Part-Time Sexer Takes a Chance
Wait — boy or girl? He’d gotten distracted again. It was the way the fluorescent lights were making her red hair glow. He watched as she picked up another chick from the crate, and he tried again to read the tattoo on the side of her hand.
If he could only read it, he thought, he’d understand her.
He’d only been a chicken sexer for a few weeks, and she’d been here the whole time. There were three of them, all working part-time. He supposed the owner could have just hired one-person full time, but then they’d have to pay for benefits, and no one wanted to do that. Plus he couldn’t imagine doing this for eight hours. It was terrible.
It was a only a medium-sized farm, as far as he could tell and not one of those factory farms that was so awful. When he’d gotten the job, he’d gone home and watched a video about sexing chickens and clicked on one with a women in a hairnet wearing a face mask picking up tiny, peeping chicks, squeezing them until poop shot out, glancing, and throwing them down metal shafts — one on her left and one on her right, depending on the sex. It reminded him of an awful, deleted scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. This farm had a lot of chickens, but nothing like that.
He still couldn’t believe he’d gotten the job at all. In the end it was his vet tech experience that had gotten him through. He could tell Jessie, the owner, wasn’t impressed with him at first. He’d been late because all of those dirt roads looked the same, and his phone couldn’t get a signal. Also, he’d dressed too formally, in a plaid button-down that stretched a little over his belly because he hadn’t worn it in a long while, but it seemed like the best interview shirt he had. Then he’d thrown his dad’s old blazer that was too big. Nothing was right. But he was pretty used to that. So when he’d walked in late, he’d resigned himself to not getting it.
Jessie was no-nonsense, and he could tell she’d much rather be doing important farm things than interviewing lowly, part-time chicken sexers, but Janine was out sick, so…it was up to her. He could tell she hadn’t even looked at his resumė (it seemed kind of stupid to require a resume for squeezing baby chickens anyway), so when she asked about prior experience and he mentioned being a vet tech, she perked up. She’d been a vet tech, too, years ago.
They swapped a couple of cat bite stories, and that was that.
It’s not like he’d dreamed that five years after college graduation he’d be a part-time chicken sexer. But after the vet’s office had closed, and over the months since getting laid off from his job in client services at Richter Turf n’ Seed, his tiny savings account had dried up. None of the nearby vets were hiring, so he’d started to apply for everything. He’d gotten only two interviews: one for a counter-guy at Hertz and another at an insurance company which seemed like a scam operation. He wasn’t natural with people in the first place, which made interviews hard. “Slow to warm,” his mom had always said. He couldn’t even remember the interviews after they were over except for asking, “Can you repeat the question?” Thinking about it made his insides wince. But Jessie seemed to like him well enough after he talked about how badly his thumb had been infected after that Russian Blue bite, so here he was, scraping by until he could get something full-time or Jessie made him a full-time employee, which she’d said might happen if he “proved himself.”
He was trying to do just that, but it wasn’t easy. First of all, the chicks were so little and fragile, like dandelion puffs. He wanted to be gentle, and that slowed him down. Plus, they had their own personalities. One would hop away from his hand, another would stand still and resign himself, and some would fall asleep on their feet, even though the constant peeping filled the room. After he’d vented out the poop and looked, he’d either see the bump or not. If so, he’d lower the chick into the box on the right, for boys. No bump, left box.
The third guy, Tom — he basically just dropped them in. He smelled like really skunky weed, popped pills thinking no one noticed, kept his head down with scraggly gray hair in his face, and clearly wasn’t trying to make friends. So that left him and Bonnie. He only knew their names because Jessie introduced everyone on his first day, but since then, they’d only said “Hi” and “See ya.” The peeping was just loud enough that they’d have to raise their voices to chat, plus the job really did take some focus. But still. Bonnie. It made him think of mown grass and blue sky. She must be in her mid-20s, like him. T-shirts with band names he mostly didn’t recognize and jeans. Tattoo of a hummingbird and flowers on her upper arm. He’d been to a roller derby once, and he could imagine her skating in one, pushing other women out of her way, fierceness in her eyes and a determined smile on her lips. She’d sweep her dyed red hair out of her eyes with her wrist, since her gloved hands were covered in chicken poop and feathers, and that’s when he could see the tattoo on her hand best.
The clear glove blurred it, but he’d seen it without gloves and could tell it was long, lanky script. Probably someone’s name, he thought. A boyfriend or girlfriend. Someone she loves. But those thoughts didn’t stop him from noticing her dark eyebrows lift and clench as she peered at another chick before setting it down, just as gently as he did. The freckles across the top of her collarbone.
But what was he supposed to do? Just start yelling over the peeping while he squirted poop? It seemed so stupid. Maybe that was just an excuse. He didn’t want to do what he’d always done: wait and wait until it all just felt too weird. So far, he’d only dated girls he was friends with for a long time first (and they’d both dumped him) or that one girl from Tinder who kept trying to get him to give her money, which he didn’t have. Staring at the off-white walls of his apartment, he longed for color. For something worthy of putting up on his wall that he’d be happy to see every day. He wanted someone to choose it with, a person who could see through his eyes and know if it would be something he’d like. But it’s not like you start there, he thought.
There’s so much in between. There has to be a beginning.
He talked himself out of it every day, but the truth was that she might even like him. When they finished a crate, they had to carry the boxes of sorted chicks into the other outbuilding, and they’d made eye contact and smiled at each other then. And their shifts ended at the same time. They were often in the parking lot at the same time after washing their hands, crunching on gravel to their cars. She’d waved goodbye to him once. It would only take a couple more steps across the uncertain ground to make contact. Just one step at a time. He could do that. He’d once wrangeld a terrified German Shepherd mix into a crate when no one else would do it. He could do this.
His last crate of the day was almost empty. The last chick cowered in the corner, immobile. He moved his hand toward it slowly, not wanting to scare it even more. It peeped once and was silent. He cupped his hand and scooped it up. Between the confines of his fingers, the chick seemed to relax. Its eyes closed slowly, blinking. He stroked its little head with one finger, and then — as delicately as anyone could — squeezed, and saw it was a girl. He petted it one more time before placing it with the others where it settled down for a nap. When he looked up, he saw that Bonnie was staring at him, head cocked to one side, smiling.
He smiled back and then stood up too fast, banging his knees on the table.
“Dude,” Tom said.
“Sorry,” he said, and took one box under each arm. When he got back, she wasn’t at the table anymore. Both crushed and relieved, he pulled the slimy gloves off and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. He didn’t bother looking in the mirror — it was always the same face. But she’d smiled, and it wasn’t an I’m sorry for you smile. It wasn’t a smirk. Her hazel eyes were warm, crinkled at the edges like a pie crust.
He crunched outside toward his car, the heat making the air a shifting mirage. When he heard gravel shifting behind him, he turned to see her already looking at him.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was gravelly, too.
“Hi,” he said.
“Wow, it’s hot,” she said, holding her hand up like a visor over her eyes. “Jesus. I hate the heat.”
“Yeah, it’s not my favorite either,” he said, already aware of the sweat on his face and neck.
“You have another job after this one?” she asked, shifting her weight onto one hip.
“No, I should,” he said,” but I don’t.” Jesus. Always the stupidest shit, at the dumbest times.
“Yeah, my temp job just ended, so I’m down to just this one, too. It’s not easy to find something full time around here.”
Something in him sensed a ball to pick up and run with. Maybe he’d said something stupid, but now he had a question to ask, a direction.
“Oh, are you new around here?”
“Yeah, from Boston,” she said. “I want to save up for vet school. Oh, by the way,” she smiled, “I’m Bonnie. I think we met the first day, but just in case.”
She held out her hand to shake his, and he looked down as she reached for him.
Faith, her tattoo said in ambling curves.
“You want to go get some lunch?” he asked.
