Seventy-Four

SEVENTY-FOUR

Arthritis throbbed as Wes Frost sifted feed among the chickens. The birds looked up at him between their frantic pecking with absent, dispassionate eyes.

Food, those black peepers said. Nothing else. Food.

He rounded up their eggs, placed them in a basket and whisked them inside. He returned with a butcher’s knife.

The Rottweiler growled and barked at the end of its chain, furthered its arc in the dirt as it skidded back and forth. “Shut up, dog,” he said.

Wes set his eye on one of the fatter hens and upended her. A single brown feather lodged under the collar of his shirt. He stretched her neck against the cinderblock and envied the bird its simple thoughts, its lack of fear.

Severed the head. Set the bird to run blind. Watched it fall.

Wes plucked it bare.

He cleaned his hands in the upstairs bathroom, whilst listening to the record playing down the hall. Wes looked at himself in the mirror, drew a single feather from his collar and set it beside his razor.

Down