Twelve Turkeys for Mom’s Widows

Saturday Morning

Our grandson Cash was staying with us that weekend. He is ten, a skinny boy with a cowlick in front that no amount of water will flatten, and he goes everywhere I go if he can.

I told him at breakfast that we were going to carry turkeys to some old ladies, and he asked how many.

I said twelve. He said, “I can carry twelve,” and went to put his shoes on.

We picked Mom up at nine. It was one of those bright, clear November mornings we get in the upstate, cold enough that you could see your breath but with the sun already warm on the windshield.

Mom came out her front door in a floral dress and the mustard cardigan she has worn every fall since I was in high school.

She had her pocketbook over her arm and her white hair set, and she was ready.

I helped her up into the cab of the pickup. Cash climbed in the back seat and buckled himself in without being told, which I noted, because that does not always happen.

I had planned to tell Mom on the way, gently.

Instead I drove the whole six minutes to the grocery store without saying a word, and pulled into a space near the cart corral, and turned off the engine.

“Mama,” I said. “Wayne didn’t buy the turkeys this year. He kept the money. His hours got cut and he used it on his bills.”

She did not say anything right away. She looked out the windshield at the store, at a young man pushing a long line of buggies across the lot, and she folded her hands on top of her pocketbook.

“Did he tell you that himself?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am. Yesterday.”

She nodded slowly. I watched her face for tears, and there were none. There was something else, something tired and older than I had seen in her in a long time, and then it went away.

“Well,” she said. “Let’s go get them.”