As he entered the coop the rooster stood its ground. Standing in the corner of the cold pen having pecked itself raw, the bird didn’t look right. Stacks’ first thought was human error. He knew all too well, the natural world was destroyed from the outside while people slowly eroded from the inside out. He realized he had broken the rooster and there it was, naked, walking in circles, a shell of itself with no pride. He closed the pen door, twisted the wire latch and returned to the quiet house.
Stacks had seen a whole series of headwinds over the last year. The type of things that don’t make a lick of sense. This made him think about the control he no longer possessed. Where did he lose it? Drinking? Isolation? Bad decisions? It could have been any of these, but he knew he wasn’t a settled man.
The buzz from the refrigerator fan reminded him of unfinished business. He watched from the kitchen sink as the winter sky moved quickly from the west over his house; the weather would be changing. He pictured the poor rooster walking in circles pulling its own plumage by some unexplained impulse. He imagined a worm entering its skull, stripping insulation from the wiring. He wasn’t sure what to do. There must be a pill or something to keep this thing from destroying itself. He would call the vet’s office in the morning and see if she knew anything about sick roosters. She had helped when the cat couldn’t stop puking that yellow stomach juice. It had been Jenny’s idea to bring the cat in. Jenny seemed to have a touch. He had to admit that.
It was telling on the day when Jenny left her work boots on the back door rug. No letter, no call, no explanation and no intention to ever return. He could imagine her thinking to herself, no need to walk through mud again.
Leading up to that pre-dawn exit they had talked and screamed, and ultimatums were shouted. More declarations were made and then broken. Doors were kicked and drywall punched but neither had put a hand on the other. She had laid out her disappointment with a list of missed dreams in very clear language. He did admire her straight talk. He could see why she had left the boots, no need for shit-caked boots where she was going.
Stacks tried to think where that might be. Her sister lived in Duluth, but they had both agreed Duluth was depressing. They had vowed to never end up in a town selling itself too hard, pretending to be something it’s not. She probably headed west, she always talked about the mountains like they were beacons of good living.
Stacks had thrown the old boots in the dumpster. The dumpster sat out of sight behind the shop building. It was slowly filling. Stacks figured 10 cubic yards would be plenty of space to rid himself of his past life. Given the three months since Jenny left, he figured it was nearly half full, or half empty depending on how you looked at it.
The cold truck started, always a good sign. The radio kicked in at high volume, a reminder of the last time he drove. Stacks adjusted the volume and sadly shook his head. He remembered being pissed off, ending the night on one of his self-talk rants. There was half of a chicken sandwich on the passenger-side floorboard with some kind of sauce smeared into the carpet. He remembered that at first, he was happy, then he was pissed, then he was sad, then he was hungry and then he was tired. Small town bars have a way of sucking the fun parts of life out of you. He ramped the truck up to speed as the washboard gravel started to rattle everything that wasn’t screwed down tight.
He looked back and had to admit Jenny never liked the open spaces like he did. They lived on the outskirts of Redmond Falls with a handful of neighbors within view. She never enjoyed the ten-minute drive into town. To her, living on five acres meant nothing but too much quiet and meaningless busy work. Especially the evenings which took on a sense of dread. The oversized yard light buzzed all night against the deep blue darkness that surrounded the house. She said she felt isolated and vulnerable, certainly not safe. Stacks had felt the same but wouldn’t admit it out loud.
The sodium bulb had a yellow glow that soaked everything as it spread out across the yard. The bulb cast deep shadows at the edges of the property all the way back to where the chicken coup sat against the outbuilding. The yard light was meant to be a deterrent, but it felt more like an invitation for outside trouble. Jenny began to complain that she felt cut-off and exposed at the same time.
In the weeks since Jenny left many of their differences came to him in flashes of fuzzy guilt. They had both ignored most of it over the years, refused to deal with it. He had run roughshod over her ideas. He had controlled the outcome of nearly every major decision they made as a married couple. She gave, he took. He took, she always gave. Twenty years of give and take.
This pattern was their way of life.
As the truck rattled down the road into town an old photo of them from the reservoir fell from the visor into his lap. The smiles on their faces didn’t look forced, their tan skin was tight from the long-summer afternoons drinking beer with friends at the quarry. The picture made him feel clean and strong. The truck pulled off the gravel onto the smooth blacktop as he approached the town line. He was hoping like hell the pills would fix that rooster.
Rhett Arens is a writer/photographer living in Pasadena, CA who loves travel. He appreciates how it connects strangers and broadens perspectives. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, Taproot, The Golfers Journal, Fifty Grande, Wanderlust, The Whitefish Review, Boundary Waters Journal, Islands, ROVA and more. He likes to say, travel is a peacemaker.
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