Fowl Eulogies by Lucie Rico

Author:Lucie Rico
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Editions
Published: 2022-09-11T19:39:43+00:00

20

Fernand takes off his shoes at the door, opens the fridge. He looks around, first to his right then to his left, surprised by how quiet the farm is without the animals. When he and Paule kiss each other on the cheek in greeting, Paule can’t look him in the eye. He places his hand on her shoulder.

“How are you?”

Paule picks up a beer. She hasn’t slept, haunted all night by the sound of chickens knocking against her window. It’s not the first time ghostly noises have contaminated her sleep here. She has started to have dreams in which Ma is throwing corpses at her face, and she pissing animal blood.

The surviving chickens have come into the house and are following Paule around. For a minute the humans eye the animals in silence.

“I know this is a difficult time for you, Paule. I’ve come as a friend. To tell you not to worry.”

Fernand holds out a cake. Buckwheat flour and chocolate, baked specially for her. One side is sunken: it is convincingly homemade. Fernand slumps into a chair without taking his eyes off Paule.

She says, “Okay.”

“I don’t know how you’re feeling about all this.”

“Me neither.”

Aval draws up to his mistress. Ever since the incident, he runs around with his head lowered to the left. His physical state is worrying. Paule washes the same knife she used to cut up Uncle’s cherry tart. She suddenly feels very tired and very alone. It comes to her like this:

“I wanted to suggest something, but I don’t know if now’s a good time.”

The last word hangs in the air. Paule places the knife before Fernand.

“What is it?”

“I was going to propose moving to the city with my chickens. Relocating them.”

Fernand’s joy is visible behind his beard. Paule continues.

“We’ll make a farm for them in an apartment building or a townhouse. There are some going for cheap. With a big field outside and our offices next door. I could go home in the evenings to Louis. I won’t be afraid anymore … We’d give the chickens plenty of things to play with. And Louis, he’d know how to build a chicken abode.”

Fernand smiles. “We’d have to increase our stock.”

“Increase?”

“We could keep ten thousand. Eight thousand broilers, two thousand layer hens. And if we hired other writers …”

Paule says to herself, Ten thousand happy chickens, ten thousand chickens who belong to me.

For her colleagues, she will choose people who are like her. They will gather around Ma’s urn and discuss possible writing strategies. We should try a more comic approach this month—we’ve got the material for it. Fidel had a silly fall off the slide! And yesterday’s game of hide-and-seek can be told across multiple biographies from different points of view. Paule thinks of Uncle. He’d say, “Another unnatural thing, Paule. You’re using your past to do who knows what.” She helps herself to a slice of chocolate cake. In the city, would she be able to continue killing the chickens herself?

Fernand continues, “I need to seriously think this over.

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