Hubris and fall among the hens of Reservoir

Darren Tofts

Evening, when the measure skips a beat

And then another, one by one, and all

To a seething minor swiftly modulate

Wallace Stevens

For some time now I have been thinking that there is something strange going on with our chickens. We are not really sure of their provenance, what breed they actually are. The guy we bought them off had no idea. They kind of resemble Leghorns, small, lithe and very alert. They can be uppity and demanding, yelling the minute you emerge from the back door into their line of sight. And although they have no idea that they live in Reservoir and are unnamed, they are still feisty northern suburbs chicks, just like Shazz, Donna and K8 of Broadway.

When I was looking up Leghorns online I came across a site called Taylor Made Poultry. But I misread it as Taylor Mead Poultry. This was quite a moment of language against itself, but more significantly it was a close trace of the name of a leading superstar from Andy Warhol’s Factory. Taylor Mead appeared in a number of Warhol’s films, but his most autographical was without doubt Taylor Mead’s Ass (1964). And that’s just what it was, his naked butt on show for seventy minutes. That unexpected slippage is the conceit required to take this text in a different direction that is out of my control. So imagine that the hens believe themselves to be starlets in a holding pen at an agricultural show, excitedly awaiting the time when they will be taken to the display arena by a busy and eager assistant. This is how they see the bungalow that is adjacent to their coop. It is the metaphysics that makes sense of enclosure as their lot in life. The opening door, through which they are fed and watered, always suggests the possibility that their time will soon come to strut nimbly upon the stage. As they have absolutely no concept or understanding of longevity, decline and fall, they are in no doubt that their celebrity will go on forever.

As time passes there is no obvious sign of activity, nor of the glamour they covet and anticipate. They become increasingly impatient with and agitated by the prolonged wait. Then it slowly dawns on them, though not all at once, that they may in fact be waiting on death row. It’s unclear how they came to this intimation of mortality, but the bungalow now looks more ominously like a “Happy Hens” processing plant. They begin to talk to each other as if they are minutes away from being led, one by one, to the chop. But they each secretly wonder who will be the first to go?

We pick them up in the midst of things:

Shazz: It is kind of nice being able to look through the windows, don’t ya reckon?

Donna: Grouse.

K8: I never get to see it cos you two are always getting in my fucking way.

Donna: Well you only have to ask us to move.

K8: Yeah right.

Shazz: So when do you think the other people are gunna turn up, besides the ones that feed us?

Donna: Oh yeah, “feed us”. They chuck seed and water in every morning and occasionally some crummy lettuce from the garden. The one with the long hair throws in the odd snail and a couple of worms. But that’s only if there are any around.

Shazz: Anyway, back to my question. We’ve been in this thing a long time and I don’t remember seeing any signs of activity. You know decoration, lots of bunting, flowers, maybe even a candelabra being installed.

Donna: Perhaps there’s another entrance round the back? Maybe they are setting up a big surprise for us and don’t want us to see any of the prep.

K8: Prep. So where did you get that from?

Donna: Might have heard one of them say it, organising dinner and stuff.

K8: Mhmm.

Shazz: I’m just saying that it’s a bit odd. And that lot just seem too pleased with themselves for my liking, as if they want us to know they are up to something.

Donna: Yay I knew it!

Shazz and K8 look at each other askance, then turn their backs on Donna who is still tamping excitedly in the dirt, wetting herself into the bargain.

*

In their various bespoke places in the hutch, two of the hens sit preening. K8 has taken herself out into the dust bathing area in the sun. She glimpses her reflection in the window of the bungalow. A sample of her interior monologue follows:

it’s hardly surprising that they all look at me first, I mean why wouldn’t you seek out the fairest of them all when presented with a brood, there will always be one that stands out and catches your eye and halts your breath, its commonsense, but I also deserve it, I know for sure that they are jealous of me but of course they probably feel the same, but they are wrong, just wrong, the others even know that, especially catching my eye at feeding time or when they clean out my boudoir, I mean it really is mine and then there’s the visitors who are trotted out to gawk at us, though that stops when it comes to me, I just know they have drawn their breath in a beatific moment of awe and joy

*

Night time. The hens are comfortably installed in their sleeping box. Despite her outward appearance of dozing off, Shazz is deeply troubled. She suffers from a very old form of anxiety known as abstract melancholia, not having any idea why she can’t close her eyes and her feathers keep falling out like dandruff. As with many others before her, she is starting to suspect that the end may be near.

Shazz: [sotto-voce and very fast] perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don’t know, that’s all words, never wake, all words, there’s nothing else, you must go on, that’s all I know, they’re going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on …

This continues throughout the night. In the grip of some kind of delirium, Shazz is completely unaware that she is quoting Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable with impeccable recall. To my knowledge she has never been in proximity to that text.

*

The following day.

Having placated Charlie and the cats with their morning victuals, I go to the shed and fetch the hens’ seed. I notice that Shazz is not clamouring at the door with the other two. I presume she’s in the nesting box, giving us one of our daily eggs. When I open the lid she is not there. Having been through this unnerving situation before, I think the worst and crouch down to see where she might have quietly taken herself to shuffle off. With a start I realise that she is nowhere to be seen, nor has the door to their hutch been opened.

Staring at those remaining, all I can think of are Mulder and Scully.