Ann Patty

Word Count 1492

One beautiful summer morning, as I bent to pick up my newspaper, I was attacked by my neighbor’s four bantam roosters.  One of them, white neck feathers ruffled like a burgher’s collar in a Franz Hals portrait, lunged at my leg, puncturing my skin. As I screamed and frantically kicked him off, another came, and another, and in the seconds that followed, I screamed and kicked as four roosters, all puffed up in fighting mode, lunged and pecked at my legs with beaks or hind claws. Finally, Nelson, my neighbor, heard my screams and came to my aid, batting them away with his weed whacker. In shock, with rivulets of blood running down my legs, I screamed,” Keep your fucking chickens off my driveway. I never want to see them on my property again!” and quickly headed up the hill for home. 

After sponging off most of the blood on my legs, I drove myself to the emergency room. The advice from the admitting nurse was, “Call the police.”  The doctor administering a tetanus shot confessed I was his first case of “rooster attack.” With a prescription for antibiotics, I went home and called the police.  Less than an hour later, a white sheriff’s car appeared in my driveway, and a tall, good-looking, closely shaven blond emerged: Officer Franceschi.  I told him my story. He was immediately on his cell phone, to the animal control department, to the sheriff’s office, checking laws and regulations.  He was furious, had caught my anger and fear and was on the vengeance trail: rescuing knight to my damsel in distress. “I’m going to find a way to arrest him,” he declared.

“But I don’t want him arrested,” I told him, “I only wanted the roosters gone.” I noticed a distinct square shape in his breast pocket and asked, “Are those cigarettes?  I’d really like to smoke a cigarette right now, I’m so traumatized.” 

“No,” he said, “that’s my beeper. But I have cigarettes; come with me to my car.” He opened his trunk to display, among ticket books, Billy clubs, and a big black rifle, several packs of cigarettes: Marlboro lights, Newport, Newport lights, generics. “Take your pick,” he said. “I don’t smoke, but I’ve learned that most people, when they see me, want a cigarette, so I always keep them with me.”

We returned to my porch. He wanted to photograph my legs, and the puncture wounds, so I’d have a record on file if I wanted to sue Nelson. “I don’t want to sue Nelson,” I said, “I only want the roosters gone.” He encouraged me to sue him. “He won’t have any money, I’m sure, a woodchuck like that, but you can get a lien on the house.”  

I told him I was not interested in suing, that in his own way, Nelson had been a good neighbor. His house, which I refer to as Dogpatch, sits just north of my driveway. On the south is my other neighbor’s cow pasture, so my track is a narrow one between the cow fence and Nelson’s front yard, front junk yard, I should say. Nelson’s house, which he proudly claims was built by his great-grandfather, has been caving in on itself for years – there are holes in the back of his kitchen; the only remaining siding is tarpaper, and even that is tattered, and sparse.

Nelson keeps rabbits (whose prolific breeding results in more meat than you get from a cow in a year, so he proudly told me) and raises mice in his basement for sale to snake owners. Every autumn, he hangs the deer he has shot for winter meat; the carcass, the head and hide hang suspended there till spring.  This spring, he’s added bantam roosters, which roam freely in his scant front yard, among remnants of Nelson’s past in various states of rust and decay: old windows, former rabbit pens, rusting grills, defunct rototillers, an unseaworthy rowboat, a dead tractor, and miscellaneous wood and metal debris, punctuated here and there by a peony or a clump of Iris. Nelson and I have had friendly neighbor relations over the 24 years I’ve lived here. He’s brought me deer stew, I’ve given him herbs, he’s cut down a tree that fell over my driveway, and I’ve brought him cookies for Christmas. Once, about ten years ago, he came a’courtin’. I was still a weekend-only tenant. I’d been single for a while, and he’d witnessed the parade of male guests and I imagine he figured he might as well get in on the action.  He came with some home-canned beets, stammering that he’d consulted his nephew and niece, who told him why not go for it. He declared how much he liked me and proposed we go out to dinner. “I hope you’re not insulted,” he said.  Indeed I was!  He was 20 years my senior, had bad breath and yellowing false teeth, and lived in a junkyard. Had my allure so faded that he could dream I’d be interested?  I dispatched him with a declaration that I was deeply involved with someone else. The following weekend, a male friend and I planted ourselves at the bottom of my driveway and made out and acted like playful lovers for five minutes.   I knew he’d see us. I even let out false girly screams and coquettish giggles to make sure. That, thank god, ended that.   

Nelson continued to be neighborly, though I kept more distance. I’ve never complained about his junk, even when it seeps over onto my property.

I sat back in my cushioned chair, smoking his Newports, and stretched my legs onto the round glass table. I was wearing short shorts. I had great legs, and now they were the scene of a crime.  As Officer Franchesi photographed them, my agitation morphed into a bemused, Mrs. Robinson mood. When he finished taking about 20 photos of my legs, he left in pursuit of Nelson.

He returned twice that day, once a few minutes later, to report that Nelson was nowhere to be found. “But I know where he is, and I’ll find him soon enough, don’t you worry.” He returned two hours later to report that Nelson had killed not only the roosters but his hens too before Officer Franchesi had intercepted him, that he had searched his house, confiscated a variety of illegal traps, and given Nelson a very big talking to. Nelson promised he would be coming up to apologize and offer to pay my medical bills. He did neither. I did send him the emergency room bill, which he returned with a check in the same envelope without even a scrawled apology or inquiry about how I was faring.  Indeed, after the incident, he stopped waving at me when I passed by in my car.  If he saw me on foot, he turned his back to me.

A year later, I moved my driveway about a fifth of a mile south, on the other side of Walter’s cow pasture.  It was a feat of engineering:  bulldozers, backhoes, many truckloads of shale and schedule 40, but the entrance to my house is now calm and bucolic, a lovely gravel road through pasture and woods. 

Recently another neighbor who had heard the story only from Nelson came over in person to tell me that Nelson was looking for “payback” from the cock episode. He was furious I had called the police on him, and didn’t like losing his cocks and animal traps. The neighbor implied that Nelson might “accidentally” shoot my dog Augie. “I just thought I should warn you,” he said. “He’s not from a family that’s afraid of a feud, or to act on it.”   

After fretfully pondering this for weeks, I realized the only thing I could do was apologize to Nelson for calling the cops on him, which was, after all, a most unneighborly thing to do. A few days later, I spotted him in the woods behind my house (neutral territory), cutting dry fall with his chainsaw. I walked up with Augie on leash and apologized.  I explained that I’d been so panicked I wasn’t thinking properly. I knew that was not a kind thing to do, and hoped we could restore our friendly relationship.  He accepted my apology, we shook hands twice, after the last of which he said, “You know I carry a grudge forever, so it’s good we made up.”

Now that I come and go in my new driveway, Nelson’s Dogpatch is no longer part of my scene, and I seldom cross paths with him.  When I do, it’s usually when I’m walking Augie down the old driveway, which has reverted to an overgrown forest path.  Nelson and I greet one another and have brief, neighborly conversations.  He’s over eighty now and going deaf. He no longer keeps rabbits or mice, and he has never replaced his hens and fighting cocks.

Ann is the author of LIVING WITH A DEAD LANGUAGE; My Romance with Latin (Viking/Penguin, 2016) . Her essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Linga Franca, Society for Classical Studies, Oprah.com, The Bucket, Publishers’ Weekly, and The Toast. She was the founder and publisher of The Poseidon Press and an executive editor at Crown Publishers and Harcourt. She currently rusticates in the Hudson Valley, with her husband and dog.