Ransom's Rooster

The boy’d been born while his father was off in Germany, and his mother had named him Larry Ragsdale and left it at that. When he’d gotten old enough to realize that all his brothers had middle names while he’d been left out somehow, he’d asked her what she meant by it all. “Well,” she’d said, thinking about it, but not too hard, “I guess I plum forgot.” However disappointing this answer might have been, he finally found it didn’t matter as most everyone just called him “boh.” Most every grown-up anyway.1

Today, there’d be no names for sure. He’d come out with his father to Grandpa Ransom’s while his younger brothers got to stay at home with his mother. His father and Ransom’d have no nonsense, here. No coddling. Just “boh.” That was good enough.2

As soon as they got here, they’d immediately sat round the kitchen table at the front of Ransom’s three-room shotgun house and commenced “visitin.” A brown jar of Garrett sat on the tabletop, and it’d been “I ain’t seen cousin thus-and-such in awhile,” spit, spit, “You still got them bluegums cuttin pulp wood cross the way?” spit, spit, for a good half hour now. The boy didn’t know how much more of it he could take.3

One of the best creeks in the county snaked through the woods out back. It had high clay banks like little cliffs to jump off and big logs fallen across it you walk over like bridges. One summer, he and his brother Thomas had dug out a sort of underground fort in one of its red clay banks that had a whole network of passages, tunnels, and little hideaways like the burrow of some giant rabbit. They’d had so much fun that no amount of tongue-lashing over the clay in their hair or on their clothes could douse their enthusiasm. Maybe it was still out there, and even if not, he could always pet Grandpa Ransom’s horses, or chase them, depending on his mood.4

But the rooster…5

Just as he’d finally decided enough was enough, and he was bound for green grass and tadpoles outside, an image of the evil bird flashed into his head. No sooner had his feet hit the floor than he’d pulled them back into his chair and sat on them. He thought better of that too, though, when Ransom’s eyes settled on him. He slid his feet off the chair and let them dangle.6

The old man had snuff all packed in one cheek like a pocket gopher, and he didn’t say a word, just leaned back in his chair and spit into a glass. Something in Ransom’s short bulk, his round, bald head, and his jaw all bulged with tobacco reminded the boy of a bulldog he’d seen sleeping in the sun once. The dog wasn’t mean, he’d been told, and there was no need to be scared of it, and yet, something in the way it had watched him with its lazy eyes promised him that if it had a mind, it could get mean real quick.7

“What ya doin in here, boh?” Ransom asked. Spit. “Ain’t there something outside to do?”8

“Yessir,” the boy answered, eyes on his feet.9

Ransom had a lot of chickens around the place, guineas and banties and buckeyes, and once he’d had a lot of roosters, but not anymore. Now, he only had one.10

“Well, what ya waitin for, then? No sense sittin round here bored is there?”11

“Nosir,” the boy replied as he stood up.12

“Stay out the creek,” his father called to his back as he opened the door. He let it close behind him without a word. He could have said something to him about not wanting to go out, but that just wouldn’t do. Rooster or no rooster, he was no sissy.13

When he stepped out on the porch, he heard Uncle Ted singing behind the house, some song the boy’s father was always playing on the french harp. Uncle Ted always grinned like he knew something funny no one else did, and he went around humming and singing to himself, never any words, just a long string of “yay, yay, yay, yay.” He wasn’t right in the head, or so the boy had been told.14

He stopped on the front porch and looked left and right across the yard. No rooster. He heard hens cackling over by the well, but that was all.15

He slunk around the side of the house moving as fast and quiet as he could. He decided the woods were the place to go, even if his father’d said to stay out of the creek. That didn’t mean he couldn’t put his hands in it or even his feet and wade around a little, and the rooster…he looked left and right again…the rooster always stayed near the house.16

He felt pretty sure the rooster was the devil. It was sure as red as the devil, and it had spurs on its feet like the devil had spurs on his fork, and they stung when they hit like the devil’s fire must sting. But even if it was the devil, Ransom still loved the thing like another man might love his dog. He’d watch as its spurs went to work on the other roosters, even on some of the hens, and he wouldn’t do a thing to stop it. Sometimes he’d even smile. Then the rooster’d fly up and perch on his knee, and they’d sit there on the porch like nothing had happened, like it hadn’t just kicked some other bird to death, both watching him with their lazy, bulldog eyes. He shivered at the thought.17

He got to the back of the house just as the back door closed. Uncle Ted had gone in, apparently done with whatever he’d been doing outside. He’d left a coke bottle lying in the grass. Maybe he’d just drunk one, or maybe he just liked the bottle and had carried it around with him for awhile. With him, it was hard to say. One of the horses, a big bay, had its head hung over the fence. It watched him as he came up, sweeping flies off its flanks with slow flicks of its tail.18

He knew crossing a barbed wire fence could be a tricky business, but he had to cross the pasture to get to the woods, and the gate lay on the far side of the yard over where he’d heard the hens clucking. No sense chancing it. He had just settled on what he thought was a good spot to cross and was bending down to pull the wires farther apart so he could slip through when he heard a sound that made his blood run cold. Cackling again. Only not from the other side of the yard. Now it came from right behind him.19

He turned and found himself face to face with a dragon. The dragon was a big Rhode Island Red rooster. He thought it must be about the biggest chicken in the whole world. It had it’s head cocked over on one side, the way all chickens will do, only this one looked like it was thinking, considering its first move, wondering what was the best way to come at him.20

He lunged for the coke bottle just as the rooster started for him. Usually, everything became a blur of kicking yellow feet and flapping red wings before he even knew the thing was near him, but this time, by some miracle, he got to the bottle before the rooster got to him. 21

He threw it, not thinking, not planning on anything, and God (or something else) must have been watching because he heard the bottle connect with a dull thunk. The sound echoed inside the empty bottle as it hit the grass, and the rooster fell beside it, lying still. Too still.22

He’d hit it square in the head. What was the chance of that? Relief washed over him like a wave, but it was short lived. He nudged the rooster with his foot. It lay on the ground, not so much as a twitch. Realization struck him like a bucket of cold water in the face.23

He’d killed it. He’d killed Grandpa Ransom’s pet rooster. 24

He looked up at the horse, and he knew his face must have been begging for help, for some miracle from God, from anything. The horse just stood there flicking flies with its tail and staring at him with flat, indifferent eyes as if to say, “Tough break, kid.”25

He remembered that Ransom had gotten the bay to replace another horse that’d died in the spring. Died. Sure. Died was too soft a word. 26

Ransom had hired a crew of black men to cut pulp wood across the road, and he’d told them to have it all finished up by that afternoon. He’d ridden over to check on their progress after dinner and had just come back into the yard when something spooked his horse. It’d danced backwards, and he’d pulled the reins to try and steady it, but the horse jerked it’s head up and caught him right in the face. It had quieted down on its own after that, and Ransom had just sat there for a minute with a busted lip and blood dripping from his nose. Then, real calm and careful, he’d climbed down and gone off behind the house, leaving the horse standing in the yard. He’d come back with a board in his hand, and just as calm and careful as he’d gotten down, he’d climbed back up. By now, the horse had its head down low and one of its back feet curled the way a horse will do when it’s standing at ease. Ransom raised the board above his head and slammed it down with all his strength right between the horse’s ears. There came a crack like a gunshot, and the horse toppled forward, Ransom still atop it. He’d gotten up, wiped the blood off his face with his hand, walked over to the house, leaned the board against the wall by the door, and gone inside, leaving the horse lying dead in the yard. He’d never said one word all the while.27

Now, the bay horse across the fence blinked at him like it knew what he was thinking. “Better you than me, kid.” Swish, swish, went its tail.28

The boy’s first instinct told him to run. Where to it didn’t say. Somewhere, anywhere. Anywhere but here. But he quickly realized that idea was no good. If he just ran off, someone would find the wretched thing. The grown-ups all knew he’d been outside. They’d figure…29

The back door creaked as someone started to open it, and he felt like a robber must feel when he’s crawling out a back window with a sack of loot over his shoulder, and he hears a police siren in the distance. The door stopped a quarter of the way open, and then closed again. He heard voices inside. Whoever had started to open the door had been called back. Uncle Ted from the sound of it. He was calling something back to whoever’d stopped him, but it wouldn’t be long before he finished saying whatever needed saying and came back outside. The boy didn’t wait for that to happen.30

He snatched the rooster up by the neck and slid through the middle of the fence without even stopping to think. He didn’t bother to pull the wires apart and got a big whole ripped in his shirt for his trouble. He set off across the pasture like a rabbit does when dogs are after it complete with frenzied zigzagging and occasional leaps forward that were longer than he was tall. He heard the door creak open behind him, but didn’t dare look back. He held the rooster against his chest so whoever’d come out of the house couldn’t see it. It felt like it weighed about a half a thousand pounds, and its head flopped around like an empty stirrup on a bucking horse.31

The woods! The creek! They beckoned to him like a lifeline must to a drowning man, and when he finally entered the shadow of the trees, he felt very like he’d been pulled onto the deck of a ship from a wild, stormy sea.32

He looked back over his shoulder and saw someone standing behind the house. They had a hand up to their eyes as they peered his way, trying to figure out what he was doing. He couldn’t tell who it was at this distance, and he didn’t stay to find out.33

Onwards towards the creek! Through all weathers! Come hell or high water! Until he got there, he might as well have a lit stick of dynamite in his hands.34

When he’d finally thrown the infernal thing off a good sized bluff into the creek some half a mile from the house, he thought the sun suddenly shone a bit brighter and the birds broke out into louder songs. Storm clouds retreated from the sky, and the drums of the approaching enemy hordes fell silent. He took in a deep breath and let it back out real slow. The world (and his life), it turned out, weren’t ending after all.35

As he got back to the edge of the woods, he heard his father calling, and he crossed the pasture at a canter. He came through the gate this time, passing the bay horse as he went. It stood right where he’d left it, head over the fence and tail swishing, but now it had one ear up like it found the whole business mildly surprising and maybe vaguely interesting.36

The boy found his father standing out front with her arms crossed as he watched him come up. Uncle Ted was over by the truck humming to himself and swinging his recovered coke bottle. Ransom stood by the front door with his thumbs in his pockets, and his cheek still packed with Garrett.37

“We been callin you,” his father chided. “Time to go.”38

“What you go tearing off cross the pasture that way for when I come out the door, boh?” Ransom asked.39

“Just runnin, sir,” he replied, eyes on feet again.40

Spit. “Just runnin, eh?” He looked around the yard. “Wonder where that rooster’s got to? Didn’t see him out back.”41

The boy suddenly found it very prudent to follow his father toward the truck.42

“Hey, boh. C’mere.”43

His heart had just stopped. He knew it. He turned to see Ransom’s lazy, bulldog eyes on him. The boy came back slowly, each step leaden and stiff like those of a man climbing up to a hangman’s scaffold. He stopped a few feet away from the old man, and Ransom began digging in his pocket. He felt every eye in the world fixed on him. All motion in the universe had ceased save for that of Ransom’s hand as it rooted in his pocket. What horrors might it produce? The boy could barely muster the strength to look.44

“Here ya are.” Ransom said, holding something out to him. His hand took it without his brain telling it to. He turned his hand over and looked at the object resting on his palm. 45

A nickel. Not a ticking bomb. Not a live copperhead. Just a nickel. A shiny, new nickel, glistening like a gem in the sun.46

“Come along now,” his father called from over by the truck.47

He suddenly felt like he weighed less than the air around him, like he might start floating. He looked up at Ransom.48

The old man winked at him.49

“Get along now, boh.” Spit. “Stay outta trouble, y’here?”50

“Yessir,” he said and put the nickel in his pocket with a trembling hand.51