The children’s embarrassment quickly passed as the rooster eluded them. But Grandmother was watching from the upstairs window. . . .
Grandmother watched Queen Mother come back inside. The children went into the chicken house. Grandmother waited five minutes, then came up on them silently. She flung open the door and found them gathering feathers for headdresses.
She sent the girl home and led Francis into the house.
She told him he was going back to Brother Buddy’s orphanage after she had punished him. “Go upstairs. Go to your room and take your trousers off and wait for me while I get my scissors.”
He waited for hours in his room, lying on the bed with his trousers off, clutching the bedspread and waiting for the scissors. He waited through the sounds of supper downstairs and he heard the creak and clop of the firewood wagon and the snort of the mules as Queen Mother’s husband came for her.
Sometime toward morning he slept, and woke in starts to wait.
Grandmother never came. Perhaps she had forgotten.
He waited through the routine of the days that followed, remembering many times a day in a rush of freezing dread. He would never cease from waiting.
He avoided Queen Mother Bailey, would not speak to her and wouldn’t tell her why: He mistakenly believed that she had told Grandmother what she saw in the chicken yard. Now he was convinced that the laughter he heard while he watched the wagon lantern diminish down the road was about him. Clearly he could trust no one.
It was hard to lie still and go to sleep when it was there to think about. It was hard to lie still on such a bright night.
Francis knew that Grandmother was right. He had hurt her so. He had shamed her. Everyone must know what he had done—even as far away as St. Charles. He was not angry at Grandmother. He knew that he Loved her very much. He wanted to do right.
He imagined that burglars were breaking in and he protected Grandmother and she took back what she said. “You’re not a Child of the Devil after all, Francis. You are my good boy.”
He thought about a burglar breaking in. Coming in the house determined to show Grandmother his private parts.
How would Francis protect her? He was too small to fight a big burglar.
He thought about it. There was Queen Mother’s hatchet in the pantry. She wiped it with newspaper after she killed a chicken. He should see about the hatchet. It was his responsibility. He would fight his fear of the dark. If he really Loved Grandmother, he should be the thing to be afraid of in the dark. The thing for the burglar to be afraid of.
He crept downstairs and found the hatchet hanging on its nail. It had a strange smell, like the smell at the sink when they were drawing a chicken. It was sharp and its weight was reassuring in his hand.
He carried the hatchet to Grandmother’s room to be sure there were no burglars.
Grandmother was asleep. It was very dark but he knew exactly where she was. If there was a burglar, he would hear him breathing just as he could hear Grandmother breathing. He would know where his neck was just as surely as he knew where Grandmother’s neck was. It was just below the breathing.
If there was a burglar, he would come up on him quietly like this. He would raise the hatchet over his head with both hands like this.
Francis stepped on Grandmother’s slipper beside the bed. The hatchet swayed in the dizzy dark and pinged against the metal shade of her reading lamp.
Grandmother rolled over and made a wet noise with her mouth. Francis stood still. His arms trembled from the effort of holding up the hatchet. Grandmother began to snore.
The Love Francis felt almost burst him. He crept out of the room. He was frantic to be ready to protect her. He must do something. He did not fear the dark house now, but it was choking him.
He went out the back door and stood in the brilliant night, face upturned, gasping as though he could breathe the light. A tiny disk of moon, distorted on the whites of his rolled-back eyes, rounded as the eyes rolled down and was centered at last in his pupils.
The Love swelled in him unbearably tight and he could not gasp it out. He walked toward the chicken house, hurrying now, the ground cold under his feet, the hatchet bumping cold against his leg, running now before he burst. . . .
Francis, scrubbing himself at the chicken-yard pump, had never felt such sweet and easy peace. He felt his way cautiously into it and found that the peace was endless and all around him.
What Grandmother kindly had not cut off was still there like a prize when he washed the blood off his belly and legs. His mind was clear and calm.
He should do something about the nightshirt. Better hide it under the sacks in the smokehouse.
Discovery of the dead chicken puzzled Grandmother. She said it didn’t look like a fox job.
A month later Queen Mother found another one when she went to gather eggs. This time the head had been wrung off.
Grandmother said at the dinner table that she was convinced it was done for spite by some “sorry help I ran off.” She said she had called the sheriff about it.