Exactly when he dropped out of hell and in to the yard of our farm, nobody remembers. But he was a mean thing from the very beginning; a bully from the get-go, one who picked fights with the older, more seasoned, citizens of his kind. With no chance of defeating them, he often was a victim of his own aggressive nature. Retribution did not soften his surly disposition. Nah, he just grew meaner, his strut more pronounced. You know how it goes with those who suffer from the Napoleon Complex. He was narcissistic and wore the bright colors of a dandy, swaggering around the community all puffed-up, terrorizing the citizenry like a thuggish dictator, which he eventually became.
My brother was his champion; it was he who bestowed the name “Testify” on him. I suspect it was my brother’s way of poking fun at folks who repeatedly felt the urge to get up in front of the church congregation to give a long-winded, melodramatic testimony, some of which had absolutely nothing to do with spiritual things. Testify was loyal to my brother but he HATED the rest of us humans. He especially had it in for one of my younger sisters. Anytime she happened to be in the yard, Testify would attack and send my poor little sister screaming in holy terror. Testify was on a mission to rid the farm of one seven-year old Indian girl.
My sister would poke her head out the door or look out the windows to scan the farm for Testify, and if she could see him, she’d go the other way. Often she’d be sauntering along, thinking she was all safe and life was good, and then, BAM, out of nowhere her nightmare would appear. Testify would stop, stare—that evil eye look—and she just knew that at any second he’d be gunning for her. She’d run screaming her head off and if she didn’t make it back to the house, she’d jump on anything that had height, and if nobody came to her rescue, there she’d stay—a prisoner of an ornery little rooster. Testify would patrol whatever object she stood on, pretending he wasn’t watching her. But he was. He’d scratch at the ground, faking a food search, or do a nonchalant walkabout, but always he watched her, waiting for that moment when she would gather her courage and make a mad dash for the house.
Testify was her terror. It was a farmyard collision between good and evil, as my sister likes to recall. Evil was a dandified, puffed-up banty rooster. Good was a dark-haired girl of seven who was forced to learn how to run like the wind! We tease her and say she could have won a gold medal at the summer Olympics if Testify was on the track with her.
Just so you know, Testify did not end up on our supper table. But, of course, he eventually died and my sister did not shed a single tear. Not one! To this day, however, she still asks, “Why me? What did I ever do to that blasted rooster?”
Rest In Peace, Dear Old Testify.
