Dear Rufus and Agnes

Dear Rufus and Agnes,

The chicken Chronicles

Chapter Nine

©2009 by Alice Walker

I have taken a plane that has thus far flown me high over the hills where you (and I) live; on my way to a distant country, India, where I am told there are perhaps more goats – especially in the South – than chickens. I can’t imagine it. It was hard to leave you, and I will be gone for quite some time, in chicken terms, but at least before I left I was able to conduct the experiment with persimmons I had long envisioned. The morning I left, I took a few of the ripe and ripening persimmons from the windowsill where I’d placed them – a wonderful and visually satisfying display of colors I love: deep orange, red and yellow – and carried them down to you. You were interested, as you always are, in new food, and crowded round with the others to see, and taste, what I had brought. Flinging them toward the far end of your yard, it was gratifying how quickly you were on them, eating away. Like me, you gravitated toward the mushy, very ripe ones, pecking with gusto. But you also seemed curious about the less ripe ones, and even the ones that might be a bit too tart. There was an expression that described that tartness when I was a child: it made one’s jaws run up. Remembering this, of course I wondered whether chickens have jaws, as such, and whether, with sufficient tartness in whatever you’re eating, your jaws also “run up.”

Watching you eat the persimmons brought back to me my own early experience of persimmons when I was a child and the tree grew wild in the quietly rolling countryside of rural, Outback, Georgia. My siblings loved me, but they could not resist experimenting with my gullible nature. Which I still have, I’m too often told. I liked them so unequivocally, I believed almost anything they told me. So of course they took me to a fruiting persimmon tree the moment I said I wanted to see it, and I was enchanted because it looked like a Christmas tree strung with bright orange balls. They lifted me up to pick a persimmon. They had picked persimmons weeks before, and permitted them to ripen near a window in our kitchen. These had been sweet and delicious and had thoroughly awakened my desire for more. With a straight face, my brothers held me patiently on their shoulders as I tugged at the persimmons, eventually detaching a number of them. My desire (an early gluttony for beauty and experience, as I see it now) was fairly intense.

I gave no thought to the fact that the persimmons I’d picked seemed hard, and, as soon as my feet touched the ground, I pushed myself free of my brothers’ support, and bit into the softest one. It was this moment for which they’d waited. It was worse than biting into a lemon. So tart I thought my jaws would never stop running up. In fact, they seemed to run all the way up to and past my ears. Space Nut. Everyone, even my parents, when told about it later, thought this very funny. I found it fairly hard to bear, however, and could only be mollified by the gift of a perfectly ripe persimmon that my oldest brother, F., pulled out of his hat.

I wonder if you will miss me? I already miss you. Even though I am leaving you in very good hands, a number of them. You will have E. and L. and J. and K. and you will also have the dogs, M. and T. Will you even notice that I’ve gone? I suspect it will be mostly my voice you’ll miss, with its accompaniment of leafy greens, seeds and fruit.

This makes me wonder what it is you see when you look at us. Humans think we look like “somebody.” But to a chicken, I doubt we look like anybody at all. From observing you, I’d say that next to your extraordinary interest in whatever we might be carrying in our hands for you to eat, you relate mostly to our eyes. You notice eyes because they shine. Well, you will have twelve shining eyes watching over you. In fact, shininess seems to be what most attracts you. A belt or shoe buckle, an earring, a bracelet or necklace. A fly’s wing. It was my sweetheart who warned me to always wear glasses while sitting with you: They will peck at anything shiny, I was told. Over time, I saw this was true. That whenever you go after a bug, no matter how small, it is the tiny bit of shine of its skin or carapace that draws you. Cracked corn likewise has luster. Even your mash must appear to your eyes to be sprinkled with gold dust. I hope it is tasty. As tasty as the persimmons that, tart or sweet, have now delivered a previously unknown thrill to your tiny jaws.