I Know a Secret/Chapter 16

by Christopher Darlington Morley

Chickens in the Field

BLYTHE came across the lawn, her hands hidden behind her. Eyes roguish, her small positive person swinging gaily, definitely, in time to the tune she was singing. "I know a secret—I won't tell; I know a secret—I won't tell," she chanted.

Yes, she knows a secret. What is it, I wonder? If we knew, you and I, it wouldn't be a secret.

Sometimes I think I have guessed a hint of it—that the age between four and five is the most beautiful of all. I meet her upstairs unexpectedly in the middle of a hot summer night, trotting in her pyjamas. Perhaps she felt a sudden solitude, and planned an emigration into Mother's bed. (Do you know that sound of small bare feet on large bare floors, heard from below?) Or after breakfast when she climbs on a chair by the victrola, puts on a record, and dances to it with solemn grace. Quick, flitting in every movement, a dancing shape, an image gay. "She's always running," said observant Christopher. "She's an awfully quaint little thing."

She knows a secret. There are suggestions of it sometimes in the stories she tells. Riding in the car she feels an urge to narrate. She invents a myth or a long chantey of her own and recites it endlessly—if she can compel the others to silence; not always easy, for they too have epics they hanker to impart. She makes unexpected flashes of utterance, as when Dean Swift, loudly blowing her horn, went carefully round a dangerous corner. "I hear the Dean saying Excuse Me," said Blythe. That clear spring day at Lloyds Neck, when a cold April wind was crisping frills of white broken water along the beach. The whole shore was edged with a pure white band of foam. It was one of those crystal days of earliest spring, too fair for steady thought. She looked at the shining fringe of breakers and heard their clean hiss on the pebbles. (She was only three.) "Snow," she said, "Snow saying, Sorrow to come in."

She knows a secret. Perhaps once we knew it too.

Darker occasions—when there are beans or spinach to be finished. The old family cry: Finach your spinach! Steadfast unshakeable passive resistance. "You make me sad! Do you want me to burst right open?" Very well, Blythe, no chocolate cake if you don't finish your vegetables. A slow steaming of tears in those dark eyes. (And gosh, what eyelashes!) Blythe, go and look at the doorknob, see if there isn't a smile there. There's a glass door-handle, just her height, on a door that has a mirror in it. According to legend a Special Smile lives on that doorknob. The trick is that when Blythe goes there to look for the smile on the knob, she sees herself in the tall mirror behind it. And in her grim unspinachable mood she looks so comic that she herself bursts into a grin. Well then, did you find it? She climbs again, smiling but business-like, into the high chair. But the spinach is never finach. Ask the dining-room rug.

An idea for you: when you grow up and have children of your own, get a dining-room rug that is spinach-coloured.

The best stories are those Mother tells for Blythe's benefit, coming home in the car. After a long drive, perhaps out Farmingdale way to buy fresh vegetables from the stalls along the road, small passengers get restless and bickerish. I don't know why it is: Mr. Mistletoe has to brood and think a long while before he can tell a story, but Mother can spin a yarn right off the reel. The older children relish those stories too, with all the professional zest of literary critics, for they can appreciate how subtly the fable is adapted to Blythe's requirements, her mood and station in life. One of them is the story of Chickens in the Field. I have never heard it told, only heard it spoken of. As I say, it is Mother's story, and she is the one who can tell it properly.

One of the musics that Blythe makes up for herself, as the car hums along the road, is Chickens in the Field. "Chickens, chickens, in the field," she sings, many many times, to a tune of her own. That is all there is to it, but it goes on for a long while and is a great comfort. The story tells why the chickens were in the field, and what they were doing there.

 

Once upon a time there was a hen who had a large family of young chickens. They were a great care to her. They had to be watched and looked after all the time. The hen had to see that their feathers were kept clean, that they drank fresh water, that they didn't get their feet wet, and didn't eat indigestible beetles with stings. This busy hen was on the go all day, clucking to them not to cross the road in front of cars, not to wander into the next-door garden, not to go rambling in the open field which was full of dangers. Like all mothers, her legs got very tired toward evening. But if she lay down a minute to rest them in the nice warm dust, the chickens were in some trouble or other. Shrill peeps of dismay summoned her, and she would run to the rescue, all her feathers trembling with anxiety. Weary as she was, she couldn't get a good sleep at night, with all those soft jostling chickens crowding under her wings and even squatting on her back. I used to see her out walking in the morning with her family, and there was sometimes quite a wild sparkle in her handsome eye.

And then one day, when she was picking around in the driveway she happened to find a cigarette that someone had tossed out from a car. It was still lit, and just in curiosity the hen put it in her beak and took a few puffs. She liked the taste and it made her feel quite rakish to be smoking, just as she had seen well-dressed ladies doing on the front porch. She held the cigarette gracefully in one claw, and tossed her head at a mischievous angle. She saw other hens in the yard looking at her with surprise, and caught a gleam of attention from the big red rooster. Suddenly she determined to have a gay life while it was still possible. Why should she spend all her time looking after the chickens?

The whole neighbourhood is still talking about the lively doings that followed. You would never have known she was the same hen. She had her feathers smartly shingled, she bought some new clothes, and very thin yellowish silk stockings, and she smoked all the time. She got herself a swift little roadster with a rumble seat behind, and she could be seen flashing along the North Shore roads at a great pace. She didn't even need to stop driving to light a cigarette: she bought a car that had an electric lighter. She never got home to the roost until late, for she usually dined out at some gay roadhouse. If her legs were tired now, it was from dancing. She even had a fifty-trip ticket on the railroad, and the only worry she had was to find places to park the car while she went to a matinée in town.

And while the gay hen was leading this exciting life, with a little blue trail of cigarette smoke behind her, where were the chickens? Why, they were in the field, as Blythe had noticed. They had wandered across the road and you could see them over there, scattered at their own sweet will. They were having a grand time I dare say, but they were getting their feet wet and eating all sorts of dangerous things. They got into poison ivy and they coughed at night. They were getting quite tough, and there is nothing more regrettable in a chicken.

One day the gay hen was on her way back from a tea party in Great Neck. She wanted to smoke a cigarette, but the lighter in her car had got out of order. So she stopped and waved to the first car that came along, to borrow a match.

It happened to be Mr. Mistletoe's car, Dean Swift, with the whole family on board. Of course Mr. Mistletoe had a match, and hastened to give a light to such a smart-looking hen. Blythe, sitting in the back of the car, was greatly interested. She watched the hen carefully, and then began to sing her little ditty. "Chickens, chickens, in the field," she sang.

The gay hen was just tossing away the match with a debonair gesture. She was ready to step on the gas and go scooting off down the road to another party in Locust Valley. Suddenly she realized how tired she was of a roadhouse life. When she heard Blythe's song she thought with sadness of the chickens running wild all over the fields, not wearing rubbers, eating wrong food, quarrelling and using bad words, growing up rowdy and tough.

She threw away the cigarette, and drove home fast, very fast. She leaped out of the smart roadster and called all the chickens home from the field, with the old bedtime call that they still remembered. They were very big now, but once more she took them all under her wings as best she could, though they kicked and skirmished so that she was awake most of the night.

The next day she cleaned out the rumble seat, which was full of cigarette ashes dropped by her dissipated friends. Now, when she goes driving, the rumble is full of chickens, enjoying the air. There isn't even room for a package of cigarettes on the front seat, because it's crowded with fresh vegetables, from the stalls along the roads near Farmingdale. . . . .

And if the story has really been a success, and is told in a drowsy tone, to the rhyming hum of the car, Blythe is now asleep. She doesn't wake up until the Dean hits that bump at the bottom of the home driveway.