The chicken thief, by Fiona Leonard

The chicken thief, by Fiona Leonard. The Penguin Group (South Africa). Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9780143538554 / ISBN 978-0-14-353855-4

The following text is an excerpt from Fiona Leonard's novel The Chicken Thief.

Sometimes he'd simply had to learn from his mistakes. The first time he hung his bag he'd jumped back over the fence to find no more than a hook and a few bloody threads. It had been a lesson well learnt. Ask yourself, do you chase a pack of dogs through the night, bellowing with rage, until the entire neighbourhood wakes? Or do you check your anger, resolve to hang higher next time and keep well clear of that end of town? Most nights Alois carried four or five bags: one sturdy weave to store the chickens and a few lighter empties for each new house. At the beginning he carried only two bags, one to store and one for the catch. But the birds weren't stupid. After the first time death fell from the sky they knew. The first house of the evening would be fine, but by the second and third the smell of death was like a neon sign announcing his arrival. The squawking would begin before his feet touched soil. When he'd first heard it, he had crouched in the dirt and watched them, listening to their cries until he understood their fear. From then on, out of respect, he approached with clean flour bags and always with a handful of grain in the bottom. These days, despite his reason for being there, the chickens greeted him. They strode forward, heads raised towards the bag. With one hand he tossed mealies into the dust, waiting until the heads were down foraging for the corn, and then with the other he reached into the mass of feathers. Surely, he thought, the first person to have spoken of'rubbing someone the wrong way' was talking about a chicken - such a phrase could only have come from someone whose fingertips had caressed the soft down at the rise of a breast and known the harsh resistance of feathers on end. Tonight there were no greetings. The chickens shuffled warily in the dust, awake when they should have been settled in their nests. Alois watched from above as their heads turned towards the car slipping through the gate. It rolled slowly along the driveway with its lights off, turning before the house so that it faced the gate, ready for a quick escape. He knew it was worse when the intruders came through the gate. That meant it was planned, that someone who knew how such things worked had been intentionally careless: a lock not rammed home, a wire disconnected to allow the gate to slide silently on its tracks. The chickens were silent now, too. Alois had always believed they were far smarter than most people gave them credit for. His family always spoke of chickens when they wanted to explain something or guide his way. As a child, when he asked his mother why she didn't eat, she replied, 'The hen with baby chicks doesn't swallow the worm'. Later, years after he had become a man, when he stooped to come through the doorway and his mother's hair had turned grey, Alois would say, I'm not a baby chick any more, now you can eat.' Still, his mother would only smile and ladle an extra spoonful on to his plate. He saw the irony in climbing a wall to steal a chicken, of course. [...]

This is an excerpt from the novel The chicken thief, by Fiona Leonard.

Title: The chicken thief
Author: Fiona Leonard
Genre: Novel
Publisher: The Penguin Group (South Africa)
Cape Town, South Africa 2014
ISBN 9780143538554 / ISBN 978-0-14-353855-4
Softcover, 15 x 23 cm, 223 pages