chickens

Years ago, there was a writers group called the HLWC. I'm sure it was Highlander Writers something or other...but mostly it was just a bunch of writers who tossed things back and forth: ideas, story snippets, style discussions...

One of the challenges that got tossed was to do a writing exercise themed around "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Aside from being often hysterically funny, it also said a lot about people's styles, how they approached text ideas, what themes they played with...

I tripped over my own response today --



//I hate the Road.// It was an unworthy thought, petty and chickish, but staring at the long ribbon of darkness stretching east and west like some horrible scar on the landscape, the chicken couldn't help but wonder what about the flattened conglomeration of rock and tar and asphalt could engender such animosity in her.

She came out to look at it nearly every day, feathers carefully pulled away from the abomination that had been part of her environment for as long as she could remember. Or since yesterday anyway. She made no apologies for her abysmal memory. She was a chicken for God's sake! Not some demented archivist for the trivia of life.

The other chickens seemed willing enough to ignore it, to ignore the road, its ugliness, its complete lack of discernible purpose. She envied them. She envied them their innocence and their blithe dismissal of the monster that lurked just beyond the edge of their yard.

She envied them but not as much as she hated the Road. If she were a horse she would use her shiny hooves to pound on it until it cracked, to mar the smooth unbroken surface with gashes and gouts and prove to the road that it wasn't impervious, wasn't timeless wasn't....immortal.

She had seen the huge metal machines skimming across it, of course, all power and speed and spitting foul air, yet the Road ignored them, rebuffed their travels like the ducks shook water off their backs. The Road remained maddeningly intact, arrogantly unmoved by the massiveness of both the size and number of the vehicles that traveled it.

Then came the day she could no longer stand it, when spite and anger overcame her ability to be rational and logical about the Road or what it meant or why it was there. The academic exercise was no longer enough. She couldn't just stand here while the Road went on and on.

She dashed out, oblivious to danger, oblivious to the squawks of her sister chickens who were shaken from their gravel gazing by the sight of their sister, white feathers all ruffled and the glint of madness in her eyes.

With beak and claw she attacked the Road, pecking and scratching, ignoring the squeal of those heavy tires as they sped past her, seeking out any weakness, any break in the smooth black armor.

She almost fell over it as the back draft from a passing metal monster sent her tumbling, beak over tail feathers, to the far side. The near miss didn't break her resolve, but it softened it. A bit. A fraction. This damn Road was going to kill her yet, or she it. Smoothing ruffled feathers, she pulled herself to the edge, looking across to see the other chickens peering at her, cheeping and squawking to each other in mumbled commentary -- of her foolishness, no doubt.

Staring at her nemesis she almost admitted defeat, would have had her movements not been accompanied by the small rattle of stone. She looked down to see a few of the tar blackened pebble of asphalt tumbling away from the angled edge of the road to rest at her feet. Just a few. An insignificant amount given the size of the Road.

But it was crumbling. A tentative scratching at the edge produced a few more pebbles and she increased her effort until she was surrounded by several dozen of the small tokens of decay.

She looked up, studying the Road, viewing it as she had not before, without anger, without hate and mostly, she admitted as she had not before, without fear.

It was just a Road. Inanimate, unfeeling, enduring. Just a road. It would neither care nor notice when it finally crumbled.

Picking up one of the small black pebbles in her mouth she recrossed the unchanged expanse, ignoring the stares of the other chickens, ignoring the fresh feed scattered on the ground and returned to her nest and lay the small black bone of the road carefully amidst the straw and feathers.

She still disliked the road, but it wasn't a hatred born of challenge. Or of affront -- just the singular disdain and mild hatred she had for all things that were pointless. And maybe just a little whiff of compassion for the road that would never know where it had been or where it was going.

Epilogue:

Years later, and not so many it was, the farmer came out into the yard to spread food for his flock of fine plump hens and found the still and quiet bundle of feathers laying next to Route 4. Old Roadie didn't look like she'd been hit by a car. She looked like she had just come out here, next to the asphalt and settled down to sleep. Must have gone over in the night. Picking up the carcass, the farmer didn't see the tiny rounded pebble of black, much smoothed, laid, if he had noticed, very carefully right against the edge of the long and winding road.

-



~mine ca. 1998