In December, the nights were pitch black and the cold was so cold that every house had to close its doors from dusk. Inside the house, the smell of black incense and the aroma of yellow grapefruit on the altar made the atmosphere cozy, Tet seemed to be coming somewhere, very close. I hid under the thick cotton blanket, happily sticking my neck out to listen to my parents discussing Tet preparations.
During my childhood, my feet were always red and swollen from chilblains in the winter. Whether it was drizzling rain or dry, cracked skin, we still went to school in our thin slippers. The cold turned my feet purple and my hands numb to the point of not being able to hold a pen.
Every night before going to bed, I always soak my feet in warm salt water with crushed ginger to relieve the itch. Therefore, a pair of canvas shoes is my dream, because having shoes will help reduce swelling, pain and itching. My mother said that when Tet is near, when she sells the chickens, she will buy me a new pair of shoes.
My family has only a dozen chickens to raise for Tet, two of which are hens and only a few roosters. The chickens were selected to hatch from the eggs of beautiful and healthy chickens in the spring, and by the end of the year they had grown big and strong. My mother planned to sell some of them to get money for shopping, and save 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, a red face, and especially plump, well-proportioned legs. Every day, I diligently collect corn and grind cassava to feed them until they are full. The roosters' feathers are smooth and round like sim fruits, making my canvas shoes seem right in front of my eyes. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that my family has a flock of roosters because their crowing is very loud in the morning, and it is impossible to hide that crowing. My father told me to watch carefully in December, and to check at night to see if the gate is closed properly.
It was still dark, the sound of chickens chirping in the neighborhood woke me up. The roosters in the coop also woke up one by one and joined the other chickens in crowing loudly. The crowing became louder and louder, making me more impatient, eager for the morning to come soon. I was so restless and restless that my mother, lying next to me, had to urge me to go back to sleep because it was still a long way from dawn. The sound of chickens spread from house to house, at first only sparsely but gradually spreading throughout the neighborhood.
During those years, chickens were a valuable asset that could be exchanged for shoes or new clothes for us. It could also be exchanged for pork, bamboo shoots, green beans, wine, jam, etc. Raising chickens could be sold or eaten without having to hide, declare or pay slaughter tax like raising pigs.
The chickens raised for Tet are always carefully taken care of. In the afternoon, they are fed well and then put in the coop to sleep early. The coop is also enclosed around the windproof area. In the morning, we have to wait until the dew has cleared before we can release them. All of this is to ensure that the chickens grow up healthy and quickly without getting sick during the cold winter days. On cold nights, my feet feel like two ice cream sticks even though I am wrapped in a warm blanket. I often think that the chickens have thick and warm feathers, but I wonder if my bare feet will be swollen like mine.
On misty mornings, when I saw my mother getting up to cook rice to prepare for going to the market, I would get up too. It was so cold, I went down to the kitchen and comfortably curled up in the warm straw bed, the fire from the stove made my feet feel better after a long night of painful and itchy pain.
Lying there, watching the beautiful dancing flames at the bottom of the pot and seeing the mother's huge shadow flickering on the kitchen wall, listening to the familiar clattering sounds was so pleasant, sometimes I would take another nap until the rice was cooked. After a while of crowing, the chickens must have tired their necks and felt that it was still too dark so they went back to sleep.
In the mornings, I often brush my teeth and wash my face with a steaming coconut shell because it is used to scoop hot water from the huge cast iron pot on the stove.
The smell of straw smoke still lingering in the hot steam and those hot but simple breakfasts always left me with a very special feeling about winter. The chickens had a hot pot of corn bran mixed with vegetables, my mother said they also ate hot food to help them resist the cold. Every time they finished eating, their crop became huge, tilted to one side, looking funny. The chickens grew bigger every day and were as round as blackberries.
Then the last days of the year came, the market day was near. I had trouble sleeping because I thought about my warm shoes, and I was happy that my feet would no longer be swollen. Near dawn, when I heard my mother making noises in the kitchen, I hurriedly ran down to the kitchen.
Strangely, I didn’t hear the chickens in the coop making noises and crowing like usual. It was drizzling, and looking out into the yard through the yellow electric light, I saw the wooden gate of my house wide open. My parents ran out in panic and discovered that the chicken coop door was also open. The chickens had disappeared, and outside the coop door was something long and black like a snake. My father took out a flashlight and saw that it was a length of water potato, the kind often used to cook bran for pigs, that had been roasted over a fire to soften it.
It turned out that last night, a thief climbed over the wall to catch the chickens. The wall can only stop honest people, but bad guys can climb over it easily. My father said that this was a chicken thief. They grilled a piece of sweet potato until it was soft like a snake and then drove the sweet potato into the chicken coop. The chickens thought it was a snake and were so scared that they stood still, not daring to move or make a sound.
It was dark, the chickens couldn't see anything so they had to quietly accept being caught. The thief opened the gate and left without my family knowing anything. At that time, I didn't feel sorry for the chickens, I just felt extremely scared, in my mind I imagined the thief as a strange and creepy ghost.
When it was completely light, I discovered deep in the corner of the coop, the two smallest chickens were lying flat, so frightened that they did not dare to run out into the yard.
I also forgot my warm shoes, thinking to myself that if a thief came and found me alone at home, he would probably take me and put me in a sack to sell. Then I thought of the poor chickens, whose necks were twisted just before being put in the sack, to avoid waking the owner of the house with their cries.
The nights that followed, I felt so empty, the absence of the rooster crowing kept me awake. The darkness and the creepy rustling sounds outside turned me into a timid child.
Even though my mother still bought me new shoes, every time I saw them, I remembered the poor chickens. I kept thinking that if they hadn't crowed so loudly, maybe the thief wouldn't have known about their presence and the chickens wouldn't have been captured in such a cruel way. They would have been "transformed" into beautiful chickens with fairy wings tied to display on the altar on New Year's Eve.
I have gone far away from the sound of chickens on those cold year-end nights and it has truly been forgotten. But it seems that things that seem old and deep in the past sometimes come back very coincidentally. Just like tonight, a vague sound of chickens somewhere far away echoes, making me realize that I am still waiting for it, like the old days when I waited for a spring…
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