One of the hardest parts of writing Prodigal Father Wayward Son was figuring out how to organize all of the chapters ��� and which to keep and which to leave out.�� One of our early themes centered around epic fights we had had.�� This didn���t work out in the end, but here���s an account of one of our worst fights.�� Initially we each wrote our own version, and it wasn���t until later that we decided to interleave the narrative. ��So here it is, the battle of the Chicken Coop told from both sides.

The Chicken Coop��

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At the end of my sophomore year of high school, I moved to Muir Beach to live with you and our relationship improved. But it was not the end of our conflicts, and one of the most memorable fights occurred the very next summer, when I was sixteen.

You���d just bought an idyllic forty-acre farm nestled in the eastern foothills of ��Washington���s North Cascade Mountains, and I went there with you and your new wife, Jan, for summer vacation. It wasn���t easy for me.�� I missed my friends; I was bored, and had little access to marijuana, which by that time was a serious problem for me. The house had only one bedroom, and I slept in a VW camper-van in the driveway.�� After a week, I got depressed and regressed into all the old sullen and rebellious behaviors I was just beginning to shed.

SAM

No sooner had we arrived, than you became a real pain in the ass.�� The farm was rundown; there was a lot to do. The water system was constantly breaking and between my writing and all the farm work, I was overwhelmed.�� I tried to get you involved in some of the projects.�� Not only did I think it would break you out of your depression, but I really needed the help. But you usually responded by giving me the finger without even looking up from your science fiction novel.

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It was bad enough that you���d dragged me all the way out into the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. But then you started constantly bugging me. Trying to make me work. Guilt tripping me with your old Calvinist values.�� And there was nowhere I could go to escape. I was at your mercy.�� It drove me nuts.

SAM

On the far side of the front yard, nestled under a spreading cottonwood tree was an old cinderblock building with a tarpaper roof and large screened windows.�� It had been used as a chicken coop for many years, as was obvious by the foot of accreted chicken manure on the floor. The house was too small, and I badly needed to work, so I decided to convert the chicken coop into an office.�� I thought it would be a great project for you and I to do together.�� I asked you to help fix it up, but you refused.

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About three weeks into our stay, you decided to convert the chicken coop to an office. The first task that needed to be accomplished was to clean the floor. And you wanted me to help.�� I couldn���t believe it. It was bad enough being stuck on some hick-ass farm with no friends and no dope but I would be damned if I was going to shovel chicken shit, the nastiest of all the many chores you had conceived for me, just so you could have an office.

I might have been slightly more willing if we���d been converting the chicken coop to be a bedroom for me, but I couldn���t see the justice of having to work so you could have an office in addition to a bedroom while I slept in the van.

So unsurprisingly, I declined to help.

You insisted.

I told you to screw off.

SAM

I snapped. The weeks of malingering and resentment were just too much. I lost my temper and started yelling.�� I said you were going to help me whether you wanted to or not.�� I���d had it with your ungrateful, sullen behavior. It was time for you to shape up, help out, and quit whining.

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My memory of what happened next has always been a little hazy. But I remember walking up the driveway, through the front yard, towards the chicken coop. I was crying. I had always been small for my age, and at the time I barely weighed eighty pounds, while you were a strong, full-grown man. There was no way I could stand up to you and I felt humiliated. You were walking behind me and as we approached the coop, for no reason, without warning, you shoved me hard in the back ��with both hands and I fell to my knees.

That push, a cheap shot in the back when I was already beaten, was too much to bear. Without speaking, I shoveled out the coop until all the chicken shit was gone.�� But with each shovelful, I wrote you out of my life. I may not have been able to stand up to you, but I was old enough to know I didn���t have to put up with this any more. I was done with you.

SAM

My ���victory��� in the battle of the chicken coop was hollow and bitter for both of us. You felt humiliated, and I felt ashamed for losing my temper. Later that night, after we���d cooled off and I���d taken a long walk, I took you aside and apologized. Man to man. Which was a rare occurrence.

I decided this was the occasion to pass on to you my fathers favorite ring ��� a beautiful piece of spider-web Navajo turquoise set in silver. It was a palpable symbol of another aspect of the Keen Way: we may fight fiercely but we don���t stop loving.

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That turquoise ring sits on my bedside table as I write this, and after that fight you never used your strength to break my will again. I see it now as a token of a vow long ago given, a connection to my grandfather whom I never knew well, and a link to my son who I hope will one day wear it.

But despite our limited armistice at the chicken coop, our conflicts continued. All through the Muir Beach years we often ended up screaming at the top of our lungs angry as hell, sometimes as much as once or twice a month. It came to be a natural part of our relationship ��� we could yell at each other like crazy then an hour later be friends again. In a strange way fighting was one way we became intimate with each other.�� And over time the nature of our fights began to change.�� I came to be less afraid of confronting you and stood up for myself more often and more vociferously.