The Turkeys by Travis Flatt

Six wild turkeys roam my father’s lawn. Cocksure, they gang, don leather jackets, and brandish butterfly blades. Having staked their claim, how they swagger! They challenge would-be adversaries to set foot, paw, or claw on their turf. Seek rumble.

They choreograph dance numbers flavored by Jerome Robbins. 

My father is trapped indoors, miserable. They’ve run off the deer, which he and my mother use to watch amble through the trees, spotting fawns in tow, nibbling this and that. His neighborhood rests on the cusp of the wild.

Immediately preceding this avian invasion, he washed his Toyota. When polished, the doors of the sedan become mirrored. This enrages the turkeys: they mistake their reflections for rival turkeys. They peck the car mercilessly, leaving large pocks in the shiny black metal.

“Call the city,” I tell him, meaning to banish the birds. Or apprehend them.

“I’ve got a shotgun,” he replies.

This makes me anxious. I was unaware of the weapon. My mother passed away shortly before the turkeys appeared, and my father grew deeply depressed. The obnoxious might suggest some metaphysical connection between the turkey’s arrival and my mother’s departure. As for the twelve gauge, for obvious reasons, I disapprove.

“Don’t shoot any turkeys,” I say. I should mention this conversation is over the phone, me sitting at the top of the driveway in my own Toyota for fear of the turkeys. This was my mother’s car, a twin to my father’s, bequeathed to me in her will.

“They’re shitting everywhere,” he says. It’s true. They defecate freely and roost on his wood fences, sagging the beams. This, particularly the fence loitering, could diminish the property value, which I’ll also inherit when my father passes away. Not to be crass.

They make matters personal. With a grin, a taunting wink, and a figurative feathered middle finger, they hone their knives on my mother’s now derelict handrail.

This turkey situation must be dealt with, my wife says, after I hang up on my father and phone her. Those aren’t her exact words.

What she says is, “Damnit, call animal control,” and I do.

Waiting, I repeatedly honk at the turkeys, but they scorn this, stare me down, and dance me back into the street. When the animal control van arrives, it’s now six, nearing dusk. Two men in blue windbreaker jackets, heedless of the turkeys, stride with rolling, muscular man-walk up to my car and ask why I’ve allowed the situation to grow so unruly?

Actually, they say, “You got turkeys.”

They say this as if it’s my fault. I deflect. My father, I grovel, is grieving, unable to fend off marauding turkeys.

From the rear of the van, the men produce a large, rectangular object draped in a black tarp. This they place on the lawn. The tarp is removed with a flourish, revealing a caged, sinewy cougar. The turkeys are unimpressed. I am very impressed, although I was expecting something more humane—a capture of some sort. The cage door is opened. I cover my eyes, though peeking through finger slits I discover the cougar is trained and demonstrates restraint. It turns out those knives were a bluff. Gobbles of “Retreat!” (presumably) erupt, and the turkeys scatter and flee far, far into the woods, abandoning their blades. Some are literally scared out of their jackets. Animal control whistles, holsters the attack cougar, and departs. They ignore my thanks with emasculating shrugs.

“What was all that?” My father says, stepping out on the porch with shotgun in hand. I assumed he’d been watching from the kitchen, but in fact he lost interest and turned on Yellowstone.

I recount the incident with pantomime and embellishment.

He looks disappointed, shakes his head, and, still harboring a grudge, mutters he’ll order Cracker Barrel take out. He discovers that turkey is only served on Sundays. For one terrible moment, I fear he’ll obliterate the phone with the shotgun, but he returns the former to its charger and props the latter against the wall by the fireplace. Defeated, he slumps off to his bedroom. 

When I shout after, asking about the knives and jackets, he’s grown hoarse. “Ah, leave’em.”

In tepid gratitude for my part in driving away the turkeys, my father agrees to relinquish the gun, swearing he bought it for self-defense. Compromise arrives when I deliver him a butterfly blade for his nightstand, which he twirls, grinning boyishly.

A week later, once it’s certain the turkeys are gone, he and I nail a jacket to an oak the deer seemed especially fond of. We shower the hung leather with curses and jets of tobacco juice (in his case), and now, after a nine month hesitation, silently scatter my mother’s ashes.

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TRAVIS FLATT — Travis enjoys theater and dogs. And theatrical dogs. He worked in regional theater until health complications pushed him toward community theater and writing. He lives with his wife and son in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Art by AUDRA KERR BROWN — Audra is a writer, photographer, and creator of The Flashtronauts! YouTube channel. Follow her on Twitter: @audrakerrbrown.