In “The Beans of Egypt, Maine” – Carolyn Chute’s classic narrative of rural poverty – chickens abound.
“… the layin’ hens and green-tailed gamecock feed on the fish guts Beal Wittman hens The Sunderland fowl of Wittman on Harris Creek just south of St. Michaels do not sup on the gelatinous viscera of fish. Shiny black Ike (he do crow for day) reigns as cock of the walk with Otis, his smaller, nearly identical brother, second in command. The boys were named for Monsignors Turner and Redding respectively. These soul brothers and the ten hens they service – including a fashionably gray “Appaloosa” – feast on golden cupfuls of cracked corn and ebony sunflower seeds. Their water is changed twice a day and they roost in a house of glass and wood from which eggs can be gathered without the farmer having to squeeze inside. For the last two weeks of January 2015, I was that farmer, a rookie chicken man collecting 60 eggs on the morning and evening shifts. Wittman eggs The Sunderlands – the former Valerie Kontos, an artist from Baltimore’s Greektown neighborhood and husband Truitt, a deep sea chief engineer teaching at the Calhoon School on the Shore – were far away, helping friends take a sailboat through the Panama Canal. According to Valerie’s sea journal, they were “…transported back in time at a traditional guna yala village … people four foot tall living in thatched roof huts with dirt floors, sleeping hammocks, tribal chieftains,” while I savored the best of what the Eastern Shore has symbolized for centuries. Off the northeast tip of Panama, natives in dugout canoes approached the Sunderland’s vessel with fish and lobster and fresh fruit for sale. Some 4,200 miles away, off of Marshall Lane, I steadily amassed brown and white eggs – smeared with chicken poop, still warm from the hen – more eggs than any one man this side of Cool Hand Luke could consume. And it was oh-so-serene and beautiful, with one moment in particular enchanting to the point of transcendence. Wittman basket Early one morning, a wicker basket of three or four eggs in hand, I was leaving the “Coop de Ville” (as Tru calls the mobile hen house he constructed) and headed for the big house, daydreaming out past the pier into Harris Creek. As I stood, a light and steady snow began to fall through the pines as a Flying V of geese passed through gray skies, honking like a flock of old men clearing their sinuses in the morning. It was a moment of stillness and beauty, a lifetime of fleeting clarity in every snowflake upon the Shore. And, like most satori, it was fleeting. The geese disappeared downriver and I trudged up to the kitchen – Chute’s “Beans” on next to a knife and fork on the table – where the spirit gave way to the animal. Cracking a couple of eggs, I fried up half-a-pound of Esskay bacon and thanked the God stirring just outside the window for having the good sense to know how good I have it.
