Babes-in-the-Woods

By Ruth Moench Bell

Part II

Dave really should not have insisted on moving the new pullets into their beautiful big “Mosque,” as he called the new coop he had built. Lesceline could see that in his boyish eagerness to see how they would look in the new coop, he could not wait till the roof was on.

“I can easily get it on before a storm comes,” he explained, “and those pullets are altogether too crowded. They are growing so fast.”

“If you hammer over their heads, won’t it startle them and make them “huddle” or whatever you call it?” Lesceline protested.

“Oh, they’ll get used to it,” Dave felt confident.

Lesceline said no more but offered to help move them. To her surprise, she found that she could hold a wriggling, squawking pullet by one leg, as Dave showed her, while it curled up around her hand and tried its ‘best to get away. To help Dave she even managed to hold four pullets in each hand and carry them to the “mosque.” When all were housed, she caught some of Dave’s enthusiasm. The slim white young pullets with their shapely bodies, looked like the white pullet cover on the dish that had been her grandmother’s.

“They look very dainty in their white pine dwelling,” she said. “If vestal virgins in white were supposed to walk about in a mausoleum, I’d call this a white — ” Lesceline checked herself. Calling this a white tomb sounded rather ominous.

Lesceline drove the 1918 model Ford to town with the eggs and to get the feed, so that Dave could work on the roof. The new pullets must be {protected now before a storm arose. Lesceline had two punctures on the way. Fords of that vintage did not carry an extra wheel with a tire all ready for use. No man happened along to help fix the tires, so dusk came down before Lesceline drove into the yard. She was feeling tired, hungry and cross. Dave might at least have hurried out to meet her.

However, all thoughts of self vanished when Lesceline opened the kitchen door and caught one glimpse of Dave’s tragic face. A blazing fire was roaring in the range, kettles of water were steaming, and before one kettle stood Dave dipping a chicken into the feathery broth. Lesceline stared. The young cockerels had long since been separated from the pullets and had been, eaten or sold. Lesceline, startled, saw a tub half full of pullets in the middle of the room. What massacre was this? At least twenty pullets lay in the tub.

The sight of the bloody necks, the fumes of the steaming feathers was sickening to Lesceline. “Why, Dave, what’s the matter,” she asked.

“They huddled as soon as I started hammering,” Dave cried. “Why weren’t you there to keep them from huddling? I can’t be expected to do it all.”

“I had two punctures,” Lesceline said softly. She might have told him that the trip was not exactly a pleasant one. She might have told him that she had warned him against this. Instead, she got an apron and prepared to help. She knew how dismayed Dave must feel over the slaughtering of his pullets. One might kill cockerels with a good grace, but pullets meant poultry profit.

“What are you going to do with them, dear,” she asked, trying to smother the sickening feeling that was almost more than she could endure.

“I cut their heads off at once,” Dave replied. “They are — are just as good to eat — as if — as if they had been—”

“You wouldn’t sell them, though. It wouldn’t be .honorable.”

“As if a person could sell them, way out here. The Association isn’t shipping any more, anyhow. We can store them in the cold basement, and eat them ourselves. We can’t afford to waste them. ‘ I cut their heads off instantly and let them bleed plenty,” Dave defended.

“Twenty Pullets!” Then at sight of his face. “Oh, yes, of course. If I remember right, you ate two or three at each meal. That would be about six a day for you alone,” Lesceline laughed gaily. “I’ll help you, Dave.”

“Pullets are lots more tender and delicious than — cockerels,” Dave cried, quite as though he had slaughtered them on purpose. “You hold them this way, and yank the long feathers out from the tail and win? first.” He did not evince any surprise that Lesceline was subduing her natural repugnance and helping him. “Then you pull the other feathers out in — well, in ‘reverse gear,’ sort of peel them off.

Though she felt like holding her nose or clamping a clothes pin on it, though the steaming feathers were acting like a feather duster and seemed to be in her stomach, going around and around and up and down, Lesceline made no complaint. She must help poor Dave. This was not exactly what the world’s greatest architect had meant to do with his leisure. She had temporarily deflected him from his course and owed it to him to help him back to his goal, even though the road led through a tangled forest of steaming chicken feathers.

Soon Lesceline was doing two to Dave’s one, and the feather-duster motion in her stomach had subsided. At least, she would not have to draw them. Dave could do five or six at a time as they were needed. Then she would fry them, and afterwards at table pick at a piece or two so Dave would never know that her appetite for chicken was destroyed forever.

However, much to her surprise, as the days went by, Lesceline found that she could ‘eat fried chicken with a relish that amazed her. Their frying fragrance was a relief from the deadly stench of the hot-dog and hamburger stands, at which Dave and she had pretended to enjoy eating, after they bad given up ‘living at the best hotels.’

A storm seemed to be brewing, so Dave hurried to the Association to get a plentiful supply of feed and deliver the eggs. Lesceline did not care to accompany him in the rickety old car over the long, rough roads. A heavy blizzard began to blow, supper time came, and Dave did not return. Sensing that he probably had had tire trouble, and would be famished for food, Lesceline went to the basement for the two last undrawn pullets. There was nothing else in the house to cook. It took courage, plus loyalty, a spread paper, and a sharp knife. A nose high in the air was not actually necessary, but Lesceline did not seem to be able to work otherwise.

Though the chicken were fried, and the table set, Dave did not come. She had only given the chickens “scratch” — what were those other things — she had heard Dave babble of — calcide, mash — the “dry — ” Was that Dave driving into the yard? There was something queer about the way he drove. He had not carried his heavy coat with him — and an icy blizzard had been blowing for some time. He was probably terribly chilled and numbed, Lesceline concluded, staring at him as he nearly fell out of the car and literally staggered up the steps.

“I wish you’d go with me, Les, to feed the flock,” Dave spoke unsteadily. “I feel horribly sick. I — I can’t get my breath at all.”

Apprehensively, Lesceline went along. “I’d give anything for a long sleep tomorrow,” Dave murmured, “If anything should happen to me” — How many times those words came into Lesceline’s mind thereafter — “I thought maybe if you’d pay close attention — and learn to take care of them — just this once — I’d try sleeping till noon. Maybe I can sleep this off.”

When they returned to the house, Dave, his face as white as blanched celery, his hand shaking so that he scrawled all over the paper, wrote out minute directions for the care of his hens. Refusing to eat, Dave dragged himself off to bed, while Lesceline, in mute anxiety could say nothing.

Long before morning, Dave had gone into that strange land of delirium alone. As if the wires were down, Lesceline could get no message through to him to let him know that she loved him and was suffering cruelly with his pain. When he had sat at the table to write instructions for her, he must have known that he was going to be seriously ill.

With terror gripping her heart, Lesceline listenend to his agonized breathing. It could have been heard outside the house. Only one thing could make a person breathe like that — only one thing could get a person down so swiftly and surely. “Pneumonia.” Once she had nursed — or helped nurse — a little brother through the dread disease. “Nothing more treacherous,” she had heard the doctor say, and then had ensued weeks of terrifying vigils.

There ,was no doctor for miles — no telephone — no neighbors. She might have risked leaving Dave and driving the roadster for a doctor — but for the rickety Ford — never had they had less than two punctures on any trip on its weary tires. She could not risk leaving him indefinitely like that. In his delirium he would be up and out to those hens he was muttering about. If she could only get it over to him that she would be faithful — faithful to them as to him.

Lesceline crawled out of bed. She would have to take the lantern and go out in the dark to the wood-pile and chop some wood and make a fire. He must have a mustard plaster on his chest at once. And then some kind of vaporizer must be fixed up for him to breathe — something warm and moist.

She got out into the kitchen, the table was still set for Dave’s supper. She had been too worried to clear up. Would he ever eat there again? And there were Dave’s directions scrawled on the paper — “The mash is in that barrel in the middle of the coop — see that the hoppers are always full. You will find the calcide — ” Lesceline could see no more through her tears. How ill he must have felt as he sat there — she put her hands to her face to shut out the memory.

She crawled into Dave’s bathrobe. Would she ever feel his arms about her again? How still the night was — and black — even the light snow that had come with the blizzard did not relieve the dense blackness. How lonely the kettle hummed, after she had got the fire going. Days and night of this — and even then — no — she must not think of that. After putting the steaming plaster on Dave’s chest, Lesceline went back and cleared off the table. At any time — no one ever knew with pneumonia —! She must keep the house exquisitely clean. If anything happened to Dave — when people came and found them there — .

Lesceline tacked the instructions up on the wall. Dave’s last precious words. She would need to consult them again and again. Work, loneliness, vigils, faith, prayers! Hours, days, minutes that seemed ages! Lesceline dared not sleep, except at fitful intervals when Dave seemed easier. Before Dave’s illness, after long trips to town, even when Dave stood beside her chopping wood, the dark shadows around the wood-pile filled her with terror. To hold a candle for Dave at night in the large hen-house, while he took the setters off their nests, made shudders creep over her. Suppose someone should be lurking there in the shadows.

Now if someone had stepped out of the darkness, she would have welcomed him and ,begged him to come in and watch with her over Dave. No one could be so wicked as to refuse. She formed Dave’s habit of talking to the hens, except that she could not joke with them or tease them. Her words were more likely to be : “Oh, do you think he will recover? Will he ever come out here and cuddle you again?”

Fortunately, Dave had brought a plentiful supply of feed for the chicks. She could gather the eggs, but they must wait — till — would Dave’s parents or hers ever wonder why there were no letters — would they wonder enough to come to see? Lesceline went mechanically from task to task — routine — blessed routine — Dave — the chicks — the housework. She went through a regular schedule — feeling that her mind was failing hut that her body would go on working through the routine — go on even if she slept as she walked.

The crisis of the disease had come. Lesceline sat beside Dave fearful of moving lest her faith should fail him. Her head would drop forward and she would bring it back with a jerk — and then move about the room again to defy nature to trick her into sleep when Dave was fighting for life. She felt that she was standing with her head against a dread door that might swing open at any moment and let them both through. Alternately she prayed, “Dear God, keep him here with me,” and cried fiercely, “Dave, Dave, you shan’t go through.”

And Dave nestled in her arms presently, as she sank with a sob beside him. The struggle was over — the fever spent — delirium was gone. He was white, weak and terribly shaken, but his breathing was easy and he dozed off into a restful sleep. Lesceline laid him back on his pillow. It would not do to chill him with a deluge of tears.

She put on his bath-robe. It was almost like feeling his arms about her again. Then she went out to the hen-house and told them sobbingly that Dave was better. He would be with them again. They looked at her in wonder, their heads cocked wisely on one side. The hoe Dave had raked the litter to the front of the coop with, stood where he had left it that last time. Lesceline kissed the handle he had held.

She sank down exhausted on the floor — the hens, awed into silence, eyed her curiously. Crooning their most contented lullabies, some of the more inquisitive hens pecked idly at the ivory buttons on her slippers. With prayers of gratitude in her heart, Lesceline must have slept from sheer exhaustion, for hens were all over her when she awoke. She drew two of them against her cheeks, as she had seen Dave do that day, so long ago — it seemed. Going back to the house, she found that Dave was awake and calling for her.

“I’d give a dollar for some chicken broth and maybe a mite of white meat,” he said weakly. “Do you suppose just a little would hurt me?”

Lesceline was sure that it wouldn’t, and told him he should have it in a very little while. He must try to sleep till she woke him with a bowl of steaming broth with tiny bits of white meat and noodles in it. She kissed him lightly on the forehead and went out to face what she had never supposed she could possibly do.

She looked long at the culls in their battery brooder. Dave had a long wire, looped on one end, with which he snared them. The wire was hanging by the brooder. It looked murderous. She would open the door, poke the wire in, catch a cull, bring it out to the front of the coop — and then close the door. She was no longer afraid to handle them. She had even learned to place a hand on either side of the old setters, lift them off their nests and put them on the roosts or in the special coop.

She would hold the chicken which she was to kill, firmly that way, with her hands on its wings, so that it could not flop. Then she would lay its head very gently on the chopping block — and then — ” Oh, I can’t,” she faltered. But Dave was weak. He must get his strength. She must not fail him now. There was no other way. She must do it. She shuddered.

A chicken was just a vegetable — Dave had said so — a mere carrot. She laid its neck on the chopping block and gripped the hatchet tight. Fortunately the hatchet was sharp. Dave always kept his tools in condition. She was about to cut off a carrot top. But carrots do not squawk and roll their eyes reproachfully. Lesceline decided to close her own eyes while she did the dread deed. She steeled herself and raised the hatchet.

Was she, too, going off into a delirium? A hand was closing over hers. A man’s hand. A man stood beside her — his foot by hers. If Dave had dared — she turned to look.

“Darling — Oh — Mr. — Oh — Dave’s dad.”

“Here, let me take that? Thumbs have gone off that way,” he said.

Lesceline went weak in his arms, and he carried her into the house. David Blaine laid her very tenderly on the couch.

“Look here, Emily. See what I found in the back yard with her eyes closed trying to whack off a chicken’s head.”

Lesceline knew she must look ridiculous in Dave’s big bathrobe. Someone who smelled deliciously of violets was crying tears all over her face and holding her close. “You poor little thing,” she was saying. “You brave little thing.” Lesceline felt that it was heavenly just to relax and cry too.

“If you’re through mooning in there,” Dave called irritably, “hurry up with that chicken broth.”

“He’s better. He’s better,” Dave’s mother laughed. “When they get cross — ”

Lesceline looked about at the neat room. “I’m glad I kept the house so clean each day that if — if strangers came and found us here — ”

“Darling, what you have been through!” Emily Blayne cried humbly.

“Well, Emily,” David Blayne stood in the doorway. He had been alternately trying to make a fire, swallowing cotton and blowing his nose — without any other sign of a cold — “I — don’t you think our ‘babes’ have emerged from ‘the woods’?”

(The End)