Love, Ruby Lavender

“Murderers! You can’t have them all!” Ruby Lavender leaned out the car window and shook her fist. The car lurched to a halt in the dirt yard of Peterson’s Egg Ranch, and Ruby scrambled out the door. She ran in bare feet as fast as she could into a dusty sea of chickens – a sea of chickens being herded toward their death at the chopping block.
Miss Eula Dapplevine was driving the getaway car. She leaped from her seat into the hot June sun and waved her arms wildly. “Run, run! Run for your lives!”
Chickens screeched and panicked. They ran and jumped and flapped their wings.
Ruby opened her arms and swept herself, like a wave, through the squawking.
“Gotcha!” She dropped to her knees and reached for chicken legs and necks and breasts, pulling them to her. “I’ll save you, girls!” She had a face full of feathers. She swayed from side to side, trying to get her balance. Her left overalls strap slipped off her shoulder.
Three men came running from inside the chicken house. The tallest one jerked down the bandanna he wore around his mouth and nose. “Stop! Thieves! Get back here with those hens!”
“Go away, Lucius!” yelled Miss Eula. She waved dust from her face with her big hat. “You won’t miss a few old laying hens past their prime!” Ruby struggled to stand with her arms full of chickens. She staggered to the car, a squawking hen under each arm, and tossed them through the open window of the backseat. “Hit it, Miss Eula!” Another hen ran screaming straight for Ruby and nearly knocked her down. Ruby grabbed it. “Good garden of peas! Well, get in here!”
She tossed it into the car, then climbed through the open window right behind it.
“Hurry, Miss Eula!”
“You’re crazy, Eula!” shouted Lucius. “Crazy!”
Chickens flew at Lucius, pecking his hard boots. Others raced, like a river over a dam, through the split-rail fence, across the country road, and into the surrounding fields.
“Go, girls, go!” Miss Eula put her hands on her hips. “How would you like to be on someone’s dinner plate, Lucius? Lucius à la king!” Lucius and his workers didn’t know which way to run first as they tried to shush the puddle of chickens left at their feet.
Miss Eula flounced back into the car. She jerked the gear shift into drive and pulled out of Peterson’s Egg Ranch, weaving the big car slowly right and left as she dodged chickens and stirred up dust. “How many did we get?”
“We got three! They’re red!” Next to Ruby sat three of the most pitiful-looking, nervous creatures she had ever laid eyes on. They clucked and stared at her.
“Three, that’s a good number. A lucky number. You are a good partner, Ruby Lavender…for a nine year-old.” Miss Eula winked at Ruby.
“And you are a good getaway driver…for a grandmother.” Ruby winked back.
“Folks will keep eating chicken, all right, but they won’t eat these three, now, will they?”
“They surely won’t,” said Ruby. “I can’t wait to get to know them.”
“We’ll get to know them together.”
The car traveled smoothly down the country road. The chickens squawked and flapped and put up a ruckus. Miss Eula’s and Ruby’s eyes met in the rearview mirror. They smiled at each other….They giggled….And then they laughed and laughed.