Chicken Feathers by Joy Cowley Read Free Book Online Page B

spilled the beans,” she said. “I’m on his hit list.”
    “Don’t worry,” Josh tried to soothe her. “They’ll catch that fox anytime now and ship him clear out of town.”
    “They’ll never catch him!” Semolina shivered. “Tell your father to shoot him deady bones. They got to do that. Or else…!” She closed her eyes.

    “I’ll look after you,” he said.
    Most days, Semolina walked at Josh’s heels, jumpy as a cricket, and at night she insisted that he lock her inside the tractor shed—which was safe enough, having a concrete floor and steel walls. He let her out each morning when he watered the Swiss chard.
    Josh begged Grandma to allow Semolina back in his bedroom, but she wasn’t having any of that. “Filthy old bird! I told you before, if she comes in, I move out.”
    “What if the fox gets her?”
    Grandma smiled, showing all her teeth. “Bring her to me and I’ll give her to the fox! Here, Mr. Fox! Nice little snack, Mr. Fox!”
    Josh swallowed back bitter hatred. Forgive people, always forgive people. He chanted his mother’s words as he walked away, clenching and unclenching his fists. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Saying it didn’t make a speck of difference. Grandma might be his mother’s mother, but she was downright miserable, cantankerous mean.
    After that, Josh stayed away from the house as much aspossible. When he wasn’t helping Tucker in the barns or Annalee with egg sorting, he worked on his boat in the tractor shed, sanding down the hull to get it ready for painting. Now it looked like a real boat, two seats fore and aft, a metal plate on the stern to hold the outboard and fittings for the oarlocks. There were only three coats of paint between Josh and the river. He’d take Annalee out fishing before the end of the summer vacation.
    Semolina, nervous of the tractor shed’s open door, roosted among old tools in the rafters above Josh’s head.
    He told her he’d heard the fox was over on the other side of town. “The guys at Semco told Dad—big red fox down at Loon Lake.”
    “Semco,” repeated Semolina.
    “The place we go every week.” Josh sometimes forgot that Semolina couldn’t read. “Sampson Egg Marketing Company,” he added, hoping she wouldn’t take offense.
    But Semolina was too jittery about the fox to get political. “Don’t matter where the fox is. He’s got his gang on the lookout. Ferrets and wildcats, raccoons and rats. Word from the girls is, they got this place staked out.”
    “Semolina, you been watching too much television.”
    “I don’t get to watch nothing excepting my back,” she snapped.
    Josh blew ahead of the sandpaper, and a fine wood dust filled the air. “Why would a fox have a gang? Semolina, that doesn’t make an inch of sense. Foxes always work alone.”
    “Carriers,” she said.
    “Carriers?”
    She put her beak in the air. “Excuse me. I didn’t tell you foxes don’t have shopping carts. Most eggs a fox carries is two or three in his mouth. Takes him all night to shift a hundred eggs. So he has a carrier gang. Raccoons, rats, pack of thieving critters. Now nobody ain’t getting no eggs, and they’re all after the one that got the hole closed.”
    “You’re safe here in the tractor shed.” Josh ran his hand over the hull, now smooth enough for the first primer coat. “When Grandma goes, you’ll come back in the house.”
    “I might be deady bones by then,” she said gloomily.
    “Don’t think like that. It isn’t healthy.” He looked at her. “Semolina, you never told me if you had a family.”
    She shifted on her perch. “No, I never.”

    “Never told me? Or never had chicks?”
    “Both,” she said.
    “You could still have babies. You ever thought about that?”
    She made a coughing noise. “Excuse me, buddy. You might know biggies, but you don’t know birds. I ain’t laid an egg in four years, and even then…” She stopped and put her head on one