. You got roosters, you got chickens, and then there’s hens. What’s a hen?”

“It’s one of those,” he says, pointing into the Bakers’ backyard.

“Then what’s a chicken?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. “What are you talking about?”

“Chickens! What’s a chicken?”

He takes a step back from me and says, “Brycie boy, you are losin’ it. That’s a chicken!” He stoops down to pick up another rock, and he’s just about to let it fly when the sliding-glass door to the back patio opens up and Juli steps outside.

We both duck. And as we’re checking her out through the fence, I say, “When did she get home?”

Garrett grumbles, “While you were losting it about chickens.” Then he whispers, “But hey, this’ll work great. She’s got a basket, right? She’s probably coming out to collect eggs.”

First she had to get all mushy with that mangy mutt of hers. She got down and nuzzled and ruffled and patted and hugged, telling him what a good boy he was. And when she finally let him go back to sleep, she had to stop and coo at the bird Garrett had scared out, and then she started singing. Singing. At the top of her lungs, she goes, “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outsi-ye-yide, I’ve got the month of May. I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way? My girls. Talkin’  ‘about my little gir-ur-rls …”

She looks inside the coop and coos, “Hello, Flo! Good afternoon, Bonnie! Come on out, punkin!”

The coop wasn’t enough for her to walk in. It was more like a mini lean-to shack that even her dog would have trouble crawling in. Does that stop Juli Baker? No. She gets down on her hands and knees and dives right in. Chickens come squawking and flapping out, and pretty soon the yard’s full of birds, and all we can see of Juli is her poop-covered shoes.

That’s not all we can hear, though. She’s warbling inside that coop, going, “I don't need money, no fortune or faaa-ya-yame. I‘ve got all the riches, baby, anyone can claim. Well, I guess you say, what can make me feel this way? My girls. Talkin’ ‘bout my little gir-ur-rls, my girls …”

At this point I wasn’t checking the chickens out for rubbery red stuff or feathers. I was looking at the bottom of Juli Baker’s feet, wondering how in the world a person could be so happy tunneling through a dilapidated chicken coop with poop stuck all over her shoes.

Garrett got me back on track. “They’re all chickens,” he says. “Look at ‘em.”

I quit checking out Juli’s shoes and started checking out birds. The first thing I did was count them. One-two-three-four-five-six. All accounter for.

After all, how could anyone forget she’d hatched six? It was the all-time school record --- everyone in the county had heard about that.

But I was not really sure how to ask Garrett about what he had said. Yeah, they were all chickens, but what did that mean? I sure didn’t want him coming down on me again, but it still didn’t make sense. Finally I asked him., “You mean there’s no rooster?”

“Correctomundo.”

“How can you tell?”

He shrugged. “Roosters strut.”

“Strut.”

“That’s right. And look --- none of them have long feathers. Or very much of that rubbery red stuff.” He nodded. “Yeah. They’re definitely all chickens.”

That night my father got right to the point. “So, son, mission accomplished?” he asked as he stabbed into a mountain of fettuccine and whirled his fork around.

I attacked my noodles too and gave him a smile. “Uhhuh,” I said as I sat up tall to deliver the news. “They’re all chickens.”

The turning of his fork came to a grinding halt. “And …?”

I could tell somethng was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I tried to keep the smile plastered on my face as I said, “And what?”

He rested his fork and stared at me. “Is that what she said? ‘They’re all chickens’?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

“Then exactly what did she say?”

“Uh … she didn’t exactly say anything.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I went over there and took a look for my self.” I tried very hard to sound like this was a major accomplishment, but he wasn’t buying.

“You didn’t ask her?”

“I didn’t have to. Garrett knows a lot about chickens, and we went over there and found out for ourselves.”

Lynetta came back from rinsing the Romano sauce off her seven and a half noodles, then reached for the salt and scowled at me, saying, “You’re the chicken.”

“Lynetta!” my mother said. “Be nice.”

Lynetta stopped shaking the salt. “Mother, he spied. You get it? He went over there and looked over the fence. Are you saying you’re okay with that?”

My mom turned to me. “Bruce? Is that true?”

Everyone was staring at me now, and I felt like I had to save face. “What’s the big deal? You tole me to find out about her chickens, and I found out about her chickens!”

“Brawk-brawk-brawk!” my sister whispered.

My father still wasn’t eating. “And what you found out,” he said, like he was measuring every word, “was that they’re all … chickens.”

“Right.”

He sighed, then took that bite of noodles and chewed it for the longest time.

It felt like I was sinking fast, but I couldn’t figure out why. So I tried to bail out with, “And you guys can go ahead and eat those eggs, but there’s no way I’m going to touch them, so don’t even ask.”

My mother’s looking back and forth from my dad to me while she eats her salad, and I can tell she’s waiting for him to address my adventure as a neighborhood operative. But since he’s not saying anything, she clears her throat and says, “Why’s that?”

“Because there’s … well, there’s … I don’t know how to say this nicely.”

“Iust say it,” my father snaps.

“Well, there’s, you know, excrement everywhere.”

“Oh, gross!” my sister said, throwing down her fork.

“You mean chicken droppings?” my mother asked.

“Yeah. There’s not even a lawn. It’s all dirt and, uh, you know, chicken turds. The chickens walk in it and peck through it and …”

“Oh, gross!” Lynetta wails.

“Well, it’s true!”

Lynetta stands up and says, “You expect me to eat after this?” and stalks out of the room.

“Lynetta! You have to eat something,” my mother calls after her.

“No, I don’t!” she shouts back; then a second later she stick her head back into the dining room and says, “And don’t expect me to eat any of those eggs either, Mother. Does the word salmonella mean anything to you?”

Lynetta takes off down the hall and my mother says, “Salmonella?” she turns to my father. “Do you suppose they could have salmonella?”

“I don’t know, Pasty. I’m more concerned that our son is a coward.”

“A coward! Rick, please. Bryce is no such thing. He’s a wonderful child who’s --- ”

“Who’s afraid of a girl.”

“Dad, I’m not afraid of her, she just bugs me!”

“Why?”

“You know why! She bugs you, too. She’s over the top about everything!”

“Bryce, I asked you to conquer your fear, but all you did was give in to it. If you were in love with her, that would be one thing. Love is something to be afraid of, but this, this is embarrasing. So she talks too much, so she’s too enthused about every little thing, so what? Get in, get your question answered, and get out. Stand up to her, for cryin’ out loud!”

“Rick …,” my mom was saying, “Rick, calm down. He did find out what you asked him to ---“

“No, he didn’t!”

“What do you mean?”

“He tells me they’re all chickens! Of course they’re all chickens! The question is how many are hens, and how many are roosters.”

I could almost hear the click in my brain, and man, I felt like a complete doofus. No wonder he was disgusted with me. I was an idiot! They were all chickens … du-uh! Garrett acted like he was some expert on chickens, and he didn’t know diddly-squat! Why had I listened to him?

But it was too late. My dad was convinced I was a coward, and to get me over it, he decided that what I should do was take the carton of eggs back to the Bakers and tell them we didn’t eat eggs, or that we were allergic to them, or something.

Then my mom butts in with, “What are you teaching him here, Rick? None of that is true. If he returns them, shouldn’t he tell them the truth?”

“What, that you’re afraid of salmonella poisoning?”

“Me? Aren’t you a little concerned, too?”

“Patsy, that’s not the point. The point is, I will not have a coward for a son!”

“But teaching him to lie?”

“Fine. Then just throw them away. But from now on I expect you to look that little tiger square in the eye, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, then.”

I was off the hook for all of about eight days. Then there she was again, at seven in the morning, bouncing up and down on our porch with eggs in her hands. “Hi, Bryce! Here you go.”

I tried to look her square in the eye and tell her, No thanks, but she was so darned happy, and I wasn’t really awake enough to tackle the tiger.

She wound up pushing another carton into my hands, and I wound up ditching them in the kitchen trash before my father sat down to breakfast.

This went on for two years. Two years! And it got to a point where it was just part of my morning routine. I’d be on the lookout for Juli so I could whip the door open before she had the chance to knock or ring the bell, and then I’d bury the eggs in the trash before my dad showed up.

Then came the day I blew it. Juli’d actually been making herself pretty scarce because it was around the time they’d taken the sycamore tree down, but suddenly one morning she was back on our doorstep, delivering eggs. I took them, as usual, and I went to chuck them, as usual. But the kitchen trash was so full that there wasn’t any room for the carton, so I put it on top, picked up the trash, and beat it out te front door to empty everything into the garabage can outside.

Well, guess who’s just standing there like a statue on my porch?

The Egg Chick.

I about spilled the trash all over the porch. “What are you still doing here?” I asked her.

“I… I don’t know. I was just … thinking.”

“About what?” I was desperate. I needed a distraction. Some way around her with this garbage before she noticed what was sitting right there on top. She looked away like she was embarrassed. Juli Baker embarrassed? I didn’t think it was possible.

Whatever. The golden opportunity to whip a soggy magazine over the egg carton had presented itself, and buddy, I took it. Then I tried to make a fast break for the garbage can in the side yard, only she body-blocked me. Seriously. She stepped right in my way and put her arms out like she’s guarding the goal.

She chased me and blocked me again. “What happened?” she wants to know. “Did they break?”

Perfect. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Yeah, Juli,” I told her. “And I’m real sorry about that.” But what I’m thinking is, Please, God, oh please, God, let me make it to the garbage can.

God must’ve been sleeping in. Juli tackled the trash and pulled out her precious little carton of eggs, and she could tell right off that they weren’t broken. They weren’t even cracked.

She stood frozen with the eggs in her hands while I dumped the rest of the trash. “Why did you throw tem out?” she asked, but her voice didn’t sound like Juli Baker’s voice. It was quiet. And Shaky.

So I told her we were afraid of salmonella poisoning because her yard was a mess and that we were just trying to spare her feelings. I told it to her like we were right and she was wrong, but I felt like a jerk. A complete cluk-faced jerk.

Then she tells me that a couple of neighbors have been buying eggs off her. Buying them. And while I’m coming to grips with this incredible bit of news, she whips out her mental calculator. “Do you realize I’ve lost over a hundred dollars giving these eggs to you?” then she races across the street in a flood of tears.

As much as I tried to tell my self that I hadn’t asked her for the eggs --- I hadn’t said we wanted tem or needed them or liked them --- the fact was, I’d never seen Juli cry before. Not when she’d broken her arm in P.E., not when she’d been teased at school or ditched by her brothers. Not even when they’d cut down the sycamore tree. I’m pretty sure she cried then, but I didn’t actually see it. To me, Juli Baker had always been too tough to cry.

I wnet down to my room to pack my stuff for school, feeling like the biggest jerk to ever hit the planet. I’d been sneaking around throwing out eggs for over two years, avoiding her, avoiding my father --- what did that make me? Why hadn’t I just stood up and said, No thanks, don’t want ‘em, don’t need ‘em, don’t like ‘em … Give them to the snake, why don’t you? Something!

Was I really afraid of hurting her feelings? Or was I afraid of her?

The eggs

After they cut down the sycamore tree, it seemed like everything else fell apart, too. Champ died. And then I found out about the eggs. It was Champ’s time to go, and even though I still miss him, I think it’s been easier for me to deal with his death than it has been for me to deal with the truth about the eggs. I still cannot believe it about the eggs.

The eggs came before the chickens in our case, but the dog came before them both. One night when I was about six years old, Dad came home from work with a full-grown dog tied down in the back of his truck. Someone had hit it in the middle of and intersection, and Dad had stopped to see how badly it was hurt. Then he noticed that the poor thing was skinny as a rail and didn’t have any tags. “Starving and completely disoriented,” he told my mother. “Can you imagine someone abandoning their dog like that?”

The whole family had converged on the front porch, and I could hardly contain my self. A dog! A wonderful, happy, panty dog! I realize now that Champ was never much of a looker, but when you’re six, any dog --- no matter how mangy --- is a glorious, huggable creature.

He looked pretty good to my brothers, too, but from the way my mother’s face was pinched, I could tell she was thinking, Abandon this dog? Oh, I can see it. I can definitely see it. What she said, though, was simply, “There is no room for that animal in this house.”

“Trina,” my dad said, “it’s not a matter of ownership. It’s a matter of compassion.”

“You’re not springing it on me as a … a pet, then?”

“That is definitely not my intention.”

“Well, them what do you intend to do?”

“Give him a decent meal, a bath … then maybe we’ll place an ad and find him a home.”

She eyed him from across the threshold. “There’ll be no ‘maybe’ about it.”

My brothers said, “We don’t get to keep him?”

“That’s right.”

“But Mo-om,” they moaned.

“It’s not open to discussion,” she said. “He gets a bath, he gets a meal, he gets an ad in the paper.”

My father put one arm around Matt’s shoulder and the other around Mike’s. “Someday, boys, we’ll get a puppy.”

My mother was already heading back inside, but over her shoulder came, “Not until you learn to keep your room neat, boys!”

By the end of the week, the dog was named Champ. By the end of the next week, he’d made it from the backyard into the kitchen area. And not too long after that, he was all moved in. it seemed nobody wanted a full-grown dog with a happy bark. Nobody but four-fifths of the family, anyway.

Then my mother started noticing an odor. A mysterious odor of indeterminate origin. We all admitted we smelled it, too, but where my mother was convinced it was Eau de Champ, we disagreed. She had us bathing him so often that it couldn’t possibly be him. We each sniffed him out pretty good and he smelled perfectly rosy.

My personal suspicion was that Matt and Mike were the ones not bathing enough, but I didn’t want to get close enough to sniff them. And since our camp was divided on just who the culprit or culprits were, the odor was dubbed the Mystery Smell. Whole dinnertime discussions revolved around the Mystery Smell, which my brothers found amusing and my mother did not.

Then one day my mother cracked the case. And she might have cracked Champ’s skull as well if my dad hadn’t come to the rescue and shooed him outside.

Mom was fuming. “I told you it was him. The Mystery Smell comes from the Mystery Pisser! Did you see that? Did you see that? He just squirted on the end table!”

My father raced with a roll of paper towels to where Champ had been, and said, “Where? Where is it?”

All of tree drops were dripping down the table leg. “There,” my mother said, pointing a shaky finger at the wetness. “There!”

Dad wiped it up, then checked the carpet and said, “It was barely a drop.”

“Exactly!” my mother said with her hands on her hips. “Which is why I’ve never been able to find anything. That dog stays outside from now on. Do you hear me? He is no longer allowed in this house!”

“How abot the garage?” I asked. “Can he sleep in there?”

“And have him tag everything that’s out there? No!”

Mike and Matt were grinning at each other. “Mystery Pisser! That could be the name for our band!”

“Yeah! Cool!”

“Band?” my mother asked. “Wait a minute, what band?” But they were already flying down to their room, laughing about the possibi1ities for a logo.

My father and I spent the rest of the day sniffing out and destroying criminal evidence. My dad used a spray bottle of ammonia; I followed up with Lysol. We did try to recruit my brothers, but they wound up getting into a spray-bottle fight, which got them locked in their room, which, of course, was fine with them.

So Champ because an outside dog, and he might have been our only pet ever if it hadn’t been for my fifth –grade science fair.

Everyone around me had great project ideas, but I couldn’t seem to come up with one. Then our teacher, Mrs. Brubeck, took me aside and told me about a friend of hers who had chickens, and how she could get me a fertilized egg for my project.

“But I don’t know anything about hatching an egg,” I told her.

She smiled and put her arm around my shoulders. “You don’t have to be an immediate expert at everything, Juli. The idea here is to learn something new.”

“But what if it dies?”

“Then it dies. Document your work scientifically and you’ll still get an A, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

An A? Being responsible for the death of a baby chick --- that’s what I was worried about. Suddenly there was real appeal in building a volcano or making my own neoprene or demonstrating the various scientific applications of gear ratios.

But the ball was in motion, and Mrs. Brubeck would have no more discussion about it. She pulled The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens from her bookshelf and said, “Read the section on artificial incubation and set yourself up tonight. I’ll get you an egg tomorrow.”

“But …”

“Don’t worry so much, Juli,” she said. “We do this every year, and it’s always one of the best projects at the fair.”

I said, “But…,” but she was gone. Off to put an end to some other student’s battle with indecision.

That night I was more worried than ever. I’d read the chapter on incubation at least four times and was still confused about where to start. I didn’t happen to have an old aquarium lying around! We didn’t happen to have an incubation theromometer! Would a deep-fry model work?

I was supposed to control humidity, too, or horrible things would happen to the chick. Too dry and the chick couldn’t peck out; too wet and it would die of mushy chick disease. Mushy chick disease?!

My mother, being the sensible person that she is, told me to tell Mrs. Brubeck that I simply wouldn’t be hatching a chick. “Have you considered growing beans?” she asked me.

My father, however, understood that you can’t refused to do your teacher’s assignment, and he promised to help. “An incubator’s not difficult to build. We’ll make one after dinner.”

How my fathe knows exactly where things are in our garage is one of the wonders of the universe. How he knew about incubators, however, was revealed to me while he was drilling a one-inch hole in an old scrap of Plexiglas. “I raised a duck from an egg when I was in high school.” He grinned at me. “Science fair project.”

“A duck?”

“Yes, but the principle is the same for all poultry. Keep the temperature constant and the humidity right, turn the egg severall times a day, and in a few weeks you’ll have yourself a little peeper.”

He handed me a lightbulb and an extension cord with a socket attached. “Fasten this through the hole in the Plexiglas. I’ll find some thromometers.”

“Some? We need more than one?”

“We have to make you a hygrometer.”

“A hygrometer?”

“To check the humidity inside the incubator. It’s just a thermometer with wet gauze around the bulb.”

I smiled. “No mushy chick disease?”

He smile back. “Precisely.”

By the next afternoon I had not one, but six chicken eggs incubating at a cozy 102 degrees Fahrenheit. “They don’t all make it, Juli,” Mrs. Brubeck told me. “Hope for one. The record’s three. The grade’s in the documentation. Be a scientist. Good luck.” And with that, she was off.

Documentation? Of what? I had to turn the eggs threes times a day and regulate the temperature and humidity, but aside from that what was there to do?

That night my father came out to the garage with a cardboard tube and a flashlight. He tapped the two together so that the light beam was forced straight out the tube. “Let me show you how to candle an egg,” he said, then switched off the garage light.

I’d seen a section on candling eggs in Mrs. Brubeck’s book, but I hadn’t really read it yet. “Why do they call it that?” I asked him. “And why do you do it?”

“People used candles to do this before they had incandescent lighting.” He held and egg up to the cardboard tube. “The light lets you see through the shell so you can watch the embryo develop. Then you can cull the weak ones, if necessary.”

“Kill them?”

“Cull them. Remove the ones that don’t develop properly.”

“But… wouldn’t that also kill them>”

He looked at me. “Leaving an egg you should cull might have disastrous results on the healthy ones.”

“Why? Wouldn’t it just not hatch?”

He went back to lighting up the egg. “It might explode and contaminate the other eggs with bacteria.”

Explode! Between mushy chick disease, exploding eggs, and culling, this project was turning out  to be the worst! Then my father said, “Look here, Julianna. You can see the embryro.” He held the flashlight and egg out so I could see. I looked inside and he said, “See the dark spot there? In the middle? With all the veins leading to it?”

“The thing that looks like a bean?”

“That’s it!”

Suddenly it felt real. This egg was alive. I quickly checked the rest of the group. There were little bean babies in all of them! Surely they had to live. Surely they would all make it!

“Dad? Can I take the incubator inside? It might get too cold out here at night, don’t you think?”

“I was going to suggest the same thing. Why don’t you prop open the door? I’ll carry it for you!”

For the next two weeks I was completely consumed with the growing of chicks. I labeled the eggs A, B, C, D, E, and F, but before long they had names, too: Abby, Bonnie, Clyde, Dexter, Eunice, and Florence. Every day I weighed them, candled them, and turned them. I even thought it might be good for them to hear some clucking, so for a while I did that, too, but clucking is tiring! It was much easier to hum around my quiet little flock, so I did that, instead. Soon I was humming without even thinking about it, because when I was around my eggs, I was happy.

I read The Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens cover to cover twice. For my project I drew diagrams of the various stages of an embryo’s developments, I made a giant chicken poster, I graphed the daily fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and I made a line chart documenting the weight loss of each egg. On the outside eggs were boring, but I knew what was happening on the inside!

Then two days before the science fair I was candling Bonnie when I noticed something. I called my dad into my room and said, “Look, Dad! Look at this! Is that the heart beating?”

He studied it for a moment, then smiled and said, “Let me get your mother.”

So the three of us crowded around and watched Bonnie’s heart beat, and even my mother had to admit that it was absolutely amazing.

Clyde was the first to pip. And of course he did it right before I had to leave for school. His little beak cracked through, and while I held my breath and waited, he rested. And rested. Finally his beak poked through again, but almost right away, he rested again. How could I got to school and just leave him this way? What if he needed my help? Surely this was a valid reason to stay home, at least for a little while!

My father tried to assure me that hatching out would take all day and that there’d be plenty of action left after school, but I’d have none of that. Oh, no-no-no! I wanted to see Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter and Eunice and Florence come into the world. Every single one of them. “I can’t miss the hatch!” I told him. “Not even a second of it!”

“So take it to school with you,” my mother said. “Mrs. Brubeck shouldn’t mind. After all, this was her idea.”

Sometimes it pays to have a sensible mother. I’d just set up for the science fair early, that’s what I’d do! I packed up my entire operation, posters, charts, and all, and got a ride to school from my mom.

Mrs. Brubeck didn’t mind a bit. She was so busy helping kids with their projects that I got to spend nearly the entire day watching the hatch.

Clyde and Bonnie were the first ones out. It was disppointing at first because they just lay there all wet and matted, looking exhausted and ugly.

But by the time Abby and Dexter broke out, Bonnie and Clyde were fluffing up, looking for action.

The last two took forvever, but Mrs. Brubeck insisted that I leave them alone, and that worked out pretty great because they hatched out during the fair that night. My whole family came, and even though Matt and Mike only watched for about two minutes before they took off to look at some other demonstration, my mom and dad stuck around for the whole thing. Mom even picked Bonnie up and nuzzled her.

That night after it was all over and I was packing up to go home, Mom asked, “So do these go back to Mrs. Brubeck now?”

“Do what go back to Mrs. Brubeck?” I asked her.

“The chicks, Juli. You’re not planning to raise chickens, are you?”

To be honest, I hadn’t thought beyond the hatch. My focus had been strictly on bringing them into the world. But she was right --- here they were. Six fluffy little adorable chicks, each of which had a name and, I could already tell, its own unique personality.

“I … I don’t know,” I stammered. “I’ll ask Mrs. Brubeck.”

I tracked down Mrs. Brubeck, but I was praying that she didn’t want me to give them back to her friend. After all, I’d hatched them. I’d named them. I’d saved tehm from mushy chick disease! These little peepers were mine!

To my relief and my mother horror, Mrs. Brubeck said they were indeed mine. All mine. “Have fun,”she said, then zipped off the help Heidi dismantle her exhibit on Bernoulli’s law.

Mom was quiet the whole way home, and I could tell --- she wanted chickens like she wanted a tractor or a goat. “Please, Mom?” I whispered as we parked at the curb.

“Please?” She covered her face. “Where are we going to raise chickens, Juli? Where?”

“In the backyard?” I didn’t know what else to suggest.

“What about Champ?”

“They’ll get along, Mom. I’ll teach him. I promise.”

My dad said softly, “They’re pretty self-sufficient, Trina.”

But then the boys piped up with, “Champ’ll piss ‘em to death, Mom,” and suddenly they were on a roll. “Yeah! But your won’t even notice ‘cause they’re yellow already!” “Whoa! Yellow Already--- cool name.” “That could work! But wait ---people might think we mean our bellies!” “Oh, yeah ---forget that!” “Yeah, just let him kill the chicks.”

My brother looked each other with enormous eyes and started up all over again. “Kill the chicks! That’s it! Get it?” “You mean like we’re chick killers? Or like we kill the chicks?”

Dad turned around and said, “Out. Both of you, get out. Go find a name elsewhere.” So they scrambled out, and the three of us sat in the car with only the gentle peep-peep-peep from my little flock breaking the silence. Finally my mother heaved a heavy sigh and said, “They don’t cost much to keep, do they?”

My dad shook his head. “They eat bugs, Trina. And a little feed. They’re very low-maintenance.”

“Bugs? Really? What sort of bugs?”

“Earwigs, worms, roly-polys … probably spiders, if they can catch tem, I think they eat snails, too.”

“Seriously?” My mother smiled. “Well, in that case…”

“Oh, thank you, mom. Thank you!”

And that’s how we wound up with chickens. What none of us thought of was that six chickens scratching for bugs not only get rid of bugs, it also tears up grass. Within six months there was nothing whatsoever left of our yard.

What we also didn’t think of was that chicken feed attracts mice, and mice attract cats. Feral cats. Champ was pretty good at keeping the cats out of the yard, but they’d hang around the front yard or the side yard, just waiting for him to snooze so they could sneak in and pounce on some tender little mousy vittles.

Then my brothers started trapping the mice, which I thought was just to help out. I didn’t suspect a thing until the day I heard my mother screaming from the depths of their room. They were, in turns out, raising a boa constrictor. Mom’s foot came down in a big way, and I thought she was going to throw us out, lock, stock, and boa, but then I made the most amazing discovery --- chickens lay eggs! Beautiful, shiny, creamy white eggs! I first found one under Bonnie, then Clyde --- whom I immediately renamed Clydette --- and one more in Florence’s bed. Eggs!

I raced inside to show my mom, and after a brief moment of blinking at them, she withered into a chair. “No,” she whimpered. “No more chicks!”

“They’re not chicks. Mom … they’re eggs!”

She was still looking quite pale, so I sat in the chair next to her and said, “We don’t have a rooster…?”

“Oh.” The color was coming back to her cheeks. “Is that so?”

“I’ve never heard a cock-a –doodle-do, have you?”

She laughed. “41 blessing I guess I’ve forgetten to count.” She sat up a little and took an egg from my palm. “Eggs, huh. How many do you suppose they’ll lay.”

“I have no idea.”

As it turns out, my hens laid more eggs than we could eat. At first we tried to keep up, but soon we were tired of boiling and picking and deviling, and my mother started complaining that all these free eggs were costing her way too much. Then one afternoon as I was collecting eggs, our neighbor Mrs. Stueby leaned over the side fence and said, “If you ever have extra, I’d be happy to buy them from you.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Most certainly. Nothing quite like free-range eggs. Two dollars a dozen sound fair to you?”

Two dollars a dozen! I laughed and said, “Sure!”

“Okay, then. Whenever you have some extras, just bring ‘em over. Mrs. Helms and I got to discussing it last night on the phone, but I asked you first, so make sure you offer ‘em up to me before her, okay, Juli?”

“Sure thing, Mrs. Stueby!”

Between Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms three doors down, my egg overflow problem was solved. And maybe I should’ve turned the money over to my mother as payment for having destroyed the backyard, but one “Nonsense, Julianna. It’s yours,” was all it took for me to start squirreling it away.

Then one day as I was walking down to Mrs. Helm’s house, Mrs. Loski drove by. She waved and smiled, and I realized with a pang of guilt that I wasn’t being very neighborly about my eggs. She probably thought I was delivering them out of the kindness of my heart.

And maybe I should’ve been giving the eggs away, but I’d never had a steady income before. Allowance at our house is a hit-or-miss sort of thing.

Usually a miss. And earning money from my eggs gave me this secret happy feeling, which I was reluctant to have the kindness of my heart encroach upon.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mrs. Loski deserved some free eggs. She had been a good neighbor to us, lending us supplies when we ran out unexpectedly and being late to work herself when my mother needed a ride because our car wouldn’t start. A few eggs now and again … it was the least I could do.

There was also the decidedly blissful possibility of running into Bryce. And in the chilly sparkle of a new day, Bryce’s eyes seemed bluer than ever. The way he looked at me --- the smile, the blush --- it was a Bryce I didn’t get to see at school. The Bryce at school was way more protected.

By the third time I brought eggs over to the Loskis, I realized that Bryce was waiting for me. Waiting to pull the door open and say, “Thanks, Juli,” and then, “See you at school.”

It was worth it. Even after Mrs. Helms and Mrs. Stueby offered me more money per dozen, it was still worth it. So, through the rest of sixth grade, through all of seventh grade and most of eighth, I delivered eggs to the Loskis. The very best, shiniest eggs went straight to the Loskis, and in return I got a few moments alone with the world’s most dazzling eyes. It was a bargain.

Then they cut down the sycamore tree. And two weeks later Champ died. He’d been spending a lot of time sleeping, and even though we didn’t really know how old he was, no one was really surprised when one night Dad went out to feed him and discovered he was dead. We buried him in the backyard, and my brothers put up a cross that reads:

HRER LIES THE MYSTERY PISSER

P.I.P.

I was upset and pretty dazed for a while. It was raining a lot and I was riding my bike to school to avoid having to take the bus, and each day when I’d get home, I’d retreat to my room, lost myself in a novel, and simply forget about collecting eggs.   

Mrs. Stueby was the one who got me back on schedule. She called to say she’d read about the tree in the paper and was sorry about everything that had happened, but it had been some time now and she missed her eggs and was worried that my hens might quit laying. “Distress can push a bird straight into a molting, and we wouldn’t want that! Feathers everywhere and not an egg in sight. I’m quite allergic to the feathers myself or I’d probably have a flock of my own, but never you mind. You just bring ‘em over when you’re up to it. All’s I wanted was to check in and let you know how sorry I was about the tree. And your dog, too. Your mother mentioned he passed away.”

So I got back to work. I cleared away the egg’s I’d neglected and got back into my routine of collecting and cleaning. And one morning when I had enough, I made the rounds. First Mrs. Stueby, then Mrs. Helms, and finally the Loskis. And as I stood at the Loskis’ threshold, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Bryce in the longest time. Sure, we’d both been at school, but I’d been so preoccupied with other things that I hadn’t really seen him.

My heart started beating faster, and when the door whooshed open and his blue eyes looked right at me, it took everything I had just to say, “Here.”

He took the half-carton and said, “You know, you don’t have to give us these…”

“I know,” I said, and looked down.

We stood there for a record-breaking amount of time saying nothing. Finally he said, “So are you going to start riding the bus again?”

I looked up at him and shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been up there since …. You know.”

“It doesn’t look so bad anymore. It’s all cleared. They’ll probably start on the foundation soon.”

It sounded perfectly awful to me.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to get readly for school. See you there.” Then he smiled and closed the door.

For some reason I just stood there. I felt odd. Out of sorts. Disconnected from everything around me. Was I ever goint to got back up to Collier Street? I had to eventually, or so my mother said. Was I just making it harder?

Suddenly the door flew open and Bryce came hurrying out with an overfull kitchen trash can in his hands. “Juli!” he said. “What are you still doing here?”

He startled me, too. I didn’t know what I was still doing there. And I was so flustered that I would probably just have run home if he hadn’t started struggling with the trash, trying to shove the contents down.

I reached over and said, “Do you need some help?” because it looked like he was about to spill the trash. Then I saw the corner of an egg carton. This wasn’t just any egg carton either. It was my egg carton. The one I’d just brought him. And through the little blue cardboard arcs I could see eggs.

I looked from him to the eggs and said, “What happened? Did you drop them?”

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “Yeah, and I’m really sorry about that.”

He tried to stop me, but I took the carton from the trash, saying, “All of them?” I opened the carton and gasped. Six whole, perfect eggs. “Why’d you throw them away?”

He pushed past me and went around the house to the trash bin, and I followed him, waiting for an answer.

He shook the garbage out, then turned to face me. “Does the word salmonella mean anything to you?”

“Salmonella? But…”

“My mom doesn’t think it’s worth the risk.”

I followed him back to the porch. “Are you saying she won’t eat them because ---”

“Because she’s afraid of being poisoned.”

“Poisoned! Why?”

“Because your backyard is, like, covered in turds! I mean, look at your place, Juli!” He pointed at our house and said, “Just look at it. It’s a complete dive!”

“It is not!” I cried, but the truth was siting right across the street, impossible to deny. My throat suddenly choked closed and I found it painful to speak. “Have you … always thrown them away?”

He shrugged and looked down. :Juli, look. We didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“My feelings? Do you realize Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms pay me for my eggs?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No! They pay me two dollars a dozen!”

“No way.”

“It’s ture! All those eggs I gave to you I could’ve sold to Mrs. Stueby or Mrs. Helms!”

“Oh,” he said, and looked away. Then he eyed me and said, “Well, why did you just give them to us?”

I was fighting back tears, but it was hard. I choked out, “I was trying to be neighborly…!”

He put down the trash can, then did something that made my brain freeze. He held me by the shoulders and looked me right in the eyes. “Mrs. Stueby’s your neighbor, isn’t she? So’s Mrs. Helms, right? Why be neighborly to us and not them?”

What was he trying to say? Was it still so obvious how I felt about him? And if he knew, how could he have been so heartless, just throwing my eggs away like that, week after week, year after year?

I couldn’t find any words. None at all. I just stared at him, at the clear, brilliant blue of his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Juli,” he whispered.

I stumbled home, embarrassed and confused, my heart completely cracked open.