Iris was a good girl. I liked her for Ike. 

Those two—so cute together. You’ve never seen two lovebirds more in love.

I told my grandson he’d better take care not to lose a girl like that. 

“I know, Grandma. I know,” he groaned.

“Right,” I said with a frown. Advice of an old lady not good enough for him? I didn’t live all these years just to learn nothing.

But see, he only thought of me as old, not considering that I had to be young once, too. 

“All this fat?” he said when he saw me cooking the green beans in the bacon drippings and butter, the way to render out the most flavor. 

Iris, now, she’s a good girl. She could see things from my point of view.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I think I might like it.”

“No, you won’t,” my grandson said. 

“Ike!” I snapped. “Don’t tell a lady what she will and won’t.”

He looked at me sorely, like I stepped on his toe.

“Watch yourself, boy,” I said. I brandished my heavy ladle and winked at Iris. She giggled.

And at that Ike stormed out of the kitchen, man enough that although fuming, was at least not so disrespectful to talk back to his old grandmother.

So it was Iris’s hands that I folded into mine, and together we took the knife, and I guided the blade to debone the chicken before we fried it. Special care was needed when carving with twice as many fingers on the cutting board, but this was how my own mother taught me and how I taught it to those who will listen; and besides, it’s best to learn to be cautious from the start. 

We separated the tender flesh from bone, the pearly fat, the tough bits I don’t know any other word for than scrap. Into two piles—“gentle now, dear”—the meat to keep and the rest to discard.

“All this waste?” Iris said as she leafed through the scraps.

“Bad for your gut,” I said.

“I thought you saved everything. Like the bacon drippings?”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

I realized I wasn’t quite sure—or I didn’t know how I knew—what the difference between the good fat and bad was, how in chickens the toxins and the pharmaceuticals collected in the fat and skin and cartilage and all that. How bacon, on the other hand, was not even bacon without its fat.

“Nevermind,” I said. “Just trim the scraps and you’ll live a long, happy life.”

We washed our hands.

When everything was ready, Ike came back as if he only just got off a grueling shift at work.

So that’s how it was when these two chickadees visited for a meal. 

Then my little house would be empty, and I would be left alone again.

I thought about them when they weren’t around. 

Did Ike remember my warning: be nice to her; treat her right?

Here I saw him worrying about Iris’s figure; lucky I was here to teach her to mind her well-being.

It’s a certain type of man who treats his partner one way in public and another when it was just the two of them alone. Differently didn’t always mean worse, nor did it necessarily mean better.

---

But those innocent days were not to last. When you’re young like that, every crisis was the end of the world. It wasn’t until you survived as many crises as you can count on both hands that you gained some perspective. The Cuban missiles were the first crisis I can remember, way back when, and we got through that just fine.

Iris called me on my telephone now and then. More recently, it was all worry and woe.

The price of eggs was going up. Not one ninety-eight a dozen anymore. More like one ninety-eight an egg.

I told her that the chickens must be living the high life now, all that money they make. 

She’s a good girl, but she didn’t laugh at my jokes. Her right, I supposed.

She could hardly find them in the store. And for Ike, there was no substitute to the lean, protein-packed meat of chicken.

“You’re doing all my grandson’s shopping now?”

“We’re living together now. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Fine, but that doesn’t mean all the housework goes to you. Put that boy on. I’ll straighten him out.”

He’s not here right now, she told me. Alas.

---

So I was wrong, it turned out. The chickens were not living luxuriously off the egg money. Quite the opposite.

Half of them had already perished from disease. Sounded like plague to me, though who’s to say if it’s that the angry God’s punishing the birds or punishing the humans who eat them. 

Supposedly the population would never recover. I found that hard to believe. It wasn’t more than half a dozen years ago that chicken was the cheapest meat on every menu at every restaurant. Not that I could afford to eat out much anymore. 

But there were things I didn’t even know. It’s like my late husband used to say. You can’t say you slaved over a meal unless you worked the farms and manned the factory line and scrubbed the blood and feathers off the killing room floor. Not to mention who earned a living to put meat on this table?

We took a trip to the countryside once and visited a farm. The chickens ran in the grass and pecked seeds and pulled worms from the earth. And I couldn’t imagine them doing anything else.

Poor birds.

Pheasant, sparrow, grouse, starling, pigeon. Only birds you found at the supermarket anymore. 

“Troubling times,” I told Ike when he called. “Are you prepared?”

“Of course, Grandma,” he said. 

“Good. And how’s Iris? Are you taking care of her?”

“When she lets me,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“She’s just difficult sometimes.” 

Difficult? That didn’t sound like the Iris I knew.

“How so?” I asked.

“She just kind of does her own thing. And she hardly listens.”

“Well, be a gentleman about it, and I’m sure it’ll work out.”

“I’m trying, Grandma. It’s just—”

“Try harder. She’ll leave you if you’re not careful.”

“Why do you always say that? It’s like you want us to break up.”

“Nonsense. I love Iris, dear.”

“Then why are you always turning her against me?”

Turning her against him? This was news to me. 

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re always telling her to be all ‘independent woman.’”

“How is that—”

“I’m trying to be the man in the relationship, but she’s acting like I’m dead weight, and I’m left wondering where I fit in!”

“Ike, calm down, baby. You’re yelling.”

“Oh no, Grandma. No, no, no. Don’t you tell me to calm down. All I ever did was try to take care of her, but that isn’t good enough. And you! You’re driving me crazy with all your mixed up—”

“This is no way to speak to me, Ike! Call me back when you’ve gotten a hold of yourself.”

Whether he heard me or not, I couldn’t say. The call dropped either way.

So I worried about that boy. A fiery heart was a fiery heart, in anger and in love. 

The love songs he belted out to the bubbles in the bathtub and the tantrums he threw when the water went cold, all soaped up at three years old, were quite the spectacle. 

I thought a gentle heart like Iris might do good to temper his, well, temper, but I wasn’t so sure anymore.

---

My first crisis, the Cuban missiles, were easy to forget about once the dread, like silt, settled in the bottom of my chest.

My marriage, on the other hand, was a crisis I could not ignore.

My husband and I rode it out the best we could, trying to make what good things we had last. 

“At least we never fought in front of the kids, right?” I said to him on our drive home from one of his chemo appointments. His hearing was shot, and I had to repeat myself.

He didn’t know we ever fought.

That’s right, I recall. I mastered a quiet rage, a budding resentment; I kept my turmoil to myself. The one time I opened my mouth to speak he nearly hit me, and that surely would’ve ended things long before they did, at a time when I didn’t want them to end. 

“Treat me like a human being before you treat me like a woman,” is what I almost said to him. It made sense to me at the time.

But we had young kids then; we were building a family. This mission became more important than the love that I no longer felt. 

From what I could tell, he died still believing nothing was wrong, my silent rebellion dying with him. I—

“We brought dinner!” I heard from the hall. Iris’s voice. The kids let themselves in. I noticed the oven clock said it was already half-past seven.

“Something smells good,” I said, and I swept my hands over the tablecloth to smooth out the wrinkles before getting up to greet them.

“You’ll never guess what we found,” Ike said. He was swinging a greasy paper bag.

“Heat it back up first,” Iris said, taking the bag out of Ike’s hands. “It’s bone cold by now.” She tossed it in the oven. 

“Four hours,” Ike said, a subtle brag in his tone.

“Four hours what?” I said.

“Four hours there, four hours back.” He grinned wide.

“But you only live just across town,” I said.

“To get the chicken,” Iris said.

“Iris!” Ike whined. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Chicken?” I said, surprised.

“Fried chicken!” Iris said. “It was almost impossible to find.”

“I’ll say,” I said.

“But we did it,” Iris said.

“You mean, I did it, babe.”

Iris gave Ike a look. “You did it.”

So we got to eating. One bite in and I could already tell that there was hardly any meat to all the breading, but I suppose they were stretching what’s left as far as it goes. 

Even reheated, and with soggy fries and runny ketchup, it wasn’t half bad. 

The kids told me about the drive and the line of cars that nearly stretched a mile, Ike said.

All that wasted time, that gas. 

“Sounds like it was an adventure,” I said. 

Iris smiled at me. She was done nibbling on her piece and passed it to Ike. He gnawed clean down to the bone. 

---

Declared extinct, or just about. The common domesticated chicken, that was. Just like the dinosaurs they came from. So said Iris, who was bothered by the latest headlines. There may have been a few niche poultry operations out there with some off-shoot species, still clinging on hope to revitalize the global population. But at this point, it sounded like it wouldn’t be worth it, the way the supply chains broke and things no longer made sense for the money. And anyway, imitation eggs and artificial chicken broth were all anyone uses in recipes anymore. 

Ike said this is unprecedented. This I couldn’t deny.

It was more than just chickens, he said. What’s next, the dairy cows? Coffee beans?

Change was change, though. Change was nothing new.

“But we didn’t come to talk about chickens,” Iris said. “Look.” She dangled her fingers in the air, and the light caught the shimmer and flash of an expensive diamond ring. 

“Oh my goodness gracious, look at that!” I said. 

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Iris beamed.

It was certainly unexpected. I looked at Ike, who gritted his teeth to keep from smiling, though he was certainly pleased with himself.

“My, my,” I said before turning back to the bride-to-be, who was glowing with pride. It sure was a pricey ring. “I’m so happy for you, Iris. Ever so happy.”

---

Everything between Ike and Iris came to fruition at the wedding, I supposed, but of course I couldn’t be there. Not when the venue was four thousand miles away. I could barely make it to the store down the road anymore, much less to the airport.

“Why so far away?” I asked them.

Let me tell you—it all came back to chicken. 

“It’s this remote island Ike found. Rumor has it that flocks of wild chickens still roost there. The diseases never reached them. It’ll be like jumping back in time.”

I told her it sounded gorgeous and tropical and romantic and she’s a very lucky girl.

She told me she’s sad that I wouldn’t be there but that she understood.

If only she did understand.

The truth was I could not justify my presence at such an event. The egregious expense, for one. The farcical goose chase for an entree, another matter. But even at a sensible service at St. Bridget’s Church in town, I would still have had my misgivings. Not that I would whole-heartedly object, it’s just…they might have seemed like a good pairing, but I was no longer so sure.

But what was I to do?

Ike always had and always will prefer things his certain way, and my sway only went so far. Too good for an old woman’s advice. And it had never been my place to speak up. There was no stopping him, just like there was no stopping time, just like there was no saving the chickens.

Ike and Iris saw matrimony as the finale, as soaring into the sunset the way it happens in the movies, love triumphant, THE END. But I knew better.

Things were only going to get worse, I feared. Money tighter, healthy relationships essential, and certain realities inevitable to come to light. 

I won’t pretend to know everything there is to know about love, but, in a catastrophe, they say the birds are the first to go. Canaries dying in the mines is what it comes down to. Or seagulls in the jet engine just after takeoff.

Originally from North Carolina, Christopher Labaza studied fiction at Emory University's undergraduate Creative Writing Program before moving to New York City to work in publishing. His short fiction has appeared in The Appalachian Review and Lunch Ticket, and he is currently drafting his first novel.