The Turkey Hunter

14 Matt O’Donnell Do not provoke the man with the gun on the edge of your land, I know is an easily remembered rule for living. And there I hollered from the doorstep, clodded down the cold dirt driveway in oversized rubber boots and boxer shorts. While up into the yard charged a large man in camouflage, with his blatant gun over his shoulder, beard flaming from his chin like a burning bush in a hot wind rushing toward me and I’m not afraid to say I was scared as hell and might well have backpedaled like a tiny Larry Bird in the scopes of those red eyes as he fired Fuck you and You want a fucking problem? at my gaping bed head. Well, you got a fucking problem now. The cloud of his voice billowed over me with the violent conclusion that I hadn’t handled this in the best way. I recalled with perfect practical hindsight, “nothing good will ever grow from feuds,” and wondered what might be reaped from this imprudence. In the poem I’d been reading, two men carried a grudge to wretched ends, innards steamed in piles on the ground, an appalling fire consumed everything. Oh, god, would it be my dog heaped on the front lawn? Or merely a messy mass of guinea fowl? I could take the end of the hens, might even drop it all right there. Or, maybe it’s me, lit up in neighborly effigy from the hot barrel of a shotgun this morning, or on Thursday while taking out the trash, Alesia waking to my foolish guts dribbled across the kitchen floor. The Turkey Hunter Things shifted into higher gear despite me. Or on account of me. Why not be honest? —Sydney Lea, “The Feud” 15 I say, I don’t want any problems with anyone, and might have continued with good luck or happy hunting, headed back up to the house, behind the glare of the window, where I might have stayed in the first place with my mug, merely contemplating the sun. But, instead, How about playing guns somewhere other than my driveway? pitied myself such a waste of irony, felt it like a trickle down my leg. He lets off again, You want a problem? Step into the road and I’ll give you one. I do. I cross into the road to answer his call, not now unlike a strutting tom, think back to my last brawl, fourth grade, that I’d done well jumping Matt Bolduc from behind off a tall school desk, wished Sister Alma was here for this ambush, too, my punishment looming greater this time than missed recess to scrawl chalk lines on the board, “I will fight the Devil.” Despite a Super Dad T-shirt, I don’t strike an imposing figure in my underwear, which is something like what I’m sure my neighbor was thinking. That and, “I have a gun.” “Good fences make good neighbors,” of course, but remembering so much goddamned poetry wasn’t helping me here, like a handful of good-sized rocks would, or longer arms. Look, I’m not against hunting. I’m just uncomfortable with people shouldering shotguns in my yard, you see? I stood my ground. You fucking liberals move in here— I didn’t see his left hook coming and, back on my heels, dumbly wondered when he’d read our bumper stickers, what pithy slogans had to do with this turkey hunt, wondered if it was good or bad that this armed man hated me for deeper, unspoken offenses and not just the morning’s trespass. His warning widened my stance, and in my righteous muck boots, I wished for the innocence of toilet paper in the trees, a flaming bag of shit against the front door, the mailbox deposted from the shotgun seat of a pickup to score our philosophical differences— Jesus Christ. I only have three days for these birds and every time I turn around, someone’s shouting bloody murder at me. Matt O’Donnell 16 Ecotone: reimagining place 16 His face dropped its beard so that it looked almost soft, and...