And Now the Sky is Falling

FICTION And Now the Sky is Falling Ralph Price The real events in our lives have no beginnings, no endings, sometimes not much in the middle. We make a nickel's worth of sense of our pasts by stringing memories like Cheerios. We remember color. We remember insults taken, but not those given. We remember being cold. We remember mistakes. Cars. Being in trouble, fobs. Or put another way, there are certain events (or time-spans pretending to be events) that come to the party that is our consciousness, then won't go home. Even after the incidental erosion of memory which has come with time and the river, there are probably ten or twelve of these globettes of personal history swimming around in my own bucket. Sometimes they seem like stories, good stories, just like I remember them. Sometimes they seem more like the leftoversfrom dreams. But gas or grist, I wanted to write as accurately as I could. I have tried to be a conscientious reporter, giving life tofact andfigure,finding romance in the exactitude of detail, revealing the beauty in bone-hard truth. But sometimes it doesn't work. Even the objective eye-witness must look one way or he must look the other. I avoid the lie as ifI were plugged into an electroshock lie detector, surrounded by angry detectives. I tell the truth and the truth about the truth. ... And it still comes outfiction. A CHICKEN COMES HERE EVERY DAY. She is black with white spots and a large red comb, so big, in fact, that for a while we thought she might be a rooster. But seeing her here now—and she is here for long visits—it is obvious she is no rooster. She does not crow, and she is not stupid like a rooster. She does not pick fights with the evening breeze. She positions herself under the bird feeder. What is spilled, she gathers. A rain of plenty on her crimson bonnet—the hemp seed, the sunflower seed, the flax, the thistle—something new to eat every two seconds, as long as the sparrows and the finches keep spilling. Which surprises me a little—to see how many hours she spends in an area the size of a pie. As long as the shower continues, she scratches and pecks in that circle. And she is healthy and bright as new money. Ten hours a day without moving ten inches. No need to seek out companions, as a dog would do. Alone in the garden surrounded by 55 flowers, she bends her head this way and then that way, watching for cats, watching for falling seeds, watching for me. Watching, pecking and scratching, like the farmer's wife who can't stop working. When she is busiest, the hen makes a noise that reminds me of my grandmother singing hymns without words. Bringing in the sheaves, dum-de-din-de-dum. We shall come de dum-dum, yalle lah-lah-lum. Chickens are not as well-equipped to understand humans as are other birds, like crows, parrots and robins. Men and women and chickens have lived wing to elbow since the cave. Chickens were easily domesticated, because they see humans as nothing more than food dispensers. We have an endless curiosity about chickens, and we never tire of learning about them. They, on the other hand, never learn a thing about us. Chickens have no talent for human psychology. No intuition for motive. Unlike the crow, for instance. If I go to the field with my shotgun, the crow watches from a thousand yards. If I go to the field with camera and tripod, the crow watches from five hundred. If I go to the field with a shovel and start digging a hole, the crow flies over my head. If I go to sleep, he might steal my hat. Robins are like that, too. They'll follow the gardener to his garden. And starlings are as smart as they are plain. Split their tongues and teach them the Gettysburg Address. Oh, yes. Someone will do it. My father went into the chicken business when I was nine years old, and he...