The Rooster
“I saw a rooster today,” my dad said to me over dinner as he shoved a chopstick full of rice into his mouth. “It just flew out of nowhere and landed near the Post Office.”
For the past ten years, my dad has been working dutifully in a branch of the US Postal Service in the Bronx. He minded mostly his own work, walking at a brisk pace while his fingers scuttled through the mail. He often finished his shift earlier and picked up extra deliveries. He rarely earned any overtime, a financial strategy emphatically opposite from the advice he was given. “Some people are so lazy,” he said, “I don’t understand how it would take so long to deliver a few boxes.” Once he came home and proclaimed, “I am now delivering mail with my left hand.”
Perhaps because of his slightly stand-offish manners and his scrambled English skills, my dad was friendly with his colleagues but not really friends with any. His interaction with them was prefaced by a nod and a smile, but would not extend much beyond a casual “How was your weekend?”
When the rooster landed, the Post Office bristled with excitement. From the way my dad described it, the beast looked like it was the Messiah of Land Fowl. My dad talked about it like some gnarly thing that had survived a zombie apocalypse, with a giant wingspan of six feet, a blood-red crown, and a plume of tail feathers that could rival that of a peacock. In truth it was an average-sized creature with a creamsicle colored cape, a black-gray mess of sickle feathers, and sported a small, red comb. It prowled the fences with beady, mistrustful eyes, its breast, scarred by ancient rivalry, thrust forward proudly. When it was spotted my dad and his coworker would flock to the window, pressing their faces up against the glass like eager children as they watched it strut back and forth, head tilted in ponderous poise.
“This a cool chicken,” my dad’s colleague Peter, a short Hispanic man with a bald head and a wide smile, commented, to the nodding heads of the rest of the postal workers.
Ten days after the rooster arrived, the Post Office was seized with a new wave of fervor. A black, speckled hen appeared. “Look at that Loverboy!” Peter cooed. “That’s some crazy shit, they gonna have babies!”
My dad burst through our front door two weeks and announced triumphantly, “There are seven eggs!”
The entire Post Office monitored the heap of eggs as if dinosaurs were going to hatch from them. There were daily updates and notes exchanged, photos of the family posted and sightings shared. For a while, the place hummed with anticipation over the imminent new lives.
But a few weeks passed and nothing happened. A silence descended upon the men. There was to be no chicks. The mother hen had left the eggs just sitting there.
There were discussions and speculation of this abandoning. “Too cold.” Peter suggested. “No, it’s too in the open,” said my dad. My dad had raised pigeons when he was a child, and for that his word was taken as expertise.
My dad and a few colleagues found some empty cartons and constructed a makeshift shelter for the rooster and his companion.
A few weeks later —
“There are eight eggs!”
The men of the Post Office watched with bated breath as the hen settled over the eggs. For three weeks they waited, until one day, when the first wet beak poked itself through the porcelain facade, the men reveled in jubilee.
My dad came home with a daily report of the chicks. “There are eight chicks!”
Then —
“I saw seven today!”
“Six!”
“Five!”
Then one day the Rooster showed up with its wattles torn and bloody.
“The cat must have gotten to him,” My dad sad quietly, then added, “Three.”
After that my dad didn’t talk about the chicks for a while, and we dared not ask. He went to work as usual, but was more pensive, silent.
But then one evening, my dad returned strangely giddy. We could see he had breaking news.
“FIVE! Five lived! I didn’t see them for a while but today they returned! And they got all big now! Look look look!”
We were happy for my dad. And the rooster too, seems to have gotten used to the Post Office, and can often be seen with his family idyllically pecking at the rice that my dad brought from home to feed them. My dad resumed his daily reports of the chickens — and of how he and Peter would watch them together from their windows and keep count of the chicks.
One evening, as my dad walked out of the Post Office, he heard a frantic clucking around the corner. As he walked towards it, the Rooster came running up to him, tilting its head and caw-cawing loudly, as if gesturing to my dad to follow him. My dad ran around the corner and found that one of the chicks had walked through the holes in a barbed wired fence and had fallen into what appeared to be a narrow trench that separated the Post Office from a neighboring house.
The black hen was pacing back and forth madly, bobbing its head and shrieking every few seconds, trying to wedge herself into the fence and failing. My dad ran back into the Post Office, “Peter! Peter where are you?!”
“What?! What’s going on my man?”
“The chicken, the bay chick fell. We have to go get it.”
Peter grabbed his jacket and ran out with my dad. After examining the premises, it was decided that the only way to access the trench was to knock on the door of the people who owned the house and go into their garden.
So Peter and my dad found themselves at the doors of strangers and, after gesticulating wildly through a somewhat nonsensical explanation, were shown with some reluctance into the garden.
The chick was against the wall, flailing. It appeared to be startled, but unhurt. It glanced and my dad and Peter and shuffled a few steps.
“Okay,” Peter said, “You take that side, I take this side.”
The two men started closing in on the baby chick, stooping close to the ground as if they were about to Sumo wrestle. But the chick would have none of it. It darted through the legs of the men, flapping its fledgling wings and flew in loops, dodging my dad, occasionally chirping as if taunting him.
These were not young men. After a few minutes, Peter stood up and put his hand on his lower back.
“Forget it, we’re never going to catch him.”
“Wait,” my dad said, “Okay, I have an idea.”
My dad and Peter huddled and looked at each other. Slowly, Peter began to unbutton his light blue US Post Office assigned uniform shirt. My dad retreated into the corner and waited in the shadows. With one hand grabbing onto a sleeve, Peter stretched out the shirt into a makeshift net. He was a burly, bearded man with a gut hanging out from under his white undershirt. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His arms were hairy and damp. At my dad’s command, he was ready.
“Okay…not yet…NOW!”
My dad charged at the chick with outstretched arms. The little thing panicked and tried to fly, and ran straight into the soft blue cotton of Peter’s embrace.
“Yeaaaaaahh man!!!!”
Peter spun around with joy, the bird still cradled in his arms, now a writhing bundle sheathed in fabric. He gave my dad a high-five and together, they walked out back into the street.
The rescue mission was a complete success. The chick was returned to its impatient family, where it was escorted away quickly along with its four siblings. My dad and Peter told the tale to everyone else at work the next day, and then again over a beer at happy hour.
Days after the rescue, the rooster and his family seemed more at ease with the humans too; they have made the Post Office a permanent home and would even wait for my dad and his daily rice feedings.
As for my dad, he still gave daily updates about the rooster and the chicks, but my mom and I noticed that he also started talking more about the people at work, particularly his friend Peter, whom he quoted often as he described their daily antics. I hear that sometimes, they even go out for a beer together after work.
At least that’s what my dad tells me.
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