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Izzy followed Roach through the crowded market, a stormy grumble in the wake of an excited ray of sunshine. He was weighed down by sacks and boxes containing spices, special flours, chemicals, oils, and pickled foods of every variety. The bags of flour, salt pork, hard tack, rice, and other standard fare were likely on board already. This round through the market, Roach had said with glee, was for SPECIAL THINGS.
Izzy could understand Roach’s joy; he had more money to spend on ingredients than he’d ever had in his life, after all. He had to (grudgingly) admit that there was a trickle-down of happiness on board the Revenge, now that Stede and Edward were back together, and a fragile peace existed among them all. Edward took joy in seeing Stede happy, and fine food made Stede happy, so Ed spent lavish amounts of money on it. That, in turn, made Roach happy, because he got to cook new and interesting things. And that made the crew happy, because they ate better than they ever had.
The only person unhappy about it was Izzy, because Ed had voluntold him to be a pack mule for Roach that day.
“Are we almost done?” Izzy said wearily to Roach’s back as he inspected a pack of vanilla beans with almost sexual interest.
Roach spared him a glance, irritated at having been interrupted fondling the vanilla. “What? Yeah sure, just —“ He looked around, clearly seeking a way to get Izzy away for a few minutes. “Go buy us some chickens. The old ones have stopped laying, I’m stewing them tomorrow.”
Fine. Izzy could buy chickens. He didn’t need to worry about anyone having absurd standards about chickens. He walked over to a stall with crates stacked higher than he could reach. A red hen sized him up with a sharp amber eye. A white hen in the next cage over began cackling loudly about the egg she’d just laid.
“Three pullets,” Izzy said to the poultry salesman.
“Meat or layers?”
“First layers, then eventually meat.”
The salesman pulled an empty crate off the top of the stack and reached into a larger crate. He pulled the hens out one at a time. Izzy suspected the leggy young birds weren’t laying yet, so he pointed to the cackling white hen and said, “And that big white one.” At least they’d have a few eggs until the others started laying.
The white hen was a tad brighter than the others, and when her door opened, she made a break for it. The salesman chased her around the stall with a remarkable lack of motivation. Izzy set his bags down and sat on a barrel, resigned to a long wait.
A speckled hen looked at him through the bars. He smirked at her. She was the tiniest chicken he’d ever seen. He would have thought she was still a chick if she wasn’t fully feathered out, with a bright red comb. Must be a runt, he thought.
But then his eyes fell to the rest of the birds in the crate, and his smirk faded. All five of the little hens in there were like her, barely the size of a dove, with a proud stature and downswept wings, their little tails held aloft. They were all different colors - dark brown and white, red, cream and white, speckled, and a gray that Izzy thought might be called blue by people who knew chicken terminology. There was a rooster in with them too, his feathers that shiny beetle-black color that would flash green in the sun, with stunning red hackle feathers and an enormous red comb. The rooster approached Izzy and looked through the bars at him as a tom cat might regard a king, with haughty disregard.
Izzy liked that bird.
“There you go,” the salesman said, dropping the crate with the layers at Izzy’s feet.
“Are these chickens, or some other kind of fowl?” Izzy asked.
“Oh, they’re chickens, alright! Those there are the smallest kind of chickens in the world! They’re called Seramas, all the way from Malaysia.”
“They lay eggs for eating, like full sized hens?”
“They sure do! Just scaled down! Here, I pulled an egg from them this morning.”
And he handed Izzy a tiny egg, maybe a third the size of a normal egg. It. Was. Adorable. Izzy suddenly empathized with Roach’s excitement. This felt special. New. Shiny.
He wanted those chickens, in a way he hadn’t coveted anything in a long time.
“I’ll take all of them.”
*****
“What in the hell are those?” Roach said with a curled lip as Izzy opened the crate and took out a tiny hen. She was mahogany brown with white specks, like a snow-dotted mountain. Inwardly he named her Flurry.
“They’re Seramas,” he said. Then, because he couldn’t help but get defensive about them, “Captain Bonnet will surely get a kick out of their tiny eggs. And we’re all here for the joy of Captain Bonnet, aren’t we?” He hadn’t meant for it to sound so bitter.
Roach crossed his arms, eyeing the small birds as Izzy put each one carefully into the pen - a rather large enclosure for such little things, and Izzy had outfitted it with several nice perches to roost on, a thick layer of straw bedding, and three Serama-sized boxes for nests. The pen was on the first floor below deck, where a bit of sunlight could reach them. Izzy had ideas about how to improve the space even more.
The rooster thought about kicking at his hand, but settled down, resigned to his fate, when Izzy picked him up and began stroking his hackle feathers.
“Well, I suppose it’ll be fun for Stede for a little while, and when the novelty wears off, we can just eat them. It’ll be like quail.”
Izzy’s face contorted into something dark and furious. He rounded on Roach and got up in his face (as much as he was able to from his height. He rose up on his tiptoes to give himself another inch.) “I’m going to say this once. You don’t lay a fucking hand on these stupid fucking birds. They’re MINE, alright? I paid for them out of my own fucking portion. Whatever you do to these birds, I will do to you. Do you understand?”
The rooster clucked softly between them, asking puzzled chicken-questions.
“I got it,” Roach said, holding up his hands, eyes wide. “Hey man we all got our quirks. You’ve got pet birds now. I won’t mess with them. I can gather eggs from them, right?”
Izzy raised the rooster higher up his chest and curled a hand over him. “Don’t call them pets. They’re productive. They’re livestock. Not pets.”
“And Edward says no pets,” Roach said, his eyes softening in understanding. He smiled and patted Izzy’s shoulder. Izzy knew there was a shadow of fear on his face, that Roach could blow his cover, tell Blackbeard that he had pets. “No worries, man. They’re not pets, and they’re not for meat. Got it.”
Izzy took a step back, relieved. “That’s right,” he said. He felt like he should thank Roach, but he wasn’t sure what he would be thanking him for, so he just turned away and put the rooster in with the hens.
Roach looked over his shoulder at the birds. The rooster arched his neck and crowed, and Izzy couldn’t help but laugh, the rooster was so little but he was trying so hard, being so proud of himself in spite of being a pipsqueak.
“Have you named them yet?”
Izzy hesitated. “A couple of them,” he admitted softly.
“How about Baxter for the head honcho there?”
He allowed himself a touch of a smile. “That’s good. Captain Baxter.”
“Perfect.”
“The dark spotted one is Flurry.”
“Nice. Hey, I’ll save you back some good kitchen scraps for them, yeah?”
Izzy’s heart relaxed. Roach wasn’t going to give him grief about the chickens, wasn’t going to tell Ed about the potentially-pets angle. “Thank you,” Izzy said.
Roach left him to his chickens. He watched them explore, hop up on the roosts, check out the nest boxes, sipping at the water. Baxter discovered where the food was; he stood up straight and tall and clucked loudly, calling the hens, who came running over to inspect the food. He stood on watch until the hens drifted away, and only then did he eat.
“Good man,” Izzy said. “If one of your ladies goes broody, maybe we’ll let her hatch some chicks, yeah? Bet you’d be a good dad.”
He couldn’t get over the thrill their small scale gave him. It was ridiculous. It was wonderful and new and pretty. They were HIS. His project, his idea, his … pets.
Ed might see through him. He resolved, with an iron fist clenched in his heart, to encourage Stede’s inevitable enjoyment of the little eggs. Ed wanted Stede happy. Stede would like the miniature chickens. They would be allowed to stay if he liked them enough. Izzy smiled, enjoying the sensation of childlike joy that he hadn’t felt in so very long. Maybe this is how Ed felt about the weird little stuff Bonnet showed him. Maybe this was how Bonnet felt about his books and fancy items. This was surely how Roach felt about cooking ingredients, Izzy had seen it on his face.
Well. If this was how it felt. He could hardly blame them. Maybe he could allow them their absurdities, now that he had his own.