Hi!
Another piece of twenty minute fiction. This one inspired by a tweet from Mark Stay (@markstay) about “watering the chickens.” I added five random words and here we are.
As usual I corrected typos and punctuation and deleted anything bad or unnecessary otherwise it is as I originally wrote it. Enjoy!
We could never stop Grandad watering the chickens.
He started one summer. It was warm. Seemed like a good idea at the time. The chickens were at the bottom of the garden. Granny didn’t like them. She said they smelled like Grandad’s trousers when he had them on too long. So the herb garden grew to encompass tomatoes, salads, strawberries and rhubarb in beds, the herbs in hanging boxes creating a verdant backdrop when you looked out the kitchen window.
Whenever Grandad was missing we’d find him hidden behind the foliage; the hiss and platsch of water from the blue hosepipe a giveaway. He’d be standing close to the tall cage he kept the chickens in, leaning in to make sure that each got its fair share. There were three. Two auburn-coloured, one white with brown spots along her wings.
“Grandad! Granny wants you to light the fire.”
He’d give us one of his trite responses and shamble in. He’d do what was required but before you’d know it he’d be gone. Granny would purse her purple lips.
There was always some pretext: the rubbish needed to be taken out; the car should be filled up in case she wanted to use it; the jar was stiff and she wanted him to open it. We’d find him spraying water over the chickens. Leaning in, like he was listening.
Sometimes we hid in the garden, the chickens gackering. If we got too close there’d be a hush. The kind when you walk into a room and people stop talking about you. Grandad leaning in.
It did them good, too. They kept growing. First they were up to my knee. Then up to my waist. Too big for the enclosure. Granny was thankful when there was a drought one year: there was a ban on the hosepipe.
Grandad looked uncomfortable. We’d find him leaning against the backdoor to catch what the chickens might be saying.
“You talk more to the birds than you do to me!” said Granny. We offered to have her stay with us. The chickens were so big they were scary. Their orange eyes stared at us in the garden. We’d pluck herbs – Granny refused to enter the garden at all – as the chickens conferred. We’d race inside and lock the door.
One night she woke and found him watering the chickens. He leaned in, at eye level with the three ladies, one hand pushed through the chicken wire fence.
Needless to say she moved in with us after that.
Grandad insisted we call in advance before visiting. The floors were always damp when we arrived. The chickens watched us from the good couch in the sitting room.
The random words were:
verdant
trite
needless
thankful
offer
I really dislike the line “So the herb garden grew to encompass tomatoes, salads, strawberries and rhubarb in beds, the herbs in hanging boxes creating a verdant backdrop when you looked out the kitchen window. “
It needs to stop after “…hanging boxes.” but then I would lose my “verdant” prompt.
On the other hand I think “We’d find him spraying water over the chickens. Leaning in, like he was listening.” works very well.
The original was “We’d always find him spraying water over the chickens, leaning in to them, almost like he was listening.” I got rid of fill-words but making two lines out of it is the real special sauce: both lines have more room to resonate.
