Scheherazade's Fortune

Caustic dust lined his mouth as he exhaled, leaving his lips coated white and his tongue dry like a sponge. He rested the blade of his shovel in the filthy straw, squinting against the flurry of motes spilling agitated into the air. His bandanna puffed out as he breathed through the fabric.

“Fuck,” Kyle sighed.

He coughed and scanned the huge barn, registering the thousands of cooped chickens in the unventilated space. The stench made his eyes water, and sweat trickled down from beneath his baseball cap. Hitching his jeans, he shook his head and continued his work. He scraped shovelfuls of acrid chicken manure into a wheelbarrow and then wheeled the contents to seasoning bins just inside the sliding barn door. Why these people would want to keep this horrific stuff, he didn’t know. And why would security be so tight? It’s a chicken farm. Chickens. He saw three Rottweilers outside on his way in this morning, as he drove through the gated entrance. He even had an ID card.

Flat shafts of sunlight peeped through the cracks under the wide doors, and Kyle paused nearby for a quick break from the din and stench. The hint of fresh air was enough to clear his head, and he raised his bandanna to wipe his face. He looked at the rows of stacked cages, the thousands of chickens living out their lives crammed inside wire frames. He licked his lips, imagining that existence. No natural light, clipped beaks, feet and heads with untreated sores, bald spots, and if he’s lucky, crapping on his neighbor’s head other than the reverse. The birds lived in a state of constant agitation, flapping and pacing, clucking non-stop. Kyle started work here three days ago, on break from New Mexico State University, and already felt he’d been here for years. Some experimental farm. He’d expected something different. Something with a desk.

He splashed his face with water from the cooler and shook out his bandanna, tying it around his face again. Once more unto the breach, dear friends. He chuckled, and then blanched at the thought of three more months of shoveling chicken shit. God, what a summer.

He rounded the corner leading down the main aisle when Kyle heard a voice. He paused, cocking his head.

“Psst. You. Hey, Bandanna Boy.”

He whipped his head around, looking for a face to go with the voice. Nobody else was in here, though. Kyle shrugged and started walking again.

“Did I stutter?”

“What the hell,” Kyle uttered. “Who’s there? Ortiz, stop fucking around, man. I got work to do.”

“Oh yeah, important work. You think shoveling my turds can wait uno momento, hombre?”

A large hen squawked and flapped her feathers, creating a fetid draft Kyle struggled to breathe through. She seemed to eyeball him, sitting in the topmost crate on his left. She cocked her head with a twitch.

“That’s right. Me.”

Kyle’s mouth drifted open as he realized the hen was speaking to him, and also bilingual.

“Listen, let me tell you how it’s gonna be.” She swiveled, checking over her shoulder. “Tonight, you come back after the barn’s closed down. You bring a lantern, wire cutters, and the ability to keep your fucking mouth shut. You dig, pendejo?”

Kyle watched her beak and tongue move, forming the words without lips, and forgot to follow what she said. She was healthier than the other chickens, and cleaner, too. Still had all her feathers, and she somehow escaped the excruciating debeaking. He examined her cage, but the only identification was a small metal plate with a number punched into it. 59863X.

“Hey, dickhead. You hear what I said?”

Kyle shook his head, a bemused smile under his bandanna. He removed his cap and scratched his head.

“Whoa, check out the unibrow.”

“Dude, that ain’t cool,” Kyle grumbled, putting his cap back on.

59863X clucked and scraped her foot clean on the grid floor of her cage. The chicken in the cage beneath her eyed us, flapping and pecking at a piece of loose wire.

“Where’d you come from? You’re not like the other chickens.”

“That’s a line if I ever heard one.”

“Seriously. I’m not gonna catch any radiation or anything, am I? If I help you?”

59863X cackled with her beak open wide, and brushed her face with her wing. “Oh, that’s rich. Some bayunco takes a job shoveling chicken crap all day, and he’s worried about gamma radiation? Give me a fucking break. Christo. No, no radiation. I came from a genetics lab that lost its funding. Fucking feds. But I did get thousands of heavy doses of what I can only assume was an experimental drug which enhances brain function, specifically in the cerebral cortex. The juicy part. You figure out the rest.”

“Uhh.” Kyle blinked.

She sighed, her chicken shoulders shrugging. “Okay, forget that. No time to play catch-up. Don’t think, monkeyboy, just follow directions. You’re in college. You should be good at that.”

Kyle started to get angry, but decided that was definitely getting distracted from the fact a freaking chicken was organizing a breakout in front of him. And recruiting him against his will.

“Hey, chicken.”

She continued scratching a logistics diagram in her own feces. “The name’s Scheherazade.”

A long pause. “Seriously?”

“Look, I didn’t pick it, all right? Can we move on?”

“Hokay. What if I don’t help you? What’re you gonna do about it?” Kyle plucked at the sturdy wire cage. “I mean, you need me, right?”

She stopped and turned a fierce eye his way. “What’s your point?”

“You should be nice to me.”

“Heh. Good one.” She ran through some quick calculations and nodded. “All right, here’s the plan.”

“No, really. What happens if I don’t help you?”

She paused, standing still for a chicken, and stared at Kyle. “I get someone else to help me, find you later, and eat your face off while you sleep.”

Kyle shuddered and touched his cheek through his bandanna. “Right.”

“Okay, then. Flashlight. Wire cutters. Antibacterial ointment. Mace. And some ramen.”

“Ramen?”

“Fuck, yes. Ramen. Jesus. And Philip Boffey’s direct phone number.”

“Should I even ask?”

“I keep forgetting you’re a moron. Science editor for The New York Times. I’ve got some shit that’ll make his head explode. Not literally, of course.”

The spot under Scheherasade’s cage was spotless before Kyle had the plan firmly in his mind, and he left to go home for a few hours, take a shower and a nap. He had a long night ahead of him, and some touchy prep work before that. He wasn’t accustomed to making pipe bombs by hand, but this chicken sure seemed to know her stuff. Apparently, chicken shit was good for more than just fertilizer.