Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [17]
The feeder was right in the middle of the yard. He poured his mixture into it. He went back to the door of the building and shone his light around the inside. The birds slept with their heads tucked into their wings. Some of them lifted up and looked at him, jerking their heads and making a low clucking noise.
“You are the next step,” he whispered to them.
He left them to their sleep and carefully walked out the way he came. He hoped it would happen quickly and was glad that he would not be there to see it.
CHAPTER 6
Whirling chicken, whirling chicken. Jilly Daniels stood in front of the chicken coop with the egg basket in her hand and watched the fluffy chicken they called Lupita whirl in front of her. The brown-striped chicken kept turning as if she were trying to look at something behind her.
Two other chickens were sleeping by the door. Usually they went into the coop to sleep. Jilly walked up to one and touched it with the toe of her shoe. It didn’t move. So tired. She walked around it and went into the dark chicken coop. She used to be scared to go in alone, but now she was used to it: the dusty smell, the dark, small room, the hay all over.
She made the rounds of where the chickens left their eggs and didn’t find very many. Only seven. Maybe the chickens were too tired today to lay eggs. Usually she found between fifteen and twenty. She was only six, but she knew how to count up to a thousand.
She went back out into the sun and looked at Lupita. The chicken had stopped whirling but was still walking funny. Tilted to one side.
It reminded Jilly of how she felt when she had the flu last winter. Like her head was on crooked. Maybe the chickens were sick. The two by the door hadn’t moved at all. They should be out pecking at the ground.
What was the matter with them? The chickens were mainly her responsibility. That was what Dad told her when they came and they were only little fluff balls. She had begged him to let her have chickens and he had made her promise that she would take care of them. That meant she had to feed and water and gather their eggs every day. Sometimes when she was reaching under the hens to get the eggs, they pecked her, but it didn’t really hurt. She had learned a lot about chickens, but she had never seen them behave like this before.
Lupita went head-down into the dirt. Now look at what had happened. Her chickens were falling over.
Maybe she’d better tell someone, Jilly thought.
Her mother was out in the backyard, hanging up the sheets.
“Mom,” she hollered.
Her mother looked over and waved.
“Mom, the chickens are acting funny.”
Her mother didn’t seem to hear her. Maybe she was too far away. Maybe it wasn’t important.
Jilly looked back at the chickens. Lupita rolled onto her back and started to shake. Jilly had never seen a chicken do anything like that before. It reminded her of Henny Penny, the little chicken who thought the sky was falling. Maybe Lupita was scared and that was why she was shaking.
“Mom!” Jilly heard her voice rise up high in the sky, a scream.
Her mother’s head lifted at the sound. She dropped the sheet she was stretching out on the line and came running.
Rich had driven to the Daniels farm a few times before. They lived up the bluff from Fort St. Antoine, on the rolling farmland that surrounded the lake. As he approached the farm today, he felt the sky open above him. He sometimes drove up near their farm just to watch the weather. It was so much easier to see when a storm was coming out of the basin of the bluffs.
Rich had bought eggs from the Danielses, but he didn’t know them very well. Having moved to the area about ten years ago, they were relative newcomers. Meg played with their children, so Claire knew them better.
Rich had been surprised when Celia Daniels had phoned him this morning—surprised that she even knew who he was. As he drove up the bluff, he remembered her call.
She had been terribly upset, her voice high and shrill. “Our chickens are dying. The vet is out on call. I didn’t know who else to try. Because of your pheasants,