Pour One Out for Lucy

The day the chicken lost its feathers, the sun was shining hard enough to bake the clay, and Momma lay spread on the divan with a paper fan and a weeping glass of ice water. The cubes in the glass clinked when she lifted it, and I thought that was find because the heat had swallowed all the sounds and I've never liked quiet.

The chicken was shedding feathers in dry puddles across the lawn. I watched them drift off its body as it took one jerking step after another. Finally, it lay down and I say, "That's it for the chicken then."

My voice came out loud and Momma jerked. "What?" she asked.

"Yep."

Momma slid off the divan, smoothing her cool glass over her brow. "Let's see her."

She stood long at the window staring at the body of her best laying hen the last two years.

"Heat did her," I said.

Momma turned and looked long at me. "I figured." She went back to the divan.

I was when the sky layered pink and the heat stopped curling off the land that I buried Lucy. "You were a good girl," I said. I poured a glass of cold water over her grave, waited for the ice to melt.