Chickenlandia Mystery Page 5

  Veenie, Hiram, and I sat on the wraparound front porch, which was wide and well-shaded, red begonias in concrete planters blooming all around. A curtain of white morning glories crawled up the weathered porch lattice. It was dusk, so the glories had puckered up like tiny deflated balloons. We clucked like chickens about nothing of any great importance: the weather, the graffiti the county was scraping off the covered bridge, and the new dishes Pokey Tatlock, who ran Pokey’s Tavern, had on the menu. Pokey’s mom, Dolly, had unearthed a mess of honeycomb mushrooms on some stumps along the creek in Hound Holler. She deep-fried the fungi in a special Schlitz beer batter laced with hot peppers and a sweet pineapple sauce. It was the talk of the town.

  Hiram looked interested in the mushrooms. “I love a good mess of mushrooms. Yeah, boy. My wife, she used to fry up mushrooms every spring, but she passed a couple of years back. I got two grown girls, but they don’t cook. Bookish. Went to school up at Purdue. Got their PhDs in poultry. The pair of them run my chicken breeding lab.”

  The only one not paying Hiram any mind was Fergus Senior. He stood on the porch steps, feet far apart, smoking a Kool unfiltered cigarette. He squinted out over the hay meadow, turning his back toward us. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to be pretending that he didn’t know us. I thought that was a stretch since he and Veenie had been married for a decade and had a son together, Fergie Junior, who lived between the canned goods in the basement of the house Veenie and I shared. Junior was a good kid, a musician, but he wasn’t very industrious (like his daddy). He liked to roam around the house in his floppy house slippers and tighty-whities at all hours. He was happier than Veenie thought a mostly unemployed man ought to be, probably because he was fueled by Pop-Tarts, rock and roll, and wacky weed.

  While Fergus Senior pretended not to know us, Ma hustled into the farmhouse and came back out with a pot of coffee, some hand-thrown blue mugs, and a smooth, cold peanut butter pie with a graham cracker crust.

  We stopped chatting and dug into the pie and hot coffee while they were fresh. Ma had swirled dark chocolate into the peanut butter so it was very tasty, pretty much like fork eating a giant Reese’s peanut butter cup.

  Veenie was inhaling her second helping of pie and eyeing a possible third when Hiram launched into a speech about why he’d come to visit. What he said was pretty much the same as what Ma had told us at the beauty parlor that morning. He launched into an ear-stinging speech about why he wanted to buy Chickenlandia and what a great deal he was prepared to offer the Hortons.

  Ma listened politely, getting up only to pour more coffee.

  Hiram, who was sitting in a rocker, leaned back and shot one leg up to rest on his opposite knee. He tossed his giant white hat onto his knee and bounced it a bit. His high-heeled cowboy boots were spit shined. Looked to be some kind of exotic white leather, maybe alligator. He fiddled with a gold wristwatch that was big enough to hang on a bus station wall while his tongue wagged on and on.

  “Why not deed me this place?” Hiram kept shooting this question at Ma. “You wouldn’t have to worry. I’d take care of every little thing. All the upkeep. All the repairs. Peepaw wouldn’t need to risk his neck climbing up on that rickety barn roof all the time. Heck, you two could even stay living here. My girls could come over, learn the business from you. Camp out in your barn until they had a good feel for the operation. Gosh, it’s a slam dunk, win-win for everybody.”

  Ma shook her head. “Peepaw and I wouldn’t know how to retire. We like being busy.”

  Hiram guffawed. “Oh, shucks, Ma, it’s easy. You could move to one of them fancy retirement condos down in Florida. Take up golfing. Buy yourself a bikini. Get some sun.”

  Ma’s jowls quivered. Her fingers worried nervously over a loose strand of braided gray hair that hung over one ear. “Sounds plumb awful to me.”

  Hiram crossed and uncrossed his short legs. He leaned forward in his rocking chair. His eyes shined as he lowered his voice and fiddled with his bolo tie, which featured a rooster as the slide buckle. “I’m prepared to offer more. How’s half a million sound to you?” He leaned way back in his chair, crossed his arms across his chest, and waited.

  At the mention of half a million dollars, Veenie made a sound like she was choking on her third piece of peanut butter pie, which she was. I pounded her back. My pounding cleared her throat, but it also knocked the false teeth out of her head. Her teeth skittered across the porch floor and came to rest between Fergus Senior’s booted feet.

  Fergus stared down at the teeth but didn’t move. He turned to look at Veenie. His face said, “What the …” but his mouth stayed silent.

  While everybody was trying to decide what to do about the runaway teeth, a speckled hen swooped down from its perch on the porch railing, grabbed the dentures, and made a run for it toward the henhouse.

  We sat there stunned, but not for long.

  Veenie popped up like a jack-in-the-box, tightened her helmet strap, raised her BB pistol, and headed full charge toward the henhouse.

  “Uh-oh,” I heard someone say. And it was me.

  Hiram stared after Veenie. “That a real gun she got?”

  “Nah,” I said. “It’s a BB pistol.”

  “Why she carrying that?” he asked.

  Fergus eyed me. “Cause she’s nuttier than a squirrel turd.”

  Hiram asked if we should go after her.

  I said no, she’d be fine. And I reckoned she would be. Those chickens had no idea who they were pecking on, but they’d find out right quickly now. I just hoped there weren’t any lasting casualties.

  Ma remained calm throughout the brouhaha. She asked Hiram if he had anything else to say.

  He stood up, hiked his pants, and mashed his white hat to his head. “Reckon not. I made my offer, and it’s a humdinger.”

  Ma stood. “We thank you for the offer, but we don’t want to sell. We grew up here, me and Peepaw. Reckon we’ll die here too. Already got a couple of spots picked out for our eternal resting place up on a shady knoll behind the house.”

  Hiram stuck both thumbs in his waistband and sucked his bottom lip. “Gosh darn. I really wish you’d sleep on this. Think it over for a spell. In the meantime, I got a donation for you; it’s my sponsor’s fee for the festival. I want to do my part to help out the old folks’ home.” He pulled out a fat wallet and slid out a check, which he handed to Ma.

  Ma stared at the check. “Lordie!” she said. “We can’t accept this.” She handed it back to Hiram.

  “You sure enough can.” Hiram palmed the check back to Ma. Once the check was in her wrinkled hand, he closed her fingers tightly around the paper.

  I caught sight of the number written on the check before Ma closed her hand: five thousand dollars. That was enough to keep the oldsters at Leisure Hills swimming in Schlitz for the entire summer.

  Ma took the check and slipped it into her dress pocket. “Well, we appreciate this. We surely do. It’ll all go to the old folks. But this don’t change nothing. Me and Peepaw are not selling Chickenlandia. Not to you. Not to anyone.”

  Hiram puffed up. “Someone else trying to buy this place?” He pinned me with his eyes, but I just shrugged.

  Ma looked uncomfortable. “Hiram, you said your piece, and we heard you. Now you best be getting on home. It’s darn near sunset and you live all the way over toward Norman, don’t you?”

  I could tell by the way Hiram chewed his bottom lip that he wasn’t happy about the outcome of his visit. Ma was a mule once her mind was made up. I didn’t see any way he could get her to pack up and leave her chicken paradise. But I also knew that Hiram had a reputation for getting what he wanted, when he wanted it, no matter what it took. I was feeling a little uncomfortable about Hiram and the way he was looking at Ma. It occurred to me that he could have kidnapped Ginger and Dewey in an effort to upset Ma and Peepaw. That would be a dirty trick, but everybody knew Hiram wasn’t afraid to soil his hands.

  “Well,” began Hiram, “guess I’ll be drag
ging my raggedly ol’ ass on home then.” He stepped off the porch, but then turned to face Ma. “Call me if you change your mind. You hear?”

  Ma nodded. None of us said a word as Hiram strolled to his white limo and waited for Fergus Senior to open the door for him. He slid in and was gone from our sight, the darkly tinted windows of the Caddie pickup hiding whatever was going on inside. Fergus hopped into the driver’s seat and the giant truck peeled out of the gravel driveway.

  I asked Ma again if she thought Hiram might have something to do with Ginger and Dewey’s disappearance

  “He might. Hate to think it, but he might. They were my best pair. He could be studying them, their genetics and all, or using them as breeders for his own operation. Or, heck, maybe he stole Ginger and Dewey hoping to break our spirits. You reckon you gals can figure this out for me and Peepaw?”

  “We’ve solved tougher cases,” I said. “We’ll snoop. Veenie has a whole gang of snitches. A couple of hours and a round of free beers down at Pokey’s and I imagine we’ll have Ginger and Dewey tucked back into their nests before the weekend is done.”

  I hoped my boast was right. I could tell Ma was worried sick. She had a heart of gold. If anyone ever deserved a little help from a guardian angel it was her.

  As Hiram pulled away, Veenie came loping across the barnyard. She had her BB pistol in one hand and her teeth in the other. She didn’t look any worse for the wear. I hoped the chickens had faired likewise.

  Veenie held up her dentures. “You got any bleach?”

  “Bleach?” I asked. “What you need that for?”

  “That chicken licked my teeth. Got chicken spit all over my dentures. I ain’t putting these back into my head until they’re spanking clean. Don’t want to die of no avian flu.”

  Ma tried to reassure Veenie that she couldn’t get avian flu from a little chicken saliva, but of course she didn’t succeed. We all traipsed into the farmhouse kitchen and had another piece of pie while Veenie’s teeth floated in a Tupperware bowl of bleach so strong it could have turned a heart as black as Fergus Senior’s into an angel’s wing.

  I studied Ma as she hustled around the kitchen warming a pot of bean soup and cornbread she’d stirred up for the 4-H kids. Gosh darn. Veenie and I had to help her find Ginger and Dewey. If Hiram Krupsky or Pam Perkins were behind the disappearance, neither of them would stop until they’d taken control of Chickenlandia. I had a sneaking feeling that Veenie and I would need more than a BB pistol to ward off all the trouble that was chicken dancing our way.

  Chapter Seven

  I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that a thunder boomer had rolled across Pawpaw County overnight. Thunder shook my old wood-framed house like the devil had a hold on it and was trying to claw off the siding. Even half asleep, I could hear the windows rattling. Tornado weather. I stretched a feather pillow over my head and tried to ignore the racket. I was almost back to sleep when Veenie blew in and popped up and down on my bed like it was a bouncy castle. “Get up, RJ. Hoosier Squealer says the river is flooding over 235. Zollmans already lost half a herd of cows.”

  I rolled over to face the iPad screen that Veenie had shoved into my face. The pictures on the Hoosier Squealer news site were fuzzy, but I could make out a Hereford cow, eyes wide as black moons, her neck stretched out, trying to cow-paddle in some pretty deep water. The cow floated past the tip-top of a submerged barn. Only the cupola of the roof and an arrow-shaped weathervane were visible in the flood waters.

  Cows can swim, but not all that well. They can’t spread their toes and shovel back the water. They are fairly helpless, bobbing around like giant, furry Buicks once they get snatched up in a river stream. I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes with my right shoulder while fumbling in the half-dark for my glasses.

  “Water reach town yet?” I asked as I slid on my glasses.

  Knobby Waters sat on sandy river bottomland not a mile from the East Fork of the White River. It didn’t take much rain for the river to jump its banks and roll into town. The river usually licked in as far as the railroad tracks before stopping to rest. A few times, the water had jumped the tracks to swallow the town. I had pictures of my kinfolk in their Sunday best attire clutching Bibles, rowing down Main Street to church. Once, back in the ’50s, our house flooded to the rafters. My daddy tossed us all on the roof with some quilts, the family Bible, a shortwave radio, and a loaf of bologna. He told us to have a picnic while he went out netting catfish with the menfolk.

  The water eventually receded. When it did, my brother Basil and I swooped up a bucket of fresh fish in the living room. Carp mostly. It was a heap of work shoveling the mud and tossing the driftwood out of the living room. Mama was mad as a wet hen that the flood had ruined her new rose cabbage carpet from Sears, but that was life on the river.

  “Dunno how high the river is,” squeaked Veenie. “Get up! It’s raining like all get out. Let’s take a ride. Get our eyes on this thing. I done made us some coffee and Pop-Tarts.”

  Veenie shoved a cherry Pop-Tart under my nose. I sat up and nibbled the burnt icing before I took Veenie’s iPad and flicked through the portfolio of flood photos. The water was out over Highway 50 on both sides of the Brownstown bridge, as well as over 235 at the Knobby Waters covered bridge.

  “Roads clear to Freetown?” I asked. I’d been meaning to run up Highway 50, then shoot over on 125 toward Freetown to the Cluckytown egg farm that morning to interrogate Cheaty Pants Pam about Gertie’s disappearance and Ma and Peepaw’s missing prize chickens.

  Veenie swiped at her iPad and drilled down into the Facebook page for Pawpaw County road conditions. “Looks to be clear now, but you better get your butt in gear. You know how fast that river can swell.”

  I dragged myself out of bed, and after a hot cup of black coffee and another Pop-Tart, pulled on my son Eddie’s old, green 4-H windbreaker and headed out the door, through the downpour.

  Thankfully the windshield wipers worked on the Impala. The defroster was on the blink though, so I had to sit up and wipe at the window with the sleeve of my windbreaker to keep the fog cleared enough to see to drive.

  It took forever for us to splash and bump our way to Freetown. Back in the day, Freetown had been a hopping metropolis. I’d worked summers in the Bundy Brothers canning factory along the railroad tracks there as a teenager, as had Veenie. Veenie remembered when her pappy used to tote her over to Freetown on Saturday nights to watch the free movies they projected at twilight on the backside of Sprague’s grocery.

  “Movies was free,” Veenie reminisced. “But popcorn cost a nickel. RC pop cost a nickel too. That’s how they got you.”

  A nickel’s worth of fun seemed like a fair deal to me. Nowadays you could blow a twenty-dollar bill on a bad senior matinee movie and a bag of leathery popcorn. Whole world had gone to pot like that since the ’70s. Kids these days wouldn’t know what to do if we made them sit outside in lawn chairs to watch a black-and-white movie that unrolled on the splintery backside of a barn.

  Veenie fussed with her cell phone as I drove. She was trying to update Harry, the boss, on our whereabouts, but she couldn’t catch a signal because of the storm. We hydroplaned on the blacktop past Freetown, toward Cluckytown. I was happy when I spied through the waterfall of rain several long, narrow egg barns. A row of silver-colored chicken feed silos came into view in a flat field next to the egg barns.

  I splashed through potholes big enough to crack an axle until I had the Impala nuzzled up to Cluckytown’s front office door. The office was nothing fancy: a small concrete block building painted lime green, with the paint bubbled up in giant blisters.

  Veenie eyed the office and the half a dozen long, narrow cement block barns that were packed close together in the field behind the office. “Lucky it’s raining,” she snorted, “otherwise we’d be fainting from the smell of chicken shit.”

  Truer words were never spoken. Cluckytown was home to 5,000 hens. I’d been inside Cluckytown once, on a Farm Bureau poult
ry tour. The long, narrow barns were filled with battery cages. The tiny wire cages were stacked five high in receding cantilevered rows, like the rows of a gymnasium bleacher. Six or seven scrawny laying hens, their beaks filed down and wings clipped, would be stuffed inside each cage. A conveyer belt system ran under the wire cages, catching the chicken droppings and carrying them out of the barns as soon as they fell. It was the only way to keep the barn floors sanitary. The manure was then run through a pelletizing machine to dry and compress it. The pellets were then bagged and sold as fertilizer. That much chicken shit smelled. Cluckytown was not the sort of place most folks enjoyed visiting on a nice hot July day. Lots of folks worked there, but no one seemed all that happy about it. Krupsky paid better.

  I flipped up the hood on my windbreaker and puckered it tight to my head. Veenie did the same with the hood on her poncho. We made a mad dash for the front office door, slipping and sliding. Once inside, Veenie shook herself like a dog and I followed suit. We both used our shirttails to wipe the rain from our glasses.

  The office wasn’t much to write home about. It was a concrete box painted too bright a white. The walls glared in the flickering fluorescent tube lights. A couple of battered, blue metal desks and a row of dented filing cabinets huddled in a far corner. If Pam was pulling in a profit, she sure enough wasn’t wasting it on the décor.

  Pam Perkins, aka Cheaty Pants Pam, was perched behind an old metal desk, surrounded by a mound of yellow and pink paperwork that was spotlighted by a decrepit gooseneck lamp. She stared at us as we stood in the entranceway waiting to drip-dry.

  Pam was a tiny woman. Only her head and shoulders were visible above the mound of paperwork. The biggest things about her were her huge, round, metal-framed glasses and her Eiffel Tower of white hair. If there were any truth in the old adage “the higher the hair, the closer to God,” Pam was halfway to heaven just sitting there. Her hair was held together by a network of bobby pins and tiny red, white, and blue bows. I reckoned she’d bought up all the Aqua Net hairspray at the Kresgee’s five-and-dime over in Bedford back in the '60s because her hair was so stiff it reminded me of one of those artificial white Christmas trees.