Driving down a dirt road under the blue Colorado sky, I looked out the window of our station wagon over the wood side paneling and watched the weeds roll by. Mother had made a sharp turn and I knew the sound of wheels sliding in gravel meant we had arrived. A 1960's flatbed truck sat in a dusty swirl kicked up by the wagon. "This way," Mom said as she lead me by the hand toward the dark shade of a tin barn.
A man in overalls greeted us. "You here for chicks or ducklings?" "We're here for some chick," Mom said as if to remind me of our purpose. I peered into an big metal trough with hundreds of little black chicks contrasted against yellow hay. Each one had a distinct white mark on it's head, and little scaly feet balanced perfectly below. The peeping and chirping intensified every time I reached my hand into touch the downy feathers and the chick swirled away like rippling water at my reach.
I named each of the ten, according to the shape of the white mark on their heads. Checkers, Arrow, Fleck, and another Johny, after my older brother's friend. It was a constant battle to keep them fed with pill bugs I'd collected from dirty boards on our feral two-acre lot. The helpless bugs plunked into the tin cage one by one before being snatched up by a greedy chick. The occasional earth worm became incited a rugby match among my growing brood. But day by day, they grew larger and my love and fascination with them grew deeper. Like children going through an ugly phase, so did my little chicks begin to loose their soft down and sprout prickly feathers. How dirty, how scaly, how greedy and mean. And yet, like a father I tended them, scolded them, fed them and cleaned them. Life became sacred.
Months passed. When the chicks were too large for their trough my Mother moved them to a pen on the sunny side of the barn. Their feathers had grown now and their bantam wings began to flap both in combat and rest. They learned to scratch the ground for seeds and ants, always to return to the cage for shade and safety. They needed me less, and as a four-year old, I felt my children pull away into their own lives, taking care of their own needs.
On a clear morning in the Colorado, when the early morning light makes it appear that mist still lingers, although there is none, I looked out the back window and saw the dark shapes in the dust near the chicken coop. I tightly velcroed my sneakers, and whisked along with my curious eyes fixed on the mysterious shape. As a neared, more shapes appeared in the short dry grass.
Blood, entrails, feathers, crushed bodies like a battlefield. My stomach tightened and I felt like running. The smell of death and blood make my saliva thicken and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I swallowed. The metallic smell of blood filled my nostrils and distilled on my palate. Feathers, death, cold eyes, coyote tracks, stillness except for the swirling of downy feathers in the breeze. All ten lay lifeless. My first experience with death.