The Turkeys We Walked Home

Three Hundred

When the last bird was in, Pax swung the gate shut and hooked the chain, and then, without being asked, he wrapped it around twice and hooked it again.

Then we counted.

You cannot count three hundred loose turkeys in a pasture. They move. So we did what I always do on moving days. We filled the feeders and let them crowd in, and I walked down the line counting by fives, and Ellery walked the other side counting by fives, and then we compared.

Ellery got two hundred ninety eight. I got three hundred and two. “Again,” I said. We did it again. This time we both got three hundred. I looked at my watch. It was eleven fifty two in the morning.

I sat down on an overturned bucket by the gate, and Junie came and leaned on me, and for a minute nobody said anything. The birds were muttering at the feeders. The sun was higher now, and my coat was warm on my shoulders.

“Every one,” Ellery said quietly.

“Every one,” I said.

Lunch

I made grilled cheese and tomato soup from a can, and we ate it at the kitchen table with our boots still on, which I never allow.

Ellery did not say much. She ate half her sandwich and pushed the plate away.

After the little ones went outside to look at the birds again, she stayed. She was turning her spoon over and over on the table.

“Are you going to call Dad?” she asked.

“Not today.”

“Are you going to call the police?”

“No.”

She looked up at me, and she had her father’s way of looking, steady and a little stubborn. “Why not? She did it on purpose. She knew what would happen. I told her.”

I took a while before I answered. I wanted to get it right.

“Because you live in her house half the week,” I said. “Because you sleep there, and eat there, and do your homework at her table. And if I make this into a fight with police and lawyers, you are the one who has to sit in the middle of it. You and Pax and Junie. Not me. Not her. You.”

“But she should get in trouble.”

“Maybe she will,” I said. “But not from me making you pick a side. I would rather walk turkeys for three hours than do that to you.”

Ellery looked at me for a long time. Then she got up and came around the table and put her arms around my neck from behind, the way she used to when she was small, and held on.

“I’m still mad,” she said into my hair.

“You’re allowed,” I said. “So am I.”

The Afternoon

I spent the afternoon going over the birds. A few had scraped feet from the stubble. Otherwise a half mile walk on a cool day is nothing to a turkey.

About two o’clock, the phone rang. It was a woman named Signe from church, who had heard from her husband, who had heard from Burton at the elevator, that the Solheim turkeys had been out on the road that morning.

“Are they all right?” she asked. “Are the kids all right?”

“Everybody’s home,” I told her. “Every bird.”

“Well, thank the Lord,” she said. “I’m bringing you a pan of bars.”