The first thing I noticed was the quiet.<\/p>\n
Forty laying hens are never quiet at two in the afternoon. There\u2019s always one bragging about an egg, and three more arguing with her about it. My mother used to say you could tell time by her hens. She said two o\u2019clock sounded like a church basement right before the coffee was ready.<\/p>\n I had spent the whole morning in town. Settling up at the funeral home. Carrying casserole dishes back to the church. Now I sat in my car with the engine off and a box of thank-you cards on the seat beside me, and I listened to the wind work at the wire on the chicken run.<\/p>\n The little pop door on the coop was standing open. The big door was open too, propped with the cement block Mom always used when she cleaned.<\/p>\n Ezoic Not one under the lilac. Not one dusting herself in the bare spot by the propane tank, where they\u2019d worn a bowl into the ground over thirty-five years of afternoons.<\/p>\n Then I saw the sign.<\/p>\n It was a flap torn off a cardboard box, leaned against the mailbox post at the end of the lane. I\u2019d driven right past it coming in, because I\u2019d been busy trying to remember how to spell the organist\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n I walked back down the lane to read it.<\/p>\n Black marker. My aunt\u2019s tidy, slanted printing.<\/p>\n Laying hens. Two dollars each.<\/p>\n And under that, smaller:<\/p>\n All must go today.<\/p>\n I stood there in my funeral shoes, because I hadn\u2019t thought to change them, and the April mud came up over the sides.<\/p>\n Ezoic \u201cThere you are,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve got the pantry about done. You would not believe what that woman kept.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are the hens?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s handled.\u201d<\/p>\n She peeled off one glove, finger by finger.<\/p>\n \u201cI called it in to the swap program on the radio this morning. And I put a sign out. They were gone by one o\u2019clock. Every last one. People came with boxes. One man had a feed sack.\u201d<\/p>\n Ezoic \u201cI sold them.\u201d<\/p>\n She took a bank envelope out of the apron pocket and held it up, the way you\u2019d hold up a good report card.<\/p>\n \u201cEighty dollars. I thought that was something, for a bunch of old chickens.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at the envelope.<\/p>\n \u201cForty hens,\u201d I said. \u201cTwo dollars apiece.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe realtor comes Friday at ten, Annette. She said herself a place shows better without livestock. You can\u2019t have a yard full of chicken mess and expect anybody from town to see past it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ezoic \u201cNobody has time for chickens. You work. Dale works. That boy has school. Somebody had to be sensible.\u201d<\/p>\n I should explain about the realtor. Because that part was partly my own fault.<\/p>\n Mom died in her sleep on a Thursday night. Her heart, the doctor said. No warning to speak of.<\/p>\n On Friday, I sat in the arrangements room at the funeral home with my head in my hands, and I said out loud that I did not know what on earth we were going to do with the place.<\/p>\n I meant it the way you mean anything on a day like that. I meant I was tired.<\/p>\n Aunt Lucille heard a decision.<\/p>\n She\u2019s seventy-eight. My mother\u2019s older sister. She left the farm for Lincoln the week she finished high school, and she worked forty-one years in the claims office of an insurance company. In forty-one years, she never once left a file open on her desk overnight.<\/p>\n By Saturday, she\u2019d found a realtor.<\/p>\n By Sunday, she\u2019d moved into Mom\u2019s spare room with a bucket and a box of trash bags.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have the strength to stop her. And I thought there\u2019d be time. I thought the worst thing that could happen before Friday was a clean pantry.<\/p>\n The place was coming to me. Mom and Dad had settled that years ago, and Lucille knew it as well as I did. She wasn\u2019t stealing from anybody. In her own mind, she was saving me the trouble.<\/p>\n \u201cWho bought them?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhich people, Aunt Lucille?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople from the radio. I don\u2019t know them. I don\u2019t know anybody out here anymore.\u201d She pulled the glove back on. \u201cA young woman with a van full of children. A heavy man. Somebody\u2019s hired man in a seed cap.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you write down a single name?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was cash, honey. You don\u2019t write a receipt for two dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot one name.\u201d<\/p>\n She thought about it.<\/p>\n \u201cOne. An old man. Zeller. He said to tell you he\u2019d taken twelve. He said it twice, like I was hard of hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n So there it was.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t pick up the telephone and undo it, because there was nobody to call. Forty hens had gone down that lane in the backs of strangers\u2019 cars. And the only record of it was eighty dollars in a bank envelope.<\/p>\n I felt like screaming.<\/p>\n I\u2019m forty-seven years old. I have never screamed at a relative in my life. I came closer that afternoon than I ever hope to come again.<\/p>\n But arguing with Lucille had never once, in my whole lifetime, changed what Lucille had already done. And it wouldn\u2019t bring home a single hen.<\/p>\n And she was right about one thing, though not the way she meant it.<\/p>\n A laying hen in her second spring is worth fifteen dollars to anybody in York County who knows a hen from a hat. Two dollars is what a spent hen brings at the sale barn. The kind that\u2019s headed for somebody\u2019s soup pot.<\/p>\n Whoever answered that radio call had either gotten the bargain of the year, or meant to wring some necks.<\/p>\n Mom called the refrigerator the icebox her whole life. On top of it, pushed back against the wall, sat a red coffee can with a plastic lid gone cloudy with age.<\/p>\n I reached up and took it down.<\/p>\n That was her egg money.<\/p>\n She\u2019d sold eggs out of that kitchen door since 1991, the year I turned twelve. That was the year she decided the hens were going to buy the groceries. Three dollars a dozen, lately. Two for most of the years before that. It all went in the can. And it was nearly all ones.<\/p>\n I took the lid off and counted it out on the table, next to Lucille\u2019s envelope.<\/p>\n A hundred and twelve dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d Lucille said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey paid two,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll pay three.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor chickens.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor Mom\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnnette, you can\u2019t even find them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can find twelve.\u201d I put the money back in the can and pressed the lid down. \u201cThat\u2019s a start.\u201d<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t have anything sensible to say to that.<\/p>\n I picked up the can and went outside to call my husband.<\/p>\n Dale drives the anhydrous truck for the co-op. And the last week of April is no time to ask a co-op man for a day off. He\u2019d already used his three days of funeral leave standing next to me. Every farmer in the county wanted nitrogen on before the corn went in, and he was hauling tanks from before daylight until after dark.<\/p>\n He listened to the whole thing without interrupting. I could hear his truck idling.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo dollars,\u201d he said finally.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n He was quiet for a second.<\/p>\n Dale loved my mother. She fed him every Sunday for twenty-two years and never once let him leave without a carton of eggs under his arm.<\/p>\n \u201cTake my pickup,\u201d he said. \u201cThe keys are on the hook. Put Duke\u2019s crate in the back. The big wire one. It\u2019ll hold six or eight if you don\u2019t go far.\u201d<\/p>\n Then he said, \u201cBring them home, Annie. I\u2019ll be out there the minute I can.\u201d<\/p>\n Prove your golden-age TV mastery with 94 questions on Bewitched, Gilligan\u2019s & more.<\/p>\n Our son, Colt, is fourteen.<\/p>\n I picked him up at the school at three-thirty with the dog crate already in the truck bed and the coffee can on the seat. And I told him what his great-aunt had done.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t say a word for about a mile.<\/p>\n Colt had been feeding those hens since he was big enough to carry the scoop. He\u2019d fed them all four days since Mom died. Morning and night. He\u2019d gathered the eggs and put them in the icebox on the back porch, the way she taught him.<\/p>\n \u201cDid she sell Pearl?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe sold all of them, honey.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked out the window at somebody\u2019s planter crawling across a field.<\/p>\n \u201cPearl\u2019s seven,\u201d he said. \u201cShe lays about one egg a week. Whoever got Pearl is going to eat her.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen we\u2019d better get moving,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n I had one name, and it wasn\u2019t enough. So I drove to the feed store before it closed.<\/p>\n Lucille had tacked a card on the bulletin board there too. I took it down and handed it across the counter to Jeff, who\u2019d sold my mother layer pellets and oyster shell for as long as I could remember.<\/p>\n He read it. His face changed.<\/p>\n \u201cI wondered,\u201d he said. \u201cI heard it on the radio, and I thought, that\u2019s not Rosalie\u2019s voice, and that\u2019s not Rosalie\u2019s price.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know anybody who went?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKim Kroeker was in here at noon. Bought a sack of pellets. Told me she\u2019d gotten eight hens for sixteen dollars and felt like a thief.\u201d<\/p>\n He was already writing on the back of the card.<\/p>\n \u201cNorth of Benedict. Second place past the church. Go on. She\u2019s good people.\u201d<\/p>\n She was.<\/p>\n Kim Kroeker came out on her front step with a baby on her hip and two more children behind her. Before I\u2019d even finished saying my name, she said, \u201cOh, no. Oh, it was your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI knew two dollars was wrong. I said so at dinner. I said, somebody\u2019s grandma has died and somebody\u2019s cleaning out, and I just didn\u2019t know whose.\u201d She shifted the baby. \u201cI\u2019ve got them penned by themselves. You don\u2019t put strange hens in with your own the first week.\u201d<\/p>\n It was getting on toward dusk by then. That\u2019s the only sensible time to catch a chicken. A hen on the roost at dark will let you lift her off like a loaf of bread, as long as you hold her wings snug and keep the light out of her face.<\/p>\n Colt went in with the flashlight pointed at the floor.<\/p>\n He came out with a Rhode Island Red under each arm. He turned them toward me so I could see their legs.<\/p>\n A blue band on one.<\/p>\n A yellow band on the other.<\/p>\n Mom banded every bird she ever raised. A little plastic spiral on the right leg. A different color for each year\u2019s hatch, so she always knew how old a hen was without guessing. Green for the birds from three springs back. Blue for the next year. Yellow for last spring\u2019s pullets.<\/p>\n I\u2019d never thought of it as anything but one of her fussy ways.<\/p>\n That week, those bands were the only proof we had.<\/p>\n We put eight hens in the crate.<\/p>\n The Kroekers\u2019 little girl, maybe five years old, stood by the tailgate with her chin shaking. She\u2019d named one of them Butterscotch that very afternoon.<\/p>\n Colt got down on one knee in the gravel.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s going back to my grandma\u2019s house,\u201d he told her. \u201cThat\u2019s where she\u2019s from. You can come see her any Saturday. I\u2019ll show you where she sleeps.\u201d<\/p>\n I counted twenty-four ones out of the coffee can.<\/p>\n Kim Kroeker put her free hand behind her back.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t take more than I paid.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou bought them fair,\u201d I said. \u201cYou fed them, and you penned them right. I don\u2019t want anybody out a dime because of my family. Please.\u201d<\/p>\n She took it at last.<\/p>\n Then she walked me to the truck door and said, low, so the children wouldn\u2019t hear, \u201cIs your aunt all right? She seemed like she was in an awful hurry to be finished with something.\u201d<\/p>\n I thought about that most of the way home.<\/p>\n We turned the eight hens loose in the coop by flashlight.<\/p>\n Every single one of them walked up the ramp and went to the exact same spot on the roost she\u2019d left that morning. They shuffled and muttered and settled.<\/p>\n Colt latched the pop door. Then he stood there with his hand flat on it for a minute.<\/p>\n Lucille had left the yard light on. There was a plate of funeral ham in the oven, covered with foil. She\u2019d gone to bed.<\/p>\n Before I went to sleep, I called the one name I had.<\/p>\n Mr. Zeller answered on the ninth ring.<\/p>\n He\u2019s eighty-one. He still farms a little, south of town. He\u2019s been a widower for three years.<\/p>\n I told him who I was and what I wanted, and that I\u2019d pay him three dollars a hen and be glad to do it.<\/p>\n There was a long pause.<\/p>\n \u201cThursday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI could come tomorrow, Mr. Zeller. I don\u2019t want to put you out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThursday. At dusk. Not before.\u201d<\/p>\n And he hung up.<\/p>\n I knew Mom took him eggs. I didn\u2019t know whether a man who says Thursday and hangs up on you is a man who means to help you.<\/p>\n Wednesday morning at eight, I called the radio station.<\/p>\n The fellow who runs the swap program didn\u2019t make me explain it twice. At five minutes past nine, between a man selling a hay rake and a woman looking for canning jars, he read it out just the way I gave it to him.<\/p>\n He said that forty laying hens had been sold Tuesday from Rosalie\u2019s place northwest of York. That they\u2019d been sold by mistake, the day after her funeral. And that her daughter would be grateful to buy back any that could be spared, at three dollars apiece.<\/p>\n He gave Mom\u2019s phone number.<\/p>\n Then he added something on his own.<\/p>\n \u201cFolks,\u201d he said, \u201cmost of you have eaten that woman\u2019s eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n The telephone in Mom\u2019s kitchen rang eleven times before noon.<\/p>\n Two of the calls were about hens. The other nine were egg customers, calling to say they were sorry.<\/p>\n A woman named Connie, over by Waco, had six. She\u2019d turned them straight in with thirty red hens of her own and couldn\u2019t tell one from another.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at their right legs,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n She set the telephone down. When she came back, she was laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I\u2019ll be. Your mother was a smarter woman than I am.\u201d<\/p>\n That was eighteen dollars. She sent us home with a jar of chokecherry jelly besides.<\/p>\n The other call was a man out past Bradshaw.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t laughing.<\/p>\n His name was Denny. He was about sixty-five, retired off the railroad, and he had a neat little henhouse with a new tin roof.<\/p>\n He met us in the yard with his arms folded.<\/p>\n He had five of Mom\u2019s hens. He hadn\u2019t penned them separate. They were already scratching around with his own.<\/p>\n \u201cI about didn\u2019t call,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re laying good. I got three eggs out of those five this morning, and that\u2019s the day after hauling them. I paid what was asked. I didn\u2019t cheat anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, sir, you didn\u2019t,\u201d I said. \u201cYou did nothing wrong. That\u2019s why it\u2019s three and not two. And if you say no, I\u2019ll thank you for your time and go home, and I won\u2019t think one bit less of you.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked over at Colt.<\/p>\n Colt had walked to the fence. He was standing very still with one hand held low, the way Mom taught him.<\/p>\n A red hen with a blue band came across that yard at a trot. She stopped right at Colt\u2019s boots and squatted down flat, wings a little out. The way a hen will for somebody she knows.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one of ours,\u201d Colt said. \u201cI helped Grandma band the blue ones. I held them.\u201d<\/p>\n Denny unfolded his arms.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, shoot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He rubbed the back of his neck.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother kept hens. If somebody had sold hers out from under the casket, my dad would\u2019ve gone to every farm in Hamilton County.\u201d<\/p>\n He went into his shed and came back with a wire catching hook.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t wait for dark. I\u2019ll get them. You\u2019ll never catch that speckled one without it.\u201d<\/p>\n He took the fifteen dollars, too. He said a man ought to take what\u2019s offered when it\u2019s offered honest.<\/p>\n That made nineteen hens back on Mom\u2019s roost by Wednesday night. And fifty-seven dollars gone out of the can.<\/p>\n Dale got there at half past nine, still in his work coveralls and smelling like ammonia.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t come in the house first. He went straight to the coop with a trouble light and a handful of tools. And he fixed the latch on the pop door that Mom had been tying shut with baling twine since Christmas.<\/p>\n When he came in, Lucille was sitting at the kitchen table in her robe. She hadn\u2019t gone to bed that night.<\/p>\n \u201cEvening, Lucille,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That was all he said to her.<\/p>\n He washed his hands at Mom\u2019s sink and ate what was in the oven. When he was done, he looked at me.<\/p>\n \u201cHow many?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNineteen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow many to go?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-one. Twelve tomorrow, if Mr. Zeller\u2019s a man of his word. Nine I can\u2019t find.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucille turned her coffee cup a quarter turn on its saucer.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know they had bands,\u201d she said. Nobody had asked her. \u201cShe never told me they had bands.\u201d<\/p>\n Dale looked at her for a long moment.<\/p>\n And I\u2019ll always be grateful for how he said the next thing. Because he could have said it a good many other ways.<\/p>\n \u201cRosalie would\u2019ve told you anything you asked her, Lucille. She\u2019d have walked you out there and shown you every one.\u201d<\/p>\n My aunt got up. She rinsed her cup. She went down the hall.<\/p>\n Thursday at dusk, we drove to Mr. Zeller\u2019s.<\/p>\n He was waiting by his henhouse in bib overalls and a canvas chore coat, with his hands in his pockets.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re Rosalie\u2019s girl,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, sir. This is my son, Colt.\u201d<\/p>\n He nodded at Colt like that settled something.<\/p>\n I had the money counted out ahead of time. Thirty-six ones with a rubber band around them. I held them out.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t take his hands out of his pockets.<\/p>\n \u201cPut that away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Zeller, I mean to pay. You bought them fair, the same as everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know you mean to. I won\u2019t sell you those hens, Annette.\u201d<\/p>\n Colt looked at me.<\/p>\n I stood there holding my dead mother\u2019s egg money, with the wind going through my jacket. And I honestly did not know what kind of man I was talking to.<\/p>\n Mr. Zeller turned and went up his porch steps. Slowly. One hand on the rail.<\/p>\n He was gone long enough that I could hear my own heart.<\/p>\n When he came back out, he was carrying an egg carton. He carried it in both hands, level, like something that might spill.<\/p>\n It was one of Mom\u2019s.<\/p>\n I knew it before he got to the bottom step. She reused her cartons until they fell apart. Her customers brought them back empty every week, and every time she refilled one, she wrote on the lid in pencil. A name. The day she packed it. How many. When the lid filled up, she turned it and wrote down the side.<\/p>\n \u201cRead it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The lid was gray with old pencil. Line after line. Zeller, and a date, and 1 doz. Dozens and dozens of them, most too rubbed out to read.<\/p>\n But the last line was clear. Because nobody had ever written over it.<\/p>\n Zeller. No charge. Tell Dorothy the brown ones are for her.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was my wife\u2019s last week,\u201d he said. \u201cThree years ago in March. Your mother came up this porch every Saturday for fourteen months while Dorothy was sick. And she never took a dime. Not once. I tried. I\u2019d put two dollars in her coat pocket and find it under my sugar bowl.\u201d<\/p>\n He cleared his throat.<\/p>\n \u201cDorothy couldn\u2019t keep much down toward the end. She could keep down a soft egg.\u201d<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t see the carton anymore.<\/p>\n Colt took it out of my hands so I wouldn\u2019t drop it.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard that radio Tuesday morning,\u201d Mr. Zeller said. \u201cI knew the place. And I knew that wasn\u2019t her on the telephone. And I knew what kind of man buys a two-dollar hen.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked off toward his henhouse.<\/p>\n \u201cI went as fast as I go. Your aunt had sold twenty-eight by the time I got my boots on. I took what was left. It wasn\u2019t my place to tell a grieving family its business. But it was my place to see that twelve of her hens didn\u2019t get their necks wrung.\u201d<\/p>\n He shrugged.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been boarding them. That\u2019s all. A man doesn\u2019t charge for boarding.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy Thursday?\u201d Colt asked.<\/p>\n It was the first thing he\u2019d said. And Mr. Zeller almost smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cOpen it, son.\u201d<\/p>\n Colt lifted the lid.<\/p>\n Twelve brown eggs. Every one wiped clean. Every one set in with the small end down, the way Mom always did.<\/p>\n \u201cA hen goes off laying when you move her,\u201d Mr. Zeller said. \u201cThey gave me four the first day and three the second. It took until about four o\u2019clock this afternoon to make the dozen. And I was not going to hand Rosalie\u2019s daughter eleven eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a woman who cries in front of people.<\/p>\n I\u2019d gotten through the visitation and the service and the cemetery with a dry handkerchief.<\/p>\n I cried in that old man\u2019s yard until my son put his arm around me.<\/p>\n He\u2019s taller than I am now. I hadn\u2019t noticed until that very minute.<\/p>\n Mr. Zeller had the twelve hens penned by themselves, with fresh straw and their own waterer. He\u2019d cut air holes in three apple boxes. He lifted the last hen out himself and held her a moment before he handed her to Colt.<\/p>\n A big old Barred Rock. Gray as a rainy day. Her red leg band had faded so much it was nearly pink.<\/p>\n \u201cThis one\u2019s no layer,\u201d he said. \u201cI expect you know that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Pearl,\u201d Colt said. His voice cracked on it. \u201cYou got Pearl.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI got her first,\u201d Mr. Zeller said. \u201cNobody was going to want her for anything but the pot.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked him to come Saturday. I told him there\u2019d be coffee.<\/p>\n He said he\u2019d think about it. Which, from a man like that, means yes.<\/p>\n Thirty-one hens went to roost in my mother\u2019s coop that night.<\/p>\n Pearl took her place at the end by the window, where she\u2019s slept since Colt was in second grade.<\/p>\n Friday morning, I went out to the back porch to see about the eggs.<\/p>\n Mom kept a second icebox out there. An old round-shouldered one that hummed. That was where the egg business lived. It was the only thing in that whole house Lucille hadn\u2019t scrubbed.<\/p>\n I opened it.<\/p>\n Fourteen cartons, stacked two deep. And beside them, the bowl of loose eggs Colt had gathered since.<\/p>\n Mom had packed those cartons the Thursday she died. For the Saturday she didn\u2019t live to see.<\/p>\n Every lid had a name on it, in fresh pencil. Pavlik, 2 doz. Schmidt. Pastor. The school cook. Fourteen names, in the same handwriting that had signed my report cards.<\/p>\n There was a fifteenth carton on the door shelf. Off by itself.<\/p>\n I heard Lucille come out behind me.<\/p>\n She had her car keys in her hand and her good coat on. I understood that she\u2019d been about to tell me she was going home to Lincoln.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n I took the fifteenth carton off the shelf, and I held it so she could read the lid.<\/p>\n Lu. Sunday. No excuses.<\/p>\n My aunt sat down on the porch step like somebody had cut her strings.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t coming,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I waited.<\/p>\n \u201cShe asked me for last Sunday, and I told her I had a hair appointment Saturday and didn\u2019t feel up to the drive. It\u2019s fifty miles, Annette. It\u2019s fifty miles on a good road.\u201d<\/p>\n She was looking at the carton. Not at me.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd she said, then come this Sunday. And I said I\u2019d see. I\u2019d already thought up what I was going to tell her. I had it ready.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAunt Lucille.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe packed me eggs. I told her for thirty years that store eggs were good enough for me. And she packed me eggs every single time. And I\u2019d get them home, and they\u2019d sit there until I threw them out.\u201d<\/p>\n Her mouth wasn\u2019t working right.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t sit down in this house. Do you understand me? If I\u2019m scrubbing something, I\u2019m not sitting in it. I thought if I could just get it emptied out, it would quit being hers.\u201d<\/p>\n I sat down on the step beside her. The boards were cold.<\/p>\n I had a speech ready. I\u2019d worked on it in the truck, driving between farms. Every word in it was true.<\/p>\n I looked at my mother\u2019s sister, seventy-eight years old in her good coat, holding a carton of eggs she\u2019d been too busy to come get. And I found I couldn\u2019t say any of it.<\/p>\n Kim Kroeker had seen in five minutes, on her own front step, what I hadn\u2019t let myself see in five days.<\/p>\n But I didn\u2019t tell her it was all right, either. Because it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cI have thirty-one of them back,\u201d I said. \u201cNine are gone, and I may never find them. Tomorrow is Saturday. Mom\u2019s customers are coming to that door at eight o\u2019clock like they have every Saturday since I was twelve. And they\u2019ve all heard what happened, because I put it on the radio.\u201d<\/p>\n I kept my voice even.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to tell them who sold her hens. I\u2019m not going to tell them anything. You can be in Lincoln by then. Or you can be standing at that door handing out the last eggs she packed. I\u2019d rather you were at the door. But that\u2019s yours to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t answer right away.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the realtor?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cI called her at seven this morning.\u201d She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, hard, the way Mom used to. \u201cI told her I\u2019d spoken out of turn and the place wasn\u2019t mine to list. She was very nice about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Then she put her car keys in her coat pocket.<\/p>\n Saturday came up clear and cold. There was frost on the truck and a meadowlark singing on the fence post.<\/p>\n Lucille was dressed by six.<\/p>\n She had on Mom\u2019s apron again. But there was no bucket this time, and no rubber gloves. She\u2019d set the fourteen cartons out on the kitchen table in two rows, with the names facing the door. She had Lu\u2019s carton off to one side, by the sugar bowl. She kept touching it.<\/p>\n The first car pulled in at ten minutes to eight.<\/p>\n I stood back by the stove with my coffee. And I let my aunt open that door.<\/p>\n It was the school cook. She had two empty cartons in her hand, the way they all did. Because you didn\u2019t come for Rosalie\u2019s eggs without bringing your empties back.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Lucille,\u201d my aunt said. \u201cI\u2019m Rosalie\u2019s sister. I\u2019m the one who sold her hens. I thought I was helping, and I was wrong, and I\u2019m sorry for it. These are yours. She packed them herself.\u201d<\/p>\n The school cook looked at her.<\/p>\n Then she looked down at the name on the lid. In pencil. In a dead woman\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n And she pressed that carton against her chest.<\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d she said. \u201cThen I\u2019m glad you\u2019re the one handing it to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucille said it fourteen times that morning.<\/p>\n She said it to every single one of them. The whole thing. She didn\u2019t shorten it, and she didn\u2019t dress it up.<\/p>\n Some of them were kind about it. One old farmer took his eggs, said \u201cTwo dollars,\u201d shook his head, and walked back to his pickup without another word.<\/p>\n She stood there and took that too.<\/p>\n The empty cartons piled up on the counter. Thirty, forty of them. Soft as cloth at the corners. Every lid gray with my mother\u2019s pencil. Years and years of Saturdays.<\/p>\n When there was a gap between cars, Lucille started reading them. She\u2019d pick one up and tip it toward the window.<\/p>\n \u201cShe wrote the weather on this one,\u201d she said once. \u201cTwenty below. Left on your porch, do not come out.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Zeller came at nine.<\/p>\n He\u2019d shaved.<\/p>\n He drank one cup of coffee standing up and told Lucille, very gravely, that he was the fellow she\u2019d thought was hard of hearing.<\/p>\n And she laughed. The first time I\u2019d heard her laugh all week.<\/p>\n Nobody would take their eggs for nothing. I want that written down. I told every one of them there was no charge. And every one of them walked right around me and put three dollars in the coffee can anyway.<\/p>\n A little after ten, a tan Buick came up the lane at about four miles an hour.<\/p>\n It was Mrs. Pavlik.<\/p>\n She\u2019s eighty-four. She\u2019d been buying two dozen a week since the summer Mom started.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t stop at the house. She stopped right in front of the coop. She rolled down her window.<\/p>\n \u201cAnnette,\u201d she said, \u201ccome and get these birds out of my automobile before they ruin the upholstery.\u201d<\/p>\n There were two apple boxes on her back seat. And a laundry basket with a bath towel clothespinned over the top.<\/p>\n The towel was moving.<\/p>\n Nine hens.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been on the telephone since Wednesday noon,\u201d Mrs. Pavlik said, while Colt and Dale carried them out two at a time in the dog crate. \u201cI have the church directory, and I\u2019m not afraid to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n She ticked them off on her fingers.<\/p>\n \u201cA couple by the lake had four. The Schmidt girl\u2019s neighbor had three. Two went to a man who was fixing to butcher them this very weekend. I told him I\u2019d pray for him. He didn\u2019t care for my tone.\u201d<\/p>\n She sniffed.<\/p>\n \u201cCount the legs. They\u2019ve all got her bands.\u201d<\/p>\n They did. Green and blue and yellow. Every one.<\/p>\n Forty.<\/p>\n I got the coffee can. By my count, I owed her twenty-seven dollars. I started counting it out.<\/p>\n \u201cYou put that away,\u201d she said. Just exactly like Mr. Zeller.<\/p>\n \u201cI broke my hip in the winter of ninety-eight. Your mother carried eggs up my back steps for two winters. And shoveled them first. I\u2019ve owed that woman a good deal more than twenty-seven dollars for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n She looked past me, toward the kitchen door. Lucille was standing there with a dish towel in her hands.<\/p>\n \u201cIs that the sister?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSend her out here.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucille came. She came the whole way across the yard and stood beside the Buick window with her back straight. And she started in on her fourteen-times sentence.<\/p>\n Mrs. Pavlik lifted one finger off the steering wheel.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard. Everybody has heard.\u201d<\/p>\n She wasn\u2019t unkind. But she didn\u2019t soften it either.<\/p>\n \u201cYou sold thirty-five years of that woman\u2019s mornings for the price of a loaf of bread apiece. I want you to know that I know it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d Lucille said.<\/p>\n \u201cGood. Now. I was the oldest of seven, and I buried a sister myself. I cleaned her house out in four days flat, and I gave away a quilt I\u2019ve wanted back for twenty years. So I know something about that too.\u201d<\/p>\n She put the Buick in gear.<\/p>\n \u201cI take two dozen. I like them candled. Rosalie always candled mine. I\u2019ll expect them next Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n And she backed that car all the way down the lane. Because she has never in her life learned to turn around in a farmyard.<\/p>\n Lucille watched her go.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s candled?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n So I showed her.<\/p>\n Dad built Mom\u2019s candler out of a wooden box, with a sixty-watt bulb inside and a hole in the top about the size of a quarter. You take it in the pantry and shut the door, because brown eggs are hard to see through and you want it good and dark. You set the big end of the egg against the hole, and you turn it slowly.<\/p>\n \u201cThat bright place at the top is the air cell,\u201d I told her. \u201cSmall is fresh. If you see a line like a hair, that\u2019s a crack, and it goes in the house bowl, not in a carton. A dark speck, same thing. She never sold an egg she hadn\u2019t looked through.\u201d<\/p>\n My aunt held an egg up to the light in the dark of her sister\u2019s pantry.<\/p>\n The shelves around us were bare. Wiped down to the wood. Neither one of us said a word about it.<\/p>\n \u201cI can see it,\u201d she whispered. \u201cAnnette, I can see right inside it.\u201d<\/p>\n She set it in a carton. Small end down. Without being told.<\/p>\n Lucille went home to Lincoln on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n Before she left, she put the bank envelope in the coffee can. The whole eighty dollars. She never said a word to me about it.<\/p>\n She came back out the next Friday.<\/p>\n On her way, she stopped at the feed store and bought two sacks of layer pellets and a bag of oyster shell, and had Jeff load them in her trunk.<\/p>\n She comes every Friday night now. She sleeps in the spare room. And on Saturday morning, she\u2019s at that kitchen door by eight.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t sell the place.<\/p>\n Dale and Colt and I moved out to the farm in June, when school let out.<\/p>\n Colt ordered twenty-five chicks through the feed store. He and Lucille banded them at the kitchen table. Orange, for this year. She held them. He did the bands.<\/p>\n Mrs. Pavlik made him take my picture that first Saturday, before she left.<\/p>\n It\u2019s on the icebox now.<\/p>\n I\u2019m standing in front of the coop with a red hen under one arm and Mom\u2019s coffee can in my other hand. The dog crate is on the tailgate behind me with the last two hens in it. And I\u2019m smiling like a fool.<\/p>\n The cartons still go out with a name in pencil on every lid. The customers still bring them back empty.<\/p>\n Lucille writes them now.<\/p>\n She and Mom learned their letters from the same teacher in the same country school, and their handwriting is so much alike that I have to look twice.<\/p>\n Last Saturday, I picked up an empty carton off the counter to see whose it was.<\/p>\n It said, Zeller, 1 doz, no charge.<\/p>\n And under that, in the same pencil, she had added:<\/p>\n Come for dinner Sunday. No excuses.<\/p>\n He came.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first thing I noticed was the quiet. Forty laying hens are never quiet at two in the afternoon. There\u2019s always one bragging about an egg, and three more arguing … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53048,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53047\/revisions\/53048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere wasn\u2019t a hen in the run.<\/p>\n
\nAunt Lucille met me at the kitchen door. She had on yellow rubber gloves and one of Mom\u2019s aprons. Behind her, the kitchen smelled like bleach instead of coffee.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou sold them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nShe set the envelope on the kitchen table and squared it with the edge.<\/p>\nYou Know Your Classic TV<\/h3>\n