A story taken from growing up on a farm,

Remember, Just Two

                                                         

                                                        Daniel L Austin

My father sent us out on a snowy afternoon to get some farm­-fresh chickens for Sunday dinner. “Pick out the older ones and, remember, just two," he said, pointing his finger and reminding us once again to kill no more than the two. But the warning and the finger was for my brother, because he was the oldest. I only held the hatchet and followed along.

We kept our chickens in a make­-do enclosure in back of the barn – nothing fancy on our farm. Old pieces of wood nailed together and covered with rusting sheet metal. There was an opening in the front that allowed them to run around in a wire­ mesh pen.

I did not have time to count the chickens. They scattered in the fresh snow, squawking and beating their wings in a blur of white feathers and red combs and wattles as my brother hunted them down. He was too quick for them and already had his first, its head lying on the well­-used wooden block that sat in the middle of the pen. Brother supposedly had a way with poultry and cows, according to my father who said Brother knew how to hypnotize them. I believed it. Why else would a chicken quietly offer up its head on a block of wood while a hatchet was suspended over its head?

It happened in seconds, faster than seconds, if that was possible. The steel edge of the hatchet sliced through the chicken's soft, white neck, and its head fell to the ground. Streaks of steaming red blood painted a Pollock­esque scene on the snow as the chicken continued to thrash about. Sharp, throaty noises emanated from the hole where its head used to be.

“How come it talks, it does not have a mouth?” I asked.

“Muscles,” Brother said, and brought down the hatchet again.

Holding the Bag

                                                        

                                        Daniel Austin

I found a Zombie hiding in the bathroom at McDonald’s. I opened a stall, and there he was, maybe six feet tall with a ponytail and black­-framed glasses with thick lenses, and wearing a black tee shirt touting a reunion tour for Black Sabbath. Madras shorts, bottomed off with a pair of well­-worn Birkenstocks, he was not much on looks because he had the usual zombie pallor, death gray with flaps of skin hanging off him. And he grunted like he had rocks in his mouth when he talked, and had a hard time walking. He jounced, and parts of him fell on the floor. No big deal, I said to myself. I would pick up the parts and put them in a plastic bag and reattach them at a later date. (Note to self: think about stocking up on plastic baggies, plastic covers for my furniture and air freshener.) A few minor obstacles, but I thought he was beautiful, and he was mine. I named him Ozzie Mac D. The only worry I could foresee was my girlfriend, I wondered if she would let me keep him.

I hustled Ozzie Mac D out of the bathroom and into my car. I pulled up to the drive-in window and ordered him a bunch of hamburgers to keep him happy, I hoped. No worries there. He did not seem to care what was in the bag, only that it passed for food. The way he devoured them made me think he would probably do anything for a bag of burgers, and he probably would not even care if they got his order wrong.

Go Figure. A gazillion-dollar empire responsible for serving up an average of 50 million burgers a day, but has yet to figure out how put the correct items in the bag at the drive­-up window. Instead of getting the plain hamburger you ordered, you end up getting a cheeseburger with onions when you open the bag a mile down the road. Or maybe an apple pie or a chicken sandwich. Anything but what you ordered.

I had plans for Ozzie Mac D, and the first thing I wanted to do was teach him to drive. I soon discovered his driving skills weren’t all that great. He did not seem to retain anything I taught him, and he was not motivated. So I reverted to the secret weapon - ­­a bag of burgers. He improved by the end of the day, and three bags later, Ozzie Mac D was driving. Far from perfection, but he was at least able to negotiate the route we traveled on earlier test runs to McDonalds without any major damage. Oh sure, there were a few minor dents on the fenders of the car, and a few mail boxes and parking meters that needed some TLC, but he was driving. Besides, It was time for dinner.

Thinking Back & Forward

When I was in college, I discovered writing and enjoyed my English classes especially when we would talk about the authors. The Victorians. My professor said they were terse, stoic and very much into metaphor because they did not believe in telling it like it is. Emotions? Heaven forbid. English Lit: Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, (one of my favorites) and Shakespeare. And, of course, the poets. William Carlos Williams, Tess Gallagher, The Beats, and many others. Of all this wonderful writing, I first fell in love with poetry.

I set about writing poems about my teachers, one in particular who, bothered by the traffic noise on the hill in front of his classroom, walked slowly to the back of the room, slowly lifted a window and proceeded to shoot the trucks passing by, one shot after another. And then turning back to us, "Forgive me," he said. "But it was just so sweet and cold." 

Of course I got plenty of laughs borrowing from the good doctor and other greats I chose to mock in the school's Poetry and Fiction review with my attempts at proving that anybody can write poetry. But one day I was confronted by a professor of English 201, and a well-know poet herself, in the hallway. She said she had read my poetry and found it amusing. But looked long at me and said she though I wrote those amusing poems because I was afraid that I could not write a true poem. She told me that she thought I was afraid to fail, thus the funny stuff. And walked away. To this day I have never forgotten those words and how she was exactly right in her thinking. After that I attempted to write, as she said, real poetry and failed many times. But the few that I got right, the poems in which the words somehow made magic happen were worth all the failures. And from those failures and few successes came my love and fascination with the short story. And meeting people, some my heroes to this day. Raymond Carver had a way of getting deep into your soul and not easily letting go. And I have yet to figure out how he did it. Or Donald Hall who made me cry from cover to cover with "String to Short to Be Saved" and a very nice and down-to-earth person. The joy of reading new voices continues today. I recently discovered an author called Charlie Huston whose prose is so hot it burns your fingers, and he has even developed new ways to use grammar. 

So I say, face your fears, let's see some of those risks on this page. Poetry, Prose, Erasure, or Otherwise, Fiction, Flash or Short Story. There is nothing so exciting as reading a new voice except perhaps being that voice. 

Daniel. L. Austin.