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| Chicken Bones by Carolyn Rowell |
| In St. Andrew's by the Sea they make little candies that Aunt Peg calls chicken bones. Pink and silvery and hard they look like the sort of bone a tiny cannibal might put through his brown flaring nose. Aunt Peg grew up in St. Andrews by the Sea and she loves chicken bones and always has a bag on hand to reward you after you help her shell the peas or weed the onions. In the butternut tree beside the hen house you sit and carefully suck them suck past the smooth lingering butterscotch to the soft peanut butter centre. If you are not able to resist——if you bite down——the candy will splinter a shard might stick in your throat just below your Adam's apple where it will turn and turn and turn each turning a small pain. After you give Shep your drumstick because it's still pink inside and the ligaments look like worms, Uncle Stan says Never feed chicken bones to a dog. It could kill him. He says it kindly but you cry because it's unfair that you hadn't known something that important——unfair that a weight such as death might be yours to lift. But mostly you cry because you want to know how it would feel to mourn and think you can work yourself up to it. You watch the dog chase after the tractor, you watch him wolf down his supper of kibble and day-old bread, watch him beat his old tail on the linoleum and beg for scraps, watch for the first hoped-for signs that he is done for. Sadly nothing happens A childhood friend of Aunt Peg's still lives in St. Andrew's by the Sea. She sends chicken bone candies to Peg and Stan in their Florida trailer park. When Uncle Stan gets restless, thinks he's back on the farm and the cows need milking, and Aunt Peg is a stranger who has no right to be sitting in his wife's chair, Aunt Peg hands chicken bones to him one by one and says "Don't bite now. Just suck on them." and he says surprised "Peg, it is you. You look older. When did your hair do that?" copyright 2002 Carolyn Rowell |