Love the sound of chickens in those days

In December, the nights were pitch black and the biting cold meant everyone closed their doors from dusk onwards. Inside, the scent of black incense and the fragrance of yellow pomelos on the altar created a warm atmosphere, making the Lunar New Year feel so close. I snuggled under my thick duvet, happily craning my neck to listen to my parents discussing their New Year preparations.

During my childhood, my feet were always bright red and swollen from chilblains in the winter. Whether it was drizzling rain and biting wind or dry, cracked skin, we still went to school in our thin flip-flops. The cold turned my feet crimson, and my hands were so numb I couldn't even hold a pen.

Before going to bed, I always soak my feet in warm salt water with crushed ginger to relieve the itching. Therefore, a pair of canvas shoes is my wish; with shoes, my feet will be less swollen, painful, and itchy. My mother said that near Tet (Vietnamese New Year), when she sells the chickens, she will buy me a new pair of shoes.

My family only has a little over a dozen chickens that we're raising for Tet (Vietnamese New Year), about two-thirds of them hens, and only a handful of roosters. The chickens were selected for hatching from eggs laid by beautiful, healthy hens back in the spring, and by the end of the year they'd grown quite large. My mother plans to sell a few to buy things, and keep the rest for breeding next season and for Tet.

For the New Year's Eve ceremony, people need a rooster with beautiful feathers, a long tail, a comb like a flag, a red face, and especially, plump, well-proportioned legs. Every day I diligently gathered corn and grated cassava to feed them until they were full. The flock of roosters had smooth, round feathers like ripe berries, making my canvas shoes seem right in front of my eyes. Everyone in the neighborhood knew my family had a flock of roosters because of their loud crowing in the early morning; it was impossible to hide their crowing. My father had already warned me to watch over them carefully in the twelfth lunar month, and to remember to check at night to make sure the gate was properly closed.

It was still dark, but the sound of chickens clucking in the neighborhood woke me up. The roosters in the coop also started to get up and joined the other chickens in crowing loudly. The crowing grew louder and louder, making me restless, eagerly anticipating the dawn. I was so tossing and turning that my mother, lying beside me, had to urge me to go back to sleep because it was still a long way off. The sound of chickens echoed from house to house, initially sparse, but gradually spreading throughout the neighborhood.

In those years, chickens were a valuable asset that could be exchanged for shoes or new clothes. They could also be traded for pork, bamboo shoots, mung beans, wine, jam… Raising chickens meant selling them or eating them without having to hide, declare, or pay slaughter taxes like raising pigs.

The chickens raised for Tet (Lunar New Year) are always carefully cared for. In the afternoon, they are fed until full, then locked in their coop to sleep early. The coop is enclosed to protect them from the wind, and they are only released after the dew has completely evaporated in the morning. All of this is to ensure the chickens are healthy, grow quickly, and don't get sick during the cold winter months. On freezing nights, my feet felt like two ice cream cones even though I was wrapped in a warm blanket. I often wondered if the chickens, with their thick, warm feathers, would get swollen and sore like mine with their bare feet.

On misty mornings, whenever I saw my mother get up to cook breakfast before going to the market, I would always get up too. It was so cold, I would go down to the kitchen and comfortably curl up in the warm straw bed. The fire from the stove would soothe my feet after a long night of agonizing pain and itching.

Lying there, watching the flames dance beautifully at the bottom of the pot and seeing my mother's large, flickering shadow on the kitchen wall, listening to the familiar clattering sounds was so comforting; sometimes I would even fall asleep again until the rice was cooked. After a while of crowing, the chickens must have gotten tired and, finding it still too dark, went back to sleep.

In the mornings, I often brush my teeth and wash my face with a steaming coconut shell ladle because it's used to scoop hot water from the huge cast-iron pot sitting on the fire.

The lingering smell of burning straw in the hot steam and those simple, hearty breakfasts always left me with a very special feeling about winter. As for the chickens, their ration consisted of a pot of hot cornmeal mixed with vegetables; my mother said they got to eat something hot to give them strength to withstand the cold. After each meal, their crops would grow huge, tilting noticeably to one side, which looked quite funny. The chickens grew bigger every day, becoming as round as ripe berries.

Then the last days of the year arrived, and the market day was just around the corner. I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, thinking about my warm shoes and the joy of knowing my feet would no longer be swollen. Near dawn, when I heard my mother making noise in the kitchen, I hurried down to the kitchen as well.

Strangely, I didn't hear the chickens clucking and crowing in the coop as usual. It was drizzling, and looking out into the yard by the yellow light of the streetlamp, I saw our wooden gate wide open. My parents rushed out in panic and discovered that the chicken coop door was also open. The chickens were gone, and outside the coop was something long and black, like a snake. My father shone his flashlight and saw it was a piece of taro stem, the kind used to make pig feed, which had been roasted over a fire to soften it.

It turned out that last night, a thief had climbed over the wall to steal the chickens. That wall, honestly, only stopped honest people; a thief could easily climb over it. My father said this was a professional chicken thief. They roasted a sweet potato until it was soft, like a snake, then pushed that sweet potato into the chicken coop. The chickens thought it was a snake crawling in and were so frightened they stood still, not daring to move or squawk.

It was dark, the chickens couldn't see anything, so they just stayed silent and let themselves be caught. The thief calmly opened the gate and left without my family noticing. At that moment, I didn't feel sorry for the chickens, only extreme fear. In my mind, I imagined the thief as a bizarre and terrifying ghost.

As dawn broke, I discovered, deep in the corner of the coop, the two scrawniest chickens in the flock lying flat on the ground, so frightened they didn't dare run out into the yard.

I also forgot my warm shoes, secretly thinking that if the thief came and found me home alone, he'd probably just grab me, put me in a sack, and sell me. Then I thought of the poor chickens, their necks strangled right before being stuffed into the sacks, to prevent any noise from waking the homeowner.

The nights that followed were incredibly empty; the absence of roosters crowing kept me awake. The darkness and the eerie rustling sounds outside turned me into a timid child.

Even though my mother bought me a new pair of shoes, every time I see them, I'm reminded of those poor chickens. I keep thinking that if they hadn't crowed so loudly, maybe the thief wouldn't have known they were there, and the chickens wouldn't have been caught in such a cruel way. They should have been "reincarnated" into beautiful chickens with their wings tied up, displayed on the altar on New Year's Eve.

I had long since forgotten the sound of roosters crowing on those cold, late-year nights. But it seems that things that seemed old and buried deep in the past sometimes return unexpectedly. Just like tonight, a faint rooster crowing from somewhere far away makes me realize I'm still waiting for it, just as I used to wait for spring…

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