Excerpt from Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And one turkey less, we set off to our new home.




Grandpa's house was the last and only stop on an overgrown kilometer- long track that wound through a seemingly endless expanse of small gray thornbushes, short, brilliant green mopane trees, and the occasional graceful knob- thorn tree reaching high above its neighbors. Around the house, all but a few of the tallest trees had been cleared, and the little building stood low and dilapidated on the bare red dirt. With nothing to separate the house and the dirt— no flowerbeds, or paving, or gravel— the dust had crept up the walls and formed a foot- high orange band on the whitewashed bricks.

From a distance, it was hard to see where the house became dirt.

Everything in the house was falling apart; sofas fraying, bedspreads peppered with holes, kitchen counters chipped. The walls were whitewashed, but layers of dust had settled on the ledges where the bricks hadn't been properly aligned. Daylight streamed through every window, but, enclosed by the dusty walls and dark concrete floors, every bright room was nonetheless strangely gloomy.

Dust cloaked and dulled everything: the painting of a sad-looking black lady breastfeeding a baby, a medal hanging on a ribbon, a large black- and- white aerial map. Beneath these— the only interruptions to the otherwise bare lounge walls— an ostrich egg, a china bell with the faces of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, and a tarnished golf trophy decorated the tops of crowded bookshelves. Where they had been shifted slightly, their old positions were precisely remembered by darker, cleaner circles on the wood.

In Grandpa's tiny, overflowing study, maps and yellowing hand- drawn charts covered the walls almost entirely. Piles of tattered flight log books, some reaching higher than me, leaned precariously against tall gray filing cabinets. Much- fingered books and magazines jostled for space in every corner. In the center of the room stood a desk with a pale green typewriter, half covered in a sea of papers, scribbled notes, diagrams, and envelopes.

Opposite the intriguing chaos of this room, across a dimly lit corridor, was Granny Betty's study: tidy by comparison, thick with the smell of cigarettes and air freshener, home to a breathtakingly large and unlikely collection. Hundreds of jigsaw- puzzle boxes— big and small, enough to fill the grandest of toyshops— were stacked around the room: atop a dark wardrobe, under a dresser, in an open cupboard. I tried to count them and lost track. The room must have held more than a lifetime's work.

Low tables pushed against the walls displayed three almost finished pictures. Gleaming with bright poppies, country cottages, and sunsets, these made colorful, incongruous interruptions to the somber furnishings. The puzzles varied in the size and shape of their pieces, but each, caught in its state of incompleteness, was curiously similar. In every vast picture, the gaping holes shared the same blue edges, the same loose blue pieces scattered within them.

"I get so tired of skies." Granny Betty sighed, frowning at one of the blue- rimmed gaps.

Granny Betty, Grandpa Ivor's second wife and Dad's stepmother, sighed as if she were tired of life. Frail, softly spoken, hobbling, she was everything that Grandpa Ivor was not. Even her smile was sad. Only when she laughed, and her face was transformed by shining blue eyes and a wide, white false- teeth grin, did she really look happy.

After showing us the rooms in the center of the house, Granny led us out the back door, passing through a long kitchen, where rubber pipes ran out of an ancient stove, through an oversize hole in the wall, and joined two tall gas cylinders that stood sentry under the window. Outside, a few paces beyond the kitchen door, a rusty Deepfreeze sat alone in the middle of the dirt. Its lid was thick with grit, dry leaves, and bird droppings, and a spiky bush had crept halfway up one side.

Excerpted from Twenty Chickens for a Saddle (chapter 1, pages 1-14) by Robyn Scott. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) Robyn Scott, 2008.