His name was Denny. He was about sixty-five, retired off the railroad, and he had a neat little henhouse with a new tin roof.
He met us in the yard with his arms folded.
He had five of Mom’s hens. He hadn’t penned them separate. They were already scratching around with his own.
“I about didn’t call,” he said. “They’re laying good. I got three eggs out of those five this morning, and that’s the day after hauling them. I paid what was asked. I didn’t cheat anybody.”
“No, sir, you didn’t,” I said. “You did nothing wrong. That’s why it’s three and not two. And if you say no, I’ll thank you for your time and go home, and I won’t think one bit less of you.”
He looked over at Colt.
Colt had walked to the fence. He was standing very still with one hand held low, the way Mom taught him.
A red hen with a blue band came across that yard at a trot. She stopped right at Colt’s boots and squatted down flat, wings a little out. The way a hen will for somebody she knows.
“That’s one of ours,” Colt said. “I helped Grandma band the blue ones. I held them.”
Denny unfolded his arms.
“Well, shoot,” he said.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“My mother kept hens. If somebody had sold hers out from under the casket, my dad would’ve gone to every farm in Hamilton County.”
He went into his shed and came back with a wire catching hook.
“Don’t wait for dark. I’ll get them. You’ll never catch that speckled one without it.”
He took the fifteen dollars, too. He said a man ought to take what’s offered when it’s offered honest.
That made nineteen hens back on Mom’s roost by Wednesday night. And fifty-seven dollars gone out of the can.
Dale got there at half past nine, still in his work coveralls and smelling like ammonia.
He didn’t come in the house first. He went straight to the coop with a trouble light and a handful of tools. And he fixed the latch on the pop door that Mom had been tying shut with baling twine since Christmas.
When he came in, Lucille was sitting at the kitchen table in her robe. She hadn’t gone to bed that night.
“Evening, Lucille,” he said.
That was all he said to her.
He washed his hands at Mom’s sink and ate what was in the oven. When he was done, he looked at me.
“How many?”
“Nineteen.”
“How many to go?”
“Twenty-one. Twelve tomorrow, if Mr. Zeller’s a man of his word. Nine I can’t find.”
Lucille turned her coffee cup a quarter turn on its saucer.
“I didn’t know they had bands,” she said. Nobody had asked her. “She never told me they had bands.”
Dale looked at her for a long moment.
And I’ll always be grateful for how he said the next thing. Because he could have said it a good many other ways.
“Rosalie would’ve told you anything you asked her, Lucille. She’d have walked you out there and shown you every one.”
My aunt got up. She rinsed her cup. She went down the hall.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.