No Use Crying, Charles Venable

Mom always told me the chickens were harmless—they wouldn’t hurt me if I didn’t hurt them—but our dog never drew close to them. He circled around the flock with his tail between his legs. Normally, he followed me everywhere, but not into the chicken pen.

I understood why when I got inside. The smell of shit and raw dirt clung to the corners of the coiled wire, and loose feathers tickled my nose as they rose in a stray sunbeam. I sneezed, and the chickens scattered with squeals and squawks. They found their way around my legs, through the door, and out into a half-circle of clucking and pecking around the door. My dog fled, abandoned me to deal with the birds alone.

Inside the pen, the rooster pranced back and forth, head cocked to the side, one eye watching me as I tiptoed through the mud to the wooden boxes of damp straw where the chickens laid their eggs. His crest fell back, and he crowed into the air—it was half-past noon.

Most of the chickens fled the pen when the door opened for them. They pawed at the ground for bugs or grass or whatever chickens actually eat. The boxes were left alone, with two or three shit-stained eggs settled in the straw, but one hen always remained in her box, lying on her eggs. As I approached her, all her feathers fluffed up, and she honked at me, like a goose. “Just let me have them,” I sighed. I reached for her, and she pecked me, a blur of red and orange and white and black. I drew my hand back; it didn’t hurt. Getting pecked never hurt: it was like being poked with a stick—a surprise, a nuisance. It never hurt.

She never pecked my mom. I watched her lift the hen’s butt into the air and steal the eggs right out from under her. The hen never stopped honking and squawking, but she never pecked her. When I didn’t reach a second time, she relaxed; feathers settled, honking became cooing.

When the hen relaxed, I reached for her again. I did it slow, like Mom used to, until my fingers brushed feathers and warmth covered my hand. She was like a bubble of warm, tickling water. Beneath her, I felt the curving shells of two eggs. I grabbed both, squeezed gently between my fingers.

The sting of her beak chased the warmth away as soon as my hand escaped her feathers. She squawked again, and one of the eggs tumbled to the ground. The shell shattered, splattering my legs with albumen. The yolk punctured on the jagged edge of the shell; I watched it spill out, melt into the mud and chicken shit.

I imagined my mother standing in the door of the pen, tutting: Now look what you’ve done.

CHARLES VENABLE is a storyteller from the Southeastern United States. He believes stories and poems are about “getting there,” not “being there,” and he enjoys those tales that take their time getting to the point. About his story, “No Use Crying,” Venable says, “I considered it kismet that I saw IHLR’s PhotoFinish contest with its ekphrastic prompt at the same time I was caring for my aunt’s chickens. Seeing how relaxed the chickens were around my aunt when she showed me how to collect eggs compared to the anxiety and aggression the chickens showed when I tried the chore alone made me think of those who’ve lost loved ones. We’ve all known someone who left behind a pet stressed by the sudden change in ownership, but farm animals are rarely included in that list. There’s so much tension in the image of a broken egg; I wanted to capture that silent tension by comparing it to a recent, sudden loss.”