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Show Chick Sales 4 "Herman, your father is waiting. Grab another piece of bread to take with you. Come on now. Hurry." "I'm coming, Mother." He follows her outside to the pen where she checks to see i f , by some miracle, the bull has more fat than yesterday. He sees her shake a sorry head at the bull and at the chickens who have followed her through the open door, staccatoing the hard earth for grain. "Only a handful for now." She tosses the feed gently. "Share chicky chicks. Share until Alf gets back from Old Ben's." Then she bends to her knees and laces her son in her arms. He clings to their good-bye, but doesn't say what he thinks. Maybe, someday, he can take his mother to his pond and grant her three wishes. One would be for a washing machine, he knew that one for sure. Maybe for a real house with trees. Maybe for a knight. Four years earlier, Herman's father had tried Idaho for luck. Sometimes Herman went with him to knock on doors in Pocatello, Blackfoot, and Malad. While they stood on the porch to wait for an answer, Alf would always straighten his t ie and check his briefcase and shoes for spots of mud. The housewives would ooh and aah and say "I want that one" as they browsed through his catalogue of new-fangled washing machines, but then most of them remembered the lean crops. "Please come back in six months, won't you please? And, young man," they'd say to Herman, "where on earth did you get those big deep-water eyes? And look at those eyelashes. What I wouldn't do for eyelashes like those. Oh my." |