Jackson slept on the floor next to his bed. His chicken slept on the bed. Jackson discovered that his chicken was getting scrawny and pale during the summer of '66. This was also the summer his sister died. So he let it sleep on the bed.

Turns out chickens don't like to sleep on beds. So he strapped it down. His sister would not have approved of this.

Since his chicken was so uncomfortable it stopped laying eggs. So Jackson, like his chicken, grew scrawny and pale. This was almost exactly two years after his sister started getting sick.

Jackson, when he got so skinny that he could fit in between the tiny stove and the grey kitchen wall, did something he had done before. He got the shovel from underneath his bed, and he went to the garden, and he dug his sister up.

His sister had very little to say, but Jackson was a hopeful man, and so he let her lie in the bed and he waited. When night came she still had nothing to say, but Jackson sat in a chair facing the bed and waited.

In the morning Jackson's sister was still silent, Jackson was tired, and the chicken had laid its first egg in a year. So Jackson ate the egg, and curled up in the bed with his sister, and fell asleep.