Read The Lost Landscape for Free Online Page B

beautiful books! The little girl was so excited she could barely speak, to thank the Grandmother. Having her books stamped and discharged by the librarian made the little girl very shy but the Grandmother stood beside her so there was nothing to fear. And the little girl and the Grandmother-who-was-Blanche read these books together sitting on a swing on the front veranda of the gray clapboard house on Grand Street.
    In all that day, the little girl did not once think of me.
    Those hours, blinking and staring at the beautiful brightly colored illustrations in the books, turning the pages slowly, as the nice Grandmother Blanche read the words on each page, and encouraged the little girl to read too—the little girl did not once think of Happy Chicken.
    But when the Mother took the little girl home again to Millersport, in the late afternoon of that day, and the little girl ran out into the barnyard to call for me, there was no Happy Chicken anywhere.
    The little girl and the Mother would search the chicken coop, the barn, the orchard. . . . Oh where was Happy Chicken? The little girl was crying, sobbing.
    The (Hungarian) Grandmother who was hanging sheets on the clothesline insisted she had not seen Happy Chicken.
    The Grandmother had never really distinguished Happy Chicken from any other chicken—the little girl knew that. How ridiculous, the Grandmother thought, to pretend that one chicken was any different from any other chicken!
    The Grandfather too insisted he hadn’t seen Happy Chicken! Wouldn’t have known what the damned chicken looked like, in fact. Anything that had to do with the chickens—these were the Grandmother’s chores, and of no interest to the Grandfather who was worn-out from the foundry in Tonawanda and couldn’t give a damn, so much fuss over a goddamn chicken.
    When the father returned from his factory work in Lockport in the early evening he was in no mood either to hear of Happy Chicken. He was in no mood to hear his little daughter’s crying, that grated on his nerves. But seeing his little girl’s reddened eyes, and the terror in those eyes, the Father stooped to kiss her cheek.
    Don’t cry, he’ll come back. What’s his name—“Happy Chicken”?
    Sure. “Happy Chicken” will come back.
    SHE IS CALLING HIM -HAPPY Chicken. Her throat is raw with calling him —Happy Chicken!
    She has wakened in a sick cold sweat tangled in bedclothes. The little red chicken is somewhere in the room—is he? But which room is this, and when?
    But here I am—suddenly—crouching at her feet. Eager quivering little red-feathered chicken at the little girl’s feet. The little girl kneels to pet me, and kisses the top of my hard little head, and holds me in her arms, my wings pressed gently against my sides. And the little chicken-head lowered. And the eyelids quivering. Red-burnished feathers stroked gently by a little girl’s fingers.
    Where did I go, Joyce Carol? I flew away.
    One day that summer, my wings were strong enough to lift me. And once my wings began to beat, I rose into the air, astonished and elated; and the air buoyed and buffeted me, and I flew high above the tallest peak of the old clapboard farmhouse on Transit Road.
    So high, once the wind lifted me, I could see the raggedy flock of red-feathered chickens below scratching and pecking in the dirt as always, and I could see the roof of the old hay barn, and I could see the top of the silo; I could see the farthest potato field, and the farthest edge of the pear orchard, and the rutted dirt lane that bordered the orchard leading back to the Weidenbachs’ farm where the big barking dogs lived.
    For it was time, for Happy Chicken to fly away.

DISCOVERING ALICE: 1947
    THE SINGULAR BOOK THAT changed my life—that made me yearn to be a writer, as well as inspired me to “write”—is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and