Read Online Fresh Eggs by Rob Levandoski - Free Book Online

died.”
    â€œI lost my dad when I was fifteen,” Norman says. Afraid that either he or Calvin will start crying, he quickly gets back to the subject. “Gallinipper Foods is a big family. In order to compete and grow, everything’s got to be copacetic. Copacetic in the corporate offices. Copacetic at the hatcheries and brooding farms. Copacetic at the layer operations. Copacetic top to bottom. Up and down the line.” Now he reaches down and shakes Calvin’s knee, demonstrating the depth of his friendship and concern. “Rhea’s a sweet girl. But it’s obvious everything’s not copacetic with her. Ben Hemphill told me she was a brat the entire tour. So it isn’t just kicking the chicken tubs, Cal. Maybe Rhea needs help.”
    â€œIf I thought she needed professional help, I’d take her,” Calvin says.
    â€œMaybe I’m way out of line, Cal, but I don’t think she likes chickens.”
    The spot between Rhea’s nippie-nips is not only itching, it’s burning, as if her heart was lighting matches.
    â€œJust the opposite,” Calvin tells Norman Marek. “She loves chickens. Thinks they’re all pets. Last summer she rescued one of the spent hens from the manure pits. She calls her Miss Lucky Pants.”
    Norman’s hands are wringing the sweat out of the steering wheel. “Girl thing, I suppose.”
    Rhea reaches under the bib of her overalls and works her fingers down the front of her blue turtleneck. She scratches the spot between her nippie-nips that’s itching and burning. She feels something. At first she’s afraid it’s a spider. But it’s too fuzzy to be a spider. And it’s not crawling away. Or biting her fingers. She claws at it. It seems to be stuck right there in her skin. She pinches it. Yanks it. Cries out.
    Her father twists. “What’d you do?”
    Rhea pulls her hand from her turtleneck and examines the soft and fuzzy thing pinched between her fingers. It’s nothing but a tiny white feather. “I had a feather growing between my nippie-nips,” she says.
    â€œBehave,” her father says.

Eight
    The same afternoon they return from Bob Gallinipper’s corporate get-together in Gombeen, Calvin Cassowary sits his daughter down on the picnic table in the backyard. “I know the layer houses frighten you,” he begins. “They’re frightening places—if you let your imagination get in the way.”
    Rhea has her elbows on her knees and her hands under her chin. She is watching Captain Bates trot after Miss Lucky Pants in the overgrown vegetable garden next to the garage. In the past the little flock wouldn’t be allowed to roam free this late in the spring. Once the garden was planted, they’d be confined to their coop and yard to protect the tomatoes, squash, and green beans from their dawn-to-dusk pecking. But with half of her mother in Heaven, and the other half in the Tuttwyler cemetery, her father says there’s no time for a garden. So Captain Bates and his hens have all summer to be the free birds of the jungle the Creator intended. “I don’t like the cages,” she tells her father.
    Calvin drags his forearm across his sweaty face. This difficult talk with his daughter reminds him of the difficult talks he used to have with his own father, about things like sex and a young man’s responsibility to his family, his country and his God. “I know.”
    â€œThe chickens don’t like them either.”
    â€œWe can’t have 300,000 thousand hens running around loose.”
    â€œWhy do we have to have 300,000 hens at all?”
    â€œBecause we’re chicken farmers, Rhea. It’s what we do.”
    â€œMaybe we should do something else.”
    Calvin scratches the top of her head. Her hair is the same deep red-brown as Jeanie’s now. “When you have a farm, you have to farm.” For some reason his mind