The Damages by Leslie Schultz

I don’t make cakes much any more, but it’s Jenny’s birthday today, so I pull down the brown-glazed ceramic bowl with the blue stripes around the rim.  I add the softened butter to sugar, lemon, and vanilla, and mix them hard, holding the bowl against my hip.  Held this way, it feels like a garden pot, and that gets me to thinking about how nice it will be to smell the wet earth again, to hang laundry outdoors, to pack away these heavy, scratchy sweaters.

I go to the refrigerator for a couple of eggs.  They have fine cream-colored domes, heavy with the yolks inside.  These are fresh from our own hens.  Somehow or other, John always manages to keep them laying through the winter.  I add the flour and baking powder, then pour it into a greased pan and begin work on the frosting.  None of that out-of-the-can stuff in my kitchen.  More butter and sugar, more vanilla.  A splash of yellow food coloring and lemon juice.  It’s been so grey lately that I’ll make the cake sunny.  Sometimes I think I would have enjoyed working in a bakery, tying a different design every day.  But then, I don’t think they use such fresh ingredients.

We’ve been keeping chickens ever since we got married, back in 1953.  The only setback we had was that awful time.  August of 1960.  The heat had been unbroken since early July.  The corn looked scorched where it stood, and it seemed you couldn’t draw a breath.  That’s what I remember most – the feel of salt on my skin and the hunger for a cool breath of air.

That terrible day, I had told the little ones, just Ernie and Betty then, to play outside.  It was so hot in that kitchen, and I had to bake twelve loaves before noon.  One good thing about a farm is how safe it is for children, provided they stay in the yard.  And we had Aggie, our Boxer-Shepherd mix.  I had raised her from a puppy – training for motherhood, I’d thought.  I trusted her completely.  She always kept an eye on the kids for me, and barked an alert when a stranger came up the drive.  It eased my mind to have a dog about the place, especially when John had to go to town.

Even outside, the sounds of their high voices irritated me, like the whines and slaps mosquitoes bring.  I remember I was punching down the dough when I heard them screaming.  I flew out of that house like it was on fire, without even wiping my hands.  I can still see the white prints my fingers made when I grabbed Ernie’s shoulders and held him to calm him down.  Betty stood next to him, screaming so I wanted to shake her.  All I could think of was that they had riled a hornet’s nest, or that maybe something had happened to John.  But I couldn’t get anything out of either one of them for at least a minute.  Finally, Ernie pointed toward the chicken coop.

At first, I didn’t see anything unusual.  It seemed a little quieter than normal, but the chickens were feeling the heat, too.  Old Sam, our Bantam rooster, had barely given a peep to greet the dawn that whole week.  Aggie was sitting near the door, guarding the entrance.

I walked closer.  I remember feeling how hard the ground was under my bare feet.  Despite the heat, I felt a cold spot sink into the pit of my stomach, like I’d drunk a big glass of well water way too fast.

Aggie wagged her tail at me, then slumped down, putting her head between her paws and laying her ears low.  Her mouth was streaked with blood.  A few feathers, caked with chicken blood, stuck to the white star on her breast. 

“Get in the house,” I shouted to the children, who had begun to follow me.  I gave Aggie a wide berth, circling around her to reach the door.

It was dim in there, but I could tell at first glance that every last one of my hens was done for.  Sam, too, was simply a limp sack of colored feathers.  I waited a minute, too shocked to even draw a breath, but straining to hear the least sound.  Nothing moved.  For that, I was grateful.  I did not want to have to put any one of them out of their misery.

I spun around and stared at Aggie.  Her muzzle wore a mask of red-brown, glazed with dust.  She hadn’t moved.  She looked as sad as I have ever seen a dog look.  Her great brown eyes watched me beseechingly.  I thought of how she came to us, a squirming bundle of tan and white and brindle patches, how she stretched each morning when she rose from her stack of feed sacks on the kitchen porch, how she wagged her tail politely when I set out her food and water.

I reach out to pet her.  Her tail gave two involuntary thumps that caused the dust to rise, startling me.  I snatched my hand back, turned from her, and ran back to the house.  When I got there, Ernie and Betty were in the kitchen, crying.  I bolted the door, and pulled them fiercely to me.  They quieted, I took them into the bathroom and ran a warm bath.  When they were clean and calm, I installed them at the kitchen table with coloring books and tall glasses of sweet, red Kool-Aid.

John would be home soon.  He would know what to do.  I could see Aggie from the window.  She still hadn’t moved.  I trembled, then looked quietly away, and methodically went back to my baking.

John came in from the fields for lunch.  He was surprised to find the door bolted, but kissed me  and washed.  I didn’t know how to tell him, so I put the children down for a nap and poured him some coffee.  When I had finished, his face crumpled.  Then he stood up so fast his chair knocked over and he reached for the rifle he kept mounted over the kitchen door. 

“Oh, no, John,” I whispered, but I don’t think he heard me.  Wouldn’t have made any difference if he had.  He strode quickly to Aggie, whistled and snapped his fingers for her to come.  She followed him behind the barn, head low, tail not quite dragging.

There was just one crack.  I swear I could feel the bullet pass through my own heart on the way to Aggie’s skull.  John was a good shot.  She wouldn’t have suffered.  But for a long time after the coop was cleared out and hosed down, after John found a new rooster and some Guinea hens from the Greybell place near town, I couldn’t stop thinking about Aggie.  John said she didn’t growl or try to run.  He said it seemed like she knew something had turned in her brain, that she had stepped over a line.  Like she was looking back at us from across a great, black gulf, saying goodbye.

I guess what I can’t forget is how I pulled back my hand from her.  John says I did the right thing.  But I wonder.  That look in her eyes, like she was saying, “I’m still your good dog, aren’t I?”  But I turned my back on her and ran.

Well, Jenny and her kids will be here any minute.  It is hard to believe that forty years ago today I gave birth to my youngest.  I’m glad that she stayed close to home, just a couple of mailboxes down the road.  She and Grant have 600 acres, plus his job at the cannery.  Their son Cory is off to college next fall. 

Ernie made it back from Vietnam, but he was never the same.  He had terrible nightmares, but he would never talk about them.  I guess he didn’t have that killer instinct, but they made him a soldier anyway.  Ernie drove his motorcycle into a concrete retaining wall one wet night, after spending all evening with his buddies at the tavern.  They ruled it an accident, but I’ve never been sure. 

Betty won the $1 million seller award last year, and now she’s talking about starting her own agency.  Makes me sad to see so much farmland for sale, how it slips through the fingers of the families who’ve farmed all these years.   At least I can be happy that my Betty is making good commissions.

Raising a family is filled with danger.  One minute, it’s as though your children are poking their tiny beaks through the shell, lying there all wet and limp with the effort.  The next they’re flying off somewhere.  You don’t know where.  You just hope they know.  No matter what you do, you can’t keep them safe.  Damage is inevitable.  All you can do is hold them in your heart.