Two hours later a call came into the station. A citizen was reporting that a truck had gone off the pavement on High River Road. Boone was dispatched to investigate.
Calls to High River were rare and usually involved a couple of old-time farmers bickering over whose cow was whose, or occasionally it was a minor vandalism report from one of the mini mansions belonging to Mount Union’s elite population. Of course, the governor’s personal residence was out there, too, and right now, that’s all Boone could think about.
When he reached the scene, he saw a truck on its side in a ditch. An older model Suburban was parked on the shoulder, perhaps a Good Samaritan who’d stopped to help. The lady who’d phoned in the report, a longtime High River Road resident, had called both the police and EMTs. Boone arrived before an ambulance, but he quickly deduced that one was not going to be necessary. The driver of the truck, a man Boone recognized, was outside the vehicle stomping around in the dust, waving his arms and shouting.
“Anybody need an ambulance?” Boone called to the driver.
“Not yet,” the middle-aged man hollered back. “But if I catch her, she darn well might!”
Who was he referring to? One of the hens he just noticed running around? The truck had been carrying chickens to slaughter, a common sight on Georgia roads. But these lucky broilers had postponed certain death by an odd quirk of fate that had sent their truck off the road. A few crates remained in the bed of the truck, the panicked poultry prisoners squawking and trying to flap their wings in the confined space. This was not how they thought their day would end up.
Not all the birds faced such a frightening scenario. Dozens of the doomed cluckers were right now scurrying over the meadow bordering Route 213. Free as...well, birds, Boone thought, hiding a smile. He watched the scattered hens run in circles in the bright sun.
The truck driver, a Mount Union citizen named Hank Simpson, darted among his escaped birds, trying to nab as many as he could. Grabbing a wild chicken by one leg wasn’t a pleasant job at any time, but it was fairly easy if the birds were packed into row houses. Trying to wrap your hand around the spindly appendage in an open meadow was nearly impossible. Boone had no interest in trying to help in a situation that would only make him look considerably less intelligent than a broiler. And necessitate him covering his peck marks with iodine when he got home.
“Give it up, Hank!” Boone hollered. “You’ll be lucky to round up a dozen.”
The driver, who’d obviously eaten too much fried chicken in his life, stopped long enough to pant and point a trembling finger at a figure bent down beside the ditch. “Arrest her!” he shouted. “She’s releasing hens faster than I can round them up.”
Oh, boy. This wasn’t just about Hank’s careless driving. The accident had another witness. Crouched in the dirt was a lady whose sole purpose was opening crate doors to let the birds escape.
“Hey, you there! Stop that,” he called.
The truck driver raced toward the woman, but she quickly outmaneuvered him and began working furiously on another set of crates. More chickens ran into the sweet late summer afternoon.
She wasn’t so lucky avoiding Boone. He grasped her arm and hauled her upright. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She breathed heavily as she struggled against his grip. She looked familiar. She was about five foot five, slim, dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt. Well, it might have been pink, just like her hair might have been blond, if the woman hadn’t been covered head to toe in chicken feathers. A noxious odor that any boy raised in the chicken farming area of Georgia would know rose from her clothes and clogged his nose. He jerked his head away from her. “Phew!”
She made a half-hearted effort to pick a few feathers off her shirt. “You could offer to help, you know. Think how these birds must feel. They have to breathe this rotten air every day of their lives.”
That voice! He remembered it from high school. I just wanted to do that. No. This couldn’t be happening. Boone didn’t have time to contemplate the identity of this chicken savior, not with flashing lights from an approaching ambulance demanding his attention and the huffing, shouting Hank Simpson bearing down on them. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “What did you think you were doing letting all these birds out of the crates.”
“Are you gonna arrest her, Boone?” Simpson demanded.
Boone held up his hand, an attempt to calm the man long enough to get the facts. He continued staring at the woman. Maybe he was wrong, and she wasn’t Susannah. “Well?”
“I was saving their lives,” she said. “This truck practically rolled over. Most of the crates have fallen out and some slipped into the creek bed. If I hadn’t opened the doors, the birds would have drowned.”
“That’s hogwash,” the driver said. “I would have gotten the crates out of the water in time, and they would still have been full of chickens!”
“I don’t see how, Hank,” Boone said, taking in the number of crates that had landed in the creek. “I think the lady might be right about the chickens dying.”
“Of course, I’m right,” she said. “Now will you let go of me?”
“Don’t take off,” he warned. “What you did is still illegal.” He let go of her arm. “You can’t just go around tampering with other people’s property.”
“Even if that property consists of living, breathing creatures that can’t take care of themselves?” She stared with disgust at the old truck, which had obviously made many trips to the slaughterhouse in its years on the road. “What you see here, Sheriff...”
“Officer,” he corrected.
“Whatever. What you see is abusive treatment of the worst kind.”
“Ma’am, this is the way all broilers are taken to slaughter. Hank wasn’t doing anything that isn’t done on a weekly basis around these parts.”
“That, Officer, does not make it right. The way those poor poultry were stuffed into the boxes is abominable. Did you know that a quarter of them would have been dead by the time they reached Augusta? And many of those still alive would have suffered severe injuries.”
Boone scratched the back of his neck. “I’m really not up on my chicken statistics, ma’am, but I feel the need to point out the most relevant detail here. These chickens were destined for a fate much worse than being injured anyway.”
She stared off into the distance, where hens were scampering over the meadow. And she smiled. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do a job,” she said.
“And a legal and illegal way,” Boone replied.
The ambulance came to a stop. Boone asked the woman if she had been in the accident and if she needed medical attention.
“No. I’m fine. And I had nothing to do with the truck ending up in the creek. Your buddy here...” She pointed to the driver. “He took that last curve with a bit too much enthusiasm.”
Boone dismissed the ambulance and went to his vehicle to get the standard incident report and a clipboard. When he returned, he said, “These birds are the property of Mr. Sam Jonas, and his driver here, Hank, was just doing his job.”
Hank pounded his fist into his opposite hand. “And someone’s got to pay for the loss of income this crazy woman caused today.”
“Maybe you should start by explaining to your employer that you can’t drive a truck!” she said.
Hank stepped forward, and Boone placed his palm on the man’s chest. “Let’s all calm down now. We’re obviously not going to get those chickens back.”
“Then do your job and arrest this woman,” Hank said.
“I intend to.”
“What?”