The Coop

They were sitting at Bu Ikawati’s roadside kiosk when the light from the single bulb above their heads went out. “Yaaah, there it goes again,” said one of the men. The others only nodded while sipping their black coffee and puffing cigarette smoke, as if saying it was to be expected.

The smell of kretek, tobacco blended with cloves, filled the air. It was a balmy, sweat-filled night that had been denied rain for weeks. Syarief wiped the back of his neck with his hands. The mosquitoes that had previously gathered around the lone bulb were now making him their target. He swatted them away, only to hit Mansyur and caused his coffee to spill. That earned him a glare, and although they were good friends no words were spoken. His tongue was as heavy as the apology that sat on it. He knew it was there but didn’t bother to let it out.

Conversations were often abandoned at a night like this. Nights where they knew with certainty that the next day would be worse. Still no rain. The rice fields were parched. The longer the drought ran, the longer the silence was. Syarief wondered how many weeks had it been since he’d last seen a hint of drizzle. The riverbed was now as dry as the asphalt road. The soil cracked, the carcasses of their livelihood hung, withered and defeated. They all needed to make do without a harvest this season and the men had been working all sorts of jobs just to survive. These jobs, like the rain, didn’t come easily. Many of his friends and neighbors had been forced to go to the capital Jakarta to scrape a living.

He’d been luckier. His brother-in-law had a small poultry farm and his sister, Suminah, had got him a job as a farmhand. He supposed she had to beg Karsono for it and that thought was lodged in Syarief’s brain like a headache, pounding and unstoppable.

Each morning his job was to check the eggs, especially the ones near hatching, and to remove the rotten ones before the ammonia they emitted could corrupt the healthy ones. The barn where they kept the home-made egg incubators was only as high as Syarief’s shoulders and he had to duck whenever he was inside.

Next to the incubation barn were the chicken coops. Hundreds of these creatures squawked and pecked and flapped inside the various haphazardly stacked cages made of whatever Karsono could find—cardboard boxes, crates, Styrofoam boxes and the occasional wire pens. The whole area stank of piss and shit, and in the beginning Syarief couldn’t even open his eyes whenever he was near because they watered so much.

Karsono made him sweep and clean the cages twice a week, and warned him not to let any of the chickens escape. The warning was pointless; these chickens were as stupid as they looked, and not one dared the escape attempt whenever they were let out. Some had even forgotten how to use their feet and would just roost on the ground until Syarief grabbed and placed them back in the cage.

These days his hands smelled of the chickens, their wet feces and their uneaten grains fermenting at the bottom of the slush pile because Karsono, the entrepreneurial spirit that he was, wanted to make more money out of the chickens by selling their waste as fertilizers.

It was these hands that he was sniffing under the hushed darkness of the roadside kiosk. Bu Ikawati lit up a single white candle and placed it on top of the counter. “I’ve got soap for that, dek,” she said, watching him.

He shook his head. “The stench doesn’t come off.”

“No wonder you stink so bad,” said Mansyur.

“It’s the smell of money.” Syarief glared at his friend. “What do you have?”

Mansyur put his coffee down. “Don’t be such a stuck-up—if it weren’t for your sister, you wouldn’t have a job like the rest of us.”

“Then why don’t you go to your uncle in Jakarta? He’s rich, right?”

“I heard last year Indah, Bu Siti’s eldest, got a job with nak Mansyur’s uncle,” said Bu Ikawati, joining the conversation. “She went with him to the capital and every month she sent a lot of money home. Bu Siti bought a big TV and a motorbike. Now they’re building a brick house!”

“My father forbids me to go,” Mansyur replied, shrugging. “He gets angry every time I mention it, says it’s the devil’s city. Everybody there is corrupt.”

“What does a farmer know?” asked Syarief. “If you don’t want to go, then I’ll go. I have enough of chicken shit. Ask your uncle for me.”

His friend nodded. “All right, don’t regret it.”

Two weeks later, Syarief stepped off the bus and planted his feet at the Senen station. He brought two girls from his village with him—one was Bu Ikawati’s niece. She was almost seventeen, a pretty young thing, and Syarief could tell she was fond of him. Mansyur’s uncle had agreed to find jobs for all three of them and promised more money than they could count. “Jakarta is such a city,” he’d said over the phone. “It’s a money machine. So come!”

And they did. Syarief believed him, and that belief deepened when he finally met the man. Mansyur’s uncle looked impressive wearing a tailored suit with big rings on his fingers, and he drove a sedan! Nobody in the village had ever ridden a sedan before. The car’s interior was cool and smooth, and songs were playing from the radio. Syarief shivered a little. This is how the rich lives, he thought.

Mansyur’s uncle was telling the girls that they would be working in a massage parlor and Syarief was lucky to land a job as a security guard in that parlor. “You’ll be making big money,” uncle said, smiling. His teeth were heavily stained and Syarief couldn’t help smiling back through the rear-view mirror.

He glanced to his side and saw how Bu Ikawati’s young niece, the sweet girl, was mesmerized by the view of the city outside her window. Jakarta was indeed something else. He, too, felt dizzy with wonders, but he didn’t want to show it on his face. He leaned back on the leather car seat and tried not to squirm.

Yes, he was very lucky.

His thoughts flew to Mansyur, to Karsono, to his sister Suminah, to the chickens. Fools, he cursed them silently. They chose to be trapped in cages of their own making. They didn’t’ want to flee. Out of fear, out of stupidity. Who would want to spend their entire life like that?

Syarief was different—he wasn’t afraid to escape. Coming to Jakarta had been right. He would never be poor again and the thought made him smile. He sniffed his hands. They didn’t smell like chicken shit anymore.

In fact, he couldn’t smell anything at all.

Jakarta,
March 2012