Trust
Putnam County, Tennessee, 1946
He’s four years old.
He lives with his uncle, his aunt and his grandmother. His uncle has a couple of tobacco barns across the fields and, nearer at hand, a barn for the animals. Two cows, some chickens and a mule.
Locusts thrum. The air shimmers. Two pin oak trees bend over the barn. A flock of black-and-white guinea fowl scuds across the yard like a cloud.
He bundles his pet rooster under his arm. He climbs one-handed. All summer he only wears shoes on a Sunday. His tough little feet make easy work of the ladder to the hayloft.
In the hot shade he feeds his rooster June bugs he’s collected in a bottle. Grubs, dry corn. The rooster, his age or younger, does not remember life without the little boy. Probably the rooster does not remember life before last week, but in all of his memory a little boy holds him and talks to him and feeds him by hand.
The little boy looks out of the hayloft. One cow and the mule are asleep in the pasture near the pond. The other cow stands belly-deep in the brown water.
The little boy plays a game with his rooster. He holds the rooster over the hatch where his grandmother tosses hay down for the animals. There’s a pile of hay on the dirt floor below.
Chickens can fly, not well, but they can get themselves over a fence or up into a tree with a lot of flapping and cackling. They can flutter down well enough to land on their feet. The little boy tosses his rooster into the air. The rooster flaps and squawks and flutters down to the pile of hay, where he straightens his feathers and starts looking for Bessie bugs.
The little boy climbs down the ladder, fetches his rooster, carries him back up, and tosses him again.
They play this game all summer.
One day the little boy thinks he will toss his rooster down very gently.
He stands over the opening, lines his rooster as best he can over the hay, and opens his arms.
The rooster, trusting his little boy, sails straight down in a bundle. He may not realize he is now alone in the air. He hits the floor and dies instantly.
Telling the story, the old man doesn’t cry. He says several times, “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I thought he would fly. I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
Why should he cry? He’s 80 years old. He’s had other roosters. Some he petted, some he ate. Some perhaps both.
But he remembers those minutes in every detail.
He stares down from the hatch. He skins his hands on the ladder. Feathers splatter the straw. He learns over and over he cannot will his rooster back into the air.