Sycamore Street - Part 3, Terror Stocks the Chicken Yard

The Stock’s barn stood on the west side of their house. A long graveled driveway widened at the end into an oval, nearly filling the area between the house and barn. A basketball goal stood at the very end of the oval. A fenced section in front of the barn provided a place for a couple of cows, and another fenced chicken yard lay behind the house. A coop sat in the middle. Usually things were peaceful with the chickens pecking and scratching in the yard, but once in a while death stalked in the form of Mrs. Stock.

A tree log, more than two feet in diameter, functioned as the execution block. The axe was kept with its sharp edge buried in the top. A pair of long nails, driven two inches apart into the center, were bent over slightly and loose enough that they could be easily turned. Mrs. Stock directed her kids, usually Gilbert, to chase and capture chickens. Sometimes Don and I helped. We handed them across the fence to Mrs. Stock who stood next to the block, just outside the gate.

She must have had a lot of practice over the years because she operated with smooth efficiency. I remember her carrying two chickens in each hand. She quickly bound their legs and lay them next to the block. Three or four would be laying there calmly, waiting for their date with the axe. We kids would watch with morbid fascination as she held a chicken by the legs, place its head between the nails and turn them to close around its neck. Then the axe would fall cleaving it head in one smooth practiced stroke. She tossed the body across the fence into the chicken yard and reached for another victim.

The headless chickens would rise, like Lazarus, and start their last frantic, headless run around the yard. Mostly they ran in ever widening circles, sometimes colliding with the fence, sometimes the coop, and sometimes with fellow chickens who had managed to keep their heads for another day. I never thought to time those last runs of the condemned. I was too transfixed watching the moving fountains pumping blood to conduct any scientific experiments. Sometimes they would cover a long distance before loosing balance and fall on their sides, only to quickly rise and continue the race. Eventually they would stumble for the last time, but would continue to run in place, feet churning through air until neither blood nor life were left.

We had chickens ourselves, but never witnessed the carnage that occurred next door at the hands of Mrs. Stock. Nor did we have to suffer the odor that emanated from the bucket of hot water in which she plunged the headless chickens before plucking their feathers. We kids usually lost interest about the time the bucket came out, but we would play with the feet that she cut off after the defeathering. You could pull on the tendons that projected from the severed leg and the foot digits would curl up.
RETURN TO: Part 1
GO TO: Part 4, The Great Chicken Massacre