Page 41 of Winter Solstice
It’s chicken, man,Bart tells him.
He’s not a real man after all. He has issues. He’s a mess. His parents tried to get him to see a therapist. Mitzi had an appointment all lined up, and Bart agreed to go, but at the last minute he detoured to the beach instead, where he waited out the hour in his car, radio blaring.
Chicken.
He’s afraid of the chicken. No,afraidisn’t the right word. He can’t be in its presence. He can’t look at it or smell it, and he certainly can’t eat it. Even the wordchickenmakes him ill.
The door to the restaurant opens and Allegra steps out.
“Bart?” she says. “What is it?”
He turns his eyes to the street. He is blowing this date. He has blown it already. Bart feels Allegra’s hand on his shoulder. She’s touching his new blue cashmere jacket.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she says.
Can he tell her? If he tells her, will she understand? She’s outside without her coat. He wants to send her back inside, but he can’t banish her and he doesn’t want to go back to the table.
“When I was… while I was captured… ,” he says.
She moves her hand to cup his elbow and sidles her body up to his. When she speaks, her voice is in his ear. “Yes, tell me. It’s okay, Bart. You can tell me.”
“We ate potatoes,” he says. “Every day, every night, potatoes—no butter, no oil, no salt or pepper. Just the potatoes, either boiled or roasted in the ashes of the fire.”
“Yes,” she says.
“And then, one day, we had chicken. There were chickens scratching around the camp. They produced eggs, which the Bely ate; we were never given any eggs. But then there was spit-roasted chicken and we all got some, and it was, I kid you not, the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten, that piece of chicken.”
“Yes,” Allegra says.
“And then, the morning after we ate the chicken, one of us was chosen. The first day it was Private Jacob Hiller. And we thought, ‘Okay, J-Bear’—that was our nickname for him—‘is a big, burly guy, maybe they need him to help with digging a hole or fetching water or chopping wood or whatever.’ But J-Bear never came back. They marched him to this place called the Pit and they killed him.”
“Oh… ,” Allegra says.
“And it went on like that. We eat potatoes for days or weeks, then there’s a chicken roasting, and the next morning another soldier is taken away and marched to the Pit.”
“No!” Allegra says. She’s crying softly.
“We never knew when it would happen,” Bart says. “Until they roasted the chicken. Then you knew it was coming, but you didn’t know who they were going to pick.” Bart takes a deep breath of the night air and squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ll tell you what, Allegra. I loved the rest of those guys so much that every single time I wished it would be me.”
“No!” Allegra says.
Bart shakes his head and snaps back to himself. “I’m sorry.”
Allegra says, “I’m going back inside. I’ll have them take the chicken away and I’ll get the scallops instead.”
Bart bows his head. “Thank you,” he says.
Allegra disappears through the door, and Bart takes another moment under the black sky and the stars.
He told her.
He told her and she understood. She still likes him, he thinks.
He hears Centaur’s voice:GET BACK TO YOUR GIRL!
“Okay, okay,” Bart says. “I’m going.”
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