Turkey Stories

The Backbone

by Travis Oltmann

Her robe is cinched tight and she is bleary eyed in the morning. Coffee, dark, hot, intermittent sips. Turkey out of the sink. Cellophane wrapping cut with a knife. She takes the bird and puts it in the roasting pan. It is slippery and awkward and the task is not made easier by her arthritic hands.

                The turkey gets moved out of the way and she fetches cookware from the cupboard and heats it on the stove. Bacon in the pan. While it’s sizzling she takes day old bread and chops it into workable cubes. Olive oil, sprinkle with parsley, bake, four hundred degrees. The bacon wakes her husband and he comes down to inspect in blue jeans and a striped maroon shirt he’s had since there was color in his hair.

                They kiss and smile. Another day of year forty-one.

                Her husband goes outside to see if there’s anything to fix or anything he can improve. There’s not, but he’ll find something. He’s the type of man renovators will curse centuries later.

                Bread is done. She pulls it from the oven. Chopped celery and onions in with the bacon. Her coffee is cold and she heats it in the microwave because she doesn’t have time to make a fresh pot. The turkey needs to go in. Guests are coming. 

                Her son comes down and eats a piece of bacon. Her other son comes down and eats a piece of bacon. Over the years she’s learned to fry a bit more than she needs.

                Bread in with the bacon as well as thyme, sage, and chicken stock. When it’s mixed properly she puts it in a bowl to cool and massages the turkey with butter. Upstairs to change.

                Upon returning her son asks if she needs a hand and she says she would love it if he could help stuff the turkey. She shows him how to clump the breading together and force it inside. He doesn’t like the feeling of the breading or the turkey’s nether regions so he sits on the couch and watches football with his brother.

                The turkey is in, she checks her watch and she’s right on schedule. Her coffee sits on the rotating table in the microwave and it has gotten cold again. She re-heats the cup and puts a pot on the stove to parboil a sack of potatoes. It simmers while she peels the skins with a paring knife. There’s a gadget in the drawer that would speed up the process but it hurts in her grip. Foreign, too. Not how she learned from her mother.

                Her husband comes in and asks the boys for hand lifting a sixty pound light fixture. The brothers complain and grumble as they’re taken away from football for twenty minutes.

                Dishes clutter the countertop now and she washes and dries them in the sink so she has space to work. The afternoon games are on and the announcers call plays from the living room where her sons drift in and out of consciousness.

                Extended family shows up, friends too. Her husband adds another section to the table and she’s working furiously in the kitchen to have everything ready. Butter and cream in the potatoes, mash. Salt and pepper. Turkey out, one last baste. Cranberry sauce on the stove, remove from the heat so it doesn’t melt the skin from anyone’s mouth.

                Although thanksgiving is relatively new in her lineage the basic recipes and preparations have traveled through many hands and many years to sit on an Albertan table. She was taught on the frigid, windswept plains of small town Saskatchewan. Her mother the same. Tracing it back further will lead to a long boat ride and optimistic peasants.

                Finally, after nine hours, bowls and platters and carafes cover more visible space than the red table cloth. Laughter and cutlery scraping plates fills the room.

                Everyone remarks how wonderful the food is. Afterwards with glasses of wine in beer in hand they retreat to the living room and catch up on each other’s lives.

                She listens to the stories of the people she’s known for her entire life or their entire life. Familiar and family bear such a close resemblance. She smiles to herself.

                Late at night her tipsy husband silently arranges the ingredients to a sandwich. It is dark and he decides to leave the lights off. What a racket her coffee cup makes when he pushes a plate of turkey into the microwave.

Ask Your Mom, by Lori Hanhel now up at the Danforth Review

Check out this poignant, funny and honest short story at the link below*

http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/09/fiction-46-lori-hahnel.html

Congrats, Lori!

*Warning for some strong language

Call For Submissions: Turkeys and More

It's Autumn. The leaves are falling, the air is crisp, the pumpkins are getting ready to take Cinderella to the ball, and many of us are looking forward to that Thanksgiving gutsplosion known as the turkey dinner.

Send us your turkey stories, or Thanksgiving stories, or any kind of writing that can be loosely attenuated to the turkey/Thanksgiving theme.

Email your submission to awcswriterscorner@gmail.com and the AWCS blog turkey will happily share it with our readers.

Retreat, by Jamal Ali

This wilderness of tranquility

at Goldeye Lake,

is so soothing,

my mind is at ease.

Evergreens tickle the sky.

The placid lake reflects my mood of complete calm.

Life takes a slow pace here.

This aura of prevailing silence,

is so scintillating

that it revels my psyche.

Healing surroundings,

the fresh air rejuvenates.

I rejoice in the freedom of space and nature.

The innocent chatter of the squirrels,

so full of life,

scampers from place to place

in my midst.

In the early dawn,

an owl summons its mate,

a cry of longing echoing against the foothills.

The log cabins,

are full of splendid coziness

in the dark nights.

Short-Short Story Contest Finalist

WHAT WAS NOW

By Phyllis Heltay

Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock…then the damnable rodent continued to try to skitter a way into my works, chased up my tower by Desdemona’s cat. The turn of the last century makers were not metal fools and so built me impervious to the elements and any creatures that might consider this a safe perching nest. My iron face has retained its original subtle patina, despite what it routinely has to witness that is less than dignified, I must say.

Horrors! The aforementioned Desdemona is ignoring her marauding tabby just as she ignores the sign at the entrance to this public rose garden – NO PETS PLEASE. There you have it. The “please” at the end makes it seem like a kindly suggestion rather than a rule. While she sits on that bench, for exactly forty five minutes each and every Tuesday through Thursday, her freedom crazed animal will pounce on mice, beetles, and wind-blown leaves. Then, when its metabolism is charged to the maximum, it will use the base of the Queen Elizabeth Pink as a litter box. Shameful. Desdemona will ignore the desecration, only looking up once at my face to check that she hasn’t become so lost in her fiction that she’s out-stayed her welcome. If only my minute and hour hands could form a scowl to show my annoyance. However, I was built for the inevitable, not judgement. One minute follows the next, regardless of the endless prayers to the contrary etched on the hopeful upturned faces I see on a regular basis. They come to the garden to slow down time, and even stop it.

A few days ago a young man entered the park on a wave of anxiety, his telephone contraption glued to his ear. I’m surprised that anyone can look at me and remember how to read the hour since the style is to have the numbers flashed without a hint of irony or grace. I’ve seen expectant lovers hold their breath between the ticks of my filigree minute hand, parsing out the seconds until their flushed partners arrive, not a moment too soon.

The young man circled me twice, muttering obscenities and then, I am almost sure, I heard the sound of a gut retching pain that emanated from his core as he threw his device to the ground. He pressed his forehead to my cool metal and stood silent and still. When he felt the vibration of the hour being struck he raised his head, and I saw it in his eyes, that prayer – a sad expression of overwhelming regret and loss, and an intense need for my hands to move counter clock wise, giving him the moment back when irreparably choices changed the course of his life. I can only look down and offer another second, minute, and hour to set things right. Can he feel the vast forgiving ocean of time in those infinitesimal spaces between then, and now?

Short-Short Story Contest Finalist

What Took You So Long?

By Heidi Grogan

Cursed knots! I quickly re-thread and stitch the nylon pocket into the lining of my Speedo bathing suit. Shove the “made-for-water” fake boob into the pocket, check that it’s secure. I don’t want to see my rubber breast floating on the surface of the pool, kids using it for a game of pig in the middle.  Two years since the mastectomy, and I’m still not ready. What if people see it when I bend over? I won’t bend over.  

At the pool, Eli and his son Simon are waiting. “What took you so long?” Simon asks. 

We hit the water slide and Eli scoots down first with Simon safe between his legs.  I sit at the top and feel the water gushing, piling up around my back, moving around my hips and sneaking under my thighs. I push off, lay back and pick up speed down the dark tubes that drop off with no warning. Run the banked curves like a luger, water sloshing over the sides as I slide high left, then high right around the corners. Feel the seams of the plastic slide catch hold of my bathing suit running them over, faster and faster, click, click, click…. At the bottom I plug my nose and propel into deep water, sink low and kick up to the side where Eli and Simon laugh, ready to go again.

After each run I cup the false breast when I think no one is looking. At the end of the day it’s twisted sideways in its pocket, but my sewing job held up.

In the change room I use the key tied onto my right shoulder strap to get into my locker—I want my shampoo. The plan is to use another quarter to lock it again and free the key. Only, I don’t have a quarter.  Damn. I’m stuck! I have to get the key off the strap. Only, I can’t.  I have to get out of the bathing suit. I pull the left strap off my shoulder and wiggle my elbow through. Oh no!  My flat mastectomy no-nipple skin is exposed! The nylon pocket flops against my ribcage. For everyone to see.  And they are seeing. My face flames. I stand higher on my tiptoes, pretend to search for something on the top shelf. My calves cramp, I need to stand down. When I do, my bathing suit pulls up my crotch like a hammock yanked up between two trees, trying to toss its occupant. Fuck! I’m high centred! Back to tip toes. Two girls make horrified faces at each other and exchange a silent “OMG.” I snarl out “thanks” but the tears flow. A mother with a toddler in her arms comes over.

            “Can I help?”

            “Need a quarter.” It’s all I can choke out.  She opens her purse. This will be done soon, this will be over soon. It is. She unlocks me.

I mutter gratitude and make for the bathroom, close the door. And I bawl.

Short-Short Story Contest Finalist

The Tree

By Margaret Graw

         Skye, it’s what the mother called the child who ran toward the ruby blossom that swayed in the breeze; the plump leaves folded back perfectly to reveal the ginger flower.  The woman’s white blonde hair matched the girls; their smiles mirror reflections.  A giggle, a finger pointing, a skip and a hop, and the little girl reached out, touched a petal.  

         I’d stood on that land, in that field, for many seasons, since I was small like the blue field flowers that now tickle my feet.  I was alone at first, and grew openly, spread my branches up and out after each rainfall.  It was a free place.  The low flowers and grasses spread away from my roots, reaching toward the far edges.   As I grew taller I could see they reached out past the curve of land.  My leaves grew larger, too.  Deep green, flat and shiny, as big as a man’s hand.  Yes I see the men who come to plant and pick in the far field.  No trees grow there.  Only plants that grow in straight rows, plucked out if they stray.

         I noticed a new plant one day, growing at my feet.  She had my attention from the first shoot.  Her leaves were narrow, plump, and reached high.  Twice a year she produced the most amazing blossom, bright red and dangerous.  She draws in yellow finches, hummingbirds, birds whose names I don’t know.   I don’t blame the birds for leaving my branches to visit her.  I sweep my branches low to protect her when the monsoon comes.  I will my leaves to scatter around her and protect her fragile roots.  My roots on the sunset side, those closest to her, draw more water - feed her and encourage her.  We alone in that field stand high.  I am hers.  She is mine.

The days are easy and warm, but the nights are dark and lonely.  When the wind blows, my branches hum her to sleep.  On quiet nights I point out the stars to her and the face of the moon.  In the distance the ocean shushes against the shore bringing news of other lands, other trees, other flowers.  I think she hears this too.

         The woman had worked in the field that morning; the girl had played under a sunshade.  Until that morning I’d only seen men in the field.  The woman walked slowly, her hands on her hips.  She let the straw sunhat slip back and hang against her back.  The girl ran toward us, so small, so quick, like a cat.   

         The sun was straight overhead and the flower in a gentle tilt from the heat.  The child touched a single petal with one small finger and turned back to her mother.  Then so quickly two small hands wound around the neck of the blossom, snapped it, and pulled.  Skye swung the blossom in the air and ran a circle around me.  I stood still, but I saw the blood.