My father’s voice whispers close, like temptation telling me to do something I knew I shouldn’t. “Don’t shoot until his head’s in your sight, Bo Skeet.”
The turkey gobbler fans its tail feathers near two curious hens just this side of the rusty wire fence separating my grandfather’s piney woods from the state game reserve. Garrett was a hunter who followed rules and regulations to the letter. Had the wild bird chosen to preen six feet in the other direction, the odds of its living out the day would have increased exponentially. Even so, a nine-year-old with no kills on record shouldn’t have given the creature any cause for concern.
“Now, don’t pull the trigger, Bo Skeet, squeeeeze it gently. Eeeasy does it.” I can hear his heart beating louder than mine.
The gobbler retracts its feathers, drums a sound of concern, and stops cold. It looks just like a picture on a place mat I’d seen at a log cabin restaurant on summer vacation in Tennessee.
I feel Garrett nod stealthily, and I squeeze the trigger at the same exact time the shotgun kicks me in the shoulder, knocking me into his arms. The earth-shattering report camouflages the sounds any survivors would have made in retreat.
“Thataway!” Garrett shouts. “That’s Daddy’s boy!” He pulls me close into the fold of his big brawny arms. “I didn’t believe you could do it,” he says, cackling, jostling me like an oversized baby. “I swear to the good Lord, I didn’t believe you could do it!”
The hens are nowhere in sight. I step over the bright red shotgun shell as I walk over to the fence where the gobbler had been thrown, one of its brightly colored wings flung like a cape over what once was its head.
“I thought he was gone. I saw the sonofabitch flap his wings once. I says, ‘That’s it, he’s gone.’ But he wasn’t,” my father crows, patting me on the back, squatting to give me another hug. “Daddy’s boy,” he says again as he picks up the kill by a withered foot.
I smell blood as I reach out to touch one of the gobbler’s wings. I take the bird by its other foot, surprised at the weight of the warm, lifeless thing, and gallantly throw the shotgun over my shoulder as the congratulatory whoops of the other hunters ricochet over the hill.
* * *
The golden brown leg stares back at me from my Easter dinner plate between the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. The sad, crispy carcass radiates a noxious aura of compunction and shame. I never knew becoming the son my father always wanted would feel so rotten.
“Something wrong with your dinner, son?” my mother asks timidly from across the dining room table. Her face is partially hidden by a carnival-style tumbler made specifically for Southerners and their unquenchable thirst for iced tea.
I attempt to avoid my father’s gawp, his eyes glued to the remains in front of me, a sliver of bright, white breast meat crusted to the side of his mouth. “Everything okay, Bo Skeet?”
“It’s fine.” My eyes connect briefly with Tina’s before I drag a fried onion through its cream of mushroom pottage.
“Oh my goodness, I almost forgot,” Tina says. She grabs my plate and hers and disappears quickly into the kitchen.
“What’d you forget, punkin’?” Garrett says, reaching for the pitcher of tea.
“Just—oh…” I can tell Tina is stalling. The tinkling of glass and jars signal an impromptu symphony of cunning and desperation. “Two seconds,” she says, as Sis sucks the life from the other drumstick, watching me like I’m the rinky-dink intermission act in a two-bit circus. Garrett carves another slab from the cadaver and plops it on his plate, his eyes never leaving mine. It was a pitiful look. A look that said he was going to lose this one.
“Ohhhhhkeydokey…” Just before enough time passes for the whole thing to go straight to hell, Tina reappears at the table with our plates. “I swear, sometimes I think I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on.” Bending like a waiter in a four-star eatery, she returns my plate and her own. Something tells me whatever she’s doing is a feeble attempt to make this whole thing go down easier, both figuratively and literally.
“The heck,” Garrett says, eyeballing my drumstick and Tina’s slice of meat, both now slathered in deep red, runny gravy.
“It’s the sauce. For the turkey,” Tina says, holding out her hands for Garrett’s and Sis’s plates. “It’s Eye-talian.”
“Nuh-uh,” Sis grunts, pulling her plate in close with both arms.
“Turkey doesn’t need any sauce far’s I’m concerned,” Garrett says, still squinting at my plate.
“Fine,” Tina says, unfazed. She takes her seat and drops her napkin into her lap.
“What’s it made of?” I say gingerly, wondering if the cure is worse than the ill.
“Oh, let’s see, it’s got ketchup, Worcestershire, and, well, let’s see—Heinz 57, pure grape jelly. All your favorite things,” she says, setting the bowl on the table.
Sis makes a face. “It’s cold?”
“They do it all the time in It’ly,” Tina says.
“Land sakes.” Garrett sniffs at it.
I take a judicious bite before realizing that, solely for my benefit, Tina has whipped up something really good.
Garrett dabs a thumb into the concoction on my plate and licks it curiously. “Hmm,” he says. Lifting the boat over his plate, he spoons out the rest. “Hm,” he says again, grabbing a piece of turkey breast with his fingers, running it through the sauce, and popping it in his mouth. “Good stuff, doll,” he says out the side of his mouth, cutting his eyes once more at me, “but it would have been fine without it.”
* * *
The following April, Garrett began having problems with his lower back. The issue started as an occasional spasm, prompting him to leave work early. A couple of hours on the sofa with the heating pad usually did the trick. Sis and I would remain uncharacteristically quiet and let him choose whatever he wanted to watch on TV. By early evening, he’d get up and hobble around the house until he was back to his old self.
Just after school one day, I spot the ambulance parked in our driveway as I round the corner in front of the Gordons’ place. When I race in the carport door, my father is flat on his back by the fireplace. My mother and sister are hugging the sides of the sofa, the paramedics crouched over him.
“I can’t get up, Bo Skeet.”
“We’re gonna take your dad to the hospital,” one of the paramedics says.
“Can I ride with him?”
“You stay here with your Sis,” Tina says, standing.
I take Garrett’s hand.
“It’s the craziest thing, son. I can’t move.”
“He’ll be okay,” the other paramedic says. Garrett shrieks in pain as they lift him on the stretcher.
The look on Tina’s face says it hurts her more than it does him.
“I’m going with your father,” she says to us. “Ma Cora should be here within the hour.”
Two days later, Garrett was released from the hospital. After a battery of tests, the doctors were at a loss. “Could have been a pulled muscle, a pinched nerve, or just plain stress,” Dr. Lowell said.
After several weeks of recuperation, Garrett never suffered from back pain again. I often wondered if my father had worked himself into a twisted, tortured mess with the approach of another spring, when his wife could wind up who knows where. However it happened, the events of that April did, in fact, take the focus off my mother. During a time of year when she would find herself most vulnerable, she put all her energy into helping Garrett get well. In the process, she felt needed.
The rest of the spring and summer passed without incident.