Hens and Chickens Read online

  “Not if you give the damsels a chance to rescue YOU once in a while,” Lila retorted.

  “Oh, that’s easily arranged,” he replied, “if you stick around long enough.”

  “It’s a deal, then!” said Lila. She stuck out a thin white hand for the carpenter to shake.

  Hobart chuckled, a deep husky sound. “You’re pretty confident,” he said. He grasped Lila’s outstretched hand but instead of shaking it, he held it securely in his callused paw. “Must be you’re not afraid of spiders and mice,” he added, teasingly. “You do know that place has been empty for something like – 10 years?”

  “Seven,” corrected Lila. She unhurriedly pulled her hand away him. “But who’s counting?” She leaned down and scooped up a small handful of sunflower seeds from the storage can. “Come with me,” she said, suggestively to the carpenter.

  Hobart needed no further encouragement. He followed Lila back into the mudroom, where she uncovered the cage containing Matilda. She dropped to her knees and made soft cluck clucking noises. Matilda responded eagerly, hopping down from her perch and over to the side of the cage.

  “Here you go, Sweetie,” Lila said, holding a sunflower seed through the metal bars. Matilda snapped up the seed and greedily returned for more. Lila laughed happily, and repeated the process until her handful of seeds was fed out. She stood up, brushed herself off and regarded Hobart proudly, as though she had just scaled Mount Everest.

  “You really like chickens, don’t you?” asked Hobart, marveling at the difference between this radiant young woman and the surly chit with a chip on her shoulder whom he had witnessed last evening at Gilpin’s General Store.

  “Allow me to introduce myself, Sir,” she said, with a theatrical flourish. “You are now addressing one of The Egg Ladies of Sovereign, Maine!”

  Chapter 8

  The Old Russell Place

  Lila was correct in her numbers—the old Russell place had been vacant for seven years. The locals tell me that if the house hadn’t had such a good roof on her she would have been down into the cellar years ago. And if Pappy Russell had known the deal he was getting in 1956 when he complained about the price of that standing-seam metal roof, my sources say he might not have complained so loudly. (Although the old timers also say that Pappy always did need something to grumble about, he being the most malcontent Sovereign ever produced.)

  But these days the old Russell place was “leaning towards Sawyers,” as Wendell Russell, Pappy and Addie Russell’s grandson would say, a tongue-in-cheek way of inferring she was pretty run down. It’s a long story why the place has been empty so long, but the short version is that because nobody in the direct Russell line wanted to live at home after Addie Russell died (Pappy being long gone by then), especially not the eldest son George, who inherited the place. So Addie’s booming egg business was sold off and the house was left vacant. When George Russell died and his only child Evelyn Russell didn’t want the place, Cousin Harold moved in for a short while (but apparently he didn’t stick), and eventually one after another everyone died, until Wendell – who was the last of Addie and Pap Russell’s grandchildren still standing – finally inherited the family homestead.

  By the time of his grand inheritance, Wendell Russell was 62-years-old. All the glorious dreams he had once husbanded of reviving the old egg business had long since evaporated. Wendell had joined the U.S. Navy and had travelled the world. He calculated that – although he loved the egg business – he was probably too old now and certainly not rich enough to start a new farming operation, let alone restore a run-down house, attached hen pen and various out-buildings. “Wal, you know, it’s all I kin do to keep my pickup runnin’ nowadays,” Wendell said to Ralph Gilpin when he first came back to live in Sovereign two years ago.

  But Wendell, a bachelor now retired after 35 years in the service, figured that he would like to live a quiet life in Sovereign, Maine on the old homestead. If he could find someone to rent or buy the old house and a few acres, he could afford to finish out his days comfortably in Bud’s place, a three-room outbuilding set back in the woods 100 feet from the main dwelling that the hired hand Bud Suomela had built. At the time our little tale begins, Wendell had been installed in Bud’s place for two years, however, he had yet to find anyone foolish enough to consider taking the old home place off his hands. Until now.

  Now, Miss Hastings had scratched up a possible candidate for the place – “a young gal from Massachusetts,” he’d been told – and if she was interested, Wendell, who was raised on the farm by Grammie Addie, was to teach her the egg business. Wendell Russell, always the optimist, thought that life might be taking an altogether advantageous and interesting turn.

  The great meeting was scheduled for 9:30 a.m., and needless to say, Wendell sauntered over to the house more than an hour early. He’d kept the old place plowed out and left his truck parked in the driveway in winter, shoveling a winding, narrow path around the back of the house to the hired man’s cabin.

  After Wendell received Miss Hastings’ initial telephone call yesterday morning, he worked at the house most of the day, replacing books and knick-knacks onto the shelves from which the winter squirrels had knocked them, and just generally putting the house in order for today’s viewing. There was no electric service to the house (the power had been turned off before Wendell’s time) so instead of running a vacuum Wendell took the smaller rugs outside and shook them. He swept off the larger braided rugs and pushed the broom over the wide pine floors. He started the wood cookstove in the kitchen and ran it all day – trying to remove some of the musty odor – burning up left over maple firewood from the woodshed as well as a pile or two of old yellowed papers and envelopes that had been stacked on the kitchen table. Wendell also kept the pot-bellied parlor stove in the living room burning, and, with both woodstoves working in tandem, was able to bring the temperature up to 70°F, on the ground floor, anyway. The upstairs, well, the upstairs with its three full bedrooms and attached open chamber was still chilly, but it was Maine and it was February, and Wendell, who could remember when a glass of water froze one winter upstairs when he was a child, thought altogether it was pretty warm up there.

  Instead of driving, Lila and Rebecca elected to walk the half mile down Russell Hill to the old Russell place. Rebecca had done up the breakfast dishes so that Miss Hastings, who had reiterated that she was NOT getting involved in the transaction in any way, shape or fashion DAHRRRLINGS, was able to retire cheerfully to her computer room at her usual time to send out a few tweets to her followers on Twitter. “Take your time, dahrrrlings!” she called out, as they were dressing for their walk.

  “Be sure and tell your Tweeps what we’re up to!” cried Lila back. She pulled on her boots and looked up at Rebecca. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” she said.

  “Me either!” replied Rebecca, grinning. She stuck her wool hat firmly on her head, and together they marched off.

  Although technically still winter, the bright sun had begun its annual tilt toward the northern hemisphere, casting lukewarm rays over the snow-covered countryside. The two women promenaded down the paved road, talking and laughing, enjoying their escape from the city and their former servitude with Perkins & Gleeful, Inc. An agitated red squirrel scolded them noisily from the branches of a maple tree, and the white smoke from Miss Hastings’ woodstove danced its way up into the atmosphere until it vanished into thin air.

  Lila noted the chattering squirrel, the dancing wood smoke, the cloudless blue sky and felt irrepressible excitement. “There’s so much LIFE here!” she cried, twirling about in a little circle.

  “It’s wonderful! I bet you can get a lot of great tweet ideas. Did you update your status on @PGleeful?”

  Lila skipped ahead, and spun around to confront her former partner. “I DID NOT!” she said, wagging a finger. “I don’t give ‘two hoots and a holler’ about @PGleeful, as Miss Hastings would say! I’m gonna create our own avatar on Twitter and steal all my Tw
eeps from Perkins & Gleeful! It’s all part of The Grand Marketing Plan—I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”

  “All morning? It’s only 9:30!” said Rebecca. “Can you tweet from here? Do our cell phones work?” she added anxiously.

  “Yep. Don’t worry, Becca; Amber can still reach you.”

  Rebecca, who had not been thinking of her daughter but of the possibility of Ryan MacDonald trying to contact Lila, didn’t reply.

  “By the time Kelly and Queen Cora get around to hiring a social media coordinator, @PGleeful won’t have any followers at all!” Lila exulted. “And THAT will cost ‘em some big bucks to remedy.”

  Wendell, always on the alert, heard their chatter and laughter before Lila and Rebecca turned into his plowed driveway. He pulled a small black comb from his jeans pocket and leaned over to glance at the image offered up by the round shaving mirror hanging judiciously next to the black soapstone kitchen sink. Wendell dragged the plastic comb through his gray hair, which was long enough to tickle the collar of his plaid flannel shirt, and checked the results. Satisfied, he went to the shed door to greet the two women.

  After general introductions in the shed, Wendell ushered Lila and Rebecca into the traditional country kitchen of the Russell homestead. “‘Tain’t like ‘twas when I was a kid,” he apologized, in his drawling laid-back voice. Thirty-five years of travel around the world in the U.S. Navy had not been able to scrub the peculiar Maine accent from his voice. “But, you know, she’s still got some life left in her; if you use her right.”

  “Omigod!” said Lila, overcome by an amalgamation of eagerness and intoxication. Agitated, she surveyed the antique farm kitchen, uncertain where to begin poking and peering first. The cupboards? The drawers? The upstairs?! The sheds! She felt like a kid at Christmas, and worked hard to quash an impulse to run around the sprawling house yelling, “Yiiipppeee!”

  “You don’t live here yourself, Mr. Russell?” Rebecca asked politely, pulling off the blue, hand-knitted wool mittens that Miss Hastings had given her to wear on her walk.

  “No—oh; I live next door in Bud’s place,” replied Wendell, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of his residence. “He was the hired hand here for, oh, perhaps thutty years. Bud – course, he didn’t have no family of his own – he helped Grammie Addie with the egg business, ‘specially after Pappy died.”

  “Do you mind if I look around by myself?” Lila interjected. “I don’t mean to be rude, but …” she broke off, her eager, beseeching eyes pleading with the old bachelor.

  Wendell chuckled, low and cheerful. “Ayuh, you go ahead. I ain’t got nuthin' to hide,” he said. “And if you got any questions, I’ll be right heah.”

  “Coming with me, Becca?” said Lila, flashing her friend a backward, thoughtless glance.

  “No – you go ahead, dear,” responded Rebecca. “I’ve got a few questions for Mr. Russell.” She took off her jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. Lila, without waiting for further permission, disappeared into the bowels of the house.

  Wendell chuckled again, and turned his bright blue eyes upon Rebecca. “You kin call me Wendell,” he said, bashfully. “Nobody ever called me ‘Mister Russell.’”

  Rebecca smiled. “Then, I’m ‘Rebecca,’ please.” There was an awkward pause, but she soon latched onto a comfortable conversational course. “Miss Hastings said you were in the service, Wendell?”

  “Ayuh; retired Navy.” Wendell pulled chair out from the table and brushed off the cushioned seat with the palm of his hand. “Wouldja like a cup of tea? I brought some tea bags and some water ovah from Bud’s place.”

  “I’d love some,” said Rebecca, gracefully taking the proffered chair. “You had to carry water? There’s no running water in the house?”

  Wendell set a nickel-plated tea kettle onto the woodstove to boil. “Wal, the pump is shut off—course. It’s a private well, with awful good tastin’ water,” he said. He hitched up his pants and lowered his solid six-feet-plus frame into the chair opposite his guest. “But there ain’t been no powah turned on in this house …” he paused to reflect; “wal, not since Cousin Bob left seven years ago, I guess.”

  Surprised, Rebecca glanced up at the darkened electric lamp dangling above the kitchen table. “I didn’t even notice there was no electricity!” she said.

  “Wal, you know, the place was built before there WAS powah, and so they was pretty particular ‘bout where they put their windows.”

  “Did you grow up here, Wendell?” encouraged Rebecca. “I’d love to hear the history of the place.”

  Pleased with Rebecca’s friendly familiarity, Wendell Russell flashed a wide grin, revealing a gold upper incisor. “Wal, I sorta growed up here. This was my grandparents’ place, and their grandparents’ before ‘em. I stayed here summers and holidays when I was a kid – my Dad was Grammie Addie’s youngest – and then I lived here ‘n helped Grammie Addie with her egg business after Pappy died. She kept 400 laying hens—Rhode Island reds, mostly. She supplied all the local general stores with eggs and she also had a regular egg route. She was awful shaap, Grammie Addie. ‘Twas quite a real business, you know; ‘twarn’t no pin money thing,” he concluded, proudly.

  “Oh, my goodness—400 laying hens! That seems like an awful lot!”

  “Old Pappy – before he died – he designed the hen pen jest for Addie’s egg business,” said Wendell, jerking his thumb over his shoulder again, this time in the direction of the attached shed. “Pappy and Bud built the shed into thet little hill out back so there was lots of protection for the hens on the Noth side. And on the South side he put in all them tall windows you kin see from the driveway. There was always lots of light down in the hen pen—chickens need ‘bout 14 hours of daylight to lay good,” he instructed. “They could git out into the outdoor pen into the sunlight anytime they wanted to, ‘cause it was all fenced in. Course, Addie did need to put in some artificial light in wintah. She wanted to git the most she could out of them hens as long as possible, and she darn near made every one of ‘em go the full two years.”

  “Two years?”

  “Thet’s pretty much what you get from a laying hen,” said Wendell. He was interrupted by the shrill whistle of the teakettle as the water on the woodstove began to boil. Wendell got up to make the tea, hardly missing a beat. “Grammie Addie had a system; every year in the spring – ‘bout Patriot’s Day – she’d staaht 200 replacement chicks, and by the time fall rolled around and the new hens was ready to lay, she’d thin the old ones out and move the new ones into the hen pen. Course, there was a time in between when we had to clean the hen pen out—we did thet in summer. Now, THET wasn’t my favorite job! I never could stand the smell of ammonia,” he added wryly, wrinkling up his nose at the offensive memory.

  “I bet not!” Rebecca said, laughing. She accepted a cup of hot tea from his hands, and set it quickly down onto the shiny figured oilcloth. “What did your grandmother do with all the old chickens she took out?”

  “Wal, we mostly et ‘em,” replied Wendell, flashing another toothy grin. He hitched his jeans up and sat back down. “Bud and I chopped their heads off and they went into the freezer. We give a lot away, too. They warn’t much good, though. I never knew what real good chicken tasted like ‘til I joined the Navy. All I ever et when I was a kid was one of Grammie Addie’s played out old hens.”

  Rebecca giggled at the imagery.

  “Cookie?” Wendell asked, reaching for the bag of oatmeal cookies he had placed on the countertop earlier. He helped himself to a thick stack and pushed the bag temptingly across the table to Rebecca.

  “Thank you,” she said. Rebecca carefully selected one cookie from the bag.

  “You ain’t gonna stay alive thet way,” Wendell commented. “You’ll probably need at least four of them cookies to git back up to Miss Hastings’ house.”

  Rebecca made a little face. “In the city, I’m generally regarded as being on the heavy side,” she admitted
. “I’ve been on a diet since I was 10, I think.”

  “Wal, you ain’t in the city now, you’re in the country—and you look jest the right size for a country gal,” Wendell said, gallantly.

  Rebecca actually blushed. She put her hands up to her red cheeks. “My goodness, I think the tea is a little hot,” she said, trying to cover her blush. “Not that I’m complaining – Oh, dear! – we certainly appreciate you going to all this trouble for us, Wendell!”

  “Wal, when Miss Hastings told me ‘bout you gals driving up here all the way from Massachusetts to see the place, you know, I got pretty excited. I’d like to see someone livin’ heah, maybe fixin’ up the old place as time and money permits. I ain’t lookin’ to git rich, neither,” he added, hastily.

  “I’m sure you’re not!”

  “It jest hurts me to see the old place go downhill, year after year. And I don’t want to be the one to have her fall down on my watch,” he continued, seriously. “Miss Hastings said yore little friend might be interested in raising chickens and there ain’t no better place in the state of Maine to raise hens and chickens than right heah! I know that for a fact,” he stated, shaking his index finger in affirmation. “And, thanks to Grammie Addie, I probably know jest as much ‘bout the egg business as anybody teachin’ poultry husbandry up to the University – and I’d be glad to help you gals out.”

  “Well, we’d need all the help we could get, that’s for sure!” said Rebecca. “I don’t know if I should be asking this, but … Do you have any idea what you’d want for the place?”

  “Wal, I’d sell the house and the 10 acre field for forty thousand dollars.”

  “Forty thousand dollars!” repeated Rebecca, astonished.

  “And I’d be willing to hold the note,” Wendell added, hastily. “Is thet too much?”

  “That’s not enough!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Why, this place must be worth a hundred thousand, at least!”