Never Use a Chicken and Other Stories

There is nothing in medical literature to prove that human vocal cords are affected by fatty tissue on other parts of the body. Nevertheless, it is an anatomical fact. Fat females shriek. It is true. Ask Danny Callaghan. He knows. He is an expert. Not only does Danny have a mother who is a fat lady, but he also has several aunts, some of them his mother’s sisters and some of them his father’s sisters and all of them fat ladies. All of them shriek. Danny’s permanent part-time job completes his expert knowledge of fat ladies and their vocal cords. Danny is a stagehand at the local opera house.

In a small city like the one where Danny Callaghan’s family have lived since his mother was only pleasingly plump, there is no call for a union to represent the stagehands at the opera house—the Civic Theatre, to give it the official name. The building is not used more than once a week except at Christmas when the local Rotary club puts on its annual concert, which runs for three nights and a Saturday matinee. The opera house committee has no need to hire permanent stage people to run the curtain, turn on the lights or whatever. Danny and his friend Mike have done those jobs for three years, ever since Danny began high school and Mike was repeating Grade Eight for the second time.

In his three years at the opera house, Danny Callaghan has watched a good many fat ladies perform on the stage. Most of them sang, but sometimes they played the piano. One even played, if you could call what she did “played,” a violin. Music is not one of Danny’s strong enthusiasms unless you count heavy metal rock bands as music, which Danny does and many fat ladies including his mother do not. When you think about it, the sounds they both make are not that much different. Only the rhythm and the words vary. Fat ladies shriek German and Italian words, which nobody can translate, and rock bands have singers who don’t shriek any words that are recognizable except “Yah! Yah! Yah!” Not that Danny ever made the connection. He didn’t care. He was after the money.

Money comes in various denominations: tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds, hotel keys, car keys, credit cards. The latter three are not money to begin with but if you know how, you can turn them into tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds. Danny knew the trick. It really is not that difficult. You just have to look scrubbed, have blond hair kept shiny clean and styled with a cowlick, and remember to smile and say, “Yes, M’am” regularly. That way fat ladies trust you. When they trust you, they give you their purses to mind for them while they are performing, or they will tell you not to let anyone go into the dressing room while they are on stage because there are too many valuable things lying around to let strangers get into. For your pains they give you five dollars which isn’t money, but they think it is. The purses and dressing rooms then become money.

Danny Callaghan has a girlfriend, which is why he needs money. She is definitely not fat, which is one reason why Danny enjoys having her for a girlfriend. She doesn’t shriek; she giggles. She calls him “Dannn-eee,” which makes him feel good. Her name is Kim but everybody including Danny calls her Kimmy. She spells it Kymi, but nobody else does because they either cannot remember or they are teachers who cannot believe that those letters arranged in that order can make a name the way she pronounces it. She writes it with a little heart over the “i.” Having Kymi as a girlfriend costs Danny a good deal of money so he needs to have a permanent part-time job like the one at the opera house.

Late in May a phone call to Danny’s house alerted him to go to work for a concert the following Friday evening. His mother answered the phone and shrieked up the stairwell to give him the message. He was listening to his favorite rock band at its usual high volume through earphones that he constantly wore, and almost missed hearing her shriek except that the recording came to an end just at just the right moment. He called Mike and they reported to the opera house on Friday for instructions.

The concert performer was to be a Madame Luchinko, according to the program lying on the desk by the curtain switch. She was apparently a singer of international reputation, appearing under the sponsorship of a local women’s group, and the concert was supposed to raise money for one of their special projects. Madame Luchinko had had an open date on her very busy schedule and had graciously agreed to be of assistance to this very worthy cause. That’s what the program said. She was also fat, very fat. Her picture hinted at her size and her presence—shortly after seven o’clock confirmed the fact. She swept into the dressing room, shrouded in some kind of pale blue tent, manufactured in the Far East by the look of it. Madame was shrieking at her accompanist to do something about the absolutely abominable stage lighting. The accompanist was not fat. He was tall, skinny, bald and snarly. He obviously did not appreciate having two teenage boys as his stage crew and he did not enjoy having fat Madame Luchinko giving him orders. Danny agreed to fix the lights and went outside to have a cigarette and call Kymi from the phone booth. As he was hanging up, Mike came out to ask about the stage lights.

“What’re we gonna do about them?”

“Nothin’. Why should we? If he says anything, tell him we already fixed them. He won’t know. Won’t care either, I bet. Did you get a load of the size of the old lady?”

“Yeah.” Mike was not impressed. “This’ll be some kind of concert. S’pose we’ll make anything on it?”

“Dunno. Keep your eyes open.”