Austin and Emily Read online

  Both Emily Dooley and Austin McAdoo possessed vivid imaginations, although they were very different from each other. Both tried to envision the giant chicken. Emily imagined a docile Rhode Island Red the size of a Shetland pony sitting on a porch by a swing next to a sleeping bloodhound. Austin saw a Godzilla-sized man-killing chicken stomping on the roof of a barn and eating cows as if they were kernels of corn strewn in the yard, mooing and running from certain death.

  “Do you think there’s an admission price to view the chicken?” Austin asked.

  “Who cares?” Emily answered. “I wanna see it.”

  Austin imagined the giant chicken swallowing Glenn whole and then dancing a little chicken-strut in celebration of the delicious snack. Austin turned off the road and followed the signs until they came upon a quaint farmhouse surrounded by lush pastures. He pulled into the gravel driveway and stopped. An old man came slowly around the back of the house. He wore overalls with no shirt underneath and a hat to block the sun from his eyes. His boots dragged over the ground.

  “How do, folks?”

  “We came to see the big chicken,” Emily said excitedly.

  “That’ll be five dollars each.” The old farmer spoke in a thick drawl.

  Emily gave the man two five dollar bills, and they followed him to the backyard. The old farmer stopped in front of a big dusty patch of land between the house and the barn. There were twenty or thirty multicolored chickens leisurely pecking and walking around like chickens do. The farmer stood silent.

  Austin and Emily looked across the yard, tilting and craning their necks in anticipation of the first glimpse of the huge bird, but the old man remained silent, hands in the pockets of his faded blue overalls.

  “Where is it?” Austin finally asked.

  The old man slowly removed his right hand from the deep pocket and pointed into the yard toward the twenty or thirty chickens in front of the barn.

  Austin squinted. Emily tried to line up her sight with the pointed crooked finger like a gun barrel.

  “There she is,” the old farmer said, “the big red one.

  In the yard of chickens, there was only one red, one slightly larger than the others. Austin squinted hard and shook his head from side to side. He was not a man to be duped.

  Austin said, “We’ll be taking our money back and going on our way, sir, and you’ll be hearing from the Better Business Bureau within seventy-two hours.”

  The old man turned his head to look at Austin. His hand was still outstretched, pointing at his prized possession. “What’s the problem?” he asked slowly.

  Austin was ready. “The problem is, this is a scam. That chicken is not the world’s largest chicken. It’s not even close.”

  The old farmer asked, “Are you an expert on chickens?”

  “No, sir, I am not, but I do not need formal poultry training to know that your chicken, the red chicken, certainly is not the world’s largest chicken. I’ve seen bigger in the grocery store, frozen and ready for immediate consumption.”

  The old man lowered his hand and placed it back in the deep pocket. He looked out over his yard and then said, “I can’t be held responsible for your imagination or your expectations. You probably pictured a chicken the size of Godzilla stompin’ houses and eatin’ folks. There ain’t no chickens that big. There just ain’t.”

  Emily looked at Austin. She flashed back to the image of the pony-sized chicken on the porch next to the dog, and she waited for Austin to say something.

  “That’s stupid,” Austin said. “Everybody knows there are no chickens the size of Godzilla. We simply expected truth in advertising.”

  On the other side of the chicken yard, coming around the side of the barn, something caught Austin’s attention. He turned, and then Emily turned to see what he was staring at.

  It was a chicken. A large, red chicken, about the size of a big beach ball. The animal had a strut like she owned the place, putting one steady foot out, touching the ground, pausing for a moment, and then shifting her weight forward to repeat the process. The farmer, Emily, and Austin watched the chicken strut to the other chickens and stand in the crowd. She stood tall, dwarfing the multicolored pitiful creatures around her.

  The old man said, mostly to himself, “It’s all about expectations, ain’t it?”

  Austin looked at the old farmer with his sunbaked skin and brown boots. He looked back at the chicken in the yard and wondered if it really might be the largest chicken in the entire world.

  They drove the rest of the day on Highway 82 westbound through Mississippi and into Arkansas. They stopped for lunch, got gas, and even pulled over a few times to look at things or just stretch their legs.

  Austin talked. “People act like they’d wish to live forever, but immortality is entirely overrated. The truth of the matter is this: if there was a recipe, an absolute, guaranteed recipe for immortality, people wouldn’t follow it.

  “For instance, let’s say the scientific community determined with certainty that a person could live indefinitely eating only onions and drinking only warm buffalo milk. How long do you think people would stick to it? How many would eat onions and drink warm buffalo milk every single day? Not many, I say.

  “The longer a person lasted, the more they would realize a life without end is a life of onions and milk, endless. Even the strong would go for a piece of chocolate cake, or a glass of ice cold purple grape juice, or even a peanut.

  “You see what I’m saying?”

  Emily said, “I can’t stop thinking about the big chicken.”

  Part Two

  KENNETH MINT

  “Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on pointless.”

  —D.H. Lawrence

  CHAPTER 5

  As night fell, it began to rain lightly. Ten miles outside of El Dorado, Arkansas, Austin pulled into a truck stop. He had high pressure in his bladder and a deep need to urinate as soon as possible. He parked the car at the gas pump and started inside. The rain fell a little harder.

  The sign above read: Restrooms. The sign on the door read: Out of Order. There were four women in line for the ladies’ room. The last one had a teardrop tattoo under her eye and a cigarette hanging from the edge of her lovely mouth.

  Austin uttered, “This is ridiculous.”

  The man behind the counter said, “I just been pissin’ around the side of the buildin’.”

  The word ‘pissin’ made Austin cringe. He said, “I imagine you have. It sounds like a delightful place to piss.” And he cringed again at the word.

  Emily entered and took her place in line. Austin chose not to explain in detail.

  “I will wait for you outside.”

  Emily smiled. The cold rain stung Austin’s back and shoulders. He hugged the side of the building and turned the corner from fluorescent brightness to back-alley dark. With his right hand he reached out to touch the brick wall and kept his finger on the wall as he walked further down the side of the building, careful not to go too fast. Finally, he reached the end and found a spot in the darkness he felt was safely hidden from any passersby.

  Austin unzipped and began to urinate. He squinted but was unable to see that he was standing on the edge of a hill, his feet positioned perfectly at the precipice, a muddy slope only inches from the tips of his toes. The rain fell. In the darkness, his eyes adjusting poorly and the sound of the rain in the trees, Austin lost perspective and leaned a bit forward. With penis in hand, he stepped out to brace himself and found no earth below his foot where he expected earth to be.

  The enormous man lost his balance, threw his hands up to catch himself, landed with a thump, and proceeded to roll down the muddy hill, penis flying free, rolling and rolling over and over again, until he finally came to rest with a thud against the wheel of a single-wide trailer owned by Gladys Welch and
her common-law husband, Parnell. Both heard the sound and felt the trailer shake, but neither reacted to the distraction as they made good love on the floor in front of the flickering TV.

  Austin raised his head to look up the hill at the faint fluorescent light above. There was dirt in every orifice and all exposed skin was scratched and scraped. He lay still for minutes listening to the gentle moans of Gladys and Parnell and the rhythm of the squeaky trailer floor. He was unfamiliar with the sounds of lovemaking.

  “Perhaps,” he thought, “this is much like hell,” and then felt a sharp pain from his private area.

  If not for the thought of Emily and her fear at not finding him, Austin may have simply remained against the wheel of the trailer and waited to die. Instead, he gathered his strength and stood like Bigfoot in the woods. Every bone hurt.

  Curiosity got the best of him, and he peeked in the trailer window to see Parnell’s naked ass rise and fall like the Roman Empire.

  “God help me,” Austin whispered.

  Austin zipped his pants and headed up the hill in the rain, step by excruciating step, grasping bushes, low tree limbs, and anything else along the way. Slipping, sliding, falling, and losing a shoe at one point, only later to discover the shoe stuck inside his pants leg.

  Emily finally got to use the bathroom. She bought two Ding-Dongs and a quart of buttermilk and stepped out into the rain. Austin was nowhere to be seen, and she stood in the doorway wondering where he may have gone.

  Kenneth Mint was pretending to be interested in the confederate flag cigarette lighters in the display case as he watched Emily. He’d been in the truck stop seventeen straight hours since his car died on the highway and he walked the half-mile to his current location. He had no money, no one to come get him, and very little hope of securing transportation without trickery or deceit. He was a thirty-year-old white disgruntled traveling semi-preacher who doubted the existence of everything, including himself, but felt strongly anyway about certain things. He’d watched with interest Austin McAdoo enter and leave.

  Austin emerged from around the side of the building. Emily recognized the form. Two men were exiting their brown pickup truck between Emily and Austin. One of them, the one with the dirty green shirt, said to Austin, “Damn, boy, you outta stay out of the pig trough.”

  When Emily turned and walked to her right, Kenneth Mint seized the opportunity, grabbed his small suitcase, and walked briskly out the door to the red car parked at the pump. He climbed in the backseat and covered himself with anything available. Desperation is the mother.

  Emily heard the men laugh. The switch clicked in her brain. The carton of buttermilk exploded against the man’s head. Emily’s fingernails dug into the skin of his cheek. The man let out a howl, and Austin stood in amazement. Kenneth Mint heard the scream and raised his eyes above the passenger headrest to see beautiful Emily Dooley running across the parking lot, hand in hand with a gigantic mud-man.

  It was too late to get out of the car. For better or worse, he had made his decision, and anything was better than one more minute in the truck stop smelling chili he couldn’t eat.

  The man with the dirty green shirt cussed. “Crazy bitch.” He chased Austin and Emily a few steps and then turned around to get a shotgun out from behind the seat of the pickup. His borderline retarded friend said, “What you doing?”

  “I’m gonna shoot somebody,” he yelled.

  Austin hit the gas, and the little red car spun in a circle and out to the highway. Emily’s rage had settled, and they were both out of breath. Austin raced down the road toward El Dorado. Kenneth Mint smelled something rancid in his hiding place only a few inches from his nose. Glenn’s ass happened to be nearby. Kenneth rose up suddenly. Emily turned and screamed. Austin looked in the rearview mirror and screamed himself. Kenneth sat perfectly still and said calmly, “What are you two doing in my new car?”

  Emily screamed again. The cats were frantic, darting this way and that. Austin began to pull the car to the side of the road.

  Kenneth said, “Don’t pull over. The man in the pickup truck is chasing you.”

  Austin looked past the stranger’s head in the mirror and saw headlights in the distance. It looked like a truck. He imagined the driver, buttermilk dripping in lines down his face, shotgun in his lap, seeking revenge.

  Austin veered back on the highway and pressed the accelerator.

  “Sir,” Austin said sternly, “carjacking is a serious crime.”

  The mud on Austin’s face was hardening into a shell. Emily kept her eyes on the man in the backseat.

  “I’m not a carjacker. In fact, it’s very much the other way around.”

  Emily said, “You’re not right. This is our car. We’re on a trip, and as soon as we get to the next town we’re going straight to the police station.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” Kenneth said. He smiled at Austin like he knew something, and Austin wondered how the strange man in the backseat of the car could possibly know about the dead state trooper.

  The truck didn’t seem to be gaining on them. Austin couldn’t even be sure it was the buttermilk man, but now he had to find a way not to involve the police.

  “Are you armed?” Austin asked hesitantly.

  “Of course not, although I believe in the Biblical right to bear arms.”

  “Why are you in our car?” Austin asked.

  “I need a ride to Los Angeles. The world is coming to a natural and sinful conclusion, and Los Angeles is the place I’m supposed to be when it takes place. I don’t know where you’re supposed to be.”

  Emily interrupted, “Stop talking to him,” she said to Austin, “I want him out.”

  She watched as Glenn slowly and unexpectedly climbed down from his perch in the back window and into the lap of Kenneth Mint. Emily could hear the cat purring. Glenn never took to strangers in such a way.

  She said in a low voice, almost to herself, “He likes you.”

  “Yes,” Kenneth said, “animals have a strong sense of goodness. I am a man of the Lord, a traveling preacher, and I’m over ninety-five percent goodness. The other five percent consists of bad cholesterol and a pornography temptation, but both are in check. I don’t eat red meat.”

  Emily and Austin looked at each other.

  Kenneth said, “Can you think of anything scarier than a monkey with a switchblade? Think about it. It’s scary enough when a regular person has a switchblade, but a monkey doesn’t even know the difference between right and wrong. He doesn’t know the law.”

  Emily said, “You’re a weird man. Monkeys don’t have switchblades. They don’t have any money to buy anything.”

  “This is true. Are you two married?”

  “No,” Austin answered.

  “Not yet,” Emily said, and then smiled for the first time since the strange man appeared in the backseat of the car. She caught herself and frowned immediately.

  “Well, I’m licensed in the great state of California to perform marriages. Maybe a little ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard. What do you say, mud-man?”

  In all the excitement, Austin had forgotten his shell of mud. He stretched his face and felt the cracks form in the coating.

  Emily said, “We need to find a motel and clean you up.”

  Kenneth replied, “Thanks, but I prefer to sleep in the car.”

  Emily didn’t know what to say. She was unsure why Austin wasn’t demanding that the strange man go away, but she sure liked the idea of a wedding on Hollywood Boulevard. Emily could imagine standing on the sidewalk star of Julia Roberts, her favorite movie star, in a beautiful white wedding dress next to Austin McAdoo in his black tuxedo. She said the name to herself, Emily Marie McAdoo, and then looked down at Glenn, his chin pointed upward in delight, as the man stroked the cat’s throat.

  “There’s a motel,” Emily pointed.

  Austin saw no headlights in the rearview mirror. He turned the car swiftly, without a blinker, in case the green-shirted man was still s
omewhere behind.

  After checking into the motel and parking the car in front of room 11, Kenneth offered, “You can leave the cats out here. I’ll take care of em.”

  Emily said, “No.”

  Austin liked the idea, especially after the last motel-cat experience concluded with mace. “Well, perhaps that’s not such a bad idea. The lady said, ‘No pets,’ and Glenn seems uncomfortable inside.”

  Austin glanced at Kenneth in time to see Kenneth wink at him like they were together, partners in conspiracy, and in the bright light from the motel, Austin thought he recognized the odd man. Kenneth Mint was tall and lean with wavy short red hair, a bird-like face, and hairless arms. He was not tired in the slightest, having slept in the truck stop lounge for twelve of the seventeen hours of captivity, stretched out with his hands neatly folded across his chest like a corpse.

  “O.K.,” Emily finally agreed and then gritted her teeth and said, “but I’ll be out to check on the boys every few hours.”

  Kenneth watched the huge mud-covered man and the volatile little woman amble up to the motel room door, suitcases in hand, and then disappear inside. Glenn sniffed Kenneth’s only suitcase, a small brown jobby with a broken handle.

  “I know what you’re sniffin’.”

  Kenneth opened the suitcase and pulled out a hideous coat made of woven human hair. It was the only thing Kenneth had gotten from his grandmother after she died. He remembered her long flowing gray hair as he held the coat in his hands and made a pillow to lean his head. He found comfort in her memory.

  The next morning, Austin looked down at the muddy bathtub and felt no remorse for the mess. His pores were open and free, and the memory of the sight of Parnell Welch’s naked body seemed distant and unreal.

  Kenneth did his washing-up early at the hose by the green pool and used the lobby bathroom. He wasn’t about to abandon the car while Austin and Emily were around and provide the opportunity to be left behind.

  Somehow, Austin had been successful the night before persuading Emily to allow the strange man to ride along for awhile. Each had their own reasons, reasons purposefully planted by Kenneth Mint himself in his subtle manipulation with Glenn, the marriage scenario, and the threat of contacting the police. “Desperation may be the mother,” Kenneth thought, “but manipulation is the provider.”