The Savior of the Font

Chapter 5

 The sun has only been up for a few hours but it's already swelteringly hot. There's a strong breeze this morning and it carries with it the smell of impending rain. Faith woke up rather cheerful this morning, though it was far earlier than I ever get up willingly. All of that rest seems to have done her a world of good. During breakfast, I insisted on coming to help her do whatever it is she does on this farm. The work itself doesn't interest me but I want to stay with her and the thought of another day alone in that quiet house is unbearable.

Faith leads me into a wooden shack with no door. Rows of shelves line the walls, each dotted with chickens seated on nests. It smells awful here, but nothing on this farm so far as smelled pleasant. "Grab a bucket," she instructs. We each take a galvanized bucket from the corner. "You start on that end and we'll work our way towards each other."

"What are we doing?" I ask.

Faith, with absolutely no hesitation, sticks her hand under the closest chicken and pulls a brown egg from beneath it. The hen clucks and squirms, but seems otherwise unphased by the action. She places the egg in the bucket and moves on to the hen directly below the first. The whole scene has me too dumbstruck to look away. She reaches under the second but comes up empty-handed. "Jenny, what's this?" she actually asks the chicken. "You holding out on me this morning?"

"How is this real?" I ask.

"What do you mean?" she replies with her hand under a third hen.

"Nothing. It's just... I still can't wrap my mind around Faith Meade being a farmer."

"Why not? Have you ever known me to not get my hands dirty? I was a full-fledged archaeologist for a whole day, remember?"

I laugh. "So was I, which is the really unbelievable part."

"Yeah. You have no room to talk about someone seeming out of their element." She puts another egg in the bucket and looks at me with that half-smile, half-smirk that I've always loved. This is already the most she's seemed like the Faith I knew since I got here, and I hope it lasts. "And if you say you're going to help, get to grabbing."

I face the first hen seated in front of me. Her little black eyes stare into mine, practically daring me to reach my hand in. "So I just... Is there a trick to this?"

"Just be gentle," Faith answers while going back to her work. "They're pretty used to it. Shouldn't be an issue."

My hand shakes nervously as I gradually slide my fingers under the chicken. She's warm, and she stirs a bit. I have to fight a reaction to pull my hand back. When I find the egg, I clutch it, remove my hand, and hold it up triumphantly like a trophy. Faith laughs at me.

"Congratulations," she exclaims with palpable sarcasm.

"Hey!" I playfully pout. "That was scary."

She shakes her head and smiles. "Wait until later when we go to shear the sheep. You get kicked by one and it hurts like a motherfucker." I try to hold back my sudden burst of laughter, but do a piss-poor job of it. Faith looks at me puzzled, which only makes me giggle harder. "The hell is so funny?" she questions.

"I'm sorry," I say while trying and failing to regain my composure. "It's just... you have sheep."

"And that's funny why?"

"The Antichrist is now a shepherd in Bethlehem!" I exclaim through my laughter. Saying it out loud makes it even funnier. "That's just too perfect."

"Well, what do you do for a living these days?" she asks.

I clam up. It should have been obvious that this would get asked eventually, but I didn't do any planning for it. "I'm... sort of between jobs right now."