The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

“Polly is a scary bird,” he said. “My turkeys aren’t scary—they’re tame.”

“Travis,” I said, “you’ve got to try. And you’ve got to stop spending all your time with them. I’m not kidding.”

Two days later, Reggie went missing, apparently having wormed his bulky body through a tiny rent in the corner of the pen.

Oh, there was pure heck to pay, no doubt about it, but Travis stuck fast and stoutly denied that he’d engineered the escape. Unfortunately for my brother and Reggie both, the bird showed up at first light the following morning and waited outside the pen for his breakfast and morning grooming from his best friend. I didn’t see it, but Lamar reported that Travis burst into tears when he saw the bird and tried to shoo him into the brush, but Reggie was determined to return to the soft life. Alberto was assigned to reinforce the pen, which was then personally inspected by Father, followed by yet another talk with Travis behind closed doors.

As the holiday grew closer, Travis grew paler and quieter.

In desperation, I went to Harry, who disappointed me by saying only, “Look, we’ve all had to go through it.”

“Yes,” I said, “but none of you made pets out of your birds. It’s different for him, don’t you see?”

“It’s supposed to be your turn, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I talked Father out of it,” said Harry.

“You did? Why?”

“Because we both figured it would be too hard on you.”

“Well, that sure makes me laugh. Poor old Travis is about to fall apart, in case nobody’s noticed.”

“Okay.” Harry sighed. “What do you suggest?”

“I don’t have anything to suggest. That’s why I’m asking you to help.”

“Have you talked to Granddaddy about it?” he asked.

“I’m afraid to,” I said. “He believes in survival of the fittest. And it looks to me like those turkeys are only fit for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Despite admonishments from nearly every family member, Travis spent more time with the turkeys instead of less.

I went to the parlor one afternoon, where Mother was sewing, and I said, “I have a terrific idea. Why don’t we have a ham this year for Thanksgiving?”

“We have a ham at Christmas,” she responded, inspecting a frayed cuff.

“Yes, but we could have ham twice, couldn’t we? It wouldn’t kill us,” I said. Travis liked the shoats too, but fortunately, that year none of our present piglets had evidenced a singular enough personality to earn a name.

“We’re not going to spoil Thanksgiving dinner because Travis has become overly fond of a bird.” Mother was the court of last resort on household matters; there was no appeal, but I laid out my next suggestion anyway, feeble as it was.

“What about this?” I said to her. “We can trade our three turkeys for someone else’s. That way, at least he won’t have to eat his own bird.”

Mother sighed and looked at me. “He’s causing such a lot of trouble. All right, but they would have to be birds of the same size, not a pound less. Bring him to me, and I’ll tell him.”

I found Travis in the pen, sitting in the dust with Reggie and Lavinia and Tom Turkey.

“You need to come in,” I told him. “Mother wants to talk to you.”

“Is it about my birds?” he said, excited. “It’s about my birds, isn’t it? Is she going to let me keep them? She’s going to let me keep them, right?” He followed me to the house, chattering all the way.

Mother said to him, “Travis, we can’t not have Thanksgiving. But Callie has an idea, and I am willing to go along with it. We can trade your birds for someone else’s—that’s if we can find someone who’ll do it. But they have to be just as big as ours.”

“Trade? What do you mean?”

“Well, we would give someone our turkeys, and they would give us theirs.”

“But I would get to go visit them. Wouldn’t I?”

“No, dear, you wouldn’t,” she said.

“Then why would we do that?” he asked.

“It’s so that we could have someone else’s bird for Thanksgiving, not one of yours. So you don’t have to watch us eating Ronald.”

“Reggie,” he said, sniffling.

“Reggie, yes. And this way, you could have some turkey for Thanksgiving too. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“No,” he cried.

“That’s enough. Please wipe your nose and try to collect yourself.”

I wondered why he wasn’t relieved of turkey duty and given something else to do instead. I guess it’s because once you were assigned a chore you did it. We lived daily with the birth and death of every kind of animal, and we were expected to get used to it, or at least the boys were. Tender sensibilities didn’t enter into it; life was hard, but life for animals on a working farm was harder. And a whole lot shorter.