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A Story Submitted by a Visitor

Snow Theft

Granddaddy crashed a big armload of split stovewood into the wood box by the fireplace. It was past four o’clock, Friday afternoon, and fast falling dark outside already. The sky was close and gray. Bits of bark flew out on the hearth, and he sat down to pull off his rubber boots and stand them by the fire. His heavy horsehide jacket and hat tossed on the floor next to him. He looked as totally weary and cold as this January spell of damp, dark weather could make him.

“We’re fixin’ up to have some weather” he told me.

I kept on coloring in my newest book, propped on my corduroy covered knees, wiggling my toes in my red socks with the heels worn through. I shrugged at the idea of “weather”. I was six years old.

Granddaddy thawed out at the supper table, having some potato soup and cornbread, and then retired to his chair by the fireplace, stretching out his socked feet to the blaze.

It grew chilly in the house if you got far away from the fireplace, as the temperature outside had dropped off fast and it began to blow big feathery flakes of snow. The wind keened around the corners of the house, but we were cozy enough. Mama and Grandma were washing up the supper dishes, steaming up the kitchen windows,which already had snow on the outside ledges.

Granddaddy looked at his watch and said “It’s awful cold and bad outside to put my outside clothes and boots back on and go up and shut the chickens in”.

Grandma called in from the kitchen that she hated to see him go back out again, since it was so dark out already and snow coming down sideways in the wind. Our chicken house was away from the house, up the road by the barn and the barn lots and outbuildings. It was a little walk, but we never failed to shut up the coop at night. On summer nights, we’d walk up and just take in the smell of hay mown or tobacco leafing out, and enjoy it in the twilight. This was no summer night though, in fact, we hardly ever saw such a snowstorm as was howling outside now.

“Surely nothing that would get after them would be out and about tonight” he said, yawned, and picked up the daily paper and began to read. It was decided.

I always heard him poking the fire up and then pulling on his boots when it was coming light outside in the mornings. It was dim this morning though, and I wanted to get out and see how much snow was out there. Thinking there might be enough for a snowman (I’d never seen one before except in books) I hurried right into my pants and warm sweater so I could go with him to feed the horses, our milch cow, “Pet”, and the chickens. Granddaddy was always happy to see me up because he liked me to go everywhere with him. Grandma was in the kitchen sliding a pan of buscuits in the oven so we could eat breakfast after we did up the morning work outside and brought in the milk. He had the stainless steel milk bucket over his arm and we pushed open the kitchen door and found snow about a foot deep over the ground. I hadn’t seen such snow before, so deep it was way up above my knees and so powdery and dry it crackled under my oxfords. Granddaddy tramped a path for us, by the cistern house, by the smoke house, past the woodpile, up the road towards the barn. There was a little driveway up to the barn, with steep brush covered banks, all weighted down with snow now. When we got to the top of the driveway, we could see the chicken house on the right and before us the tobacco fields stretched out. There was something very out of place. The snow was covered with thousands of little lacy prints, like small dog tracks, and, every so often, mounds of snow bunched up, all the way to the fence on the far side of the flat field. What caught our eyes though, like stabs in the throat, were the stains, bright bloody red in the white snow, with the sun just beginning to shine on them. He didn’t say anything at first and I didn’t know what it all was. Then he muttered a curse under his breath, and something about his gun, and whirled around, nearly knocking me over. I ran along behind him towards the house, but he was going fast, and I was too little to catch up. So I just turned around for another look, and realize the chicken house door was wide open and no chickens anywhere about. The sky grew a bright blue now that the sun was up and shining bright, cold and glittering on that snow and the ground held death. Other than a scraped knee, it was the first time I ever saw blood. It was the first time I ever saw Granddaddy run either. He was coming back now, without his gun, and Mama coming along with him, all wrapped up in her coat and scarf. I ran to her, and took her hand, and asked her what had happened here.

Granddaddy said one word: “Foxes”.

He cursed them for killing and burying the chickens like that, as it seemed so much worse than just killing and eating them. Mama heard a little noise, reached into the closest fencerow and pulled out a little half-grown rooster. Somehow they had mangled his neck, and it was bleeding on her coat, but he was alive. Mama wrapped him in her scarf and carried him while they looked all around the barn lots to see if any more might be hiding there, but there were none. There were thirty dead hens and a bunch of fryers buried in the field though. Every one of the flock except that little rooster was gone.

We went back to the house then, and Grandma was heartbroken since most of her laying hens had names and she loved them all, fed them and talked to them every day. Not to mention the loss of the eggs, and the occasional fryer for Sunday dinner. That rooster was one of those, and he huddled in the scarf and was set on the floor. After breakfast, where Granddaddy just glared into his hot coffee, Mama got out her sewing basket and, while Grandma held the rooster’s head, she sewed his neck wound up with black thread. They poured some warm water and whiskey down his throat and put him in a box of newspapers in the warmest corner of the kitchen. Now Granddaddy got down his shot gun from the pegs, filled his pockets with shells, and said he was going up the road. He didn’t say more, but Grandma hollered after him to get Mr. Greene to go with him. He went that way, up the road, tramping snow, his gun over his shoulder. I could smell his cigarette smoke in the cold air, pleasant and acrid, floating out behind him.

I stood a long time in the front yard, waiting. My feet were icy but I stayed there, waiting. The snow was not melting, it was much too cold for that, and the sky was that hard blue. Soon I began to hear the guns, way off back in the woods. I stood there and listened to the guns going off, booming out over the snowy land.

I don’t remember how we buried the chickens in the frozen ground. I do remember going to the woods with Granddaddy in the Spring and him showing me the rock cliffs where the foxes had dens, where he and Mr. Greene had shot them all, little ones and all.

I remember being afraid I would see the skeletons of fox babies there and I remember I never wanted to go to that place in our woods again. I remember how that little rooster healed up, except his neck was always crooked and he looked back over his shoulder.

Mama made him into a pet, named him “Crook”, and when I was in high school, he was still roosting on the side porch on the back of the swing. He never got very big, never went back to the chicken house, and never mingled with hens. We replaced the flock over time, but it was never forgotten, and the door to the coop never left ajar again, no matter how snowy, cold, or dark the evening might be, because snow theft can come when you least expect it.

Some baby chicks a day or two after their arrival. Notice the paper under the waterer in the upper left. This is to help keep some of the shavings out of the water. Chick will scratch for food from day one.