Back to the main road then. As I said before, this farm raised kids. The only other animals were chickens, sheep, and a dog. The kids were out back in a dormitory residence. The sheep were in the pen. The chickens were in the barn when they weren't in the yard pecking for whatever it is that chickens find in the grit.

I didn't have much to do with the kids. I saw them at a distance. They were boys, younger than me, not on my screen most of the time, that is, until the day I decided to hypnotize the chickens.

This was quite a day. I arrived at the farm in the afternoon, filled with something I had learned at school, something I wanted to show Gail and her father, a special kind of decoder that seemed amazing to me as I tried to learn about the encrypted world around me.

That morning a sophomore approached me and one of my friends in the cafeteria and proceeded to demonstrate something that amazed me.

"Answer these questions," he said. "Write down your answers on a sheet of paper and then I'll explain to you what your answers mean."

I don't like puzzles but am always enthused about magic tricks.

These are the questions.

You are walking along a path. What kind of path is it? Is it rocky or smooth, uphill or down, gentle or steep?

I could see a smooth path that undulated in the dappled sunlight.

There are trees around you. Are they tall or medium height or short?

I could see tall pine trees reaching up toward the blue sky.

You come to a clearing in the woods. In the middle of the clearing there is a stump and it has a container with some kind of liquid in it. What is the container? What is the liquid? What do you do with it?

I envisioned a sterling silver flask with fine brandy in it. I quaffed the liquid in one fiery gulp. I had never had a drink at that time in my life. The brandy and the flask were my idea of sophistication.

You walk on in the woods and you meet a bear and what do you do and the bear goes away and you keep walking until you come to a house on a hill and where is the house on the hill and are its windows and doors shut or closed or open or what? My answers filled the page.

Then the sophomore magician decoded my answers. "The path is your life," he said, "And how you see it." Undulating, I thought.

"The trees are the kind of people you like to hang out with. Tall for older, medium for same age, short for younger persons." Right on the money, I thought. I do like to hang out with adults to find out what they know.

"The container in the clearing is what you think about your life, your ambition, where it will lead, and what you do with it indicates what you will do with your life's opportunities." Boy was I glad I had chosen to see a silver flask. What a son of privilege!

He continued his explanations. The bear was fright and even I, mere freshman, could figure out the house answers. Closed, open. Nice house, shitty shack. Place on the hill. Mine was in the middle.

I couldn't wait to try this out on someone, amaze them and mystify them with my Gnostic secrets and mysterious insights.

That's why I drove out to the farm in the middle of this particular afternoon. There was something else I was wanting to try too. I was a great reader at the time. Books were the manure to this stable boy's shovel and I packed them away with a furious resolve. I wanted to know everything. A little wasn't enough. I didn't want any surprises in my life. Books were maps. I didn't want to get lost in the forest.

The other thing I wanted to try was hypnotizing chickens. I read in a science fiction story that you could hypnotize a chicken by holding its beak to the ground and drawing a line in front of it extending from its beak. Even a piece of string would do. Supposedly the chicken would not be able to move. Held prisoner by a string! Stupid chicken.

So there was lots to do this particular afternoon. But Mr. Gail's Father was not at home and Gail was too easy an audience. She saw a glass goblet with spring water in it. Her attention was rapt whenever she was being discussed or analyzed and we breezed through her psychology exam as easily as a walk in the woods. My interpretation was fluent, embellished by little verbal flourishes I had rehearsed in the drive to the farm. She was amazed. But her amazement wasn't enough for my needs, not that day. I wanted to show other people.

Here is the secret of human beings, I thought. And I know it. I can reveal it to you if you'll just pay attention for a few minutes. Even this wasn't enough for me. I wanted to hypnotize a chicken. Talk about amazing. I was cooler than The Amazing Kreskin.

"Gather some kids," I instructed Gail. "I'm going to show them something amazing."

Soon we were in the yard, surrounded by eight or nine kids, boy kids, pleased with the attention I was showing them, awed by a college freshman, even more awed by an older kid who could drive and hang out with girls.

To soften them up for my matinee act, the helpless chicken, I performed my psychology stunt on them. This would show them that I had powers of the mind, soothsaying clairvoyant older kid who could drive. Wait until they saw what I could do with chickens!

What a sad litany of woods walking. Rusted cans, broken bottles, muddy water, even piss, abandoned containers left behind in the clearing. Little houses at the bottom of the hill, doors and windows shaded and covered, locked and bolted. This really worked. I could see right into the minds of disadvantaged kids. Their parents didn't want them. They saw rust where I saw silver.

The kids weren't that impressed with this trick though. Insights into their sad minds weren't what they were looking for. They wanted a stunt, a magic trick, a miracle. O.K. That's what I would give them.

Off to the barn, surrounded by kids who saw their possibilities as rusted cans, broken bottles, trash and garbage, sorrow and sadness. Off to see a chicken hypnotized.

This trick didn't go as smoothly as I had anticipated. First of all, the chickens were hard to catch, even if you weren't afraid of them as I was, flapping, squawking, scratching creatures who wouldn't hold still, not like kids or other domesticated animals.

I tried to enlist one of the kids to get my chicken for me. After all a magician with my bona fides needed an assistant. My role in this adventure was too lofty to scramble in the barn dust for a flapping prop. I needed help here.

When I realized that no one was going to catch the chicken for me, not Gail, not one of the kids, I cursed them for cowards and set out to grasp some poultry by myself. Easier thought than done. Chickens don't come to you when you cluck. This city boy was learning fast. Finally, just before I resorted to a two-by-four to stun my prey, I grabbed one from behind, barely holding on as it clucked its resentment and struggled for freedom.

I forced its head to the floor of the barn, pulled a piece of blue chalk from my pocket (magicians come prepared), and drew a line from its beak to the foot of the nearest awestruck member of my audience. Then I triumphantly released the chicken and waited for the applause.

But the chicken was leaving faster than my audience's faith. "I'll try string. Maybe chickens can't see blue," I told the kids. "Someone get me a piece of string." This request they were willing to fulfill.

While they were in quest of string, I was in quest of a chicken. Another one, I thought. That first chicken wasn't very cooperative. But they all looked alike to me. I wasn't trained as a farm hand. Finally I grabbed one from behind. The task was as distasteful as the first time. I hated chickens.

Head to the floor, beak pressed down, string uncoiled. No luck. This chicken fled as though Mr. Fox had just come to the coop.

Some of the kids drifted off.

I tried a third time, convinced there was something I wasn't doing correctly here. Maybe I needed some magic words. Hocus Pocus, Madam'mnocus. The chicken's ass was right in my face as it jumped/flew to its nest.

I gave up. The remaining kids, sore in their loss of faith, straggled off. Maybe college wasn't that impressive after all. They couldn't see my silver flask. All they could see was the chicken's ass as it scurried away.

I tried to rescue these kids with entertainment, show them how a man, a college man could tame adversity, face down a foe, hold a chicken to the floor and draw a line in the sand over which no enemy dared step. Cluck, cluck, cluck, one of the kids crowed as he sauntered
off. Only Gail was left and disappointment showed in her face.

What about me? I was disappointed too. Imagine if it had worked! Imagine the glory that would have been mine. Goddam chickens. Fry the bastards. I would stay away from farms in the future. My destiny lay in the city.