I went up to the loft to make a place for Chloe to sleep if she doesn’t want the couch, and it turned into a project. I pulled a lot of things out of Dad’s bedroom, his journals and the stuff from his dresser, and moved them up there onto these cool bookshelves that surround the bed. I took out the old mattress and replaced with it a pile of rugs and this kind of bed-roll thing from IKEA I used on my dorm beds. Jodie and I will have to break the new room in sometime. When I was moving the books and stuff up there, I boxed up my dad’s clothes and asked Sheila if her church’s thrift shop could use them. I will run those over to her this week and whatever else I feel comfortable getting rid of. I kept one of his shirts, a gray flannel one. It was hanging on a hook and still smells like his aftershave and pipe, so it’s not going away anytime soon. I haven’t been reading as much of his journals as I would like to, but what I have read makes me feel like I really missed out. I don’t blame Mom because I know things were complicated. I just wish I’d been a little less self-absorbed growing up. I can say one thing. There’s no way at thirteen that I would have seen myself pulling a kid out of a doe or cleaning off a chick’s poop-encrusted butt.
June 1, 2013
The new chicks are here! I handled them all by myself this time. I saw my first dead baby chick this time. Poor little guy. I’m glad this didn’t happen with the first shipment.
June 2, 2013
Our trip was phenomenal! We drove up Friday night and stayed in the cabins where she always goes. The river follows the road most of the way there, and then the temperature drops like ten degrees once you get into the forest. On Saturday, we hiked the trails in Ponderosa State Park, had lunch and walked around town, and spent the evening in our hotel room.
I am picking up on little things she does, like brushing her hair for ten minutes and always making the bed in the morning, even if we are going to get back in. She is fucking adorable.
I forgot how good a bathroom smells when your girlfriend takes a shower – all those pheromones mixed in with the scent of soap and shampoo. I almost passed out when I went in there to brush my teeth this morning.
When we got back to town, I went over to Jodie’s house for dinner. It’s a little weird being around Russ after sleeping with his daughter, but he hasn’t made any issues other than little jokes about Jodie never being at home. I think he just misses her and doesn’t have a problem with me at all. That’s kind of incredible, considering how conservative this area is, but Russ is good with whatever is good for Jodie.
June 3, 2013
Today I took the first set of birds to the butcher. Early this morning, after feeding and watering the new chicks, Elliot and I picked out thirty of the smallest older birds, stuffed them in these plastic crates Dad had specifically for this purpose, and stacked the crates in the back of the truck. Ominously, we packed two giant coolers with ice packs, as well.
Elliot and I drove over to the poultry processor in Fruitland, a little town near the Oregon border. Processor. That sounds so businesslike, like these chickens will be scanned and sorted, sitting on a shelf like boxes of cereal or detergent. Not killed, plucked, and bagged up.
By the time we pulled up to the facility and around to the back parking lot, I was getting pretty anxious.
“You don’t have to go in, if you don’t want to.” Elliot got out and stood beside the truck.
I sat there for a moment, pondering my choice. I just spent eight weeks raising these birds from fuzzy little fluff balls to awkward teenagers to full grown adults. I showed them how to drink, laughed at their antics, cleaned their butts, kept them warm, managed their feed, cleaned their nasty bedding, broke up disputes, and, unfortunately, have grown attached to some of their stupid little faces. After all we’ve been through, I guess I owed them this one last thing.
I opened the door and followed Elliot around the side to the front door. The odor was unmistakably that of raw chicken, and I almost gagged. Still, the place was about as clean as possible. The stainless steel surfaces were shiny, and there were a few staff people in aprons cleaning and moving birds down an assembly line.
“You want me to steer here?” Elliot asked.
I nodded. We walked over to a well-weathered woman behind the counter. She was reading off papers on a clipboard.
“Hatcher?”
Elliot coughed. “Yep.”
“Thirty?“
“Yep.”
“You want the feet and giblets?”
“Yep.”
“Come back at one. He’ll be back there in a few minutes.” She pointed at me but looked to Elliot for an answer. “She wanna see it done on one that’s not yours?”
Elliot turned his whole body toward me, forcing me to answer her myself. I hadn’t even thought about seeing it happen. I thought I would wait in the car. It couldn’t be any worse than what I had imagined. I mustered up the courage to answer her.
“Sure. I’d appreciate that.”
“Okay. Well, Bud’ll meet you around back.”
Around back, Bud, an older Hispanic man, came out and showed me over to the slaughter area where there were several devices he called kill cones set up.
Three roosters
