I joined her at the door and looked out. There were three white hens with beady yellow eyes and pale pink combs. The fourth hen huddled in the corner. One of its wings dragged limp on the ground. The wing point was torn. The feathers were gone, the flesh red and seeping blood. I glimpsed a flash of bone. The chicken was barely alive. Her head bobbed on her neck.

“Christ.”

“Something got at her the other night. We heard the noise and Aram came out. It was gone, whatever it was. But now the other ones won’t let her get near the food and they peck at her all the time. They’re horrible, stupid animals.”

“You ought to kill her. There’s nothing you can do about that big gash.”

“We ought to kill them all. There’s something about them … And they don’t give eggs, anyway.” She drew back into the kitchen. The water was boiling on the stove.

“How’s the goat?”

“Kate’s a lot better!”

Carlotta entered with tea and a couple of little bowls. We squatted on the mattress and drank.

“Spike brought a veterinarian he knows. He gave her something. A lot of stuff. He says she won’t give any more milk, now, until she has another kid, but the sores are healing up. It was some kind of infection.”

“You got any tea for us? How did you get here, Sally?”

Sam and Lichtenstein came in the living room door. Their hair was wet. They carried their shirts. Lichtenstein was tan to where his underpants showed above his dungarees.

“What happened to your face? What’s that stuff on your arm?”

Carlotta paused in the door on her way for more bowls. “I was too polite to ask,” she said.

“It’s leftover poison oak,” I answered.

Lichtenstein sank down onto a corner of the mattress in his stock meditation pose. Sam sat in front of me examining my shrinking rash.

“That’s very interesting,” Sam said. “I was just reading that the West Coast Indians never got poison oak. They’d start out very early in the spring when the leaves were small and tender and eat one every day. They’d keep it up for a month until the leaves started to toughen up. Then they were immune. They had immunity figured out five hundred years ago, while white men were still talking about evil humors and bleeding each other to death. That Ishi book was full of things like that.”

Carlotta brought more bowls and poured pale tea into them carefully. She sat with her legs bent on either side of her belly. She nodded at Sam, smiled.

“‘Ishi’ means ‘The Man.’ It’s like being called Adam. I think that might be a good name.”

Sam grinned and sipped from his bowl. “Maybe. You ought to go swimming, Lotta. It’s really nice today.”