“What do you mean? Cooperate? How can I get the hen to cooperate?” Billy affixed a mystified stare on his bird. “The hen is dead.”
“Listen, the point is, you pluck a bird when it’s wet and hot,” Beau said, giving the dead hen he was holding a saucy looking grin. “Everyone knows that.”
Ashley snorted, rolling her eyes.
Ignoring Beau’s miserable attempt at a double entendre, I refocused everyone on the task at hand. “In summary, if you dawdle with the big feathers at the wing, the bird will dry out, and won’t welcome a plucking. And you can’t get it hot, not if you want it to stay raw.”
Ashley snorted again, but this time her shoulders shook with unabashed laughter. Both Drew and Jackson, I noticed, watched her with rapt interest, slightly dazed smiles on their faces.
“You are exactly thirteen years old, Ashley Winston,” Billy grumbled, ignoring our advice and continuing to pluck at the wing.
“And you are too stubborn and serious for your own good, William Winston,” my sister tossed back at him good-naturedly. “Stop being an old man and have some fun for once. Live a little.”
“Now who’s meddling?” I said under my breath, earning me a glare from Ashley.
“Live a little? By plucking chickens?” Billy’s questions were monotone and likely rhetorical.
Beau, a big grin on his face, opened his mouth as though to respond, likely with another tasteless observation. Thus, I lifted my voice and spoke over him, “After we’re done here, Billy, I’ll need your help getting these birds into the freezer at the church. I don’t have the trunk space in my Geo.”
“Can’t, Cletus.” Billy removed several more wing feathers, tossing them into the paper bag between his legs. “I have a meeting in Knoxville tomorrow midmorning. I’ll need to head home in a bit to get some sleep. But you can take my truck if you want.”
“I do want. Thanks,” I said, shifting my attention to Beau. “That means you’re helping me load and unload.”
“Fine, as long as I can take a nap after in your room at the homestead.” The redhead spoke around a yawn.
The homestead to which Beau referred was our family ancestral home, an old Victorian farmhouse with a wraparound porch Jethro was in the perpetual process of restoring for his pregnant movie star wife and their future seventeen children. Set several acres backing up to the Great Smoky Mountain National Forest, the house was worth restoring.
“What? Why sleep in my room?” I wiped the knife I was using off on a towel and searched the tabletop for the sharpener. Cutting all those heads and feet were making it dull.
“Your room is darker,” he said, like the matter was settled.
“But your room is empty of people whose name is Cletus, and my room is not.” Finding the whetstone, I slid it along the edge of the knife, frowning my most ill-tempered frown at my brother. Beau’s old room, which he used to share with his surly twin Duane before Duane ran off with his lady love to Italy, was untouched on account of Beau and Shelly having all but moved in together just before Christmas.
Seemingly unperturbed, Beau spoke around another yawn, “My room doesn’t have custom blackout shades on the windows. You want me to help you move the chickens in Billy’s truck? Fine. Then I sleep in your room after—where it’s dark—and you sleep in mine.”
“What about Shelly?”
“Shelly’ll go back to her place right after we finish here and can take the GTO. You don’t need more than me to help load up those chickens, and she needs her sleep. That okay, Shell?”
“Fine by me.” Beau’s tall, taciturn lady friend was using the lung scraper on a big, fat hen. She didn’t seem too happy about spending hours she’d usually be sleeping cleaning out chicken innards, but I suspected that had more to do with her soft heart toward animals than anything else. She fostered dogs, birds, cats, anything that needed fostering, and though she sought to hide it, I could sense the scene when she arrived upset her.
I didn’t get a chance to press the bedroom/sleeping arrangements issue with Beau because Ashley said to no one in particular, “What I find interesting is the method of death.”
“Whose death?” Roscoe glanced at Ashley.
“The chickens.” She gestured to our surroundings with her chin. “Seems like a weird way to kill birds you aren’t planning to eat. Chickens, bless their hearts, are idiots. You have to work hard to keep them alive. Even just leaving the door to the coop open overnight would be enough to kill most, if not all. Find a stray dog, let it in the coop, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to kill every bird inside, and no one will even suspect anything. Why strangle them?”
“Unless the bird murderer wanted to send a message.” Jackson piped in.
“In a very strange and risky way? Like, it takes time to catch and strangle several dozen birds. And why strangle? Why not decapitate?”
“What do you mean?” Boone asked, looking up from his notepad.
“I mean someone knew what they were doing, breaking their necks. Cervical dislocation isn’t a novice way of killing a chicken. Either the person works in medicine—veterinary or human—and knew enough about anatomy to know where to break, or the person is an old school chicken farmer and has done this before.”
“Why do you say ‘old school’?” Jackson was looking at Ashley with curiosity rather than his typical moony-eyed worship. We all knew he’d only stuck around so he could get a few moments basking in her presence. Jackson James had been ankles over ass gone over my sister since elementary school.
“Most chicken farmers these days use the cone, right? Subdues the bird, keeps them from moving around. But this guy—or lady—didn’t. Breaking the neck is a faster, less messy, quieter way of killing birds, if you know what you’re doing. But it also requires more strength, it couldn’t have been a small person.” While she spoke, she stood, finished plucking her fifth chicken, and walked over to where I was busy at the butchering table.
“Unless they used the broomstick method.” Roscoe also stood, placing his plucked chicken next to Ashley’s.
“What’s the broomstick method?” Jackson asked, and I was reminded that Jackson’s family had never needed to source their own food. His father had been the sheriff of this county for as long as I’d been alive. They’d never had to worry about putting food on the table.
Roscoe reclaimed his seat. “Broomstick method is where you put the bird between your—"
“Do we really need to know?” Billy asked, making a face of distaste.
One thing was for certain, Billy would never be a farmer. The man could get lost in a sparsely wooded traffic circle. He’d never been friends with the outdoors, and he liked his custom cut suits too much to voluntarily dirty his hands with soil and livestock. Don’t get me wrong, he’d do it—like now—if he had to, and he wouldn’t complain either, even though he’d rather be anywhere else.
“No.” Ashley held out her hands to receive another chicken from Drew. “But Roscoe makes a good point. The broomstick method can be done by a smaller person. They wouldn’t need as much strength if they broke the neck that way.”