Special Issue #13 ISSN 1547-5957

It should have been different.
The army had been a good place for him. He’d felt comfort for the first time in
his life within the bosom of the hard strictures of army life. He’d even had thoughts
of going career. But, just when a smile on his face was becoming an everyday
happening, he’d made a mistake. His sparring partner had goaded him. The man’s
neck, so soft and available, was so easy to break. The army had sent him home
charting the whole thing up as an accident. He’d thought himself lucky at the time.
There were worst things than being dishonorably discharged.
He’d returned home with a shrug. Days melted into weeks and the mundane
world of chicken houses became a gray fog that settled over his mind. Ammoniafilled
longhouses got mucked out every six weeks in preparation for the multitude
of chicks. Chicks were laid out from the delivery truck. They ate the special feed
and drank the special water. Six weeks and you had a healthy six pound broiler. The
truck picked them up and the process started over.
He’d carried a long machete to kill the huge rats that fed on the chickens and
feed. Those rats looked like beavers. They scared most chicken house operators.
He’d always liked killing them.
Three days ago, a day like any other, with machete on hip and shovel in hand,
he’d worked on the chicken liter caked to the ground of one of the longhouses. A
sound, small and directly behind him, set him spinning with the shovel. Kim, his
little sister, stared at him with round eyes and gaping mouth. He couldn’t stop in
time. The thud of shovel on head sent a sick vibration through his hands.
He remembered carrying her back to the house, but not how he felt. He
couldn’t recall what it felt like to watch Mother and Father screaming. He explained
what had happened and showered. The cops showed up, but they didn’t arrest him.
They’d assumed it was an accident and that he was in shock.
The morning of Kim’s funeral the entire extended family had crowded inside
his parent’s house. Every face shot accusatory glances his way. He remembered
each and every look. Something inside gave. It gave and started killing. He didn’t
punch or fight. He didn’t make a sound. He retrieved his machete from his room
and started hacking. Some of the younger ones made it outside, but in the end
everybody died.
The past three days had been a greasy dream of spotty occurrences, but Kim,
surprise in her eyes and a little ‘o’ on her mouth, that would always stand out in
sharp detail, blood and all.
He parked the car behind the shed. The darkness surrounding the abandoned
station held that special deep quiet unique to the time before dawn’s first light,
when the dark was reluctant to depart the world. That abyss called to him from the
bottom of his soul. It would be so easy to give in and just go where it led, but he
resisted. Kim wouldn’t want him giving up.
He crawled from the car’s open window and slipped around the side to get the
plastic food sacks. The sacks’ crinkling sounded like fear. He had never realized
plastic could be afraid. Plastic lasted forever, after all. It was a funny sound.
Food in tow, he eased himself to the rear door and entered. The darkness was
28 The Literary Hatchet