Rooster Curry: Hail Caesar!

A Reminiscence

My father had an obsessive compulsion to farm that shamed even the fundamental imperatives of his DNA. Erroneously, my father equated farming with absolute personal freedom and consequence-less independence of will. This was a marred perspective courtesy of being raised impatiently on a Bushveld farm under the fickle yoke of an emotionally unavailable and authoritarian father. My father apparently never considered alternative routes to achieve his towering ideals. So, at a fortuitous point in his life, he leapt blindly when Fate dangled him the opportunity at owning the Greenbushes smallholding. And thus he became a willing and irrevocable servant of the soil and its blind, avaricious demands.

Most people have some preconceived idea of which animals rightly belong on or around a farm yard to officially qualify said yard as a “proper” farm yard. Clucking, industrious chickens; obnoxious, snow white geese; muttering, disheveled mallards; nervous rabbits; ragtags of lolling dogs; serenely vicious, rat-tailed cats; and – standard – the odd hand raised lamb or two are considered mandatory by the majority. Naturally Dad was no exception and soon we had a handful of Dutch Bantams free ranging on the yard. A real farmer should awaken at sunrise to the exuberant crowing of the yard chook urgently commanding the diligent to their noble chores, song in heart. And yes, I hated that rowdy, crack-brained thing with an all consuming, ablative hate. The early worm could meet its fate in untrammeled quietude until I was good and ready for the morning reveille of my choice, thank you very much.

Bantams are of course as moody and hard-boiled on the stove as they are in life, strutting about the yard in cross-grained and magisterial arrogance. Moreover, their eggs are small and the sly hens hide their nests with great cunning and skill. Today I know those vagabond Bantams would have been grand for that ageless old warhorse: Coq au Vin. However, back in the day, my father’s table would not have entertained – even fleetingly – such a “foreign notion”. Dad’s convictions and opinions were temples set in immutable granite and resisting this fact was futile. Being raised in his house, it behoved rather handsomely to keep your opinions to yourself for the sake of your self-image’s sanity and ego. He was an exceedingly direct and verbally dexterous man who would unhesitatingly scythe through everyone’s opinions and ideas when he deemed their merit unworthy.

Consequently, the Bantams’ recalcitrant paucity had to be supplemented. From parts unknown Dad obtained a few White Leghorn chicks, all female. Apparently the donor assured him they were all pious and devoutly female, he even showed Dad how to determine their sex. The technique involved holding the three day old chick’s outstretched wing up into the sun and closely inspecting its armpit. I never found out which armpit and exactly what you had to look for. Even long afterwards Dad was still ominously silent on the subject. Be it as it may, about a third of those chicks turned out male and our Rooster was an involuntary accessory of that gang.

For some obscure reason, Rooster in short order became the hapless runt of the Leghorn gang. Even the young Leghorn damsels, his very own kin, were ruthless. Regularly chased away from the communal feeding tray, he was often cold shouldered into the water trough or maliciously pushed off his minute section of their perch most nights; forcing him to sleep on the ground underneath that frequently nervous roosting stick. Later on, any attempt at hanky-panky with them saucy bitches led to severe retributions.

Dad was a pragmatist. To avoid a tragedy, young Rooster was unceremoniously evicted from the Leghorn encampment and set free to roam the yard. Maybe he could join the Bantam tribe? Dad never was any good at social relationships, or others, and surprisingly his plan did not bear the fruit he anticipated. The Bantams shunned Rooster with as much bristling contempt as his own kin did. Frequently young Rooster had to flee the large and iridescently intimidating Bantam cock in frantic disarray and noisy supplications.

At that stage, a juvenile and harassed Rooster was still sufficiently bewildered for us siblings to easily corner and catch him in and around the outbuildings. But Rooster did not enjoy playing with us nor take well to our well meaning and clumsy attempts at taming and converting him into the farm mascot. Quite the contrary. Our enthusiastic little pet names did not take and the treats were thanklessly devoured with scornful greed. Rooster’s all embracing hate of everything and everyone was ascendant.

The patience of children is fickle and fleeting. Pootle, Kewpy and Lovey soon progressed to Chicky, only to descend into Cheeky, Chucky and thenceforth lesser and less salubrious appellations. Rooster’s true nature became apparent with rising frequency and – shamefully – our loyalty twisted to spite. Only much, much later did I realize we siblings abetted the foundations of Rooster’s life of retributive iniquity and discontent. We unwittingly failed our custodianship.

Rejected by all and sundry, Rooster blithely recoursed to the comforting embrace of the Bantams’ feed trough and the solace of carefree thuggery. Although the Bantams free ranged over the yard and the edges of the surrounding fields, Dad supplemented their diet with poultry rations for those lean spells when they were too efficient and foraged themselves into a dearth of edible plant material, bugs and other furtively skittering things. Their feed tray was an old car tire bisected lengthwise and the halves set into the floor of their fowl-house. Plumb right in the center of this feed circle is where a rebellious young Rooster recklessly planted himself to the immediate displeasure of the Bantam cock and his harem.

The infallible fullness of time is inexorable. Young Rooster quickly gained weight and regular encounters with the Bantam cock kept him on his toes, ensuring the weight gain was not only blubber and blubbering. The supremacy of the Bantam cock eroded sooner than expected and Rooster’s rising prospects for terrestrial domination went for the throat. Yet all achievement comes at an inevitable price. Somewhere in his brief youth of bewildered injustice, Rooster’s terrified glands lost their central plot: he continued expanding; rapidly menacing the Creator set limits for a Leghorn. Heedful, the prescient yard began to actively avoid Rooster.

Only that crinkled old yard-virago, Maskoen, was magnanimously tolerated at Rooster’s feed trough as she bore the small, daily pail with rations. The frazzle- brained Bantam cock, however, required considerable and protracted adjustment to the developing status quo. Scattered tufts of iridescent plumage attested to his growing decline and ample cognitive failure. Rooster had fledged into a force of nature and the frayed Bantams eventually withdrew in tattered capitulation from Rooster’s swathe of the yard and their fowl-house. Avoiding Rooster and resorting at night to the surrounding trees was a lesser humiliation than facing the juggernaut that Rooster had become. Their sporadic confrontations were by now brief and remorselessly one-sided spectacles: a merciless Rooster simply rushed in and proceeded to loudly trample the cowering Bantam cock in full view of his gaggle of horrified matrons.

Years later, attending a show of Natural Born Killers the first time, I suddenly connected the dots: Rooster also was a natural Killer. His seemingly innocent, virgin white breast shrouded the heart of a crazed serial murderer right from the start. Perhaps Dad’s yard had become the random and transient focus point for arcane and mindless ephemerae to coalesce into a cosmic Exterminator that had snuck into the fabric of our reality. Our good fortune then that an oversized Leghorn rooster is not exactly the most efficient tool for collapsing realities all over the known multiverse, despite the magnitude of the murderous Insanity wielding it.

My younger sisters by now avoided Rooster like the plague as he fairly regularly chased them shrieking and screaming into the kitchen. On a few occasions they only narrowly managed to slam the lower door in time on his snarling grimace. Despite their indignant, sulky complaints, Dad allowed the situation to fester. His often clinically detached curiosity occasionally overpowered his better judgment. After all, any farmer wants to brag with the successes of his agricultural prowess: be they triumphs of animal husbandry, poultry records or overwhelming pumpkins.

The Creator did not design the breast of a Leghorn to receive and retain ephemeral Entities nor the Stygian heart and malignant spirit of a Caligula or a Nero. Rooster’s excesses of maw and gland eventually engaged his handbrake and another Icarus fell to tedious earthly ignominy. The double burdens of misanthropist gluttony and tin pot global domination proved excessive for Rooster’s chassis and suspension: his legs and hips gave out, forcing him to gradually progress from brisk and streamlined despotism to a farcical effigy wheezing about in grotesque and odious ignobility. Nonetheless, even here, flightless and prematurely leaning into the twilight of his existence, the yard still had to be cautious. Despite his crippled bulk he commanded two beastly spurs that he would unhesitatingly avail himself off when properly irked. Shuffling long after sunrise from his sleeping spot under the roosting perch to his feed tray and flopping down at his banquet became Rooster’s daily routine: a slovenly emperor mired in muck and murk. Occasionally, this Universe still manages to dredge up a smidgeon of righteousness sufficient to compel even an entity from the veiled Great Beyond to stumble.

Paternal Grandmother Kowie salvaged a foundered Rooster phoenix-like from his wreckage of unrepentant shame. At first sight she divined the manner of his atoning destiny when she arrived for one of her few and too far in between visits. Gran – a formidable woman of stately grace and regal command – summarily decreed that Rooster be elevated to the higher calling of solemn Epicurean Cheer and Dad’s merciful hatchet swiftly launched Rooster into absolving eternity.

Plucked, drawn and cleaned, Rooster yielded just short of 4.5Kg. Even in the august solitude of death, laid out brutally naked on the mortuary slab that was Mom’s kitchen table, he still resembled a once magnificent emperor. And as overly large as Rooster was in life, so he turned out far too immense for any roasting pan and the oven of Mom’s kitchen. Subsequently Gran – a superlative cook – consummated Rooster as a casserole for the first Sunday lunch of her visit.

I do not remember the process of transfiguring a dead Rooster into a dish that still reverberates the dusty halls of my recollections. I was far too young to pay any attention to the mystical transmutation: living for the balm of eating was my consuming priority then. Yet I do call to mind – with lucid clarity – the sublime gravity of Rooster’s Sunday funerary voyage in Mom’s largest chafing dish.

Gran had curried Rooster into peerless transcendence. Even today, without fail, I can vividly behold the tawny, delicate chicken pieces nestled in languid strands of glassy onion rings that indolently curl and twist through the glistening, saffron-yellow gravy. And rapturous that gravy was, redolent with aromatic turmeric, tart cider vinegar, homely apricot jam, fragrant cloves, cosy cinnamon and the consolidating savour of farm raised chicken. The tender flesh easily parting in flavourous strands and fillets from the bones, only to be unctuously engulfed by that clinging, viscous gravy.

I ascended to my kitchen savvy far too late and today both gentle Gran and her recipe rest in superb grace. And let’s not libel a spade into a teaspoon: numerous attempts followed at resurrecting Gran’s recipe – all in vain. Some unknown step, ingredient or element is continually absent at each assay. Possibly the many intervening years contributed an intangible embellishment to my remembrance of the splendor of that dish. An adoring grandson’s blind reverence for that formidable woman – who unreservedly treated him as an equal – probably obfuscates the accuracy of my original recollection even further.

Maybe I should accept that this event was a formative element that shaped the innocence of my youth and leave it at that. Occasionally the transcendental splendor of a historic experience is too extraordinary to revive in this present. Yet I will heedlessly make considerable sacrifice for just a single occasion at another serving of Rooster curry and the opportunity to squeeze Gran’s soft, consoling hand under the dinner table as Dad pronounces Grace.

LA REINE EST MORT.

VIVE LA REINE!

© RS Young, 2019

Image Sources:

1. Kowie Young, Paternal Grandmother – Personal Archive.

2. Leghorn: 2 domestic-chicken-white-leghorn-cockerel.jpeg – https://www.greatbigcanvas.com/view/domestic-chicken-white-leghorn-cockerel-close-up-of-head-and-neck-france,1058429/

3. Bantam: 3 Bantam Cock.jpeg – http://www.oak-hammock-farm.com/2007%2012%20Christmas%20at%20home/SlideShow%20010.html