Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [0]
Coop
A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
For the tiny pilot
Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
At the earliest edges of my memory, my father is…
Chapter 1
This morning while splitting wood, I attempted to clear my…
Chapter 2
I am building a glorious chicken coop in my mind.
Chapter 3
I am in the office working after supper when Anneliese…
Chapter 4
Winter is on the fizzle, and Mister Big Shot is…
Chapter 5
Across the valley, the bare-bone tree line is thickening. The…
Chapter 6
Today a dog bit me grievously upon the ass. I…
Chapter 7
My daughter is weeping in the timothy. She is a…
Chapter 8
At some point every Sunday evening of my childhood there…
Chapter 9
One summer evening when the other kids got to go…
Chapter 10
Sunday mornings when I was a boy I worshipped the…
Epilogue
Before our family grew large, my brother John and I…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Michael Perry
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Recently I had an apparently deep thought. I scribbled it down quickly so that it might not escape the loosely woven sieve that is my brain. I then spent untold hours polishing the scribble until it was an aphoristic gem of original profundity. Shortly after that, I revisited an essay I had written seven years previous only to find the exact same observation, typed nearly word for word. I have reached that point in my life where every other thing I say is something I’ve said before. For instance, I regularly catch myself trying to describe the scent of dirt. I am repetitively waylaid by my affection for particular words. (The modifier “little” pops up like Whac-A-Mole in my rough drafts and is never completely eradicated.) Further amplifying the echo, bits and pieces of this book were worked out in shorter, previously published pieces some readers may recognize. I like to imagine this reflects the development of a “certain literary style” when in fact it is more likely I am developing “certain nervous tics.” To say nothing of engaging in a freelance writer’s favorite sport: recycling.
When I’m not repeating myself, I’m contradicting myself. For instance, in the book Truck: A Love Story I stated that my father never allowed us to have toy guns; lately I recall we were allowed to keep a pair of realistic-looking squirt guns given to us by a relative. I once wrote of a cow called Angie only to find out her real name was Aggie. (Other mistakes of bovine nomenclature have likely been made—I tell you this because the cows cannot speak for themselves.) The “ten-day” Wisconsin deer hunting season is only nine days long, no matter what I wrote in my most recent hardcover. Sometimes readers point out these contradictions. If they are offered in collegial spirit (we are in this together) I am nearly always happy to post them on my Web site as evidence that my head and feet are a matching set of clay.
Finally, since I believe the term nonfiction depends above all on a reader’s trust, I must disclose a few intentional partialities. I often change names to give friends and neighbors a veneer of privacy. I use the term recently with some latitude, and for the sake of forward motion I reference the lambing season of 2006 in the context of 2007. Finally, when I write of the church of my childhood, I do so knowing that some will object to the portrayal as either too critical or too benign, and all will find it incomplete, especially when the sect is small and history is spare.
I am grateful for anyone who reads my writing, even—or especially—with a critical eye, and one phrase never suffers from repetition: Thank you, reader.
PROLOGUE
At the earliest edges of my memory, my father is plowing, and I am running behind him. I see my feet, going pat-pat-pat over the soil, I see my father, left hand on the wheel, right forearm braced against the fender, head turning back to check the depth of the plow, then forward to gauge his progress. The soil is red and sandy in the high spots and dark and loamy in the low spots, where