The Chicken Sisters(54)

“Come on.” Her mother walked over to the driver’s side of the truck, followed by Madison. “We’re going back over there.”

“He’s not going to talk to me, Mom. I tried.”

“He doesn’t have to talk to you. He has to talk to me. How could you screw this up? What do you imagine we’re going to do now, run over to Whole Foods?”

“I didn’t screw it up!” Mae put her hand on the truck’s hood, still hot, and watched Madison contemplate a vehicle with no back seat at all, let alone no car seats. Mae looked at Andy, feeling desperate.

“Can we leave them with you? Jessa should be here any minute.”

“I want to go too!” Madison opened the driver’s-side door. “Grandma, tell her I can go.”

Barbara started to slide out, and Mae knew instantly that she was planning to put Madison in the middle of the truck’s bench seat. Not happening. She swung Ryder down off her hip, getting some air to avoid his objections. Andy looked unsure, Madison rebellious. If there was going to be swearing, the kid wanted to be there.

Time for the big guns.

“The iPad’s in my bag,” she said to Madison. “If you’ll sit at the picnic table and wait for Jessa, you can watch a show with Ryder.” She lowered her voice. “You can pick,” she whispered. Ryder wouldn’t care, he’d be thrilled by the unexpected appearance of any show, but Madison would.

Madison crossed her arms and looked at the truck, then at her mother, considering. Mae applied the final bribe. “There’s Goldfish.”

“Real Goldfish? Not the healthy things?”

Madison had been on to her since forever. Mae nodded. “Real Goldfish.” Ryder reached up, pulling down at her neck as she bent over Madison and knocking her off-balance. Barbara honked, and Mae shot up into the air and glared at her mother.

“Mae! Now. Get them in the car or leave them, but do it fast.”

Madison took pity on her mother. “Goldfish,” she said to her brother. “In Mommy’s bag.”

Ryder took off toward Mimi’s without a backward glance. “They better be cheddar,” Madison said.

“Parmesan,” Mae said. She always bought Parmesan unless Madison was with her. She didn’t know why. They seemed less—orange.

“Bring cheddar next time,” Madison said as she followed her brother, sounding exactly like Clemenza telling Rocco to leave the gun, take the cannoli.

Barbara was backing up, honking again, and Mae ran for the truck. When did she turn into the minion of a couple of godfathers? She grabbed the passenger door and climbed inside, feeling about ten years old. Her mother was never going to believe she hadn’t made this happen somehow. And what were they going to do? She couldn’t even imagine where they would get the chicken they needed besides Caswell’s. They were fucked; they were totally fucked.

She stared out the window as the fields rolled by, some green with tiny soybeans, some the shade of new wheat, one with little rows of corn, just up above the dirt. She really hadn’t had a chance to say anything to John Calvin, let alone offend him. She’d just been driving along the familiar roads, thinking that Jay would love this, seeing where the actual food came from. Caswell’s chicken would fit right into his new one-holistic-life philosophy. No lines between work and life. She wondered how the kids would take the connection between the birds scratching around in the dirt and the ones on the plate. She herself had never known anything different. Grandma Mimi even had chickens, for a while, when she and Amanda were little, for eggs. Amanda still did.

Her mother pulled up into Caswell’s driveway and got out of the truck without saying a word. Mae watched her walk around to the back door, just as Mae had done earlier, disappearing into the space between the house and the old barn, a couple of dogs sniffing around her feet. Past the barn, as far as Mae could see, were the corrugated steel buildings that housed the actual chickens, each with wide doors opened out into separate yards. It wasn’t some sort of idyllic farm scene, with multicolored hens pecking through the grass, but the yards were big and clean and the place used practical, healthy methods to raise birds on this scale. More than once, growing up, there had been rumors that the Caswells would sell out to Tyson, but it had never happened. Surely now, with people more interested in where their food came from, things were easier. They probably did, Mae realized with shock, sell to Whole Foods.

Barbara, looking extremely angry, stalked back around the building, followed by John Calvin in his Carhartts. John Calvin walked toward the big freezer trailer that was parked farther back into the drive, and Barbara got back into the truck and slammed it into gear.

“What? What are we doing?” Mae asked.

Barbara swung the truck around and backed up to where John Calvin was lifting the big latch on the side door. “Come on,” she said.

John Calvin handed Barbara a box. “Grab the next one,” she said to Mae, who was processing. Frozen chicken. John Calvin was giving them frozen chicken.

He stepped down from the trailer, which was plugged into a generator behind the shed. “I got pretty mad,” he said, over the noise. “Our chicken’s good enough chicken for anybody, and your sister said you didn’t think so anymore.”

Mae took the box, putting her hands in the openings on the slightly waxy sides as John Calvin released it. Amanda said—