The Day Thanksgiving Died

My neighbor and his partner adopted two little turkey chicks (turkeylings? Turkilettes?) some time ago. They'd planned to raise them as future main courses, naming one Thanksgiving and the other Christmas. This last weekend was to be the knell for both of them. The moment had come, a club was swung, a turkey hanged upside-down. A swift flick of a sharp blade and the recently deceased fowl lurched, like some zombie bird bent on redemption, on a refusal to go without a fight. The neck is cut, but overshot and along with it, the now guilt-ridden and distraught man's thumb. A phone call is made to the neighbor (me) with the not-so-cryptic question: "Where's the nearest hospital?"

When my partner and I went next door to help secure the scene (a hanging bird in the woods, with many chickens running around unsecured, would be too enticing for the coyotoes, bear and fierce racoons in the area), it was missing only police tape and chalk outlines. Besides the ominous sight of the bird (and the confused, but suspicious-looking still-living turkey named Christmas--because, even though they'd planned to kill both on the same day, Christmas still follows Thanksgiving), there was the bloody club, the bloody knife and various scattered gloves, some bloody, some not. Sensing a theme? There was also blood on the steps.

In the end, we offered to help secure the Meat of Christmas (NOT the title of an O Henry story), but alas, the thrill of the fight had left everyone involved. Karma draped over the town of Kingston like a thick, down blanket. Our neighbor is a changed man, humble and contemplative. A heart is renewed and while I'd offered so readily to come to his aid, to snap the handles of the pruning shears against the quivering waddle of Christmas, I know that I could no sooner do that to the bird than I could my own loyal dog. It was all I could do to stuff the bloated, feathery body into the safety of the Coleman cooler. I suppose that the sting of death is unexpected for many of us, even if it's in the context of supper. When I reach back into my memory, remembering the deer hanging from the rafters of my garage and the sharp hunting knife that my stepfather had given me to skin his kill, the dark eyes of the doe still resonate in my mind. I know it was dead, long before I began separating the skin from the muscle. But its eyes. Man, they were ruthless.