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noons when he got home early he would
walk to the road to get the mail, and there
would be chicken feathers lying in the
ditch around the mailbox. When he heard
the chicken trucks grind out on the high
way, he would imagine the wind catching
the feathers that did not fit into the small,
barred chicken boxes and carrying them
down along the sides of the roads. He
would think of this while the plastic beat "
the panes. Usually she would wake up
and miss him and find him beneath the
quilt on the rug. She would wake him if
he was asleep and pull him back in the
bed. He would say things to her after get
ting up from the rug, things that he had
not thought of. He had no idea where
these things came from and after he said
them, these things that he could not ex
plain, he would remember something.
He would remember another time in
another house, with another woman. It
was in the kitchen and there was bacon
frying. A Saturday morning that he
planned to go to the hardware store, then
come home and do some things around
the house, and later read through the af
ternoon or nap with her, pull her away"
from her chair by the fire, pull her in with
him.
But instead there was an argument that
he did not care to get into, that he tried
long and hard to avoid, even by going out
of the kitchen. But the argument followed
and so did the smell of the bacon until it
was so strong throughout the house that
he could not postpone it. He had to whirl
around.
And he said, "OK. Everything you
think is funny I don't, and vice versa. I
mean it. Every single thing."
And she: "What? What are you talk
ing about?"
And he: "It's OK. Really, it's all right.
I'm sorry, I really am."
But that was that, and now this was
this.
By MiCrHAEi Par1er
i
t was winter, and he had moved
I I into a house with her in the
r mountains. She kept the house
- very warm, and the first week
they were there, she helped him put plas
tic on the windows and doors that they
were not using. They went down to the
hardware store and bought a 50-foot roll
of plastic, and covered all the windows
and doors and even the outside of their
bedroom. At one time, it had been a
screened-in porch, and now, she told
him, there were cracks where cold air
streamed in. Together they tacked the
plastic all the way around the back porch
bedroom and when they had finished she
went inside to start dinner, and he stayed
Michael Parker is a senior English major
from Clinton.
outside to chop wood and to stare at the
bedroom; insulated, wrapped, plastic
gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
At first he liked it in the mountains.
She had a teaching job at the college and
he found some temporary work at a near
by state park cutting hiking trails through
the woods. He usually worked by himself,
and sometimes in the late fall he would be
out on the trail all day without seeing any
one. He would take his lunch in his back
pack and there was a favorite spot where
he liked to eat and then lie awake for a
time. He would lie awake and think about
what kind of people he would meet on
the trail, or what would happen if some
one he knew came along the trail while he
was resting. He ate and rested on a short
cliff over a creek, and he could see both
ways down the trail, if anyone were to
come along.
Sometimes he didn't get home until
late, and she would have already eaten
and would be sitting at her desk grading
papers or writing letters to her friends
back in the city. He would eat and think
about telling her about his day while she
talked about hers. She talked to him while
she wrote letters describing the house that
they lived in with the plastic over the win
dows and the piles of wood that he had
stretched from tree to tree around the
yard. It was not that she didn't ask him,
but instead that his job never changed
that much from day to day, unless he fin
ished a trail, which he had done only once,
since the trails were usually 10 to 15 miles
long. He had long ago described the colors
of the leaves to her, and besides, couldn't
she see them herself, driving through the
valley to her job?
Sometimes that fall, when he could not
sleep, he would get up and lie on the rug
next to the fireplace and listen to all the
noises that went on outside. There were
always plenty. He would hear owls,
chicken trucks, and the wind slapping
plastic against the windowpanes. The
owls were off and on, like the chicken
trucks. He knew they were chicken trucks
because he had to drive past the chicken
houses to get to the park, and in the after-
II
He was working on a book about chick
enhouses. It was to be called just that,
Chickenhouses. It was to have many pages
of diagrams and photographs, and upon
completion, he hoped that his chicken
house book would be standard fare on
every glass and steel coffee table in Amer
ica. This chickenhouse thing required a lot
of extensive research. He sometimes drove
all day just looking for signs of chicken
houses. He had in his truck a map of all
the major chicken producing areas of the
country, but it was dated and unreliable.
Besides, it was all so unpredictable. Peo
ple changed what they were doing in a
matter of days, it seemed to him. He had
always thought of the rural means of live
lihood as fairly constant, having grown
up in the suburbs. But no more, he real
ized. His last book was much easier. It
was called Wells of America, about wells.
There were lots of old wells around, and
he had not had to do so much driving.
6 Literary Supplement Thursday, November 10, 1983