You Turkey

                                  

            Recently, in a fit of worldiness, I had the car washed.

            I’m not sure why I did this. It goes against my Puritan grain, and besides, it means rain within twenty-four hours. Still, I did it, and at home, I parked in the driveway, feeling satisfied. The black car looked gleaming and handsome against the autumnal landscape.

            The next morning, from inside the house, I heard a series of drumming thrums outside. I listened, puzzled: they were loud bellicose thuds, syncopated and irregular. I looked out the window: the polished black car was under attack.

            Our land is owned by a flock of six big wild turkeys who stalk back and forth across it at all hours. They move in lordly fashion, pausing to peck up tidbits from the lawn, the driveway, the rocks. The flock is all toms, and I think of them as rejects from a group of adults, rebellious adolescents who were kicked out. It’s easy to see why: they have poor social skills. They’re big and awkward and foolish-looking, with their gawky carriage, their slow, jerky walks. They are deeply disdainful of us, and when they see us they jerk their necks in outrage, trading exasperated comments. There they are again, they say to each other. What are they doing here?       

            That day, when I looked outside, the flock was spread out raggedly across the  hillside. They were walking that weird turkey walk – head low, body crouching and gliding, long neck jerking spasmodically.

            But one of the toms had stopped on the driveway: he’d seen an enemy. Passing alongside the polished black car, he’d suddenly spied another turkey walking right  beside him. When he stopped and turned, the other tom did too. When he raised his head and lengthened his neck in a threatening manner, the other tom did too. When he swelled himself up, puffing his feathers, weaving his head and leaning forward, the other tom did exactly the same thing. It was an outrage: a complete newcomer, challenging this big tom on his own territory. The tom darted his head out and struck hard. Bam! Bam-bam! Bam! Bam!

            The other tom did just the same, hitting our tom bang on his own beak. It was uncanny, how perfectly coordinated they were, how precisely one tom mimicked the other. It was like the famous scene in Duck Soup. The two toms seemed magically joined at the cerebral cortex.

            When I couldn’t stand it anymore I went down and opened the front door.

            “You idiot!”  I shouted. “That’s you! You’re attacking yourself!”

            The tom gave himself one more warning look and turned back to me.

            There she is again, he muttered. What’s she doing here? He hunched over crossly and began stalking up the hill in a threatening way, headed for the woods, talking under his breath.

            My car still has the dents from the fight, a little battered ring near the fuel cap. It will be awhile before I get it washed again.

 

                                                                                                                 January 2012