Widows Mite – A Christmas Story

As churches go, the small brick structure is humble, but its shingled roof and white woodwork are sufficiently maintained by the handful of parishioners who live in the valley. The grass around the church and the boxwoods dressing its foundation are sparse but neatly trimmed. Where the lawn ends, blue rug juniper, a cultivar that doesn’t mind neglect, flourishes solid and luxuriant, carpeting the bank between the churchyard and Terry Creek Road.

Behind the church a cemetery runs up to the foot of the mountain in terraces. Headstones are set in wooden borders with white gravel covering the beds inside. They bear the family names of the little community that had grown up in the valley in the last century. Most of the markers are plain, cut stone, inscribed with a name and two dates. Too often, one or two smaller headstones accompany the larger markers inside a family’s wooden border; half-scale stones, with a lamb resting on top, bearing the names and dates of children who had come here early from sickness or accident.

My wife’s grandfather built the church building early in the last century. Elaine and I had recently moved to Terry Creek from California. In every way, we were strangers to the valley and to its culture, but to the people of Terry Creek Elaine’s relation made us kin. Terry Creek church was the church of the community, also making it our church.

I noticed Cora Lee on a winter Sunday morning during the second verse of “Church in the Wildwood.” Terry Creek church attendance was small, even as country churches go, and not more than seventeen worshippers were gathered in the little sanctuary that day.

Cora Lee, two pews ahead of us—we preferred to sit near the back—stood with her head bowed as we finished the hymn. I noticed the plait of her steel gray hair, one continuous braid wrapped around the top of her head like a crown. I had seen the style in old photographs of young ladies in cotton print dresses with hair, I guessed, that could have been waist long, meticulously braided, and wrapped to form a circlet. Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch girl whose family hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II, came to speak at our church when I was a child. She had the same color hair and the same braid as Cora Lee.

We remained standing after the hymn. Church custom was to stand during the singing. The congregation would rise when the preacher said, “Rise,” and we sat when he said, “Be seated.” Preacher Seawright always remembered to say “Rise,” but occasionally forgot “Be seated.” I watched Cora Lee; she was patiently content to stand until the preacher released her to sit. Her blue-gray print dress, like the ones worn by the young ladies in the old photos, was faded. She wore a shawl, crocheted from sun-yellow yarn, around her shoulders. The yarn’s brightness and sheen told me that the shawl had not shared her closet with the dress for long. When I was in high school, my mother started to crochet a sweater. The sweater was never finished, but I remember the knots and loops of it enough to know Cora Lee’s shawl was hand-made.

After the preaching (it was called preaching, never called a sermon, just as preacher Seawright was never called pastor), parishioners in the front pews turned to greet those behind them. As we were behind them all, we greeted those in front who were quick enough to catch us as we made our way to the aisle. Cora Lee seemed in a hurry as she gathered her Bible and a paper grocery bag from her pew. She made her way to the aisle, reached into the bag, and pulled out a small stack of white. I could see that what was in her hand was made from yarn, the same kind as her yellow shawl but white, with tassels hanging down from the stack. She gave one of these yarn somethings to each person she met. As she came to Ray and Anna Hamby, she made sure that they and each of their five children received one of her gifts. Cora Lee caught up to us just as we reached the sanctuary door. Handing each of us a crocheted yarn cross, she murmured, “Merry Christmas,” her eyes never rising to meet ours. We thanked her and I tucked the gift into my Bible as we left the church.

The following Sunday, bored with Ray’s list of announcements, I thumbed through my Bible. The cross fell onto the floor just under the pew in front of us. I bent to pick it up and then glanced around the room for Cora Lee. She wasn’t there. Attendance at Terry Creek could be spotty. It didn’t surprise me not to see her.

Announcements complete, Preacher Seawright petitioned the floor for prayer requests. “Remember Sister Queen,” Ray spoke up. “She’s sick in the hospital with pneumonia.”

Sister Queen, Ray volunteered to us after the service, wasn’t doing well. Cora Lee had been a stop on his regular Saturday hospital visitation. An ambulance had taken Cora Lee to the hospital on Thursday after a neighbor stopped by and found her in bed, weak and dehydrated from three days of coughing and not eating or drinking.

During Ray’s visit, she stressed to him that she needed to get home to take care of her chickens. No one would feed or water them while she was gone, and some critter had been sneaking into the coop during the night, killing the hens. She was upset.

Elaine was concerned about Cora Lee and her worry over the chickens. Monday afternoon, she drove to the hospital. When Elaine entered the room, Cora Lee was awake and sitting in bed. She looked weak, and an IV was attached to her arm, but she brightened when she saw Elaine.

“Oh, Honey, I’m so glad you came to see me,” Cora said as Elaine pulled a chair closer to the bed. “I know I’m not leaving this place except to go to my heavenly home.”

“That’s not true,” Elaine began. But Cora stopped the protest by placing her hand on Elaine’s and giving it a soft squeeze.

“It’s alright, Honey, I don’t mind. I’m looking forward to it,” Cora reassured her. “I’ve been here long enough.” Cora stopped, and a sudden concern darkened her face. “My chickens,” she pleaded. “Someone needs to look after my chickens.” Elaine saw the worry gather in Cora’s face as her eyes filled with moisture.

“I can take care of your chickens while you’re here, Cora,” Elaine reassured her. “Tell me how you feed them; we’ll be sure they’re all right until you come home.”

“I told you, honey, I’m not going back to my chickens. When I leave this place, I’ll be going to see Jesus. I just need someone to go get my chickens and care for them.”

Elaine surrendered. She took a breath to calm her own emotions. “Cora, I will take care of your chickens. I have chickens of my own. We will put yours in the coop with ours; they will be fine together.”

“Oh honey, thank you.” Cora’s face relaxed. A noticeable weight had been lifted from her. Her eyes were wet, but now with relief. Then suddenly, her face darkened again. “There’s a fox. He’s been sneaking in at night, taking my girls off one by one. That old fox started coming by a week before I came here. I tried to cover the fence where he was crawling in, but I was just too weak to fix it right. Honey, I know that old fox is still after my chickens.” A tear escaped and ran down her cheek. “Please, honey, go get my chickens and take them to your house; don’t wait.”

“I’ll take care of it, Cora. Don’t worry about your chickens anymore. I’ll take care of it”. Elaine’s words calmed Cora, and she relaxed in the bed. Cora started again, this time about some plants in the yard Elaine could have if she would dig them up. A nice Hydrangea and a Rose of Sharon; they were so pretty in bloom, they shouldn’t go to waste. Cora’s eyes began to close as she described the Rose of Sharon’s abundant flowers and she drifted into sleep. Elaine slowly took Cora’s hand from hers and placed it on the bed. She slipped from the room and down the hall.

I stood in front of the barn when Elaine’s car turned into our driveway. The barn was across the road and a few hundred feet from the house. As she opened the car door, I shouted to her that I needed some help. A pipe had frozen and burst in the night, and now the temperature had risen. The thaw revealed the burst by showering me with water laced with bits of ice. My shift at work started early the next morning, and this would be my last chance to get the pipe repaired and insulated in daylight.

Elaine shut off the water and brought a towel to the barn for me. I cut the broken pipe and did a quick inventory of parts I would need for the repair. Luckily, I found the fittings in my box of saved plumbing parts. Just as the sun had given up its last light, I finished insulating the pipe. Elaine turned the valve. I scanned the repair by flashlight, and there were no leaks. Excellent! We were finished.

That evening, Elaine told me about her visit with Cora Lee, her resignation that she wouldn’t be coming home from the hospital, and about the chickens. Elaine would need my help to get the chickens. I said we could pick them up Saturday morning. This was Monday, but we couldn’t catch them in the dark, and I couldn’t get off work to get chickens. She was concerned they wouldn’t survive until Saturday, but I reassured her that chickens know how to forage and would be all right for four days.

Saturday morning came, and Cora Lee’s chickens never entered my mind. Christmas was just three days away. I had a hundred last-minute chores still undone. Sunday morning, Ray asked the congregation to remember Cora Lee in prayer. She had slipped into a coma Wednesday night.

When Ray mentioned Cora’s name, Elaine and I glanced at each other with a look of alarm that quickly melted into shame. We had forgotten Cora’s Chickens. We sat through the service, sullen over our unkept promise.

There was nothing we could do about it that day. Right after church, we were driving to Elaine’s parents for a holiday get-together. We wouldn’t get back home until late that evening. Monday was Christmas Eve, the day our little family reserved for dinner and gift-giving. Tuesday was Christmas, and by Wednesday, I would be back at work for three twelve-hour shifts. We had to get those chickens; I just didn’t know when.

We were both pretty glum in the car on the way to her parents that afternoon. I told Elaine we would make time to get the chickens this week, even if we had to do it on Christmas day. Resolved that we had a plan, I felt better. By the time we pulled into her parent’s driveway. Cora’s chickens had left my mind again.

Christmas Eve was warm and filled with joy. We ate too much, laughed plenty, and were caught up in the giving and receiving. Christmas day was quiet. The kids were at their dad’s house, and we were enjoying the peaceful aftermath of the holiday.

It was dark before the thought of Cora’s chickens came to me. I had forgotten again. When Elaine came into the room, I said, “We forgot Cora’s chickens.”

“I know,” she replied. “I was going to ask you at lunch, but you were busy assembling your gifts. I didn’t want to stop you.”

“I promise,” I said. “We’ll go first thing Saturday morning. Nothing else on the agenda, just Cora’s chickens.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Only please, we really have to this time. I’m afraid they’ll all be dead.”

“Saturday morning, I promise.”

Saturday morning came clear, icy cold and windy. This time, Cora Lee’s chickens stayed on my mind. After breakfast, I found a box that would work fine. It was a little tall, almost four feet, but it was about two-foot square around the middle. I could lay it on its side and cut a trap door flap to put the chickens through.

By the time I finished, the box looked like a stubby cardboard coffin with a square flap cut in the top; we would just lay the box on its side, lift the flap, and insert the chickens as we caught them. I took my finished chicken box to the van and called for Elaine to come from the house.

Cora Lee’s house was down in Gap Creek, about half a mile from the highway. The turn-off for Gap Creek lies on the highest ridge of mountains that run across the northern border of our state. Just below the ridge is a deep cut in the mountain running off to the west of the highway and down into a narrow gorge.

The winter sun caught my eyes just below the shade of the van’s visor. I squinted through the glare, looking for Gap Creek Road where it climbed up to meet the highway. Almost too late, I spotted a smallish green street sign. It looked as if it had been run over and haphazardly planted back again.

As I negotiated the steep, curvy road down into the gorge, the low winter sun I had been fighting on the highway fell behind the mountain, leaving the valley below in a frigid shade.

As the angled grade of road relaxed into an easy slope near the bottom of the narrow valley, we spotted a brick chimney, and then the roof of a small house shoved into a cut below the road. In a hundred feet, a gravel drive met the road. A rusted black mailbox beside the drive said “QUEEN” in faded stick-on letters. The mailbox had seen better days. It was cocked toward the house and had been bashed at least once by a passing car.

As we turned into the yard, the drive disintegrated into a sparse yard. Cora Lee’s frame house sat on concrete block piers. Besides a few meager boxwoods, nothing protected the home’s underside from the icy wind. I thought it must be nearly impossible to keep this house warm in the winter.

A covered porch ran across the front of the little house, crowded with an odd array of old furniture, appliances, and cardboard boxes. A bantam rooster, perched on top of a vintage rust-pocked deep freeze, slowly turned his head and blinked at us as we emerged from the van.

We unloaded our makeshift chicken box and followed a path around the house toward the chicken yard. Its frame, made from iron plumbing pipe, was covered with a canopy of poultry netting. On the far side of the yard sat a squat wooden chicken house with a nest box attached to its near wall.

Bodies of a half dozen dead chickens littered the ground inside the yard; most looked flat and decaying, not much more than bones and feathers, but one carcass looked fresh, as if the chicken had met its end the previous night. A fox or some other critter had been at work.

Eight surviving hens, their feathers fluffed against the cold, perched on wooden slats that ran the width of the chicken house. We found four more hens occupying the cubbies inside the next box, each still faithfully brooding a few eggs under her feathered spread.

We set our chicken box outside the wire and began retrieving birds. The little chickens offered no resistance; either they were used to being handled or too weak or cold to put up a ruckus.

After we had twelve hens safely stowed, we looked around for any bird we might have missed. A few grains of cracked corn lay here and there inside the coop; a neighbor must have stopped by in the last few days to throw the chickens some grain.

On the far side of the chicken yard, a hole about the size of a saucer had been pushed up between the ground and the wire. Wooden boards surrounded the yard’s perimeter, but in this place, the staples holding the wire in place looked as if they had been worried loose from the plank. The hole was easily big enough for a fox or some other determined predator to enter.

Me leading the way and Elaine in the back, we picked up our box of chickens and made our way toward the front of the house. The weight of the birds inside the box shifted a little as we walked, but the chickens made no objection to their being carried away. We slid the box inside the van and got in.

I looked out the windshield to the shabby front porch. Mr. Rooster was still dozing on top of the deep freeze. I exited the van and quietly retrieved him. Like the ladies, he offered no resistance. These birds were accustomed to a human touch.

A slight commotion ensued when I lifted the flap to include the rooster, but they settled down quickly in the darkness of the box. We left the yard and the little house, driving up and out of Gap Creek toward home. Both of us were silent, relieved we had finally kept our promise to Cora Lee.

When we arrived home, we carried the box of chickens to our chicken coop next to the barn. As we lifted Cora Lee’s bantams out of the box, they blinked and looked around at their new surroundings. A few of them eagerly scratched the ground for grain our fat birds had left over. One found our heated waterer and drank deeply, scooping its beak into the water and throwing its head back to swallow the captured drops.

Elaine threw some grain out, and the little birds rushed to peck it up.

Later that day, we received a call that Cora Lee had passed away. I don’t know if she knew or if something in her spirit had been waiting for us to keep our promise, but she slipped away quietly that morning.

The cold snap ended eventually, and spring came a week or two early to our part of the country. Cora Lee’s chickens became our chickens. They shared the coop with our big girls and became a part of the flock.

Our layers didn’t mind the newcomers a bit. Each new hen found its place in the nest box or on the perch without much fuss from the others.

The roosters were a different story. We only had two: the big Rhode Island Red we kept for our layers and the bantam I rescued from Cora Lee’s front porch. Our Rhode Island Red had the advantage of weight and sheer power, but we discovered quickly that the courage and bravado of the little banty proved to be an equalizing force. In time, the two established an uneasy peace and managed their harems with only the occasional flare-up over territory or some other rooster claim.

Although Cora’s chickens were the half-pints of the flock, they made up for size with the beauty of their plumage and the personality bantams bring to a flock of production layers. Feather-footed Buff Brahmas, White Silkies, Red and White Cochins that look like downy puff balls, and tufted Araucanas, famous for their turquoise eggs.

The warming temperatures brought its yearly boon in egg production, and Easter came along with Spring. The kids dyed eggs as usual, but this year, a special prize stood out among our gaudy-colored creations. Turquoise blue Araucana eggs and half-size but beautifully ovate ivory Cochin eggs adorned our Easter baskets with a natural beauty we couldn’t approach with our food-colored eggs.

Many Christmases and Easters have passed since the day Cora’s chickens came to live with ours. Those first twelve ladies laid eggs and hatched chicks, and their chicks hatched chicks. We kept Cora’s bantams and their descendants for years. Finally, when we had to move away for a time, we gave our flock to a lady who kept chickens and loved banties especially. I imagine she still has chickens passed down from Cora’s little flock. And I imagine that those girls still produce the same turquoise and ivory gems their great-grandmothers thrilled us with each Spring.

*****

I don’t know that Cora Lee could have imagined the impact she had on our memories. I don’t think that was on her mind at all; she just needed someone to care for her chickens.

Nobody really knows the extent one person’s life can have on the lives of others. When you throw a stone into a pond, it makes a splash, and then waves radiate out from the center of where it entered the water. Sometimes, the whole surface of the pond is moved by the splash of one stone.

Even a pebble makes a splash. Through those little chickens, Cora Lee touched our lives and the lives of those she would never meet. I can only imagine how that one little splash continues to ripple.