The Rooster and the Robe

Jennings parked in the garage next to his bass boat and got out.  Hurriedly he went to his driveway, reached down, grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it at the barking dog.

“Stay off my property you damn white trash mutt,” he yelled.

Charlene talked to him from the porch.  She rubbed one hand over her belly and told him about the rooster.  “Son of a bitch rooster’s been going all day long,” she said.

Suddenly the rooster began to crow.  Cockadoodledoo!

She continued, “Baby, you got to make Wyman get rid of that thing before I lose my mind!”

“Just simmer down,” he said.  “Things are under control.”

“How can things be under control when that damn rooster is alive and crowing?”

He’d met Charlene during hockey season, during one of his Wednesday night games.  She was new behind the rink grill and when Jennings went for an after game burger they hit it off right away.  At that time she was still a little thick in the middle from having her first kid, the one now living with her mother.  But she was a looker all the same with blond hair and eyes pale blue.  When she got pregnant neither of them had any doubts about her move to his place, it was only when their neighbor bought a rooster that problems kicked in.  “Why’d you get that rooster, anyway?” Jennings asked Wyman at the start of it all.  “I like fertilized eggs,” he had said.  “Jesus, you mean to eat?  You mean to tell me that you eat sperm eggs?”

For a good half year there was no time of extended quiet during morning, noon and early evening.  Cockadoodledoo, cockadoodledoo!  The rooster crowed continuously throughout the day.  Finally things came to a head.  The rooster was crowing away one morning when Charlene turned on the lamp alongside of the bed and pushed the quilt comforter from her body.  It was very dark outside.  Convince me that you’re my man, she told Jennings in a raised voice.  Convince me!  Right then and there he knew he needed to solve the problem once and for all, nip it in the bud.  But how to handle the problem?  The solution came to him on a Sunday afternoon while watching a TV documentary about Death Row within San Quentin.

On the porch, Charlene stomped her booted foot hard against the oak planks.  “Go on and tell me,” she yelled.  “How are things under control?  Nothing has changed!  Nothing is ever going to change!”

“Look, everything changes sometime,” he said in a lowered voice and he crossed the driveway and went behind her and put his arms around her swollen waist.  Earlier he’d decided not to explain his idea to gas the rooster with carbon monoxide.  He didn’t want to worry her, didn’t want to disturb the baby.  He wanted a smooth birth without unnecessary worrying.

They stood talking in the kitchen as Charlene fixed white bread and bacon sandwiches and pork-n-beans.  Jennings waved his beer can around in front of him as he talked.  Charlene had suggested moving to the coast, somewhere around Eureka, to a nice apartment overlooking the Pacific.  If they moved to the coast there would be no rooster problem.

“My work is here,” he said pointing his beer can toward Charlene, “not on the coast.”

“Well you’re a jack of all trades; can’t you just get a different job?”

“Jesus, Char,” he said, “how can you say that when work is finally going well.  Besides, we both know the house would be on the market for a good year before it sold.”  Jennings knew this to be true.  Somehow he’d gotten himself into a situation where he couldn’t afford to move.

Charlene coated two slices of bread with mayonnaise and sandwiched the bacon.  “Here,” she said then she leaned back against the counter and used her hands to cup her belly.  “When’s the last time you’ve seen yourself in the mirror, huh?” she asked.  “Bags and dark circles under your eyes.  You’re not even thirty-five but you’ve got the bags of a sixty year old.  You never had bags when I first met you.”