Fall 2022 | Occasus | Issue 12
Lonnie's Old Mean Rooster
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Nestled deep in the twin shadows of Black Mountain and Dixon Knob lies Bloody Harlan, Kentucky, where coal bosses once hired union-busting thugs to beat in the heads of striking employees protesting for better wages and working conditions. One of the poorest counties in the United States, Harlan is old coal country; rough and tumble people come from that neck of the woods. My granny, Martha Harrison, was a legend there, famous for her cussing and cut-throat card playing. Pinochle was her game, but Blackjack would do in a pinch. When you sat down to cards with Martha, if coin was on the table, you were sure to leave with a lighter purse, but no hard feelings. That was how she played, and if you didn’t know it before you pulled your chair out, you sure did when you got up to leave. I grew up hearing stories about her from a young age, about how she was a stout woman who owned but a single pair of Go To Church shoes who stood only 5’3” in her stocking feet. Her mouth was always full: yellowed false teeth, a menthol Salem cigarette dangling loosely from her bottom lip, or a chaw of tobaccy dribbling out of the corners, like the cud of a well-fed moo cow. Her temper was also legendary—it would erupt out of her like a plume of super-heated ash and tephra belching from the deep magma chamber of a volcano. If someone looked at her sideways, she would just as soon blow than avert her gaze. But everyone in town loved her though for she had a tender heart for children and widows and animals abandoned by the side of the road. She had no truck with man nor beast, save her husband Lonnie’s mean old rooster.
“I’m gonna knock that beak right down your gullet one of these days! You’ll be cock-a-doodle-dooing out of your ass until the Fourth of July!” she muttered under her breath nearly every morning after she and Barney did their pre-breakfast do-si-do around the yard. After she cavorted with Barney on that fateful day in late July of ’42, folks in town started calling her the Carrie Nation of the Appalachians even though she used a pole and not a hatchet. When the last pin feather drifted to the ground, she declared herself to be the “Destroyer of the Devil Rooster by the direct order of God.”[1] On a blazing hot night in the summer of ’35, at the end of a brutal cockfight just outside of Lexington, Lonnie Harrison strutted out of a stifling tent with Barney tucked beneath his left arm. Barney had just become the most famous prize fighting cock in the entire state of Kentucky after tearing Jed Reed’s rooster, Cocktop, to shreds and leaving him gushing and twitching on the cockpit floor. Barney’s comb was a bright scarlet that stuck up wildly on the top of his head, and when he was especially enraged as he had been that night, he would violently toss his head back and forth to make the comb flip wildly from side to side and seem like a bird possessed by the Devil himself. A hard-drinkin’ man, Lonnie loved his moonshine. He lived up in Dagger’s Holler, about five miles east as the crow flies from Harlan. Martha, his wife of some forty years, tended his chicken coop out back of the small white clapboard house, barely spitting distance from the kitchen door. In the years after the Great Depression, in that part of Appalachia, animals were food—not pets, but Lonnie doted on Barney though he was mean as a boar in heat. As much as Lonnie loved Barney, that bird had an ornery big hate for Martha and she would mournfully regale anyone who cared to listen with stories about her daily morning feeding ritual including her husband. “Lonnie! That rooster will be the death of me. You listening to me, Lonnie? I’m tellin’ you that bird sees fit to be the death of me! He got to go! That damn old bag of bones runs out of the coop like he is done being chased by some fiend from hell! He flaps up to me and pecks my feet ‘til they run red like the River Nile in the Good Book. No matter how much I kick out at that old damn sack of feathers, I can’t never shake him loose! Sometimes he latches on with his beak!” She would let out another stream of cuss words, and then take a long sucking drag on her Salem. “Yesterday, the nuthatches were singing a song like to put a child to sleep for hours, and that damned old thing snagged a claw deep into my ankle. I got to hoppin,’ mad as the banshee of Center Point, shriekin’ down from the top of her big ole mountain! Her keen is so terrifying it can turn a man’s beard white and grow hair on his teeth. But no amount of leg shakin’ would loosen him offen’ me! Damn him all to hell! I’m about at the end of my very short rope!” Yes, Martha hated that contemptible beast with every breath in her being. The feeling was mutual; Barney’s hatred for Martha was as venomous as a copperhead’s tooth wound after being interrupted while slithering down a dusty road on its way out of town. Every morning, after tussling with Barney, Martha would hobble back into the kitchen, grab up her faded blue apron with the candy red stripes and spend the next hour feeling sorry for herself while slowly sponging the blood from her feet and legs. She often thought, “I wonder if I can strangle him with some quilting thread?” and that late morning in late May, a plan began to grow as she imagined her next quilt, a patchwork to commemorate Barney’s short, but well-pecked life. Everyone who lived in Appalachia kept chickens and roosters and hogs. It was one way mountain folk kept starvation away from their children come winter’s cold, blustery winds and deep drifts. She had learned how to slaughter chickens when she was barely knee-high to a crow by watching her granny Mae Bell each Thursday afternoon. After taking over for granny, Martha soon became a master at calming the birds before laying them down on their plump breasts. As her granny had taught her, she would place a pole on the bird’s neck up close to the head, put one foot on each side of its neck, and use the pole to pin its head in place. She would then quickly yank the pole up until she heard a “Cer-rack!” “That’s how you do it, nice and easy,” granny would say to her. No, Martha was no stranger to killing chickens. She knew chickens, but she disliked roosters because they were so aggressive. “Rooster meat was tough, stringy, hardly worth all the effort it took to ready them for the fry pan.” The first time she laid eyes on Barney strutting around the coop, she thought, “Just one more damn aggressive rooster,” and made a “humpf” noise in the back of her throat. “Like he’s God gift to hens!” She bided her time, keeping a daily nervous watch on Barney from the corner of her eye while standing next to the kitchen window drying the breakfast dishes each morning. Whenever she would natter about Barney to Lonnie, he would just puff himself up and say, “Quit your complainin’ woman! What do you expect me to do? Turn him out on to the street?” “Why, yes, I do!” And then one morning, as she went out into the yard carrying her bucket of chicken feed, it was as if Barney had been waiting in ambush. He came charging onto her like avian lightning. His attack was so swift that it caught her off-guard and she lost her footing. As he pecked her without pity, she cursed him in agonizing yelps so loudly that Miss Barbara Sue who lived half a mile away heard the ruckus. Martha had been in a particularly foul mood that morning: her shower had run cold halfway through, and the breakfast eggs did not set. As she went out into the yard, her wet hair hanging in sopping tendrils, eyes bleary, the cadence of a military band boomed in her head. The minute she crossed into the chicken pen, a ball of angry rooster feathers hit her in the chest. Seeing an old hatchet leaning against the coop, she grabbed its worn hickory handle and swung, but he flapped out of harm’s way. She started chasing him with her arms windmilling around her head, but fell behind him by three steps as Barney rose up in a ballet of feathery evasion. Another round of chase and she threw herself down on top of him and wrestled him across the enclosure, pinning his wings beneath her mighty frame. In that moment she forgot all about the pole technique and, in one decisive move, she snapped Barney’s neck. The solid crack made her grin a wicked grin from ear to ear. Victorious, she stood, grabbed Barney’s feet, and dragged his carcass into the kitchen. By the time Barney had bled out over the sink, the lard was bubbling and popping in her blackened cast iron skillet on the stove. She declared Barney a thing of wonder as she first dipped his meat into egg, then into flour, coating it evenly. Into the frying pan he went and she said to herself, “Justice will be served.” About that time, Lonnie put down his pool cue and put on his straw hat. He bid his companions good day and began to amble his way up the winding mountain road from town, his brow dripping with sweat on the steamy Appalachian afternoon. There was not a breeze in the air to whip away his happy whistling as he came around the last bend in the road just shy of McFadden’s farm. His worn leather sole made a soft thonk as his left foot touched the planks of wood and the porch swing let out a soft creak when his hand grazed it as he sauntered past. Inside, Martha heard his gruff greeting as he said hello to the oldest girl playing jacks on the porch. Then the front door screeched as it was pulled open and she knew he had arrived home. In moments, he came into the kitchen, his ham fist wrapped around the girl’s hand as he pulled her behind him. He nodded in Martha’s direction, and crossed to the rickety old table in the centre of the room in two quick steps. “Woman, where’s them vittles? I is hongry as a Black Bear!” “I have been slaving in this kitchen since before dawn, Lonnie, to make you a fine feast. Come in and set a spell.” She bent down, stuck her head into their old enamel stove and dragged out an ancient Corning Ware casserole dish in which her fried chicken lay warming. Lonnie’s mouth started watering the moment the succulent smell hit his nose. “Martha makes the best damned fried chicken this side of Memphis,” suddenly realizing his stomach was so empty that he wanted to leap across the table and grab a breast with his two hands. Martha slammed the casserole dish onto the table and said, “Lonnie, I made a very special meal for you today!” He looked down at the steaming dish before him, then back up at her. Seeing her eyes blazing like Beelzebub, Lonnie asked chagrined, “Barney?” “He done gone to meet his maker today. Et up before he goes cold.” [1] Nation, Carrie. n.d. “Top 9 Quotes by Carrie Nation.” A-Z Quotes. Accessed April 7, 2022. https://www.azquotes.com/author/24362-Carrie_Nation. |
D'vorah Elias has written poetry for more than 45 years. She has recently started writing short stories.
