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for August 2008
Katherine Checkley

I've always wanted to sit in room by myself with a table, chair, and enormous bowl of my Uncle John's chicken wings. Alone I could eat as many of the savory wings as pleased, it wouldn't matter if I got covered in hot sauce up to my ears and past my wrists, no one would be there to think me a slob, or a heifer. It would be just the wings and me, and that would be the perfect holiday.

Once I described this fantasy to my family members, attempting some humor. My brother and cousin mocked me in laughter until their cheeks were numb. I suppose they found it odd to imagine me fulfilling my most instinctual urges-clearly contradicting my reticent nature. There is something about the quality of the wings that makes me want to release my inhibitions, to stop holding back.

No one makes the large, enticing appetizer like Uncle John. Barbeques at my Aunt Eileen and Uncle John's haven't changed much in twenty years-a delightful gathering on the back porch alongside an inactive swimming pool. The food has remained constant: luscious tortellini salad, buttery corn on the cob, and strips of barbequed steak. A few Memorial Days back, however, came the addition of the pre-dinner chicken wings.

I don't know what possessed him to create such a brilliant entity in the realm of food, but any mention of a summer picnic at Uncle John's makes me think of the cackling fire of the grill, fiercely but carefully scorching the delectable bird's flesh. And of course, I envision Uncle John himself, his shadow swaggering across the pool's surface while standing before the massive black barbeque-the dragon's mouth-turning and glazing, turning and glazing.

He griddles his meat with care, a slow burning of perfection and impeccable patience. He sports his faded green bathing trunks--which I can still remember him wearing in Long Beach Island circa 1992, brown moccasins, and a white t-shirt, most likely referencing a remote beer and sea food joint down the shore.

We all wait fretfully for the wings to reach their imposing golden brown state and for the tangy hot sauce to smother them unconscious-but no one waits with more ardency than I do. I'll time my walks to the park with my siblings and cousins to be back in time for wings. I'll sit, perched like a prairie dog on the patio furniture, ten feet from the dragon's mouth, wondering when during this decade Uncle John will be finished cooking.

I wonder if he takes so long because he loves the process of the roasting and the searing more than the wings themselves. When Uncle John chars his delicacy, he exists in his own world; he is the center of chicken wing universe. He stands, reveled by the quietness in his mind. With his cigar squeezed between the middlemost part of his lips, and one hand clenching his beer while the other maneuvers the shiny spatula, Uncle John is residing in poultry heaven.

When the time comes to feast, Aunt Eileen brings out a plate of wet paper towels to serve as napkins. Lucy, the Australian Cattle Dog, runs in circles and paces the wooden deck. To her the smell must be unimaginable. The first bite is blistering, and I know my tongue will be seething later, but at that moment-at chicken wing time, that is an afterthought. My family is soundless during the wing-eating ritual, pulling one after the other from the silver bowl centered on the table, and gnawing the essence off the bone. The sound of swishing saliva striving to tame the hot sauce fills the air. I've eaten five, six, seven wings at one time-four during the years I was dieting.

I've even been caught eating Uncle John's masterful wings on videotape. There I was hungrily tearing the moist meat to shreds like a wolf that'd gone foodless for weeks. The sauce dabbled on my cheeks, and my greasy hands reaching into the pot of gold again and again. It is times like those where my fantasy comes in-a room by myself, with a napkin tucked into the neck of my shirt. With no one around to capture my indulgence-no there's no saying what those wings will do to me.