Things Worth Doing : The Telltale Chicken

by Scylla

I’ve been working on a couple of things for this issue. Unfortunately, neither of those things has finished gestating, and I find myself once again past Eutychus’ deadline for submission. The last time I was late, he kidnapped my dog, so I knew I had to come up with something before I started getting the threatening emails again.

Then this happened today:

If you’ve read my stuff before, you know that I’m into running, and that for it’s own sake, I think it’s something worth doing. One of the best reasons to run is that if you run enough, you can eat whatever you want.

So today I was out for my five mile jog, and the fact was, I wasn’t feeling all that great. I wasn’t feeling all that great probably because I was dieting. This weekend I competed in something called a Pump and Run. What you do is get weighed, then you bench press whatever your weight is (girls only have to do 60% of their weight.) For each repetition that you do you get credited with 30 seconds. Once everybody has lifted you run a 5k race.

It’s an interesting concept because upper body strength and running speed and endurance don’t generally go together. I figured I would kill this competition because I lift weights and run fanatically.

I weighed 195 and did that fifteen times. Then I ran a 23:07 in my 5k. This gave me a competition time of 15 minutes and change. As it turned out, this was no big deal. The winner’s final adjusted time was something like 3 minutes. There was a guy there who benched his weight 40 times!

So, it turns out I’m no big stuff. I figure though, if I can lose 20 pounds that will put me in the competition next year. The fact is that I can afford to lose 20 pounds. I have a comfortable body. I need to be lean. So I was on a diet.

I felt that diet when I was running. I’d had two nutri-grain bars, some fruit and bananas, and my legs felt like lead. I felt tired cranky, uninspired. And hungry.

I’m about a mile and a half into my run when what do I see on the side of the road, but a bag.

This is not just any bag, this is a bag from Popeye’s chicken. The bag does not appear to be a bag of garbage or leftovers. It appears intact. So I stop.

Inside the bag is a complete 5 piece chicken meal with two biscuits, red beans and rice and fries! It’s still hot. I look at the receipt and it’s from about 15 minutes ago.

I’m not going to let this thing go to waste am I? I pick it up and start running with it. I figure that when I get back to the house, I’ve got dinner all set.

As for the diet? Well, this just fell out of the sky, didn’t it? It would be wrong to let this gift go to waste. This is some kind of sign.

I’m used to finding things on the side of the road when I run. Usually it’s a dead squirrel or a bottle or something. Today was pretty good. I feel proud of myself. I have gone out into the wilderness by myself and captured dinner. I have killed a Popeye’s chicken, and now by the laws of the jungle and salvage it is MINE.

I am hungry as I’m running along, and I decide that it won’t kill me to have a snack. I open the bag, and take out a nice hot salty buttery biscuit and eat it. This only seems to hone the edge of my hunger, though. I decide that a drumstick wouldn’t hurt. The high protein will give me the fuel I need to finish my run.

So I run down the road, the bag in one had, a drumstick in the other, and I’m munching happily when all of a sudden up ahead I hear a car coming.

Suddenly a terrible thought occurs to me.

It is just barely possible after all, that this dinner was not a gift from the heavens. Maybe it didn’t come from God. Maybe this is somebody’s dinner. Maybe it somehow got placed on top of a car or in the back of a truck and it fell off.

Maybe that person is now driving back, looking for his dinner, the dinner that is now my dinner. The one I am now eating.

This is an alarming thought, and I am immediately torn in several directions.

First is Primitive Scylla: “I found it. It’s mine. I’m keeping it. The law of the jungle and the law of salvage say it is mine. I am hungry. It is in my hands. I will not give it back. I am going to eat it. It belongs to me because I am strong, and I have it now.”

A moment later comes Scaredy Scylla: “If they find you with the bag, they are going to be mad. You will not be able to explain why the formerly stapled shut bag is now open. You will not be able to explain why a biscuit and a leg (oh and a couple of fries,) are missing. You will not be able to explain the grease on your face, the chicken in your teeth and the smell of fried food emanating from your sweaty pores. They may take the bag, or beat you up or kill you.”

“I don’t think they’d kill me,” I reply to Scaredy Scylla.

Scaredy Scylla confers for a second with Rational Scylla, and they issue a joint statement: “You’re right. They probably won’t kill you. Consider though, what they will do. You have just picked up, and are eating something you found by the side of the road! They will think you are sick, or crazy. Don’t you know better than to eat things you found by the side of the road? Even if they say nothing, will they not look at you with fear derision and pity? What kind of man will they think you are?”

Before I can consider this, Liberal Scylla shows up and starts berating me: “When you lost your kid’s shoe at Hershey Park, weren’t you grateful that somebody picked it up, held it in the air, and returned it to you? When you lost your wallet, weren’t you happy when it got mailed back to you? What kind of person are you that you would conspire to steal somebody else’s property? Somebody was probably looking forward to that meal. They are going to be upset that they lost it. They are almost sure to realize that they lost it on the road, and they are almost sure to come back for it. Why would you steal it? Aren’t you a good person?”

Scaredy Scylla - “You know, they might beat you up for eating it.”

Primitive Scylla - “MINE!”

Liberal Scylla - “What about the feelings of others?”

I hear the car coming closer and I stick the bag and the drumstick in my right hand as I run, and put that hand behind my back as if I am pulling my shorts out of the crack in my ass. As the car passes I move my hand to keep the bag hidden. The car flies by and is gone.

I’m not sure why I did that, I’m just a little nervous now, possessing a stolen dinner and all.

I finish off the drumstick as quick as I can, and throw it in the woods. I determine that I will run displaying the bag, and if the owner drives down the road they will see it, and can claim it. If I make it home with the bag it’s mine.

How will I explain the missing food?

I won’t, I decide. I will just stonewall. The impact must have opened the box in the bag, ejected a drumstick, a biscuit, and a couple of fries, and then resealed itself, a pure accident of trajectory. These kind of weird coincidences happen all the time. I will deny all knowledge of what happened. They will have to be satisfied getting what is there.

A few minutes later I hear a truck coming. This time, I KNOW. I don’t know how I know, but I KNOW.

They have come looking for their chicken.

Suddenly scared, I throw the old plan out the window, and without thinking I stick the bag under my shirt and wedge it under my armpit on the side facing away from the road.

The truck goes by slowly. I see a man with his son looking intently at the side of the road. The truck has no tailgate.

I do not wonder what they are looking for. It is hidden under my arm.

The truck keeps driving, and I keep jogging and we pass each other, and I feel sick in a way that has only a little bit to do with what I’ve been eating.

Because you see, I know what is going to happen next.

I keep hoping that the truck is going to go far enough to pass out of sight. If they do I will hurl the bag into the woods.

But I know that this will not happen.

I know that the person in the truck is going to think “Hey, if he’s been jogging, down this road, maybe he’s seen the bag. Why don’t we go back and ask him?”

That bag is now under my shirt, under my sweaty armpit, open, with food missing. When they stop, they will clearly see the bulge that a five piece chicken meal makes. The jig will then be up. It will be obvious what I have done.

Scaredy Scylla - “Why’d you hide it under you armpit? You are going to have a tough time explaining that one.”

Sure enough, I hear the truck stop and begin to turn around.

For a moment, I panic! I start sprinting and almost turn into the woods. I will run and hide through the woods, and sneak back to my house and eat the chicken.

Then, a grim fatalism comes over me. Surely more bad things will happen if I go running through the woods. This has been one bad mistake after another. Why make it worse? Submit to the inevitable.

As I run, a grim expression plastered to my face, the bag still concealed under my shirt, under my armpit (I have been in view the whole time. To move it now would be obvious. I guess a part of me was hoping they would just drive by.)

The truck pulls abreast.

“Excuse me.”

I stop. “Yes?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can.

The driver and the son are staring at me. Clearly they can see the bulge under my shirt. It’s quite large.

This is just like that Edgar Allen Poe Story, The Telltale Heart.

They know. They know everything.

“You didn’t happen to see a bag of Popeye’s chicken around here, did you?”

I briefly consider bolting into the woods, a fugitive. Maybe I can still lie.

“Sir?” He asks again.

“Oh,” I say. “You mean uhhhhh, this one?” With as much dignity as possible I remove the sweaty greasy opened bag from underneath my shirt and display my shame before me. “I guess it fell off your truck, huh? Here you go.” I attempt to hand the thing to the kid, but they are both staring at me in shock, disbelief and disgust. “Sorry it got a little sweaty, and some food seems to have fallen out. Here you go.”

They’re still staring. I can’t believe this is happening. I stand there for an eternity, holding the sweaty rumpled bag towards the window. Finally, the kid takes it.

“Thanks a lot,” the guy says, not a little sarcastically, and they drive off.

It occurs to me that I am a bad, bad man.