Thank you. Good-bye.

So I'm standing in the parking lot of one of our two grocery stores in the county, with three roosters, listening to Sting, as you do, waiting for someone to come and adopt my avian laddies because our intern season is about to begin again and they have a rather well-earned rep for terrifying, scarring and bruising the women. I'm supposed to be meeting someone named Mr. D whom my husband found on Craigslist. I told the laddies all the way into town that they will have nice green grass to run around on, and bugs to hunt, and ducks to scare. But I'm starting to worry. I asked my husband to call Mr. D. after I left, half an hour ago, from home, but I have no idea if he did so. I arrived ten minutes late for our original appointment, and don't know if he was here and gave up, has yet to arrive, or forgot completely about our rendezvous, and, without my husband's prodding, will never show up. I'm late beginning one of my two “writing days” per week. These blessings are an idea my husband came up with to keep me from slitting my wrists. And I still have more errands to run for my day job.

I ask every man who pulls into the parking lot if he's Mr. D. Happily, no one's shot me or had me arrested yet. I don't have a cell phone so calling Mr. D. is out of the question.

My salvation arrives in the form of Mr. E., who looks like he's lived in La Plaza since about a century before Noah sailed; he walks over, asks me what I'm selling and I explain that I'm waiting to give three roosters to a fellow who wants them, seemingly, as pets. He brightens up, tells me he use to raise roosters until the nearby hotel began complaining that their sunrise crowing was waking the guests. But now the hotel has gone out of business. He gives me his address and phone number, says if Mr. D. doesn't arrive I can bring the roosters to him and he'll find them a good home.

I go into the store, leaving the roosters listening to “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot” (with the windows down, of course) and call my husband.  I get voice mail because we don't even have a normal phone at home. We have Skype, because it's cheap and doesn't require the (very expensive) installation of telephone poles to bring a hard-line onto our land and to our house. Unfortunately, we can only access calls when we're on a computer, which of course my husband—working as a farmer all day in April—seldom is. We're very well-aware, thank you, that in theory we could use somebody's old smartphone to access Skype in our wifi-blessed house. In fact, we've had no less than four donated to us by lovely, technologically more progressive friends for just this purpose. The phones make very convenient, albeit lousy, cameras. Otherwise they sit unused.  Off grid, ever- concerned about wattage, we never remember to plug them in.

I tell my husband that Mr. D. is now 40 minutes late for our appointment, and mention Mr. E. When, after another 10 minutes, Mr. D. doesn't show, I drive over to Mr. E's. He seems delighted to see me and tells me to come around back. There, behind his house, is a veritable smorgasbord of well-tended sheds and animal-free corrals.  He pulls out a large animal travel crate (usually used for dogs) and asks me to put the birds in for fear they'll fly away from him. I'm concerned about this. My boys usually free-range around a large chicken run. I promised them grass and bugs, not life in a cage. But I'm pretty short of options. I ask Mr. E. if they can run around his yard. Kindness and loneliness waft off him in equal measure. He assures me he will call his friend who has ducks and chickens right away and see if she wants them. If she doesn't, it goes without saying, they will eventually be his dinner.  He is not a wealthy man, to put it mildly, and he is an elder.  This would be an honorable end for the Buffy-the-Farmer-Slayer, Morris (pretty as a peach, relentlessly attacking those who care for him), and Albert, my hero and protector from crabby Morris, condemned as guilty by association.

I take the boys out one at a time, hold them close, say thank you and good-bye, and let them go into the crate. They are looking around intelligently, curiously, confused, wondering where the hell they are. All three crowd into the far end of the cage.

Mr. E's in a chatty mood. I keep shaking his hand and thanking him, but he won't let me go. He tells me about his Easter, which, despite his being a man of God, he spent mostly alone.  This makes me terribly sad.  He tells me he goes to church every weekend and asks if I do. I'm not getting the "he's about to ask me if Jesus is my personal savior" tail-tingling, so I'm not anxious to leave, but I do want to get going.  And I realize, sadly, it's as much about guilt as my desire to write. I have a relationship with these animals, and now I'm just leaving them here, to an uncertain future, with a total stranger. It does not feel good or right. Mr. E. assures me they'll go to a good home, but I cannot see that home now, and cannot imagine how roosters are going to wind up anything but stewed. Mr. E. asks if we sell our hens' eggs, and if so for how much. I tell him, already knowing that if he wants to buy some there's no way I'm going to charge him. He also tells me that if the “check engine” light in my old used car ever comes on all I have to do is disconnect the battery for 20 minutes and the computer will reset itself. I did not solicit this information; it was a gift.

I leave Mr. E. and that silence falls over me that falls on you at a parting, or a death. The CD in my player changes as I head to the bank. The Reals' “Anchor” comes on. It's a lovely song, made lovelier by the fact that I know the lead singer and guitarist, Matt Kowal. Matt's people are from this county, and when he sings later about kids playing in a stream, I can't help wondering if he means the erstwhile river that runs through our land. But now he's singing about love and loss, “then when you go, I'm sinking low like an anchor.”

I make my deposit; the clerk smiles at me like he's enjoying The Reals' bellowing out of my car. Next the post office, and then the drug store. They have my prescription ready.  Hallelujah. When the young pharmacy assistant, whom I've never seen before, hands it to me he says, “that should take care of you.” It feels, in context, like an extraordinarily weird and inappropriate thing for him to say. My meds are for depression and anxiety, of the life-threatening variety. It occurs to me that, though he's not a pharmacist himself, he surely knows that from looking at them. I suddenly feel quite naked.

At the checkout counter a young woman is being trained to cashier. She's sweet and earnest. She staples closed the paper bag of three pill bottles given me by the pharmacy assistant. As she hands it to me she asks me if I'd like a bag.  I cannot resist pointing out the obvious.  She giggles. 

They looked so frightened, uncertain, alone.

I drive to the county's second grocery store to check their dumpsters. They're very kind about leaving the dumpsters open, unlocked, unlike many grocery stores in the state, because our county vies with the one next door for poorest in Colorado; they know people are hungry. Our apprentice farmer is a first-rate dumpster diver who brought us tons of delicious strawberries, oranges, and collard greens, all still edible, all sealed in plastic, from her last expedition. In her honor, I check out what's available inside before placing my trash-bag—carefully--in the waste receptacle: only Red Bull, which I'm elated to see is being thrown away and which I leave where it belongs.

Matt is singing about putting his grandparents' ashes in a waterfall. I put my friend, Helen's, ashes down on our land, in the chokecherry grove. I sobbed, quite unexpectedly, while doing so. I had never before been responsible for laying human remains to rest. And I guess I miss Helen more than I realized.

What if he can't find a home for them? He'll eat them. That will be it.

How long will they have to live in that cage?

In the grocery store I pick up a few things for my lunch. Salad greens, a cucumber...the kinds of things the roosters would love.

I drive to the library, the silence still heavy on me, because I know I will forget them. Not their names, or their personalities, but the heaviness, the guilt, the sense of...wrongness I feel right now. I will bury it in my flesh, it will become a part of me. A part I accept but do not like, and remember only in dreams. I've eaten a lot of chicken in my life. But I've never looked my dinner in the eyes and said “thank you. Good-bye.” I've known the names of some of the beef I've eaten, but never the chickens.

A good day of writing puts them out of my mind for several hours. Overwhelmed with inexplicable exhaustion, I leave before dark to head home, stopping at an acquaintance's farm en route. L., a strong, sunkissed woman in her 30s with an easy smile and a fierce intelligence, greets me at the door to her farmhouse. I've come to pay her for chicken feed I bought last week. We stand on her porch a few moments, chatting about this and that...the farmers' market, dogs, sheep. She and her husband have a beautiful piece of land with a view of the mountains, and a plethora of sheep and lambs out at pasture. I tell her one of our goats is pregnant, will kid later this month. I ask her, if one of the babies is a boy, would she like it. For food. She isn't sure. She'll talk it over with her husband. I know if that day comes I will dread it, and I will hate myself even more than I do now. But I will give her the kid, and she and her family will eat well.

On the way home, I see, as though for the first time all day, the light as it falls, the ferocious blue clarity of the sky, the crispness of the mountains. A hawk flies overhead, and I am awestruck by the beauty of this world.