Preliminary Field Report #0002
The barns on the Eastern Shore are low and long, with large feed hoppers and Everglades air-boat fans, making them look like sawmills for dwarves, or something more sinister, in a vaguely Central European way.
The truck is a big flatbed, with wire cages stacked ten-high the length and width of the trailer, several chickens in each cage. As the truck drives over a bump or rise in the road, the chickens all raise, weightless for an instant, as a flock in a taste of flight.
I drive over the same bump, feel the gut flutter and parabolic thrill and smile toward the chickens ahead. Feathers shower in the truck’s wake, a dirty downy snow on my windshield.
