The day Aunt Iris called Daddy and told him to come home, snow lay thick and deep throughout Ellenton.  The weather was still deteriorating, and by dark, the snow that had fallen wispy and free all day long came down in wet clumps, dense as sludge icing the second after touching the ground.  It fell wet and sticky and fast making us all look rather abominable as we traversed yards made remarkably unfamiliar in the dark by the sparkling wintry coat.  Palmer Conroy, Lucky Luther, Billy Parker and Tommy Patterson converged along the alley that ran beside my house, and there we built a fire to warm frozen hands and feet as we battled the frigid night taking breaks from downhill runs that began in front of my house and ended in Palmer Conroy's driveway.

Palmer’s sled could carry six down the hill at incredible speed.  The only problem was we could not steer the thing at all.  Our slim, gangly bodies could not coax the sled to do anything but fly in a straight line, and so we grabbed hold of each other, the cold air whipping tears from our eyes blurring our world as we raced out of control.  On each daring ride, at the last possible moment, somebody would yell, “Jump!” and all would bail out rolling off the sled for lack of nerve to stay on.  Our bodies tumbled and slid through snow and slush as the unmanned rocket careened across Third Street and up Palmer’s driveway before crashing into the backend of the Conroy's still new 1965 Pontiac Catalina.

Each time the sled drove head long into the rear of the car, we rolled ourselves up and out of the snow to stand erect, bodies raw and chapped watching the empty collision take place.  It was as if we were still waiting for Palmer's father to come blasting out of the house in undershirt and boxer shorts as he’d so often done to laugh at us.  But RC Conroy had been dead for almost three years, and so the sled sat immobile in the quiet emptiness, lodged beneath the Catalina until one of us gave in and walked the short distance across the street to retrieve it.

The night my daddy slipped out of the storm, the winter sky broke open momentarily to produce a shower of moonlight catching our attention and drawing our gaze upward.  We had studied space in school, knew our planets and could pick out the redness of Mars in the evening sky and Venus in the morning.  We knew what NASA stood for, and could imagine the power of a Saturn V rocket blasting an Apollo capsule into the vast emptiness of space.  Through that brief patch of clear night, we strained to see astronauts streak across the sky, but our imaginations could not stay aloft for very long.  The brilliant flames of the fire in front of us kept pulling them back down to earth.  When the sky disappeared behind the storm, snow resumed and a figure appeared out beyond the fire trudging his way along the street curb.  It was Daddy coming home.

    We watched as he slowly plodded toward us, hands pushing hard against thighs with every step in an effort to wade through nearly a footof snow.  He made his way slipping and sliding across Robbins Street and then pushed the final distance to arrive upright, beads of sweat freezing quickly to his unshaven face.  A blanket of snow laid evenly over his hat and well-worn hunting jacket, and though he did not say, I knew he had been outside for a long time, that the walk had brought him a great distance

home.  He came close to the fire, and there, within the circle, sat down on a concrete block to warm exposed hands and thaw plastic loafers that were cracked in the seams, packed full with snow. 

He sipped Jim Beam from a pocket flask, his body steaming heavily like he was on fire.  He whistled for us to come around, waved us in close to the flames with his flask.  From where I stood, I could see his hands were clawed up, his knuckles scraped until the soft red exposed meat glistened with the wetness of damp blood.  Though his eyes were no more than bruised slits, they still could lock a boy down, and he pulled each of us in from the cold without question to talk about things my daddy said were important. 

When we were all accounted for, he spread the snow to uncover raw ground and pluck up a short, wide blade of grass, delicately positioning it between his two thumbs.  He lifted his torn hands to his face like he was ready to pray, but instead, blew across the paper-thin edge to create a warbling, gobble-like sound of a turkey. 

The awkward noise pierced the winter night, echoing off houses down the alleyway filling the air with the sudden sound of anxious mutts pulling hard on chains and clawing up fences.  As each warbling echo died and the

darkness outside the range of our fire began to settle, Daddy would lift his hands to his lips and break the silence wide open again.  Three times he did this.  Three times he brought lights on in bedrooms and robe-wrapped bodies out onto front porches. 

We all laughed out loud, as drunk on the evening as my daddy was on his Jim Beam.  Tommy Patterson rolled around on the ground and started making monkey sounds.  Billy Parker stuffed his mouth full with raw snow and then blew it out into the fire, the hiss soft and subtle in the burning coals.  Lucky Luther laughed so hard at Billy spitting snow that he peed in his pants and had to go home early.  Palmer Conroy asked my daddy for a cigarette, and that stopped us all.  We watched as he thought about it and then gave the boy a Camel.  Palmer held the non-filtered cigarette as if it were a natural extension of his hand.  He lit the end with a burning twig and then inhaled the aromatic smoke before letting it seep out of his mouth and nose. 

Tommy Patterson sat up and stopped acting like a monkey.  "Goddamn Palmer, I didn't know you smoked."

Billy Parker said, "My daddy says smoking will stunt your growth."

I said, "Give me one of those," and Tommy Patterson said goddamn again.

Daddy took a long swig rolling the liquor cheek to cheek before spitting into the fire.  The sudden blast of alcohol re-ignited the flames and sent sparks floating through leafless trees.  The burst of flame projected Daddy’s shadow onto our house and he became bigger than life.   

He stood up holding the flask out before him.  "All you boys got mouths dirtier than dog shit, so just shut up cause there's something you ought to know about what I just did."  He pointed out into the dark alley toward a field that lay deep in snow.  "I seen the animal when I was your age right out there by the Parker house.  It wasn't there yet, Billy Parker's house I mean.  There was only a field of weeds most of the time.  We played a lot of ball out there.  I hit the hell out of a baseball on that field.  I could hit it all the way to Purty Spears's back porch.  Hell I took out her kitchen window more than once.  Got my hide tanned for that, I'll damn guarantee you.  But I could hit it and so I did.  I suffered the consequences for a talent I just had to use.  I was about your age when I first saw the turkey.  I was eleven or twelve years old.  Biggest bird I ever laid eyes on."

Palmer Conroy had moved away when Daddy ignited the flames and now sat in deep shadows cast like fingers from the trees rooted on the edge of the fire pit.  The ember from his cigarette pulsed each time he drew his lungs full of smoke, and I could see Daddy was watching him out the corner of his eye.  Palmer flicked ashes, then spit into the snow.  "RC said that turkey story was just bull.  He said this ain't no Wild Kingdom.  RC said that there ain't no wild turkey roaming around here."

Palmer had always called his parents by their first names, something I could never have done and then lived to tell about it.  And even though RC was dead, Palmer talked about him all the time like he was still alive and walking around.  I looked at him and said, "How do you know about the turkey?" 

Tommy Patterson said, "Everybody knows about the turkey, Raybert.  Where you been all your life?" 

Everyone at the fire laughed for a moment and tossed loose snow at me, the cold flakes stinging where they stuck to chapped skin.  I looked over at Daddy embarrassed and he winked at me like it was nothing, like he had been there forever and had not just shown up for the first time in two weeks.  I wanted to spit at him for not telling me about the turkey sooner than in this public offering.  I wanted to say

I could smoke a cigarette, that I had just smoked one from a pack Palmer stole from Nichols Market before we came to build the fire.  I wanted to scream that he could go back to wherever it was he had come from, that he shouldn’t be there anyway.  But of course, I didn't dare. 

Palmer made nothing out of any of this.  He smoked his cigarette and looked at Daddy, still challenging, making him work harder than I imagine he really wanted to.  Daddy paused only long enough to lift his flask to his lips and then turn his gaze toward the boy.  "Palmer, God rest your daddy's ghost, but he was just wrong about all that.  I seen the turkey and right after I seen it, the next day, Purty Spears was dead on the ground out in back of her house.  She had tried to mow her grass in the middle of the afternoon in August heat and her heart give out.  Now, Perty Spears wasn't no crazy old coot.  She knew better than to do a fool thing like that.  They say she saw the turkey and went insane, tried to use the lawnmower to get the old bird.  Instead, she had a heart attack and was already cold when they found her."  Daddy swigged at his flask and then looked directly at me.  "And you know what?"
 

I shook my head. 

He looked beyond the flames into the dark sky, his narrowed eyes roaming, reaching out past our wet bodies. 

"When old man Vance came to get Perty, the turkey was only fifteen feet away from her.  It had flown off as best turkeys can fly when the hearse drove up into the yard.  Old man Vance nearly had a heart attack himself when he saw what the bird had done.  Perty Spears' eyes had been pecked out.  Yes sir, pecked out clean.  At the funeral, they kept the casket closed.  Wasn't nobody gonna look at her without eyes.” 

Billy Parker rose up on his knees at that.  “My Uncle Charlie died last year and his eyes were closed when they buried him.  Daddy said they sew ‘em shut, so that old woman’s could’ve been gone, and there ain’t nobody could have told the difference.  Not you, me, not nobody.”  Billy looked around at all of us like he was proud of what he just said before he settled his eyes back down on Daddy.

“You ever seen a soul without eyes, boy?”  Daddy looked right at Billy waiting until he was sure he was scared shitless.  The boy shook his head, his mouth a gaping hole like he just had the wind knocked out of him.  Daddy said, “Well, I have.  I seen it more than once.  And you can’t fix something like that.  It’s against nature.  Your skin’s got nowhere to go except into the holes like in that Psycho movie at the drive in, and ain’t nobody gonna look at something like that.  It’s a natural reflex to close your eyes and not look.  Understand what I’m telling you?”  Billy Parker shook

his head again, but I’m pretty sure he had never seen Psycho nor been to the drive-in over in Hickory Point.  After that he just slid back from the fire almost like he was trying to hide from the rest of the story.  

Daddy widened his gaze to take us all back in, kept going like Billy hadn’t interrupted nothing.  “That was the first time I ever seen the turkey out there with Perty Spears.  Seen it since and whenever it shows up, there's hell to pay.  Someone dies or there's disaster, tornadoes or floods, or Finch Creek tops its banks and takes the life of a small child.  I've seen the bird at car wrecks where deaths occurred or outside homes where people died in their sleep or by fire or gas line explosions.” 

We all flinched when Daddy shoved his hand up in the air like a hitchhiker thumbing a ride. “Shooting rockets into that belly full of stars can bring it out too.  They shouldn’t be doing that.  Brings bad things out in people.  That turkey’s been around here tonight.  It’s a bad sign.  It's an omen."  Daddy lifted the flask to his mouth and swallowed hard until the liquor was all gone, the last drops licked from the spout by his thick tongue.  He returned the blade of grass to his lips, but this time, the results were weak and tedious, the warble broken and full of drunkenness.  The neighborhood dogs remained silent and this seemed to depress my daddy.  His eyes cut across the fire and caught me looking, waiting for what he would do next, his swollen lips fighting back when he tried to smile.  Daddy said, “How’s your momma doing?”

     I said, “Okay. I guess.”

He said, “Is she feeling better?”

“Aunt Iris said she ain’t chasing her tail no more.”

Daddy laughed at that, spit into the fire again. 

It was like right then no one else was sitting there but him and me, or else he just didn’t care if others knew more about our dirty laundry than the clothes he picked up and delivered to the dry cleaning plant each day.  “Well Iris does have a way with words now, don’t she.”

I said, “Yes sir, she does, I guess.” 

Momma had been sick since I could remember, on and off sick that would sneak up on her and like Aunt Iris said, make her chase her tail like a crazy dog.  She tried to explain it that way after she had told Daddy to come home.  She said, “Your mother’s like a dog that chases its tail.  When she’s quiet and not paying any attention, she doesn’t even know the tail is there, but when she’s all excited, not thinking straight, she spins around and around going nowhere.  When she’s spinning like that, there’s not much we can do.  She’s steady for now.  I just hope that brother of mine will come home and do what he needs to do.”

Daddy was looking at me from across the fire again.  I tried to hold his eyes, grab on to what little certainty I could find in his presence there.  I said, “Are you home to stay?”

He lowered his gaze for a moment like he was sorry I had to ask such a thing, and then was drawn skyward, the moon breaking free of the storm once again.  The spray of light took our breath away and distracted Daddy from ever answering my question.  He looked around at each boy like he had never drifted away from the turkey story he had been telling, and in one last attempt to scare us, stood up and kicked snow into the fire pit just as the moon went Poof! and disappeared behind heavy clouds pouring darkness back down on top of us. 

Without the flames, Palmer was no longer in shadow nor separated.  He stood up and tossed his cigarette into the smoldering pit.  "Bullshit."  Then he spit and stomped off toward the sled.

Daddy looked after Palmer.  "That mouth don't make you a man.  I'll box your ears, boy."

Palmer said, "You drunk, that's all.  It’s why you give me that cigarette.  It's why you said all those things.  You won’t remember any of it tomorrow."  He looked over to where

we all stood frozen in shock at what he had just said, then he bent down and pushed off, the sled quickly gaining speed, racing out of control toward Third.

Had Daddy really wanted to chase him down, he never had a chance.  Jim Beam was working him over real good and I am not sure he even knew exactly where his legs were by the time Palmer made the intersection.  He staggered then, almost fell before righting himself in time to see the boy stay on the sled as it flew across the street.  When Palmer slid up into the drive, the sudden raw concrete stopped the sled and sent the boy careening up under the Catalina.

Daddy said, "That boy’s got RC rolling over in his grave."

Billy said, "Maybe he saw the turkey and got scared."

"He ain't seen nothing.  He ain't seen nothing yet."  Then Daddy staggered off into the shrubs along side our house to take a pee before disappearing inside to wake momma and make sure Iris was right about her tail.

The turkey story got to Billy, and I had to walk him up the alley to his house.  He kept listening into the darkness for that warble, looking for tracks in the snow.  He asked me if my daddy really had played baseball in his yard and wondered out loud what it might look like to see a dead person without eyes.  I had no answers for him. 

The night had spun me around and I was dizzy with Palmer Conroy and my Daddy¾my life as I knew it at that precise moment. 

I had no idea if Momma was well or if my daddy would be home when I woke up.  I could not tell Billy Parker for sure if there really was a wild turkey out there in the dark night, but part of me was thinking at the time, if the creature Daddy spoke about was real, then it had crawled somewhere beneath my house waiting for a moment yet defined to rise out and bring despair and destruction unlike I had ever seen.

Later that night, I stood by the window in my room and watched Palmer Conroy’s house.  I waited until the light in his window disappeared before I turned out my own.  Then I stayed put, staring out into the storm.  I never considered the fact Daddy was telling lies.  He had not even grown up in Ellenton.  He did not arrive until after the war and from that moment on, his existence in our lives was precarious at best.  It was late February, 1968 and while snow swept across the yards and streets of Ellenton, my thoughts remained outside, a treacherous storm spinning the world dark and still, more uncertain than ever.