James McKew

The work truck smelled of greasy fish tacos and spray paint. With one hand on the wheel, elbow out the window, I leaned over to Amos. “Wanna shoot some turkeys this weekend?”

Amos lifted his face from the blue screen in his lap. His eyes glowed red and spun like those little drink umbrellas in a tiki bar rum buzzer.

There’s nothing better than watching a friend’s brain turn to Jello over turkey hunting.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, watching as his lips form silent words, figuring out how he’d sell another ‘boy’s only’ weekend to his wife.

“Nine years and we still haven’t got one,” I pressed. It was true, our hunting had been in a dry spell for a decade, but that was about to change. “Besides, if I don’t get out soon, I’ll have to turn in my Man Card,” I told him.

“Man Card?” he asked.

“Yeah, Honey Bee made me watch so many romantic comedies last month, my voice is a full octave higher than at Christmas time.”

The next day, Amos and I took my truck out to our favorite spot. Between us sat Lil’ Samson, a six-year-old carbon copy of Amos. The boy’s mother sent him along as a bargaining chip in the hunt negotiation. Lil’ Samson looked up at me and asked, “You my daddy’s best friend?”

Such a cute kid. Innocent, unblemished by the world.

I rubbed his fair hair. “More like your daddy’s bondsman, parole officer, and the voice of The All Mighty when he’s about to fall into an adulterous relationship.”

Lil’ Samson frowned at that and stopped talking.

At Mile Marker 26, we pulled onto a washboard two-track and went another eight miles to a sagebrush basin next to a muddy river. Turkey tracks were up and down the wet banks.  We squatted in the brush and baked under the hot sun, waiting for the turkeys to walk by, but none came. Lil’ Samson itched in the uncomfortable heat and finally broke with, “I got to go potty-potty.”

A tom turkey gobbled at us.

“Hush now,” Amos whispered.

“No, I got to go potty-potty, now!”

A group of excited turkeys called back to us, and the white head of an old tom glimmered for a brief second above the brush.

Natural turkey caller? Could we get that lucky? I wondered. If the kid was a freak of nature, then we were about to hit the jackpot.

Tingles ran up my back and made my hair stand on end. “Lil’ Samson,” I said quietly, “Tell me again what you got to do?”

“Potty potty!”

Right on cue, the turkeys gobbled. Lil’ Samson sounded like a hot hen. The toms milled around pecking the ground just far enough out of range that we couldn’t shoot them.

“Say it again,” I urged, but Lil’ Samson now refused to speak, and we went back to camp empty-handed.

“We suck at hunting,” I said, flopping down in a chair. “I don’t know why we keep doing this.”

“We need the turkeys to hold still a minute,” Amos explained. “If we could get them in a corral for just two seconds. Maybe we could get them inside the trailer. It’s like a pen.”

“I smell burning electrical wiring,” I said.

“That’s my brain, figurin’ out how to make this happen.”

“Corralling turkeys is against the law,” I explained.

“No, it ain’t. You show me where it’s wrong to invite turkeys into your trailer? Heck, it’s so simple, I can’t believe we hadn’t thought of this before. Any luck, and we’ll get our own show on the hunting channel after this! We’ll use Lil’ Samson and his potty-potty sounds.” Turning to the sulking kid, he said, “What say, son? You want to be part of a controversial and possibly illegal attempt to lure turkeys into our travel trailer?”

“Momma says the only wild turkey in our house is what you hide behind the flour in the pantry.”

“I’m about to prove your momma wrong.”

Before dawn, the game warden drove by in a cloud of dust. Seconds later, Amos scrambled under the trailer and hid behind the tires where he could reach up and close the door behind the turkeys.

Lil Samson got on the bed. His eyes were bright with a desire that went way back to the days of woolly mammoth barbecues.

I nodded at him and said, “When you hear me whisper ‘chickity-chickity,’ climb out the back window and run for cover. Got it?”

That was the last thing I remember before my brain blocked out the horror that was about to unfold. Afterwards, Amos explained it this way:

Lil’ Samson called ‘potty-potty.’

The toms lined up and marched into the trailer looking for the hot hen.

I stepped in behind them with a shotgun at the ready.

Amos swung the door closed behind me.

Lil’ Samson disappeared out the window to safety.

I woke later, face down outside the trailer, my clothes shredded, and what skin I still had on my face and hands was raked with scratches and bite marks.

Amos pulled me into a chair.

“That was some serious crapola, man!” he said with a hard slap to my back.

Feathers to puff out of my mouth.

“That trailer was rocking around and bouncing off the ground like a demon-possessed volleyball. Your screams for mercy sounded like a freight train comin’ off the tracks!”

Amos wrapped my wounds until I looked like Frosty the Snowman on spring vacation. Later that night, I wandered into the bush and watered the cactus plants. I could hear voices somewhere in the darkness. Months later, thumbing through the cable channels, I came across Monster Hunters whose expert witnesses explained the blurry, night-vision footage they shot on that spring night was actually a rare albino Sasquatch raiding campers in Wahoo County, Colorado.