TWO THAT WERE TOUGH

Where Kennedy's Come Again in the Spring (p. 904, J-292) crackled with the wit of an aged farmer who has only the birds and Death for company, this ruminative friendship, between old Mr. Hilton, owner of a decaying grist mill, and Wild Wings, a feral chicken that roosts in the millyard, is sheer unmodulated melancholy. In the course of an 80 page vignette Mr. Hilton comes to accept the necessity of leaving his home to live with a daughter in Atlanta, and gives up a plan to capture Wild Wings and take him along. . . . That's all, but Butch's habit of echoing and explicating the old man's most obvious thoughts ("". . . if he were drawing up a list today, he would be especially thankful that he had not broken any bones when he fell from the ladder"") robs the tough old companions of their dignity and gives us a tale that's not so much poignant as anemic.