I went to Mississippi to kill a turkey, it being April and the time to kill turkeys. Once or twice a year I go to a sporting reserve in upstate New York and shoot pen-raised birds, pheasant and chucker mostly. These birds are set out in the morning, hidden within the brush like Easter eggs for bloodthirsty children. Hours later you walk through fields with a guide, a few springer spaniels up ahead sniffing and pissing and squirting a constant skid of diarrhea.
Soon the dogs freeze, tails stiff, paws lifted and limpβno matter the circumstances, a beautiful thing to behold. So I packed a duffel bag for the trip south, breaking down my. I surrounded these cotton-encased sausages with innocuous polo shirts and khaki pants, the condiments of a law-abiding citizen. Gretchen, my wife of two years, my second in six years, watched me as I did this.
You really noticed it in her eyes. They wanted to be nervous, constantly scanning details and questioning their particular relevance, but something in the pills held them from panic, kept them steady like hands restraining a small wild animal. You know what happens if I get busted with this thing in an airport? She weighed them with utmost concentration, her upper lip curled and tucked over her lower teeth, an expression I recognized from her tennis-playing days.
She used to have a very nasty spin serve, a left-handed slice, and on ad points she would force you into the fence. But this was when her killer instinct was aimed at others. She made a few juggling pantomimes, trying to figure out the basic mechanics between object and air and self. I went to the bureau and grabbed some other socks.
The plantation number is by the phone, just in case. You shoot turkeys on the ground, in the head, as they strut in front of a replica of a hen, the hot blood of desire shading their necks purple, drowning out all reason for the hope of a thrill. Sitting in the airport bar, my flight to Atlanta an hour from boarding, a brief vision of blow-up sex toys played in my head, of lonely men, young and old, seeing a group of helpless naked women lounging by the highway, their mouths finishing the perfect O of hello, their breasts better than saline implants, their vaginas shaved.
