Carver by Marilyn Nelson

Author:Marilyn Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press

Chicken-Talk

1909: So many chickens were missing,

and Washington so hounded Carver’s heels,

that Carver bought replacements secretly

and smuggled them into the poultry yard.

In 1910, seven hundred sixty-five

were unaccounted for, and Washington

sent Carver almost daily telegrams

tallying all the missing. Folks in town

said they were “being liberated by ol’ John.”

They told about how “back in slavery days …”

The night was as dark as a barracks

on Goree Island. John stepped to the doorway,

and stepped back. Mariah held the baby close,

her soft palm over his mouth. “He out there?”

John leaned into the night, his face

tasting its breezes. He looked back

and shook his head. He clutched his juju,

looked at his woman, and clenched his eyes

in a prayer to the Ancestors. He ran out.

The gate hinge creaked, but John slipped in

through an inches-wide gap. No feather stirred

as he entered the sleeping coop, until

a stupid biddy squawked warning

and the flock burst with alarm.

John stood, shushing.

“It ain’t the fox, fool; it’s me, your friend.”

The melee fell to murmuring.

John’s fist was under a fat warm hen

when a voice rose in the yard.

“Yes, I did remember to load it. Will you

get on back in the house?

(That damned fox!)”

Uh-oh, John, you in bad trouble.

He gone to get you this time.

You say no?

As Master’s boots crunched toward the door,

a faint voice trebled inside.

“Who’s in there?”

Master took another step.

He heard the voice again.

Then another, another.

“I say who’s in there?”

He cocked his shotgun, stepped again.

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.

Master just went on home,

according to John’s children and John’s

children’s children and their children and theirs. And John

never told on Brer Fox.

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