The Chicken That Crossed the Road

Miguel looked across the school campus. He spotted two boys, second graders he guessed, playing soccer with a foursquare ball. He could think of nothing more fun than challenging them. But no, he was in sixth grade and had a bigger challenge: that boring English assignment. Why did his English teacher torture him—and the entire class—with such a stupid topic: “The Most Courageous Person I’ve Known”? 

He groaned at the painful thought of writing two full pages about a person who didn’t exist. He couldn’t think of anyone, and this included his parents, who had done anything more heroic than help some people jumpstart their car. Did that make them courageous? He snickered at this trivial act of kindness. His father was an accountant who worked with figures all day, and his mother sold real estate.

He pushed a hand into the nearly empty potato-chip bag and brought out crumbs. He threw them into his mouth and rummaged through his brain. Who could he write about? His grandparents? They just sat in recliners all day. His aunts and uncles? They were lazy as old dogs. He knew of a girl at school whose father had jumped in the river to save a drowning boy. That’s courage, he acknowledged. But he didn’t know the man.

At twelve, Miguel just wanted to be a boy. He wanted to play, get his homework done as quickly as possible, and eat. He dropped his potato-chip bag into a trash can, licked his fingers, and concluded that he didn’t know any courageous people.

He left the school grounds, then reached into his pocket for a baby Snickers, a candy bar left over from a not particularly profitable Halloween. As he was ripping open the wrapper with his teeth, he heard someone behind him call, “Hey.”

Miguel turned. It was his classmate, Robert. At first glance, Robert appeared to be chewing mud. Then Miguel realized that he too must’ve been devouring leftover Halloween candy. 

Robert hurried to catch up with Miguel, who hadn’t bothered to wait. He didn’t really like Robert, but Robert acted as if they were best buds. After all, weren’t they both getting Cs in English?

“I got to show you something,” Robert said, after swallowing his muddy candy. His cheeks were pink, his hair tousled as if he had been wrestling on someone’s lawn.

“Wipe your mouth,” Miguel ordered.

Robert wiped his mouth with a thumb.

“What?” Miguel asked. “What do you want to show me?”

“I found a chicken.”

“A chicken,” Miguel remarked slowly. He was curious. “Where?”

Robert pointed toward the alley.

Miguel assumed that the chicken had escaped from a yard. “So?”

“So? So let’s go see it.”

“What are we going to do with a chicken?” Miguel asked.

“Just look at it—that’s all.”

Miguel sighed. He had been enjoying his candy in solitude and now Robert had ruined the moment. What did he want them to do? Pull the chicken’s feathers off and roast it over a fire? He shrugged his shoulders. “OK,” he said. “But you better not be messing with me.”

In the alley, sure enough, there was a white chicken, plump as a football, plucking at the guts of a dirty pillow that lay on a pile of garbage.

The two boys stared at the chicken. The chicken straightened up and stared at them. It jumped from the pile, fluttering its wings. Then it returned to poking at the pillow.

“Why’s it eating that?” Robert asked.

Miguel had visited the Little Farm at the city park and was aware that chickens would gobble anything they could get down their throats. Then, like soup, an idea bubbled in his mind.

“Help me,” Miguel said. He grabbed the dirty pillowcase, handed it to Robert, then told him to hold it open.

“Why?”

“There’s no time for ‘why.’ Just do it.”

As Miguel slowly approached the chicken, it lifted its head, took a few gangly steps, and clucked.

“Come on, little chickie,” cooed Miguel.

The chicken clucked again.

“Come on,” he repeated.

The chicken moved slowly, a grave mistake, because Miguel was quick. He grabbed it by the neck and held on, despite the chicken’s fluttering efforts to get loose. The chicken spread and retracted its wings like two folding fans. When it finally calmed down, accepting its fate, Miguel stuffed it into the pillowcase and sloppily tied the end closed.

“What are you going to do with it?” Robert asked.

“Sell it,” Miguel answered. For a moment, he felt like a fox, the most devious of all animals. He would sell this strutting piece of poultry to the neighbor down the block, Mr. Shafer, a retired railroad man. Mr. Shafer had once kept chickens in his yard. But those chickens, Miguel recalled, were long gone.

“I think it’s wrong,” said Robert, with a look of anger. “I’m outta here.”

“Go, then!” Miguel bristled.

Robert, head down, walked out of the alley. Before leaving, he turned and shouted at Miguel. “You’re gonna mess up!” he cried. “I know it!”

Yeah right, Miguel thought. But he felt queasy at Robert’s pronouncement. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, maybe it was just wrong. Nevertheless, he picked up the pillowcase. He hefted it with one hand — the chicken was surprisingly heavy. Maybe it had been eating rocks. He had read on the Internet that a man had been carving a turkey — to Miguel, a turkey was just a big chicken with an ugly thing hanging from its neck — when a diamond ring rolled out of the stuffing. With only a twinge of guilt, Miguel hoisted his catch over his shoulder, then started toward home.

Mr. Shafer was in his front yard, tinkering with a truck. The hood was up and some of the engine parts were set on newspaper in the driveway. A red chest of Craftsman tools was perched on the fender.

“Mr. Shafer,” Miguel called from the bottom of the driveway. He didn’t dare set foot on the old man’s property without permission.

Mr. Shafer turned, with a socket wrench in his hand, and slowly offered up a gray smile. “What?” he asked. His eyes were flat as coins and his face streaked with grease.

“I got a chicken,” Miguel announced. He held up the pillowcase, which began to sway from the chicken’s clawing struggle.

Mr. Shafer narrowed his right eye suspiciously. A large man, he wasn’t anyone to fool with. He had a temper when solicitors knocked on his door, and would sometimes yell at the neighborhood kids to stop making noise.

“It’s a nice chicken,” Miguel added. “It’s really young.”

Mr. Shafer growled something that Miguel couldn’t decipher, then wiped his oily hands on the funny pages of the newspaper. He hiked up his pants and walked toward Miguel, saying, “You selling chickens now, boy? Last year it was Girl Scout Cookies.”

Miguel ignored this remark. “My grandma wants me to get rid of it,” he lied. “She can’t eat chicken anymore.” The words sounded lame once they exited his mouth, but there it was, a story for Mr. Shafer to weigh on his own.

“Why do you think I need a chicken?” Mr. Shafer asked.

Miguel searched his mind for an answer. “Because they’re nice?”

Mr. Shafer’s chuckling wobbled his belly. He peered into the pillowcase then cradled the chicken in one hand. “She don’t seem very big.”

Miguel looked into the pillowcase as well and was immediately saddened by the hen gazing up at him. His heart sank. Had he become so unfeeling that he would deliver an innocent hen to a man who could do only one thing with it? For a moment, he imagined the hen as a fluffy little chick, temporarily out of harm’s way. Then he pushed aside his misgiving. “Nah,” he said, “it weighs pretty good.” He rubbed his arm to make the point, as if it had been a great effort to carry the hefty hen.

Mr. Shafer offered Miguel two dollars.

“Just two dollars?” Miguel squeaked. His Adam’s apple went up and down as he swallowed. “It’ll make a nice pet.”

“Three then,” Mr. Shafer bargained.

“OK,” said Miguel, reluctantly.

Mr. Shafer grabbed the pillowcase from Miguel. He pushed one large, veined hand into his pocket and pulled out three crumpled bills. He deposited them into Miguel’s outstretched palm then sauntered back up his driveway. He tossed the pillowcase into the bed of the truck as if it were a bag of aluminum cans.

What have I done? Miguel moaned to himself. The ole guy’s really gonna cook it! He turned and ran along the block toward his own house, trying not to think of the defenseless hen looking up from inside the pillowcase.

Miguel sat on the front porch, catching his breath. Then he recalled Robert’s words: “You’re gonna mess up!” He hadn’t cried for at least a year, but now he felt his eyes growing moist. When tears began to roll down his cheek, he let them fall. Yes, they were salty and, yes, he had done a bad, bad thing.

But Miguel’s sadness turned to fear when he saw his mother’s car pulling into the driveway. He had completely forgotten his promise to vacuum the living room and tidy up the bathroom — as soon as he got home from school. He scurried across the porch on his hands and knees, thus avoiding detection as the car squeaked to a halt. Then he stood up and quickly unlocked the door, sliding inside like a burglar. He immediately went to the hallway closet and pulled out the vacuum cleaner. He plugged it in and turned it on. Minutes later, his mother came in, lugging two bags of groceries.

“You could’ve helped me,” she said, putting the groceries down on the coffee table. She kicked off her shoes in the living room; without the high heels, she was no taller than Miguel.

“Sorry,” Miguel lied again. “I didn’t hear you.” He turned off the vacuum cleaner, pushed the vacuum cleaner hose aside, then carried the bags of groceries into the kitchen, where he began unpacking their contents. He stopped when his hands discovered a pre-roasted barbecue-flavored chicken, its plastic container fogged from heat.

“Oh,” he said, picturing the little white hen on Mr. Shafer’s kitchen table. He swallowed, tasting a spit-like lozenge of guilt.

Miguel gathered the cans of tomatoes and plastic bottles of fruit juice in his arms and carried them to the pantry. When he opened the pantry door, he was greeted by a staunch row of soup cans — chicken noodle. He closed his eyes and imagined Mr. Shafer dunking a plucked chicken into a large pot. Some of the neighbors said he had been mean to his wife. No wonder he lived alone.

His mother came into the kitchen. “I see you didn’t clean the bathroom like I told you,” she remarked. She made a face at him, then opened the refrigerator. The light bulb brightened her cheeks, but her mood remained frighteningly dark.

“I’ll do it right now,” Miguel chimed. He hurried to the bathroom, where he sprinkled the basin with cleanser then scrubbed it with a sponge. He sprayed the mirror and wiped it clean but didn’t like what he saw there. He didn’t like himself. He was hateful. He would never like himself again.

“I’ll save you,” he whispered, the mist of his words clinging briefly on the glass. Then he looked at the toilet. It seemed pretty clean to him. Still, he flushed it twice before returning to the kitchen.

In the time he had been cleaning the bathroom, Miguel’s mother had received a phone call. The call, he could see, had put his mother in a really bad mood. 

“I thought I told you to set the table,” she snapped.

She hadn’t, but Miguel wasn’t about to argue. He set the table, filled three water glasses, then returned to the living room. He put the vacuum cleaner away, then perched nervously on the edge of the couch, praying that the little white hen was OK.

At six-fifteen, his father arrived, his tie undone beneath his shadowy beard.

“Hi, Dad,” Miguel said.

“Hey, son,” said his father in return. He set his briefcase on the coffee table and, with Miguel on his heels, went to the kitchen.

“Hey, Cutie,” he said, hazarding a smile.

Miguel’s mother, however, remained sullen. Both father and son knew enough not to ask, “What’s the matter?” The family sat down for dinner. Miguel did his best to eat the drumstick his mother shoved onto his plate. But he couldn’t stop imagining the little hen in the pillowcase without a leg. I’m terrible, he moaned in his heart. I’m bad.

“The deal fell through,” his mother remarked as she stabbed at a coin-shaped carrot. “The buyers backed out. I knew they would get cold feet!”

Real estate was a frequent topic at the family dinner table: home buyers, mortgage companies, termite inspectors, landscapers and decorators — all of whom regularly failed her.

Miguel’s father lifted his water glass. “Don’t worry,” he said.

Miguel watched the fork in his mother’s hand. It looked deadly.

“I mean,” his father corrected. “You’ll sell the house. You’ll get multiple offers — you’ll see.”

Miguel’s mother continued cutting savagely through the chicken breast, a beastly slaughter of bones on her plate. 

Miguel’s father looked sympathetically at his son. 

To keep himself from speaking, Miguel stuffed his mouth with mashed potatoes.

They ate in silence until Miguel, testing the air, announced, “I think I’m going to get an A in English.”

“That’s great, son,” his father said, smiling. “You’re good at writing.”

“And I’m good for nothing,” Miguel’s mother remarked. She stared at her husband, then her son, and then jabbed a cherry tomato with her fork. “For what we have to pay for these,” she mumbled, “they should taste better!”

“But, Mom, it’s true,” volunteered Miguel. “It’s like Dad said. The house will sell. People need a place to live.” But he had to agree about the tomatoes, which were flavorless and hard.

After dinner Miguel cleaned up the kitchen, grinding the chicken bones and gristle in the disposal. He felt a little dizzy watching the soapy water spiral down the drain, bearing scraps of food. His mom was right — it hadn’t been a dinner worth eating. After he wiped down the table with a clean sponge, he went into the living room. The clock on the wall read 7:30. He told his father that he was going to see Robert for a bit.

“This late?” his father asked. He was sitting in front of the television, which was muted but showing the Golden State Warriors playing the Los Angeles Lakers. His mother was on the phone in the den, with the door closed. In this age of foreclosures, selling real estate was a 24/7 occupation.

“Yeah, I gotta borrow a book,” he explained. He said that he would be back soon, then slipped into the hoodie that hung on a peg near the front door and left. He paused on the porch for a few moments, his hands fingering the greasy bills in his pocket. They smelled, he thought, of motor oil.

“I’ll save you,” he found himself saying, his breath a white mist in the glare of the porch light. He sprinted down the porch and hurried in the direction of Mr. Shafer’s house. For the first time, he thought about all the “for sale” signs on lawns — one at every third or fourth house. Where were people going, and why? He imagined his mother in the den, making phone calls to clients who sometimes picked up but mostly just let their voicemail take messages that they never returned. There were plenty of houses for sale, but where were the buyers? He felt sorry for his mom, who was often disappointed but still kept trying. Now he sort of understood. Could she be the courageous one after all?

Miguel continued along the sidewalk, security lights coming on at his approach. Dogs barked, and two cats crossed his path in a great hurry. Cars passed, their cool silvery headlights prowling the curbs. Then two boys, thin as vampires, emerged from behind a tree and stood in his way.

Miguel stiffened with fear. He could tell that neither boy was a friend. One was frowning. The other smiled evilly.

“What are you doin’ here?” snarled the taller one.

“I’m going home,” Miguel said weakly.

“You ain’t goin’ home!” the other boy sneered, “I know where you live.”

Miguel looked more closely at this boy. Something long and bloody seemed to be wriggling from his lower lip. Miguel realized it was a red whip of licorice, slowly disappearing into the boy’s mouth as he chewed.

Miguel recognized them both now. They were a year ahead of him, seventh graders, at the middle school this fall. He swallowed and spoke. “I mean, I’m going somewhere else, then home.”

The tree above them filled with wind. Three black birds lifted, each one crying a deathly cry as it flew away.

“Why don’t you try to hit me?” the taller boy dared.

Miguel took a step backwards. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

“You’re scared, huh?” taunted the boy. “Tell me!” he crowed. “You scared?” Even in the dark, this boy’s front teeth shone white.

“Nah, I just don’t want to fight. You’re bigger.”

In the next moment, the shorter of the two boys pushed a hand into Miguel’s front pocket and brought out the three dollars from Mr. Shafer. The boy stuffed them into his own pocket, skipped backwards and, along with his friend, disappeared down the street. 

The tree above rained down a few leaves. A dog barked in the distance. A car alarm went on and no one seemed to care. Miguel was breathing fast. He had to admit to himself that he really had been scared. He swatted the tears from his eyes. I hate them, he told himself. They’re bullies.

He swallowed again, tasting a terrible truth. The last time he’d gotten into a fight had been in third grade. He had not won that battle. Thinking of the distance remaining to Mr. Shafer’s house, he lost the courage to continue. He turned and started home, head down, his thoughts as dark as the unlit street.

Within minutes he was back home. But he didn’t go inside. He stood on the front lawn, bathed in the glow of the porchlight. Even behind the closed curtains, his living room seemed brightly lit. The far window — his mother’s office — looked dim by comparison. Mom and Dad, they work hard, he told himself, they’re good parents. But he didn’t feel like a good son. He had sold a chicken to a mean man.

“I’m sorry I did it,” he said, taking a deep breath. When he exhaled, he noticed that the puff of air was shaped like a fist. As he grew angry at himself, his breath came faster. Fist after fist blew from his mouth. “Why am I being a coward?” he asked. He rolled his hands into fists and promised to fight if necessary.

He hurried back in the direction of Mr. Shafer’s house, keeping a careful eye on the shadows. He knew that the boys — those vampires, he thought — were out there in the night. Hiding behind a tree, or throwing rocks at passing cars. Miguel pictured them eating candy stolen from a convenience store, the empty wrappers at their feet.

He arrived at Mr. Shafer’s house then paused on the sidewalk, shivering in the cold night air. He briefly appraised the house, as if he were a potential client ready to snatch up a distressed property. The place was in poor shape, with a lawn chewed up from parked cars and trucks. Part of the wooden fence lay on its side. A bag of aluminum cans, large as an inflatable Santa, stood upright on the cement porch, next to an old sofa.

Miguel walked slowly across the lawn. The living room flashed with the colors of a large-screen television. Miguel heard canned laughter, but Mr. Shafer didn’t join in. Maybe there was nothing funny inside him, Miguel thought. 

Then Miguel heard a cluck, and then a second cluck. Next came a scratching sound, like claws against paper. 

It’s her, he told himself, and felt a sorrowful lump in his throat. He tiptoed over the lawn and leaned his body against the front of the house. He had been shivering with the cold but now he was shuddering from fear. Again, he remembered the essay topic: “The Most Courageous Person I’ve Known.” Did rescuing a chicken from a mean man require courage? 

As his heart pounded, Miguel heard the noise of pounding inside the house. What was Mr. Shafer doing? he wondered. Nailing a bear rug to the wall? Stomping on cockroaches?

Then Miguel saw the hen. One of its legs was tied with plastic twine to the porch rail. How was he going to get her loose? He hadn’t thought to bring a knife. He dropped to all fours and slowly crept across the porch. The concrete felt as cold as ice cubes. Still, he had to do something, even if that something was reckless.

Don’t make a noise, Miguel pleaded silently. Please don’t make a noise. When he reached the hen, he paused. The little chicken stood quietly, as if unaware of the plans for its future. The hen waited patiently for him to untie the knot with his numb fingers, showing more courage than anyone Miguel had ever met.

But the knot wouldn’t come loose. “Come on,” Miguel whispered to himself, then lowered his face to the knot and began to nibble. He nibbled until his teeth, like blunt scissors, finally cut through the twine. He spat out flakes of plastic. Miguel wiped his mouth. Was this an act of courage or was it more like getting rid of shame? The shame of selling the chicken and the shame of facing those two boys whose names he couldn’t remember. He knew their faces from the years when they had gone to his school, but what were their names?

When the pounding inside the house resumed, Miguel lifted the hen into his arms and duck-walked across the porch. After it was safe to stand up again, he realized that he was no longer cold; in fact, he was sweating. He had never really been brave before and now, on a regular night in the middle of the week, he had surprised himself.

“I’m sorry,” he told the hen, squeezing it lightly until it let out a small cluck. Then he walked away from Mr. Shafer’s house, back straight, and crossed the dark, dark road. He had intended to leave the three dollars on the porch, but that was no longer possible. But he could still take the little hen back where he’d found it — the alley — and then go home. It would be all right. Then he would feel like his old self again—a boy, not a thief.

The next morning, Miguel imagined an elderly woman descending from her back porch, with nothing to look forward to but her garden. But she would stop, suddenly, only halfway down the steps. What is that white thing in the yard? A towel from the clothesline? Her heart would flutter and her hands come together in a single clap when the towel moved — the hen! “So there you are, you naughty, naughty girl! I was so worried,” she would say, clucking to herself. “You didn’t cross the road, did you?”