Inside the VFW, it was dark and twinkly lights were strung everywhere. There was a stage with a Christmas tree on it.

The floors were wood, and they creaked when you stepped on them. The whole place was noisy with people talking and laughing. Music was playing, and a man dressed up in a Santa Claus suit was walking through the crowd shouting, “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

At a card table off to one side, there was a blue ceramic bowl full of tickets. And next to the card table, there was a very long table covered in butcher paper. There was a punch bowl on the long table, and a tower of Styrofoam cups and a big platter of cheese cubes with a little frilled toothpick stuck in each piece of cheese. Next to the food table, there was another card table with a record player on it. Someone on the record was singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

A cloud of cigarette smoke hung over the room. The smoke made the lights and the Christmas tree and the people all seem unreal. It was like looking at someone else’s dream.

Iola said, “Who wants some punch?”

“I’ll get it,” said Elmer.

“Oh, there is Frederick Morton,” said Iola to Beverly. “I haven’t seen him since the last dance. I’ll be right back.”

“Turkey tickets,” said a little man in a blue cap holding a fistful of red flowers and a roll of tickets. “Win the world’s largest turkey. I also got poppies for sale.”

“How much are the turkey tickets?” said Beverly.

“Fifty cents,” he said. “Fifty cents to win the world’s largest turkey. I’ll throw in a poppy with each ticket.” The man didn’t have any teeth. He smiled at her, displaying his gums.

“I don’t want a poppy,” said Beverly. She handed the man a dollar. “Two tickets.”

“What you want to do is write your name on the back of each ticket,” he said, “and then drop them over there in that bowl, and you could win yourself the world’s largest turkey.”

“Got it,” said Beverly.

“You ever heard of the trenches?”

“What?” said Beverly.

“The trenches,” said the man, “that’s where I was. In the trenches. You don’t never forget it.”

Elmer came over and handed Beverly a cup of punch. She looked down into the cup and saw something floating at the bottom.

“It’s a maraschino cherry,” said Elmer.

“Right,” said Beverly.

“You know about the trenches?” the little man asked Elmer.

“Yes, sir. I’ve read about the trenches.”

“Sure you have. Gonna buy a poppy?”

“Okay,” said Elmer. He handed the man a dollar and took a poppy and pinned it to his jacket. He said, “‘In Flanders fields, the poppies blow,’ right?”

“Don’t bother reciting that crap to me,” the old man said. “I am ninety-two years old. Ninety-two! I don’t never want to hear that stupid poem again. I lived through it.” He pounded his fist on his chest. “I lived through that war. I was in them trenches. Nothing describes it. Nothing touches it.” He shook his head. “And now, here I am in Tamaray Beach, Florida, selling tickets for the world’s largest turkey. Ha-ha-ha. See? That’s how life jokes with you. There ain’t no sense to it. No sense at all.” He smiled, displaying his pink gums again.

“I’ll take two tickets,” said Elmer.

“That’s a dollar. Like I told your girlfriend, you got to write your name on the back of each ticket.”

“Thank you,” said Elmer.

“You know what I learned after being here on this earth for ninety-two years?”

“No, sir,” said Elmer.

The little man leaned in close to them. He whispered, “I ain’t learned a thing. Not one thing. Except that there ain’t nothing in this world that can’t happen. That’s it. That’s the whole of it.”

And then he turned away from them and shouted, “Turkey tickets! Get your tickets for the world’s largest turkey!”

Beverly finished her punch and went up to the card table. There was a woman sitting behind it knitting a tiny pink sweater.

“Can I borrow something to write with?” said Beverly.

The woman handed her a pen, and Beverly wrote “Iola Jenkins” on the back of each ticket. She dropped the tickets in the blue bowl.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” said the woman. “Good luck to you.”

And then Iola was behind Beverly, clapping her hands and saying, “The band is here! The band is here! Now the dancing can start.”

“Oh, boy,” said Beverly.

The band started with “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

Elmer stood beside Beverly. They watched Iola dance with a man wearing a checked jacket. His hair was dyed black.

And then a song called “Moon River” started, and Iola came and took Elmer by the hand and said, “We can waltz to this one, honey.”

“I don’t know how to waltz,” said Elmer.

“A waltz is easy to learn.”

“Okay,” said Elmer. He put down his punch cup and went off with Iola.

The ninety-two-year-old turkey-ticket man came up to Beverly and smiled at her with his gums.

“Guess how old I am,” he said.

“I know how old you are,” she said. “Give me twenty dollars’ worth of tickets.”

“Twenty?” he said.

“No,” said Beverly. “Actually, I want forty dollars’ worth.”

“You want forty dollars’ worth?” he said. “The turkey ain’t that big.”

He counted out the tickets slowly and handed them to Beverly. She went back to the little table.

The knitting woman said, “Well, look who’s back!”

“Yeah,” said Beverly. “It’s me. Can I borrow that pen again?”

“Certainly,” said the woman.

Beverly took the pen and got busy writing Iola’s name eighty more times.

Elmer was still out on the dance floor in Iola’s arms. The room smelled like cigarette smoke and perfume and the ocean, because everything smelled like the ocean in Tamaray Beach.

Beverly realized she was happy, as happy as she had ever been in her life.

It didn’t make any sense.

It was stupid.

But she was happy.

She wished that Raymie were at the VFW.

And Louisiana. Louisiana loved a party.

Beverly looked up and out the narrow window that was above the knitting woman’s head. She almost expected to see bare branches, snow falling. Instead, what she saw was the lit-up letter V and the flutter of wings.

Her heart skipped a beat.

It was the bird returning home — bringing something back to the nest.