The Good, The Bad, And The Poultry
Let me preface by saying this story is a joke. A few years ago, I was told to write an essay about the clash between ancient China and the West as told in a story, "When Cowboy Chicken Came to Town" by Ha Jinn. Cowboy Chicken is basically a Kentucky Fried Chicken with the name changed to protect the author. I decided to change the assignment a bit. This was the last of my college classes where creativity was encouraged.
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Cowboy Chicken:
Episode III
The Good, The Bad And The Poultry
The stranger stepped through the door and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside. It was a bright day in Lago, but you’d never know it from inside the little hole-in-the-wall bar. The stench of urine mixed with stale whiskey and vomit invaded his nostrils before he had walked two steps. His jaw muscles tightened as he rolled the short black cigar in his beak of a mouth and coolly glanced around the room quickly and efficiently, not missing a detail. He knew that this was where his man would be even before he saw him. This was just the kind of place a piece of scum like Chang would try to hide in. It had taken him months and several hundred dollars in payoffs, but Chang was finally his.
No one in the bar took notice of the stranger. He dressed like the gunfighter he was, wearing his dusty hat and poncho with casual disregard for the high society patrons at the card tables. No one immediately recognized him, but they all recognized his type. Nobody asked any questions knowing that, if someone did, he might not like the answers. Chang had his back to the door, lost in his glass of rotgut. He had made his final mistake, the last of many. The stranger tapped him on the shoulder. Chang slowly looked up and found himself staring up into the dark eyes of a cold-blooded killer. He was the first to realize just who the stranger was.
Three years before, Chang had emigrated from China to the United States to escape a static and unfulfilling life as a rice farmer. Once in America, however, he found it difficult to overcome the stigma of his appearance in the West. Like many in his situation, he was hired by a fellow countryman, a railroad baron. The baron was a former military man from China who had had little to no personal contact with the peasant class, but he enjoyed exploiting them even better in the Land of Opportunity, and he ruled with an iron fist. One year before, Chang had had enough and run away. He knew the consequences of his actions but was confident that he could find somewhere to hide out of his employer’s grasp. Anyone who crossed the baron had to face his enforcer, and that man was currently staring Chang in the face. It was almost a relief to Chang to know the end was so close. He was tired of running.
No one knew the hired gun's name. They just called him "General Tso's Chicken." It was rumored that a giant chicken gunfighter roamed the desert, searching only for the most dangerous and elusive quarry. Everyone who saw him tried to forget his face and the fiery red comb and wattles. It was as if to even look on his hideous visage was to invite his wrath. The Feathered Angel of Death had come to Lago.
Chang recoiled in fear and recognition, panicking at the sight of the giant bird and what his presence meant. The stranger remained cold and emotionless. He slowly plucked the cigar from his beak and said through clenched jaw muscles, “Chang.”
“Y-yes?” Chang stammered.
“You have dishonored my employer by leaving him.”
“How much is he paying you? I’ll double it!” Chang pleaded.
“Once I’ve taken a job, I finish it,” the stranger replied evenly.
Chang thrust a wad of bills at the stranger. Some stuck in his feathers, but most fell to the floor. “Take it, it’s all I have.” He slid off the barstool and hunched on the floor.
The stranger slowly looked down at the money and the pathetic excuse for a man lying at his knobby yellow feet. The only noise that could be heard was the faint sobbing of the man on the floor.
“Via con dios, muchacho. Ba-Kawk!”
The stranger’s gun was drawn in the blink of an eye. In that same instant, everyone in the bar recoiled at the deafening gunshot. A small red dot, half an inch in diameter, had appeared on Chang’s forehead as his head snapped back. Nobody said a word. They knew he had five shots left and didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his sidearm.
The stranger picked up the money on the floor and sauntered out the door. His business finished, all he had left to do was report back to Tso and collect his fee.
After a moment of silence, the tinny piano resumed its tintinnabulations, and the hum of conversation again filled the small cantina.
A thin yellow rooster in fancy Eastern clothes leaned over to the bartender. “Who was that? And why did he kill this chicken?” They both looked toward the door, where Chang’s body was being dragged away.
The bartender raised a wing to cover his mouth and whispered confidentially to the stranger, “They say he made trouble on General Tso’s railroad gang.”
“Like how?”
“He said the food was fowl. He called it ‘chow mainly garbage’”.
“Oh. Was it?”
“So I’m told. Why, one day the overseer, a boy named Sue, disappeared. Chang claimed the stew that night was ‘chopped Suey.’ But that wasn’t the worst. The cook was covered with warts, and Chang used to say to him, ‘Wart! Shoo, guy!’”
“How could you see the warts?”
“You couldn’t without ruffling his feathers. But everyone knew they were there.”
“Well, none of that’s too bad. What else did he do?”
“He called a strike. The whole gang stayed in the trees one morning instead of coming to work. The Enforcer called Chang out, but when he wouldn’t face him, the Enforcer called him a chicken. That night, Chang and his brother Ching fled. He’d been on the run until today.”
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Out on the desert, about fifteen miles out of Lago, the Enforcer rode toward Taos. Taos was Tso’s main coop. The Enforcer knew he would find his employer there, at Tso’s Taos Ranch. Little did he know he was being followed.
A few miles behind him, riding hard, was Ching. There was nothing chicken-hearted about Ching. He was bent on revenge, revenge for his brother’s sudden death. He made a deadly cluck, cluck, cluck under his breath. The sound matched the rhythm of the drumming hoof beats as he moved on, ever closer to the Enforcer.
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The Enforcer rode on, never suspecting that he was being followed. It was almost sundown. He rode down an arroyo on a path flanked by twilight-lit purple cactus, the sky a flung paint pot of color overhead, a picture no artist ere could paint. The rooster tails of clouds in the sunset were every color imaginable, reflecting light on the Enforcer, so that from a distance he looked more like a tropical parrot than a leghorn. His riding had the careless ease of long practice. He could search his body with his beak, looking for varmints, while riding at full speed.
He did so now, and as his head moved back and forth the sun reflected from his beady little yellow eyes.
With darkness sweeping across the plain as the Earth turned, General Tso's Chicken dismounted and built a campfire. In the distance he could hear coyotes howling to greet the dark, but he knew the campfire would keep them away. He was hungry. He had some dried grubs mixed with Indian corn in his saddlebags, but fresh food would be better. He scratched around until he uncovered a nest of scorpions, which immediately began to scuttle around like bees from an upset hive. With quick neck and beak movements, the Enforcer severed the tails from the bodies of a dozen or so of them before the others got away. The tailless bodies continued to run about, trying to stab and sting with their missing tails. One ran over the killer's scaly yellow foot, sending a tickling sensation up his drumstick. The Enforcer picked off the tailless scorpions one by one. They tasted like shrimp. The severed tails continued to twitch with a life of their own, until the Enforcer contemptuously scratched them into the campfire, where they sizzled and popped, then went still. The killer rooster soon roosted on one of the logs before the fire, tucked his head under his right wing, and went to sleep.
In his dream, General Tso's Chicken began to live again the day he had come up against the only gunslinger he had ever faced who could out-draw him. At high noon he stood in the main street of the nameless desert hamlet, facing Rhode Island Red, the fastest gun in the East. His wing twitched. He squinted, waiting for Red to make his move. Faster than seemed possible, Red drew and fired, and then... He awoke, his heart beating wildly and sweat soaking the down under his feathers.
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Ching had not stopped. He rode on, his eyes searching the horizon for signs of a campfire. An hour before dawn he saw the thin wisp of smoke from a pile of smoldering embers. The form next to the fire remains was still sleeping. Suddenly his vision was blocked by a rapidly approaching gun stock studded with brass tacks. Then he saw a bright flash and awoke staring at the afternoon sun.
He tried to turn his head away from the sun’s glare and it was only then that he realized he couldn’t move. He was trussed up like an animal. The dazzling light was blocked momentarily by a group of savages looking down on him. “Indians,” Ching thought to himself. These were Italian Indians – Guineas, small and black feathered. It’s said that they fletch their arrows by plucking their own tail feathers. He had heard tales of these uncivilized barbarians, but this was his first encounter with them. He was so scared that he had forgotten what little English he knew. He just began pleading them in his native Mandarin language. The Indians had never heard such a strange way of speaking, and in his frenzy Ching managed to work free of the binding ropes.
The sight of a freed man babbling in an incomprehensible tongue steeled the wild men for action. The four of them quickly surrounded Ching, who was still slightly disoriented from the blow to his head. But Ching was a master of the deadly arts. He and his brother both had studied since childhood under the ancient Kung Fu master Kwai Chang Caine.
Ching shook his head to clear out the remaining cobwebs and sized up his opponents. The one with the feathered war bonnet seemed to be the leader and, thus, the most dangerous. However, Ching could tell that he would have to deal with the three young bucks first. They were reckless and eager to prove themselves to each other. Ching had no weapons, but only the leader had a gun, the rifle that had first struck him. Ching readied himself to face the onslaught of clubs and edged weapons that the three warriors were armed with.
The first warrior, painted mainly in blue, rushed at Ching with a lance. Ching gracefully sidestepped his charge and directed the spear point into the soft earth. The weapon immediately stopped, but Blue kept moving. The polearm was wrenched from Blue’s grasp. It clattered to the ground, but Ching used his foot to skillfully flip it into his wings. Now Ching had a weapon and the advantage.
The next Guinea was gray in color and was armed with the saber of a dead cavalry officer. Ching thrust the butt of his spear into Gray’s gut and relieved him of his sword. He stuck it in the ground in case he needed it later. Ching struck Gray on the neck, knocking him unconscious. As he was doing this, the third warrior, whose feathers had more of a taupe motif, jumped on his back. Ching was outraged at this dishonorable method of combat, but soon remembered that this was America and nobody could be expected to fight fairly. He dropped the staff now useless to him. With both wings firmly gripping Taupe’s wing, Ching flipped him onto his back and in the same fluid motion grabbed the saber. It was a far cry from the katana he had practiced with in China, but it would have to do.
Taupe was on the ground still groaning, but Blue had recovered and was trying to sneak up on Ching. Ching quickly dispatched Taupe with a quick longitudinal cut from gullet to gizzard. By then Blue was upon him. It was a small matter for Ching to make a diagonal slash across the belly of Blue, whose viscera promptly fell to the ground. Blue collapsed next to his giblets and began weeping for assistance from unseen deities.
Ching, red-faced and panting from exertion, turned to face his final foe. The chief hadn’t made a move during the entire fight. He simply stood there like a statue with his rifle in one wing and a bundle of cigars in the other. The chief looked down at the fallen warriors, then stretched his rifle arm out toward Ching. The chief clearly wanted him to take it. Ching slowly bowed to the chief and took the ornately decorated rifle. Even though he was exhausted, he immediately got on his horse and began riding for Tso’s place. He still had to find the Enforcer.
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One week later, the Enforcer rode through the gates of General Tso’s ranch. Though he had been on the trail for days, he looked as if he had come straight from a fancy hotel bath. He was so hardened and unaffected by hard outdoor living that some people swore he was pure gristle.
General Tso was outside inspecting his workers. The sight of a man relishing the torment of his own countrymen disgusted the Enforcer. Why would Chinese enslave Chinese? It ruffled the Enforcer’s feathers to see anyone cooped up under the rule of another. Individual freedom was in his blood, and it was only his love of money that kept him working for such a feudalistic throwback.
The Enforcer dismounted and strode over to the General and tossed a lump of flesh at his feet. “Chang’s gizzard,” the Enforcer simply stated.
Tso handed the hired gun a wad of sweaty cash. The Enforcer didn’t even count it. “I’ve done what you asked, now I’m gonna move on. It’s been a pleasure working for you.”
“Not so fast,” the General began, “I want you to keep working for me.”
“Sorry. I got places to go, money to make.”
“I have been most generous, I can still make it worth your while,” Tso retorted.
“Quite frankly,” the Stranger, no longer Tso’s Enforcer, said through a clenched beak, “your whole operation makes me sick.”
“I see…” Tso replied hesitantly.
“But do you want to hear something funny?” the Stranger cracked. “Before I killed Chang, he threw a wad of money at me.”
“And why do you think he did that?”
“I think he wanted me to kill you.”
At this the General started laughing heartily and the Stranger’s face flashed into a smile, only to harden a split second later. “And once I’ve taken a job, I finish it.”
The blued steel of his .45 Colt flashed out and two quick staccatos were heard with another following at a slightly longer interval. Two bright plumes of red appeared on Tso’s chest and his right eye became an empty cavity.
Another shot rang out, but it didn’t come from the Stranger’s still-smoking gun. The Stranger’s wing immediately went to his left side, and his feathers came back red and sticky as he started at it in disbelief. He knew something important had been hit as he collapsed on the ground. He saw an imposing figure step out from behind a nearby building, silhouetted against the sun. A cloud moved to cover the brightness and even though he was growing faint from lack of blood, the Stranger immediately recognized his attacker. It was Rhode Island Red. The sight of the Eastern Dandy and his nickel plated .45 Smith and Wesson revolver sent shivers through the Stranger’s giblets.
“It seems I got the best of you once again,” Red began in his haughty, high-pitched voice. “Thanks for taking care of that foreign dog for me; I would have done it eventually regardless. This operation is just too good to pass up.”
Red leaned over and pulled out a handful of the Stranger’s plumage. “Lookie here! A Fistful of Feathers.” He violently tore out another bunch and said, “And what do we have here? A Few Feathers More.”
“Coward,” was all the Stranger had the strength to mutter.
“It’s a shame that I only winged you. But now I can savor my revenge. Prepare to meet the Colonel.” And at that Red pressed his shiny gun against the Stranger’s temple.
Before he could fire, Red was knocked backward. The Stranger thought he had heard a sound like a whip cracking near his ear, but couldn’t be sure if it was just due to blood loss. Three seconds later he heard the far-off boom of a distant rifle shot. Whoever had shot Red must have been half a mile away.
A few minutes later Ching rode up to the Stranger’s bleeding form. He bent down and peered at the Stranger. The Stranger, summoning up his last reserves of strength, raised his gun and gut shot Ching, who promptly collapsed to the ground in a heap.
“Nobody’s gonna sneak up on me when I’m down,” the Stranger rasped.
Ching stared upward into the blue sky in disbelief. “I am Ching, brother of Chang. I swore I would kill you after what you did to my brother. But then I saw how you helped my people escape the tyranny of Tso. I was the one who shot the gunman. I was trying to save your life.”
“Now we’re both screwed,” the Stranger said with a half laugh.
“What do you think will get us first: the ants or the wild dogs?” Ching mused.
“Neither, friend,” the Stranger choked out as he pointed his gun at Ching’s head and pulled the trigger. “One shot left. Better make it count,” were the Stranger’s final words.
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