“Where’d you get it?”
“Where do you think?”
“Your dad’s store? In November? That makes no sense.”
“Right? Somebody special-ordered them and never picked them up. Donnamarie was shitting bricks over these dozen chicks, calling us at the house every day, so I had to go get them.”
I could feel the heartbeat through the feathers. “Won’t he miss the rest of his friends?”
“Okay, so. I told you this was life and death? This is the alive one. Sad story.”
“The rest are dead? How?”
“So. I have this dog, Jip? He’s the sweetest little thing.”
“So sweet, he offs chickens?”
“I don’t even know how it happened. I was outside letting them run around, and Dad lets Jip out the back and next thing I know he’s just hoovering the little fellas out of the grass.”
Her smile turned upside down, the saddest of sad. I wanted to kiss her more than I wanted to live. “Survivor,” I said to my little friend, giving his chest a tiny fist bump. “You and me.”
Was I giving a thought to no pets allowed, the whole ridiculousness of a chicken in the house, any of that? What do you think? The bird was in the hand.
I went nuts, and spent too much money. Got her flowers not from Walmart but the true flower place in Bristol where they had one the exact color of her hair. Orchid. A new suit jacket, not from Goodwill. The homecoming rigamarole at halftime would be in uniform, but after that was the dance plus all other postgame action. It killed me that I couldn’t drive over and pick her up, but my option was U-Haul’s Mustang, himself supervising. I’d sooner take the riding mower. I tried to talk Angus into letting me use her Jeep, flying solo on my learner’s permit just this once, because what cop in Lee County is going to ticket a General on game night? No dice. Angus was still teasing me about flavor of the week. All I could say was you wait and see. Dori’s the one.
Angus called the baby chicken Dori’s and my “love child.” Like many a bastard, he ended up in a back room in a cardboard box. Dori brought him a waterer and scratch feed from the store. She came over every day that week, being pretty lonely, all on her own with her dad that turned out to be a lot sicker than just his heart. She said it’s a losing battle trying to get in to see doctors. Only after the heart attack did they find the cancer in him that by that point was eating him up, lungs and bones. One day she closed my door and asked if she could lie down and cry a little bit, while I held her. Everything in me, my whole insides, turned over for this girl.
She was the one that took me shopping for our homecoming date and talked me into the new jacket, never even worn before. I told her I was not a wealthy man, but she laughed and said I had three hundred at least in my bedroom. Lortabs sold for ten bucks a pill, oxys for eighty. I wasn’t about to part with those pills, but we bought the jacket. She lined up a neighbor to sit with her dad overnight on Friday. I was counting down minutes.
The ride problem turned out not an issue. Coach made us come out two hours ahead of kickoff for last-minute drills. I was wound so tight over so many things, getting the thunderous trots in public for one, I took every pill I was supposed to. Stood on the sidelines watching the hole in our game that should have been me. I was there and not there, the crowd noise and stadium lights melting into a long grasshopper whine in my ears. Feeling my heart thumping in the backs of my knees and my teeth. One sorry son of a bitch. Only one thing could save me.
She’d turned up looking like a wet dream. The purple-hair waterfall down one side of her face, the shiny blue dress also like water running down her perfect body. I wanted to drink it off of her. Before kickoff we’d met up in the parking lot so I could give her the flower thing. But really just to see her. I didn’t fully believe she’d come. I fetched the clear box out of U-Haul’s car and slipped it on her wrist and she was like a kid on Christmas morning. Holding it up to her hair. Perfect match. She’d not seen an orchid before, let alone anybody giving her one. It killed me to leave her. I told her to find the pep squad and they’d tell her where to line up for the halftime court. I’d already caused no small amount of drama, signing up a date that was not enrolled as a student. Seriously ticking off the cheerleaders and locker-cookies chicks. But Dori would never know about that, I’d make sure. I felt fifty years older than these kids in high school.
“See you on the field,” she said. That open-lip smile. “My liege.” She reached up and kissed me, surprise attack, and I got hard. What that feels like inside a jock and cup, oh man. Like a V8 under a Yugo hood. I couldn’t help wondering what I had to look forward to later.