From The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West:
“Do you know Earle Shoop?” Homer finally asked.
“Yes.”
Homer then poured out a long, confused story about a dirty black hen. He kept referring to the hen again and again, as though it were the one thing he couldn’t stand about Earle and the Mexican. For a man who was incapable of hatred, he managed to draw a pretty horrible picture of the bird.
“You never saw such a disgusting thing, the way it squats and turns its head. The roosters have torn all the feathers off its neck and made its comb all bloody and it has scabby feet covered with warts and it cackles so nasty when they drop it into the pen."
“Who drops it into what pen?”
“The Mexican.”
“Miguel?”
“Yes. He’s almost as bad as his hen.”
“You’ve been to their camp?”
“Camp?”
“In the mountains?”
“No. They’re living in the garage. Faye asked me if I minded if a friend of hers lived in the garage for a while because he was broke. But I didn’t know about the chickens or the Mexican…. Lots of people are out of work nowadays.”
“Why don’t you throw them out?”
“They’re broke and they have no place to go. It isn’t very comfortable living in a garage.”
“But if they don’t behave?”
“It’s just that hen. I don’t mind the roosters, they’re pretty, but that dirty hen. She shakes her dirty feathers each time and clucks so nasty.”
“You don’t have to look at it.”
“They do it every afternoon at the same time when I’m usually sitting in the chair in the sun after I get back from shopping with Faye and just before dinner. The Mexican knows I don’t like to see it so he tries to make me look just for spite. I go into the house, but he taps on the windows and calls me to come out and watch. I don’t call that fun. Some people have funny ideas of what’s fun.”
“What’s Faye say?”
“She doesn’t mind the hen. She says it’s only natural.”
Image: Muerte en el palenque by Daniel Gonzalez
