The volunteer scrutinized Caitie’s chickens from one end to the other, compared the numbers on their leg bands against the numbers on her entry forms, stamped her vet’s P-T report, and gave her an exhibitor’s badge.
“Section One,” he said, and pointed toward a row of double-stacked cages arranged along both sides of the tent and down the middle, over a cedar-mulch floor. Section One was for chickens and ducks. Section Two was reserved for turkeys and geese, and Section Three for guineas, peacocks, quail, and pheasants. The air was filled with a raucous pandemonium of crows, cackles, clucks, quacks, honks, whistles, and shrieks. (The shrieks came from the peacocks on the other side of the tent. They sounded for all the world like a throng of women complaining about being murdered.) If you wanted to be heard, you had to raise your voice over the cacophony.
“Hey, China, over here!” Tom Banner saw us and waved. As security coordinator for the fair, he was uniformed and wore his duty belt, and since he’s well over six feet and muscular, he cuts an impressive figure. “You’re down at this end,” he said over the hubbub, and walked us to the cages where Caitie’s chickens would spend the next three days.
Tom and his wife, Sylvia, both experienced homesteaders, live just up the lane from us. As a volunteer reserve deputy sheriff, Tom—a former Delta Force officer in Iraq and Afghanistan—does weekly partner ride-alongs with the deputies, responds to emergencies, serves warrants, and generally helps to keep Adams County peaceful. At home, he raises chickens, geese, and ducks and is familiar with just about every homestead critter there is. Sylvia, a talented spinner and weaver, tends a flock of about a dozen Gulf Coast Native sheep. I wondered if she was showing her sheep in the livestock tent, and maybe some of her work in the Weaving Club’s Sheep to Shawl exhibit.
When Extra Crispy and Dixie Chick were comfortably housed in their individual show cages, Tom and Caitie moved off to the side to attach the video camera high up on a nearby post. I stowed her gear under the cages and took a moment to glance around. And did a jaw-dropping double take.
In the cage next to Extra Crispy was the strangest rooster I had ever seen. He was totally black—black as coal, black as night, pitch-black, black as the inside of a black cat. From his black comb, wattles, and beak to his black legs, feet, and toenails, this rooster was amazingly, extraordinarily, exclusively black. Well, perhaps not quite. Among his high-arching black tail feathers and the plumy drape of feathers across his back, the blackness was highlighted with shimmers of iridescent purple and metallic green, like a sheen of oil on black water.
I was still staring at this incredible creature when Caitie and Tom got back. “What in the world is that?” I asked Tom, pointing. “He’s spectacular! In a class by himself.”
“I have no idea,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I knew chickens, but that one’s a mystery.”
But Caitie had an answer. “He’s an Ayam Cemani rooster,” she said. “I saw one on Animal Planet just last week.” She went up to the chicken’s cage and put her finger through the wire. The rooster came over and pecked it politely, saying hello. “And he’s not just black on the outside, either,” she added. “Under those black feathers, his skin is black. And under his skin, his muscles and bones are black. Even his heart and gizzard are black. It’s called hyperpigmentation.” She said it again, slowly, emphasizing the syllables. “Hy-per-pig-men-ta-tion. In Indonesia, where he comes from, he’s considered magical. He’s supposed to bring good fortune.”
“Black heart and gizzard, too?” Tom asked, with interest. “So that accounts for his name.” He pointed to the entry card pinned to the cage. It read Blackheart.
“Amazing,” I said, still transfixed by his incredible blackness. “He must be very rare.”
“Oh, he is,” Caitie said authoritatively. “At least, he’s rare here in America. And expensive. I’ve heard that roosters can cost twenty-five hundred dollars or more. And eight eggs were sold on eBay for fourteen hundred dollars. Not for eating,” she added, “but for hatching. They were guaranteed to be fertile.”
“Twenty-five hundred bucks for a chicken?” Tom whistled.
“And a hundred seventy-five dollars for an egg,” I said incredulously.
Tom chuckled. “A little beyond my homestead budget, I’m afraid.”
“Mine, too.” Caitie made a wry face. “I’d love to have a breeding pair, but I can’t even afford an egg.” She paused, tilting her head. “But if you had a hen and a rooster, and the hen laid twenty eggs a month, you’d have—”
“A lucrative business,” Tom said.
“Hi, guys,” a woman called. She crossed the tent toward us, striding fast. She had a notebook in one hand and a camera around her neck.
“Hey, it’s Slugger Nelson,” Tom said. “Are you going to make us famous?”
“Sure thing,” Jessica said cheerfully, raising her voice over the clamor. “What do you want to be famous for?”
Tom chuckled. “Not for being kidnapped, that’s for sure.”
I met Jessica Nelson a couple of years ago when she was a CTSU grad student, doing a journalism internship at the Enterprise. Now in her mid-twenties, she’s a lively young woman with boy-cut blond hair and a generous sprinkle of freckles across her nose. A seasoned reporter with an observant eye and a curiosity that just won’t quit, Jess proved herself by surviving a potentially deadly encounter with a kidnapper—which explains Tom’s quip. I had a hand in her brave escape from the storage unit where she’d been held captive, and watched with pleasure when she was all over the news, telling her story. Anderson Cooper loved hearing her relate how she felt as she lay terrified in a parking garage
