Jesse

Saturday morning I went to the chicken coop.

Three of Mama's eight hens were dead.

They were piled in the corner of the coop, stacked on top of each other in a way that chickens don't pile.

They hadn't been eaten.

They hadn't been visibly injured.

There was no blood, no feathers scattered, no sign of a struggle.

They were just dead, arranged in a neat stack in the corner, like someone had killed them and taken the time to organize the bodies.

The remaining five hens were huddled on the far side of the coop, alive but silent.

None of them were on the roost.

None of them moved when I opened the coop door.

They just sat there, pressed together, staring at nothing.

I cleaned out the dead birds.

I buried them behind the garden.

I didn't tell Mama about the stacking.

I told her a predator had gotten into the coop and killed three hens.

She nodded.

She didn't ask questions.

I think she already knew.

That afternoon I drove to Matawan.

I went to the hardware store and bought a motion-activated floodlight, a new deadbolt for the back door, and a box of 12-gauge shells.