Chicken Eggs

Things do not quite go as expected when Dutch and his father take a break from unpacking to meet their new neighbors.

Dutch climbed to the top bunk and surveyed the landscape of his new room. The place still smelled strange, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Before too long, it would just be the smell of home. Most everything he owned was in cardboard boxes stacked against the pale violet walls that he’d made his father promise they would paint over.

“Any color you want.”

From his perch, he crunched small bites from a lime-flavored freeze pop and watched down through the window to the front steps and across the lawn to the neighbor’s house. A man stood in his garage there for a moment, looking out from the shadows as Dutch’s father walked back and forth from the Uhaul truck, carrying heavy things.

It was an unexpected vacancy in the office of sheriff that moved them to Greenville. Apparently, the previous one had been young but died of a heart condition that had never previously announced itself. Dutch was proud of his father, of his profession and of the man’s warm and gentle nature, yet he often felt nervous around him. If there was comfort to be had, it was in the knowledge that he was by no means alone. Most people seemed to be put on guard by the man’s towering stature and deep, resounding voice.

“Folks tend to tighten up around the law,” his father had said, “and also around guys that are big like me—like you’re probably going to be one day. So, we have to be careful to treat them easy.”

There had been plenty of opportunities for Dutch to observe the reactions of others who came into the vicinity of his father. It was not uncommon to hear questions like “how tall are you?” or “what did your parents feed you?” Some didn’t seem to want to say anything if they could help it. They would just eye him from across restaurants or the far ends of hallways.

More than once, men saw his father’s size as a challenge to see what they could get away with. How far they could push him.

Despite all the occasions when a stranger had said something rude or poked a finger in his chest, only once had Dutch seen his father hurt another person.

It had happened in the grocery store. His mother was still alive at the time, swollen round with his sister. A man there was in some hurry for reasons he didn’t bother to announce, and even though Dutch’s father had already started to put some of their groceries up onto the belt, the man decided that he was going to push on through and cut the line. His mother had been standing nearby, flipping the pages of a magazine, when the man bumped hard into her and she fell against the rack where all the gum and candy bars were displayed.

His father dropped an arm in a flash and caught her before she was on the ground. Some of the Snickers bars flew off the shelf and scattered. The man paid no attention and put his package of beer and carton of cigarettes in front of their things to be scanned by the girl working the register. Dutch looked up at his mother and she down at him and when she smiled, he thought the whole thing was over, but suddenly the man’s boots were going up past his face and into the air. His father had put a hand around the man’s throat and picked him up with one arm as easily as if he were pulling a bag of garbage out of the trash can.

He pinned the man down onto the conveyor belt and held him there. Dutch could see his eyes bulging out of his skull toward the ceiling, shiny and yellowed like old ping pong balls.

The whole thing lasted just a moment before his father let him go. Dutch expected the man to run away, but instead he got down off the counter and did some yelling, looking angry and more than a little embarrassed. No one spoke on the trip home. Dutch rode with his hands under his thighs to keep them from shaking.

He found that his fingers were again beneath his legs when a tap on the bedroom door brought him out of the memory.

“Hey, Dutchie. Come on downstairs. We’re going to go meet the neighbor.”

He pictured the man in the garage. Thin, with a bald spot on the back of his head, he’d had a shaggy dark beard with some gray in it. Earlier in the afternoon, a long orange school bus had pulled up to the curb and a girl who looked about his age got off and went into the house. She was wearing bright pink shoes and a pink ribbon in her blonde hair.

“Why are we going over there,” Dutch asked when they were out on the porch.

“I thought it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves before too much time goes by. They must be curious about us, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. I guess so.” He worried a little that the neighbor could be one of those men that would feel a need to start trouble. To see what he could get away with.

They walked up to the door together. It was a blue door with a brass knocker. His father gave it a few clicks and they waited. When it opened, the man was looking at his father’s chest until he stepped back and got his bearings, tilting his head up several degrees to find the face at the top.

“Evening,” his father said, his voice a bit higher and softer than usual. “I’m Jack Livingston and this is my boy, Dutch. You’ve probably noticed already, but we’re moving in next door. Figured we’d come by and say hello.”

“I see. Alright then,” the man said. “Well, I’m Chris Beltz, but I go by Jay.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Jay.”

“You too,” he said, then looked down at Dutch. “And you as well, partner.”

There was movement in the house behind the man. A flash of pink and then it was gone.

“Well look,” he heard his father say, “I hate to impose the first time we’re even talking to one another, but I promised my boy that after all the work we’ve done today I’d make him a peach cobbler. That’s his favorite.”

Dutch’s head swiveled upward. He felt a large, warm hand fall onto his shoulder. He kept quiet and began to feel more nervous, unsure what was taking place.

“That right?” Jay asked.

“That’s right. Only thing is, I realized that we have all the fixin’s except for the eggs. I’m sure the general store is closed up by now, so I was wondering if we might be able to ask for a couple. If you have them to spare, that is.”

The man considered, appearing surprised by the sudden request. His eyes drifted around the porch and out to the yard, then he gave a little chuckle.

“Brandy,” he said, his scratchy voice raised, but not to a yell, aware as he was that she had concealed herself in the house somewhere near enough to hear him. “Fetch me two chicken eggs from the fridge.”

The three of them stood in silence for a beat and listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen. Then the girl came up beside the man Jay, smiling proudly in her pink ribbon and shoes, a brown egg in each palm. Dutch was nudged forward by the big hand on his back.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey.” She met his eyes, then looked back down.

He took the eggs. A buzz tickled across his fingers when they touched the cold hard shells and her soft warm skin at the same time.

“Thank you,” Dutch mumbled.

The girl said nothing.

“Sure thing, gents,” Jay answered.

“I appreciate it, neighbor,” his father said. “You saved the day for me.”

As they crossed the gravel driveway into their new yard Dutch looked back behind them, but the blue door was closed.

He waited until they were in the house to ask.

“Are you really making cobbler?”

“No. Not tonight anyway. I’ll scrounge something up for us though. Hot dogs I guess.”

“But why did you tell him that?”

His father opened the flaps of a cardboard box and began placing books on the built-in shelves beside the fireplace.

“Well, I wanted to have an excuse to introduce ourselves—one that wouldn’t just seem like we were being nosey. Plus, you can learn a lot about someone by how they react when you ask for a favor.” He organized the books from largest to smallest on one shelf, then smallest to largest on the next. “But mostly, I wanted to owe him something.”

“Eggs?”

“It doesn’t really matter what it is. He’s not going to expect me to bring him two eggs tomorrow to pay back my debt. It’s more about asking for his help, letting him solve a problem for me. It gives him just a little bit of power right from the start. That’s something that people like. Having a little bit of power.”

“Because he helped you.”

“Right. You get the idea.”

Dutch picked up a box with his name written on the side and started up toward his room.

“That girl seemed nice,” his father said. “Brandy.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you’ll need to borrow a calculator for your homework sometime. Until we can get you one of your own.”

“Yeah,” Dutch said as he carried his things up the steps, his heart thumping against the weight of the box. “Maybe I might.”

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