Love the sound of chickens in those days

In December, the night was pitch black and the cold was so intense that every house had to close its doors from dusk. Inside the house, the smell of black incense and the scent 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 our feet purple and my hands were so numb that I could not even hold a pen.

Every night before going to bed, I would soak my feet in warm salt water with crushed ginger to relieve the itch. Therefore, a pair of canvas shoes was my dream, as shoes would help reduce swelling, pain, and itchiness. My mother said that when Tet was near, she would buy me a new pair of shoes when she sold the chickens.

My family has only a dozen chickens to raise for Tet, two-thirds of them are hens, only a few are roosters. The chickens are selected to be hatched from the eggs of beautiful and healthy chickens from the spring, and by the end of the year they have grown big and strong. My mother plans to sell some of them to get money for shopping, and the rest will be used as breeding stock for the next season and for Tet.

For the New Year's Eve ceremony, people need roosters with beautiful feathers, long tails, combs, red faces, and especially plump, well-proportioned legs. Every day, I diligently get corn and break 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 house 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 crowing 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 continued 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, fed well in the afternoon and then locked in the coop to sleep early, the coop is enclosed around to block the wind, in the morning we have to wait until the dew has cleared before we can release them. All of this is to keep the chickens healthy and grow quickly without getting sick in the cold winter days. On cold nights, my feet feel like two popsicle sticks even though I am wrapped in a warm blanket. I often think that the chickens have thick and warm feathers, but my bare feet are not as swollen as mine.

On misty mornings, when I saw my mother getting up to cook rice to prepare for going to the market, I would always 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 clacking sound was so pleasant, sometimes I would take another nap until the rice was cooked. The chickens, after crowing in unison for a while, must have tired their necks and thought 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 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, skewed 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 the 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 hurried down to the kitchen.

Strangely, I didn’t hear the chickens in the coop making a clattering noise or crowing loudly 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 these people specialize in stealing chickens. They roast sweet potatoes until they are soft like snakes and then drive the sweet potatoes 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 could not 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 did not feel sorry for the chickens, I was just extremely scared, in my mind I imagined the thief as a strange and scary ghost.

When it was light, I discovered deep in the corner of the coop, the two smallest chickens were lying flat, so frightened that they didn't dare run out into the yard.

I also forgot my warm shoes, thinking 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 following nights were eerily empty, the absence of the rooster crowing kept me awake. The darkness and the creepy rustling outside turned me into a timid child.

Even though my mother still bought me new shoes, every time I saw them, I thought of the poor chickens. I kept thinking that if they didn’t crow so loudly, maybe the thief wouldn’t have known about their presence and the chickens wouldn’t have been caught in such a cruel way. They would have been “transformed” into beautiful chickens with fairy wings, displayed on the altar on New Year’s Eve.

I have been 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 buried deep in the past sometimes come back very coincidentally. Just like tonight, a faint 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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