“I’LL COME BACK and feed you,” I told the chooks treading all over my feet. The straw in the laying boxes held eggs. In one box, a hen hunched, feathers fluffed so her head looked too small for the rest of her.
She pecked my hand, but I pinched a couple of warm eggs, and slipped a cold china one under her.
“Just to fool you for now. After breakfast, I’ll put you under a box and tip a bucket of water over you. The infantile’s finished, school’s been open a week, and Dad’s got the day off.”
“Cluck!” she grumped and pecked me again, just a dull knock really.
Holding the eggs with both hands, I pushed through the jostling chooks, hopping backwards, shoving the gate open with my behind, and the nasty old white rooster flew up.
“Cock-a—Squawk!” My left knee caught him, and I danced, keeping my balance, not dropping the eggs, feeling something squish between my toes. Beak open, wings snatching air, the old rooster looked so silly I laughed, “Serves you right.” The cockerels opened their wings, as if they might have a go at him while he was down, but saw his crazy eye and went for their lives.
Dad took the eggs at the back step. “Don’t think you’re coming inside my kitchen with mucky feet. All over my lino that I’ve only just polished.”
“You have not. You’re still in your pyjamas.”
“So are you.”
“Well, that makes us quits. Can we have them for breakfast, Dad?”
“Just rubbing your feet on the grass won’t do a thing. Put them under the tap; here’s the scrubbing brush.”
I scrubbed the stinky slime between the toes, and wiggled them up and down against the cold water. In the kitchen, Dad was putting on a few bits of coal. “Moan! Moan!” the draught roared because he had the damper wide-open.
Dad filled the kettle, put it on the stove, and went out to have a wash. “The water in the cylinder’s not as warm these mornings,” he said, coming back dressed. “How do you want your egg?”
“Soft, so I can stir it up with bread and butter.”
Sure enough, he rolled his eyes up and said, “Baby food. Have a wash and get dressed. By the time you’ve fed the chooks, breakfast will be ready. You could feed them while you’re collecting the eggs.”
The water out of the hot tap wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t hot either. School hadn’t opened till the weather cooled down. All the long summer, the grownups had said the cold weather would stop the infantile epidemic, but this one had gone on for ages, the worst since 1925, the New Zealand Herald reckoned.
From the barrels in the back shed, I filled a scoop of maize, another of wheat, and scattered it in the run so even the chook without feathers on her neck would have a chance.
“Once the frosts get hard enough, I’ll start giving you a hot mash with pollard before you go to bed. That’ll keep you laying, won’t it?” I waited. “Has no one taught you to pay attention when you’re being spoken to? Just for that, you can all put your hands on your heads.”
They didn’t even listen. The bossiest chook pecked her wheat and chased the one with no feathers on her neck. The wicked old rooster picked up bits of bright yellow maize, dropped them, and called “Took! Took!” to his favourites. I bent to open the little gate out into the paddock. The old devil, all that time, he’d been waiting to get his own back. He flew up, pecked my neck, and tried to dig in his feet, but I wasn’t scared of him now. Not like when I was little and stood and screamed.
I threw him off, the cockerels cackled, and I ran, Clump! Clump! This time I didn’t have to wash my feet: I’d worn my mother’s old gumboots.
“Saturday, and Dad’s home for once!”