Cursing softly, I picked my way across the bog that was Uncle Hobart's front-yard. The constant rain had turned the ground into a quagmire that now clung tenaciously to my shoes. I had almost made the shelter of the front porch before I found myself taking a shoe-less stride, my left foot sinking into the slick slime, allowing the glutinous goo to invade my sock and ooze up between my toes. Fighting to release my shoe from the sticky mess, I heard the front door open. Uncle Hobart stuck his head out, his faded blue eyes twinkling as he watched my struggles.
"Should 'ave worn yer wellies, yer silly bugger," he shouted, slamming the front door shut again.
"Thanks a bundle," I muttered, as I finally managing to extract my shoe from the sucking, muddy embrace.
I found him sitting in the kitchen, drinking beer from his tankard. He pulled a face as I walked in and threw a dirty tea towel at me. "'Ere, wipe yer foot," he ordered. "Yer making me floor all dirty."
Looking down at the kitchen floor, I raised an eyebrow. My footprints were completely lost amongst the dirt encrusted on the stone-flags. Showing extraordinary restraint I said nothing. Instead, I sat down with a heavy sigh and began rubbing my foot with the tea towel, not sure whether I was making it cleaner or just adding grease to the already hardening mud.
Uncle Hobart leant back in his chair, examining me with his watery blue eyes. "'Ow long yer staying fer, then?"
Shrugging, I gave up on my foot and opened the can of beer that he pushed across the table towards me. "How long'll it be before you'll be able to cope on your own?" I countered.
Holding up his bandaged hand, he rotated it back and forth. "Doc reckons it'll be a couple o' weeks at least."
I took a deep pull on my beer and grimaced. "Well I might be able to stretch to a couple of weeks, I suppose." Leaning forward I stared hard at him. "But there are conditions!"
His smile faded. "Conditions! What bleedin' conditions? Can't yer 'elp a poor old man without bleedin' conditions? How would it be if we all went round with that attitude? Bleedin' conditions. Hah!"
Ignoring his outburst, I pointedly looked around at the mess in the kitchen. He fidgeted defensively in his seat.
"Aye, well," he mumbled, clicking his dentures at me. "I am an old man, Peter boy, and it's 'ard keeping up with things. 'Sides, its women's work, ain't it?"
"Well I can't argue with that, I suppose." I allowed him his few seconds of triumph before bringing him back down to earth again. "That's why I've asked Aunt Martha to come over and help us out for a few days."
Uncle Hobart jumped to his feet, his eyes darkening in anger. "Yer've done bleedin' what? Martha? Bleedin' 'ell, Peter boy. What fer!"
Encompassing the kitchen with an expressive hand, I barked a short laugh. "Do you really need to ask that? Come on, just take a look at this place."
He sat down and muttered something under his breath.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I said, it just needs a bit o' a tidy up," he repeated, surreptitiously pushing a pile of dirty underwear under the kitchen table with his foot.
"And who's going to do the washing and cooking?" I wanted to know.
Fixing me with a beady glare, he shrugged his shoulders. "Well I kinda thought yer might do it, like."
I shook my head. "Well you can forget all about that. No, I'm afraid it's Aunt Martha or you can find yourself someone else."
"Ain't got no one else, 'ave I?"
Ignoring him, I took another drink of beer.
"Don't know no one else, do I?"
Emptying the can, I gently placed it on the kitchen table.
"All on me own, ain't I?" his voice was almost a whisper now.
"Good," I said, throwing my muddy sock into the kitchen sink amongst the dirty dishes. "Well that about settles it then, doesn't it? I'll go and get my things out of the car, shall I?"
*
Aunt Martha hit the house like an angry tornado. From the moment she arrived, she was washing, sweeping, dusting and polishing. Her angulated form could be seen flitting from place to place as she steadily worked her way through the rooms. Uncle Hobart and I were frightened to sit down, in case we were polished, vacuumed, or shaken out of the window.
"How's the hand?" I asked Uncle Hobart.
We were sitting in his old shed, swigging beer, it being the only place where we felt safe from Aunt Martha's housework.
"Ain't too bad considering."
"When're you seeing the doctor again?"
"’Alf three." He studied his pocket watch. "'Ave ter leave soon, I reckon."
He looked around for somewhere to hide his empty beer can.
"What's up," I chuckled. "Frightened of Aunt Martha finding it?"
His scowl suddenly changed to a smile as he laughed along with me. "Yer know, Peter boy, I've always fancied 'er."
"I know," I answered, nodding. He looked at me sharply, one eyebrow raised. "She told me at the funeral," I explained.
"Did she now? Did she indeed?" Standing up, Uncle Hobart slowly ambled towards the door, stopping at the threshold to look back at me. "I told Martha she should cook one o' them chickens fer our dinner tonight”.
Finishing my beer with a flourish, I threw the empty can under the workbench. "Great," I replied, "I love chicken."
"Then yer won't mind killing and gutting one, will yer? Martha's driving me over ter the quack's, so she can't do it."
With these parting words, Uncle Hobart slipped out of the shed, slamming the door behind him, and by the time I gathered my wits enough to follow him, I was just in time to see him and Aunt Martha bouncing down the track in her 2CV.
*
I studied the chickens scratching about in the dirt. "Come on, chick, chick. Come to Petey," I called, but they all studiously ignored me.
Glancing at the old farming book again, I tried to act more confident than I felt. The instructions seemed simple enough. Hold the bird's neck in one hand, legs in the other, and pull until the neck snapped. I grimaced. "But just how hard are you supposed to pull?" I pondered, not expecting an answer and therefore not being disappointed when the chickens just continued pecking at the ground. "And what if the bloody things head comes off in my hand?" I was definitely beginning to feel a bit queasy about all this.
A few minutes later the chicken was draped across my body, ready for the dirty deed. Swallowing deeply, taking the strain, I looked down at my victim. It glared back at me defiantly, then proceeded to crap down my left leg. Shaking my head, I let it go, I just couldn't do it. The bird ruffled its feathers indignantly, before stalking off in a huff.
A few beers later found me back in the chicken run, armed with an enormous axe. Laying a trussed-up chicken across the seat of Uncle Hobart's captain's chair, I spat on my hands, lifted the axe high above my head in a double-handed grasp, closed my eyes and swung it downwards with all my strength. The thwack of steel biting into wood echoed around the farmyard and I tentatively opened one eye to take a peek. The wreckage of Uncle Hobart's favourite chair was strewn around my feet. The chicken stared up at me with little beady eyes. I'd missed it completely.
Untying the chicken, I set it free, deciding that I'd be better off going down to the local shop for a frozen bird, while my nemesis took a couple of wobbly steps towards the gate, squawked once, keeled over and died from a heart attack. I hid the pieces of Uncle Hobart's chair in the woodpile, picked up the chicken and headed for the house, a broad smile plastered across my face. Stage one successfully completed!
*
Opening yet another can of beer, I tried to focus my bleary eyes on the sorry looking carcass laying on the kitchen table. The book said, after plucking, I should burn off the remaining feathers with a hot flame, suggesting methylated spirits poured in a saucer. After a long and futile search of Uncle Hobart's shed only turned up a blowtorch, I decided to make do with that instead and now the charred chicken looked like a casualty of the Vietnam War. I opened another can of beer to cheer myself up.
After decapitating the bird, I gutted it, tossing the intestines and head onto the draining board. But then, everywhere I went, its beady little eyes followed me. Tossing the head out of the kitchen window, I shivered as the farm cat pounced on it, growling low in its throat. Uncle Hobart's collie wandered over to see what was going on and was rewarded with a swipe at its nose. Sinking another can of beer, I studied the book again. Good, just the tendons to remove and the job would be done. Humming the signature tune to ER, I staggering over to the kitchen sink, picked up the chicken and deftly sliced around one leg with a sharp knife.
I swore profusely as the leg dropped to the floor. "Damn, that wasn't supposed to happen," I muttered to myself. After scanning the book another time, I shook my head. "That definitely wasn't supposed to happen. Never mind, I'll have another can of beer and try again." Well, there was another leg, and I was determined that I wasn't going to be beaten by a dead chicken. After all, my pride was at stake here.
Carefully cutting around the knee joint of the remaining leg, I successfully completed the operation and had another drink to celebrate. By now I was so drunk that I was staggering around the kitchen, clutching a half-burnt, one legged chicken, making clucking noises between fits of the giggles. Finally I settled down and turned to the problem of how I was going to remove the tendons from the leg. It would take more strength than I had in my current state.
After sinking a few more cans of beer, the solution suddenly came to me in a flash of inspiration. Weaving my way into the cowshed, I tied one end of a rope around the chicken and the other end around the neck of a handy cow. Then, binding the chicken's leg to a nearby stanchion with a piece of bailer twine, I stood back to admire my work. When I hit the cow's rump, it would take off and pull the tendons out of the chicken's leg with no trouble. Squinting blearily at the cow, I raised my hand and gave it a hefty whack. The cow bolted for the barn door in a swirl of dust, while I let out a loud, "Yahoo!" Success at last. One chicken ready for the oven.
Staggering over to the stanchion, I went to claim my prize. But... but... Frowning groggily, I searched around in vain but could only find one very scraggy looking leg, the tendons hanging from the end like a bunch of white worms.
"Oh hell!" I muttered to myself, "I suppose I should have tied the bird to the stanchion and not the leg!" I burped loudly, trying to regain control of my swaying body.
Desperately clutching at the doorframe for support, I watched bleary-eyed as the cow galloped back and forth across the field, dragging one very sorry looking chicken carcass after it. Opening another can of beer, I took a deep and satisfying quaff and was still laughing inanely when I finally passed out, falling backwards into a huge pile of cowpats!