Chickenfeed Read Online Free PDF

life.
    *

    Each time one of Elsie’s letters arrived, Norman felt twinges of guilt about keeping her dangling. But like all cheats he put his own happiness first. On the two or three weekends that Elsie came to the farm during the summer, he managed to jolly her through them without too many rows. Her moods had less impact when he knew he could laugh with Bessie after she was gone.
    His hardest task was keeping Elsie at bay in the shack. She was at him all the time, rubbing against him and urging him to undress her the way he used to. She told him she’d changed.
    ‘I’m not afraid to have sex any more, pet,’ she coaxed. ‘It’s natural when two people love each other.’
    ‘What if you get pregnant?’
    ‘You can use a rubber if you want.’
    ‘I don’t have them any more,’ he lied. ‘I threw them away. In any case, it’s too dangerous, Else. Your dad’ll give you hell if you end up with a baby out of wedlock.’
    ‘I don’t care, lovey. I want to show you how much you mean to me. And how can I do that unless I give myself to you?’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Please let’s do it, Norman. You need to know what a good wife I’ll be.’
    He was canny enough to recognize that this wasn’t her real reason for wanting sex. He began to see their relationship like a game of chess. Each of them was trying to force the other into a corner. Norman wanted Elsie to realize she had no future with him. While Elsie wanted to bind Norman to her by getting pregnant.

    In the dark hours of the night, Norman often tried to convince himself that he should marry Elsie. ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,’ he’d say out loud.
    He’d shared his life with her for four years. She knew more about him than any person on earth. There were even times when the thought of her not being there scared him. Perhaps he’d grow tired of Bessie, too.
    Sometimes he wondered if he cared for women at all. His chickens gave him more affection than people did. It still upset him to break their necks and remove their pretty plumage.
    He loved the way they ran when he called to them. Necks stretched out and legs pumping. The young ones scampered so fast they fell over his feet as he walked towards them. He had to tread carefully. Some were tame enough to be stroked, others skittered away with nervous cheeps.
    He had one cockerel who was a fighter. A Welsummer with blue-black tail feathers and a magnificent red comb. Norman called him Satan because of the evil that lurked in his beady eyes. If a cockerel in the next-door run strayed too close, Satan leapt at the wire and tried to attack him. He guarded his own hens jealously. Norman admired him for it.
    He also admired Satan’s appetite for sex, which meant few of his hens produced unfertilized eggs. This was in contrast to his Buff Orpington and Leghorn cockerels, whose milder natures made them lazy.
    Which wasn’t to say that Norman liked Satan. He treated him as warily as a snake after the bird attacked him from behind one time. Satan drove his sharp spurs into the back of Norman’s leg and the wound hurt for days.
    ‘I don’t know why you don’t kill him,’ said Elsie.
    ‘What for?’
    ‘Teach him a lesson.’
    ‘What’s he going to learn when he’s dead? And what good would it do me? Only a madman would kill his best cockerel.’
    ‘Then teach the others a lesson.’
    Norman looked at her with irritation. ‘They’re chickens, Elsie. Their brains are about this big.’ He made a tiny gap between his thumb and forefinger. ‘They learn where their food is and they learn to lay their eggs in the nesting boxes. But that’s it .’
    ‘There’s no need to get snappy with me. I was only trying to help.’
    ‘Yes, well . . . it’s a stupid idea. It was my mistake anyway. I got him riled. It makes him jealous when his hens eat out of my hand.’
    ‘His brain can’t be that small then,’ she said acidly. ‘Isn’t jealousy what humans