They hate this stuff, want them some chicken, she said, tossing bored yard dogs boneless 
breasts of chicken. We understood what she meant only when the crate had been opened 
and five de-beaked birds stopped flapping their fleshed and feathered carcasses around 
the yard, bodies assigned to one pile, heads to another. The dogs drooled, but by then the 
children’s heads were mostly bowed or covered. Sharmaine pulled her little brother’s body 
to her chest. Maybe she was crying, though with her I can never quite tell and Tyrone 
was sitting all of a sudden, crouching really, and biting his knee to hold back tears. You 
can’t do that, we said, but of course it had already been done, and she couldn’t see why not, 
she’d grown up here, and what was it we’d brought the kids to see?The sterile packages 
she’d send to market later? In the old days birds fought back, she said, assuming it was the 
speed of the dispatch that alarmed us. I once gave up a goose what got away 71 times, ran 
round this damn yard near all afternoon before Old Bo got a grip on her and lost an eye for his 
trouble. These de-beaked things, they have no fight, she said, her hands slick from tossing 
expired breasts to distract the dogs, a ruddy feather planted just above her lip. On her 
signal, Frankie and Will opened another crate and several necks were simply severed. Bo, 
one eye open, head square on his paws, kept the young ones in their corner. Those dogs, 
they licked each other’s muzzles and their own.