The Chicken Coupe

I think it is plain evil to beat your children. That said, my childhood's warped perspective has me believing that there were a few times when, arguably, I deserved a beating.

Case in point:

Back when I was still quite confident of my aim with standard objects (not just knives), I would sink paper shots from across the classroom and bean 2 x 4s with rocks.

My grandparents had a chicken coop on the acre of land we had divided into several backyards. The largest expanse was the roaming grounds of our geese. The purpose of the second back yard, the one butted up against the chicken coop, was in dispute. my sister wished for the ducks to nest there. I hated the idea, as they were destroying the cane and grass with their grazing.

I had tossed all the ducks over the fence into the coop to hang with the chickens. The geese had to be segregated; they had a tendency to get lethal in their bullying. My sister, being a stereotypical sibling, tossed all the ducks back into the yard. We participated in this tennis match of sorts for two or three days. After returning the ducks to the coop yet again, I confronted my sister. It, of course, turned into an argument resulting in her trotting out to the coop.

As she rounded up the ducks, I collected rocks. I let her toss over the first few before firing a few warning shots into the coop's structural 2 x 4s to convey my seriousness. To no avail; as she bent down to grab the last duck in the coop, I threw a rock square at her right ass cheek. I missed by an inch or so. Whatever's necessary to miss a bent-over-person's ass and glide right up their side to nail them nicely behind their ear. My sister dropped like a sack of rags, nearly crushing refugee beneath her.

Having injured my sister before, I was well aware of the Standard Operating Procedure: offer assistance and apologies from a safe distance. My sister climbed to her feet, one hand grasping her wound all the while. Then she turned her Medusa eyes upon me. I was almost as pathetic as a dear in the headlights as she rushed me. As she closed half the distance between us, I scrambled to the coop gate, with all the speed of one knowing their life is literally on the line. Goddamn latch! See, the desert heat is no friend to wood; the screw to the latch ate threw the dry lumber as if it were mere saw dust. The latch was wonky. It rarely closed to the point of locking. This day, however, it was in rare form. My sister knocked me threw the damn gate in a pile of lanky limbs, asunder lumber, and the synthetic cactus known as chicken wire. She clobbered me.

After a few minutes watching the stars fade to clouds, I picked myself up, dusted off, rinsed the blood off with the coop pool's hose, stacked the ruined gate against the coop's opening, and walked my personal Trail of Tears to the house, where doom certainly awaited.

Doom indeed. My sister's wails had incensed my grandmother. At the door, she pulverized me as if I were Beetle Bailey. As I crawled into the house, I heard her ranting to my grandfather. Hoping to lose this event in my chores, or at least lose myself in them, I wandered to the broom closet. As I retrieved the broom, I heard my grandfather, The Man With The Ten Pound Hands, holler my name. As his shadow filled the hallway and set the broom aside. I thought: "You deserve this one, so take it like a man."