The Chicken Whisperer
M.M.Wake
      Copyright M.M.Wake 2012
Published by www.5minutefiction.co.uk Publishing at Smashwords

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Chicken George was a special lad. He used to live at the end of our street. He had ‘Down’s Syndrome’, my Mother said, but it didn’t mean a lot to us kids, we just thought he was a bit unusual. Of course he looked a bit different and couldn’t talk that much, but that didn’t bother us, he was just one of the gang. His mother, a little mousey woman, treated him like a baby, used to make him wrap up all year long, even in summer, and we had some hot ‘uns back then. But Chicken George didn’t mind, he’d wait until his mother was out of sight, and strip off down to his vest like the rest of us.
It wasn’t just his condition that made him special though. He had a real affinity with nature.
He had a gentle soul and it was if all the birds and small living things could sense that and somehow formed a special bond with him. He could feed wild birds out of his hand, and he was always nursing a sick animal of some sort, a blackbird with a broken wing, a fledgling sparrow fallen from its nest, an injured mouse, you name it; he seemed to find it and take care of it.
That’s how he came by his nickname, Chicken George.
Mr Stevenson had a big square allotment. He grew every sort of vegetable you could think of, and then some more. He also kept chickens, 20 brown noisy hens that supplied most of our mums with their weekly egg ration. But one summer they stopped laying, just like that. One lad said he’s seen a fox prowling around and that had probably scared them, so Mr Stevenson secured the chicken run until it was more like Fort Knox, but still the hens would not lay.
One day as we lads were walking past the allotments Mr Stevenson called out jokingly to George to have a word with his girls.
Well, before we could stop him, George had taken the man at his word, and hopped over the hedge and into the chicken coop. It was a sight to behold, George sat amongst the chicken shit and peelings, arms outstretched towards the birds and making clucking noises.
We shouted at him to come away, not to be so soft, and that his Mam would be after him for ruining his britches, but he ignored us and concentrated on the hens.
And do you know, after a few minutes, the chickens came up to him and eventually he was picking them up one by one, gently stroking their feathers and speaking softly to them.
Well us lads just stood there in amazement. We knew George was special but we hadn’t seen anything like that.
After attending to all 20 birds George hopped back over the hedge and smiled.
‘What you been saying to them chickens George?’, we asked good humouredly
George looked back at us with a large grin and winked.
A couple of days later we were walking past the allotment again when Mr Stevenson shouted to us, all excited like.
‘George’, he shouted, ‘Av got somat’ for you lad, my girls have started again, I don’t know what you did, but they’ve started laying again’.
George all smiles pushed to the front of the group, where Mr Stevenson pushed 2 bob into his hand.
‘I reckon if you can come and look in on my girls a few days a week George, there will be a few more bob coming your way, and take these for your Mam, and with that he handed George a box of the biggest and brownest eggs we had ever seen.
And every day after that George would spend half an hour amongst the chickens. His mother made him wear his oldest trousers, but she was glad of the eggs and the extra for George.
And from that day on we called him ‘Chicken George’.
Happy days.
It was only as we grew older that the differences really began to show. As we matured into young men, George seemed left behind. As we finished school and started work and courting, George was alone, we were walking into a world that he could not follow, not in those days anyway.
I still used to see him from time to time, on my way home from work. He was usually skulking around the streets, or going to the shop for his Mam. He was no longer carefree, his old playmates had deserted him, and he was locked in a place where he was neither boy nor man. He spent the days on the dreary, grey streets, pacing up and down like a caged animal, full of frustration and neglect. His once happy, open face had developed an old man’s scowl. Even his clothes looked shabby, and his mother, now a widow, could ill afford new clothes for a son that was permanently wanting and would never be able to provide for himself, let alone her.
It was a sad state, yet when he saw me his face always used to light up and I saw a glimmer of the old George. He would give me the thumbs up and I would smile and do the same before hurrying back home to get ready for a night out with the boys.
As he got older, George became a bit of a handful. I heard it mostly from my mother, but I had chance to see it just the once. He was in the High Street with his Mam, something had obviously upset him and he was flying into a rage, kicking and screaming, legs and arms shooting out wildly as if he was having a fit. Although still a boy in his ways, George had the body of a strong man and soon all of the fresh produce in front of the grocers had been knocked from the neatly stacked boxes and apples and oranges rolled down the street and into the gutters.
His mother just stood there, looking old and worn in a shabby coat and bonnet. She caught my eye and I hurried quickly past not knowing what to say, yet feeling guilty of something unexplainable, deep inside.
I only saw George once after that. Typically it was as I passed the old allotments. Mr Stevenson still kept his chickens, and George still looked after them. He was sat there, just as in years gone by, amongst the shit and the scrapings and bits of feathers, whispering to the birds.
He didn’t see me, or he pretended not to. Our worlds were so different now, I wanted to call out and say ‘Hi’, but something inside me made me feel ashamed, and I turned away.
It was a couple of years later, after I had got married and moved away from home that I heard the news. My mother told me one Saturday.
George had been taken away to an institution, apparently he had become violent and his mother couldn’t cope anymore. It was one afternoon that had sealed his fate. George had gone into the chicken coop as usual and without warning he had killed them all. Just like that, George had wrung the scrawny necks of his beloved hens.
Mr Stevenson had found him, sat in the shit and the feathers and the blood, the mangled bodies of the birds all around him, weeping.