Why the Barn Has a Tin Hen
Once there was a small brown hen called Hetty. She lived in a red barn at the top of a windy hill, and she was sure she was built for roofs. She told everybody so.
On top of the barn sat a tin rooster. Years ago the wind had blown him round the wrong way. Nobody had ever turned him back. So every evening the sun went down behind his tail, and he had never once seen it.
“Tonight,” said Hetty, “I am going to sit up there beside him. I am going to watch the sun go down over the whole valley. Just once.”
She said it to Old Tam, the farmer, when he came out to fill the water trough. In those days animals talked to farmers, and farmers talked back, and nobody thought it strange.
Old Tam thought about it for a long time, because he thought about everything for a long time. Then he said, “Is that so.”
Old Tam wore a hat with a round hole in the top.
“You ought to mend that hat,” said Moo the cow. Moo said that every morning. Old Tam never did.
Hetty did not wait for anybody. She ran across the yard and flapped as hard as she could. She went up as high as a bucket, which was the highest Hetty had ever been. Then she came down, right in the water trough.
Ploosh!
“A hen is not built for roofs,” said Moo.
“This hen is,” said Hetty, and she shook the water off all over Old Tam’s boots.
Next Hetty made a bigger plan. She asked Moo to stand very still beside the haystack. She asked the pig to stand on Moo. Then she would stand on the pig.
“A pig is not built for standing on cows,” said Moo.
But the pig climbed up anyway, puffing. Then Hetty climbed up on top of the pig. She was higher than the bucket. She was higher than the gate. She was nearly as high as the hayloft door.
Then Hetty’s tail feathers tickled the pig’s nose.
“Ah, ah, ah-TISHOO!” said the pig.
Down came Hetty, down came the pig, and down sat Moo, all into the big heap of hay. Flump! The hay was soft and deep, and nobody was hurt. But there was hay on everybody.
“A hen is not built for roofs,” said Moo, with hay on both ears.
“This hen is,” said Hetty. But she said it quite quietly, because she was upside down.
By now the sun was low. The sky over the valley was going yellow at the edges. Hetty sat on the rim of the water trough and had a think.
The third time, she did not flap, and she did not climb on anybody. She walked over to Old Tam, who was oiling the creaky gate.
“Please, Old Tam,” said Hetty. “Will you help me up to the roof? Just this once?”
“A hen is not built for roofs,” said Moo.
“This hen is built for asking,” said Hetty.
Old Tam thought about it for a long time. He took off his hat. He looked at the round hole in the top. He looked at Hetty’s small brown head.
“Well,” said Old Tam. “I think this hat is built for hens.”
He popped Hetty into the hat, and her head poked up through the hole, just so. Then Old Tam put the hat back on his own head, with Hetty in it. Up the long ladder he went, one slow rung at a time. Hetty’s head stuck out of the top of his hat like the knob on a teapot lid.
At the top, Old Tam lifted Hetty out and set her on the roof, right beside the tin rooster. He stayed on the ladder, close enough to reach.
And there was the whole valley.
The sun went down, and everything turned gold. The pond turned gold. The mill turned gold. The long lane turned gold, all the way to the village. Far below, Moo turned gold too, and looked very small.
“Look!” said Hetty to the tin rooster. “Look at the pond!”
The tin rooster went on looking the wrong way.
“You’re missing it,” said Hetty. “Now the mill has gone gold. Now the lane. Now Moo.”
The tin rooster did not say a word.
“He is no good at looking,” said Hetty.
“He’s tin,” said Old Tam.
Then the gold went soft and blue. A star came out over the mill. A lamp came on in a window down in the village, and then another one. Hetty yawned a great big yawn.
“That was the best thing I ever saw,” she said.
“Time to come down,” said Old Tam. He put her back in his hat and carried her down the ladder, one slow rung at a time.
“That hen should be in bed,” said Moo.
But Hetty did not hear. She was already fast asleep in the hat. Old Tam carried her into the kitchen and set the hat down by the warm stove, with Hetty still in it.
In the morning Old Tam found an old biscuit tin. He cut the lid into the shape of a little hen. Tap, tap, tap went his hammer as he bent her just right. The tin hen had a picture of a teapot on her back, because the biscuit tin did.
“It would be simpler to turn the rooster round,” said Moo.
But nobody heard, because of the tapping.
Old Tam carried the tin hen up the ladder and set her beside the tin rooster. He turned her to face the sunset. So now, every evening, the tin hen watches the sun go down for both of them, and the tin rooster has company at last. Neither of them says a word.
And that is why the red barn at the top of the windy hill has a tin hen on its roof, with a teapot on her back.
As for Hetty, she still says she is built for roofs. But on cold nights she is built for hats. She curls up by Old Tam’s stove, tucked in his hat, with her small brown head poking out of the hole, fast asleep.