I Remember It All

Chapter 1-2

I took a breath and opened my door.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

No, I wasn’t all right. I was embarrassed and confused.

She reached in and took my arm. “Come on. You need to relax. Come in…”

* * * *

That had not been the good part of last night. I probably should have gone home then, but I hadn’t, and, boy, was I glad! Especially this morning.

I stared down into a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, two fried potato wedges, and two slices of toast. The bacon was even the thick cut-it-yourself kind. “Thank you for this, it looks great.”

She smiled as she sat down opposite me with her own plate. “The toast has the cashew apple butter you gave me on it. I’m sorry I don’t have any orange juice, though, or do you start your day with something else?”

“I usually start my mornings with the chickens.”

“You eat chicken for breakfast?”

“No, no, not eating chicken. I start the day sitting with my cup of coffee and talking to the chickens. Hens are very excited and talkative at that time of day. Most have just gotten those eggs out and they’re happy for a while. They’re proud of themselves at that moment, so they like to spend the morning bragging about it. Did you know that Gallusian is a highly evolved language?”

“Gallusian?”

“Yes, chicken language. They’re scientifically the Gallus domesticus. They speak Gallusian.”

“I didn’t know that.” It seemed I heard her say that more and more lately.

“Most people don’t,” I explained. “They start to learn it while they’re still in their shells, just before they hatch. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it’s the mother telling them how to break out of there, giving them a rousing prod to be born, which is why we have to collect the eggs before they can develop into embryos.”

“Does that mean you are anti-abortion?”

“For chickens, yes, because the mother hens can’t understand what happens. They think they forgot where they laid them. They share the sitting duties, so I guess it’s hard to keep track of which ones are yours. But what also makes sense is, if you gave birth to a new kid every day, sometimes two a day, you’d probably also forget where you left one or two. Having that many kids running around could drive anyone crazy. I mean, can you imagine having over three hundred kids a year?”

“As strange as that seems, it also sounds logical,” Darlene admitted, as she started to eat her breakfast.

“So I collect all the eggs. They’re usually still warm and don’t need to be refrigerated right away. They don’t develop into embryos unless they’re kept at the chicken’s body temperature for eight or nine hours. If you take the eggs away and cool them or at least leave them in a cooler place before ten hours have passed, there’ll be no development.”

“Oh. That’s right, I forget you have a whole menagerie out there.” Darlene took a bite of her toast. “So, what do you usually eat for breakfast?”

“Just coffee, mainly. Occasionally some toast.”

Darlene nodded and we continued to eat.

“I do have a question for you, though,” Darlene said. “I notice you sleep with the blanket up over your face. Do you always do that?”

“Of course!” I had to laugh. Yes, it was a quirk I developed very early in life. “I’m very private when I sleep. I hate people watching me sleep.”

She glared at me as if I were even more un-normal than usual. “But it was just me. I’ve seen just about everything else of yours.”

I shook my head with a little chuckle. “I think it was when my folks told me that Jesus, and Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny were always watching me. I couldn’t imagine all those people looking at me all the time. So, I tried to hide so they couldn’t see me sleep. I started that when I was barely four.”

Darlene looked at me with surprise. “And you’re still doing it thirty-five years later?”

“My mother told me I didn’t have to because she’d always be watching out for me, so I tried it without for a few years, but it still didn’t seem right to have all these folks watching me sleep. When Mom died, I guess, I felt my shield had been shattered so I had to hide again.”

“Do you still believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny?”

“Well, no, but habits die hard.”

“I’m sorry about your mom. When did she die?”

“September sixteenth when I was thirteen. They were going to the Bahamas for their anniversary and the plane crashed in the ocean. There were no survivors.”

“Oh, Sweetie! I’m so sorry!”

“It was a long time ago. I lived with my grandfather after that.”

“Your mother’s father. You mentioned that.”

“That’s what got me into science fiction. He loved Buck Rogers.”

“I think you mentioned that when we first met,” Darlene said with a small smile.

“Exactly. I asked you if you were related to Buck.”

“That right. It was the first time I realized you were into that.”

I remembered. “Did you ever read any of my books?”

“Yes. I’ve actually read two of them. They’re very good. I enjoyed them.”

“Thanks.” I took a bite of the breakfast. “This is really good, too,” I exclaimed. “I didn’t realize you could do eggs this way.”

“Scrambled? Of course you can. How do you usually cook them? Don’t you eat scrambled eggs?”

“No, I mean, yes, I eat them scrambled, but they don’t usually start out that way. And not with all this stuff in them.”

“It’s just cheese and herbs. Don’t you put cheese is them?”

“I usually cook them sunny-side-up…or over-easy. If I break the yolk, then I just stir them up right there in the pan and make them scrambled.” I took another bite. “I sometimes make other things with eggs: boiled or baked.”

“Those are good ways, too. Do you ever poach them?

“Good God, no! I tried poaching once and all I ended up with was some kind of watery egg-drop soup!”

Darlene laughed. “There’s an easy way. If you want to poach an egg, all you have to do is line a cup or small saucer with plastic wrap, crack your egg into it, tie the ends together to make it into a little pouch, and put that in the hot water. It makes the perfect poached egg.”

“That does sound easy. I’ll have to try it sometime.” I took another bite of my breakfast and looked at Darlene with concern. “I don’t know how to use spices like this, though. Unless they’re called for in a recipe, I never think to use them in anything else. I don’t know how much to use.”

“They’re very good in a lot of things. Didn’t you mother ever teach you to use them?”

“I never had time to learn. Food wasn’t that important to me then. It still isn’t.”

We both filled our mouths again and chewed happily, which sort of contradicted what I’d just said. I guess anyone else’s cooking was important to me, just not my own. “Actually making food isn’t that important to me, let me clarify that.” We took another bite.

“Speaking of your chickens, do you have a calendar?”

“Do chickens need to keep calendars?” I didn’t know why she was asking. “Do the hens have that time of month or something that I should be watching for? I didn’t know.”

“No!” Darlene laughed. “I need you to keep a calendar and write down every time you give something away, especially when you give eggs to the Food Bank. Keep track of how many of everything. Do they ever give you a receipt?”

“No. Do I need one? I didn’t know I should ask.”

“It would help. It could save you hundreds of dollars on your taxes. If you’re giving two to three dozen eggs away daily, it will add up.”

That sounded really good to me!

“If you have a record and receipts for all you give them, you can write it off.”

“Okay. I can do that. Do you want me to go back to the beginning of the year?”

“Whatever you can remember. Then you can prepare a receipt and have them sign it. Even a rough estimate would help.”

I thought back. It had been almost sixteen weeks since the beginning of the year. I have more than two dozen chickens and probably got twenty eggs a day from them. That made four hundred and eighty eggs a week. I’d kept about two dozen for myself in all that time and gave approximately sixty-five to Tony’s mom back in March. I’d left sixteen in the nests, so the hens would have something to sit on. “There must have been almost one hundred and seventy-eight dozen I’d given to the Food Bank so far. That’s just an estimate. If I thought back, I could remember exactly how many I brought them each time I went in.”

Darlene was just sitting there staring at me. “Do you remember back that far?”

“Of course.”

She looked at me strangely. “Do you remember everything?”

“Just about. I remember almost everything right away. But if I stop and think back carefully, I can remember it all. My shrink said I had an eidetic memory, that I was memorious. She said there were only about a couple dozen people in the world that could do that…that they know of.”

Darlene looked astounded. “You remember every day?”

I nodded.

“That’s phenomenal. Your doctor was right. Most people don’t!”

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Don’t you? You remembered about the Ruskans.”

“Well, most people remember important or strange things that happen, but all the little things go into the mental trash can. Do you remember what happened last week?”

“Which day?”

“Uh…Tuesday.”

“What time?”

“Well, let’s say three in the afternoon.”

“Last Tuesday, mid-afternoon?” I thought back. “I was out in the field hacking down some new bushes that were threatening to take over. You have to watch out for something like that or they’ll become too hard for the animals to digest. Some will even become trees!”

She nodded her understanding.

“Then I sat and talked to Gudi…she’s the prime donkey…for about an hour about what kind of a new building they wanted. Donkeys hate rain. They always hide under trees or whatever they can find when it rains.”

Darlene looked like she’d think about that. “What about Thursday?”

I thought. “I went into town to deliver approximately five dozen eggs and had a nice chat with the guy who cooks there. He was worried that the beans and peas he’d planted out back weren’t going to grow because there was too much rain this year. Then I got gas for my car and went into the grocery store to get pork chops, a bag of frozen peas, some oranges, and potatoes for me and hamburger for Wol. I bought twice as much for him as I usually do because they were having a sale on it. It was only two forty a pound for the high fat one and that’s that Wol loves.

“Then I drove home and did a little research on my computer and gave everybody dinner. Friday, I slept unusually late, had a cup of coffee, did all the chores, then read Forbes magazine until it was almost time to feed the kids again. I paid the last of the bills for this month, and I talked to Beau about his friends in Montana. I had to get in touch with the guy who runs the property that they live on. When I was up there a month ago, he was having a hard time with the reserve. It was getting over filled and over grazed. He was fearful and he worried that he’d have to put down some of the herd. I made an offer to buy ten or so. I wish I could buy more but I don’t have enough land. As it is, if I take the ten, I’ll probably have to clear a few acres for them. So, I did the rest of the chores and I made dinner. I just have vegetables on Fridays. It’s a hold-over from growing up. My mother never made meat on Fridays, which was a hold-over for her growing up. Saturday…”