Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [16]
“Sorry,” said Elizabeth. She couldn’t give him more than a glance because she had to keep her eyes on the turkey. Without looking around she reached toward a bush behind her, snapped off a switch, and started up the bank. “Shoo, now, shoo!” she said.
“Out walking your turkey, I see,” said the boy.
“I’m getting up nerve to kill him.”
“I see. Are you Elizabeth? My name’s Timothy Emerson. I knew we were going to have a turkey dinner, but Mother never mentioned it was still on foot.”
“It may be forever on foot,” Elizabeth said. “This whole business is harder than it looks.”
“Can I help?”
But he wore a plaid sports coat and wool slacks, much too good for killing turkeys in, and even the effort of climbing the bank after her had turned his face pink. “Just stay where you are, keep him off the road,” Elizabeth told him. “That’s all I need.”
“I could run over him with my car if you like.”
She smiled, but her attention was still on the turkey. She gave a flick of her switch and the turkey moved away, slowly now, still examining the ground. “What you need is a leash,” Timothy said.
“I can get him to the chopping block easily enough, but then what? I just hate to tell your mother I’m not equal to this.”
“Let him run off,” Timothy said. “Buy one at the supermarket. Mother’ll never know.”
Elizabeth bent one ankle beneath her and sank down to the ground, still holding the switch. The turkey moved a few steps further off. “Is it you that the unicycle in the basement belongs to?” she said.
“Me? Oh, no, that’s Peter’s. I was never one for exercise. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you used it, though.”
“I was just hoping to see it used,” said Elizabeth. “I’m not one for exercise either.”
“Really? I thought you would be.”
“How come?”
“I expected to see you out playing football with the little neighborhood boys,” Timothy said.
“What would I want to do that for?”
“Well, you are the handyman, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” said Elizabeth, “but that’s got nothing to do with football. I wonder if other people have the same idea? I’ve been getting the strangest invitations lately. Tennis, bicycling, nature walks—if there’s one thing I don’t like it’s nature, standing around admiring nature. I come home feeling empty-headed.”
“Why go, then? Look, your turkey is heading toward the road again.”
The turkey was a good twenty feet off, but Elizabeth merely glanced at it and then settled herself more comfortably on the ground. “I always go where I’m asked,” she said. “It’s a challenge: never turn down an invitation. Now, does Peter really know how to ride that unicycle? I mean, bump downstairs on it? Shoot basketballs from it, like they do in the circus?”
“Your turkey!”
Elizabeth looked around. The turkey was picking his way down the shallowest part of the bank, talking to himself deep in his throat. “What about him?” she asked.
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll get away?”
“Oh, I thought I was going to give up on him and go buy one from the supermarket.”
Timothy stared at her. “Well, I only said—you didn’t seem—I never heard you make up your mind about it,” he said. So that Elizabeth, for the first time giving him her full attention, wondered why he wore such a jaunty feathered hat set at such a careless angle. He sounded like his mother, who was forever tying herself into knots over plans and judgments and decisions. But his eyes must have been his father’s—narrow blue slits whose downward slant gave him a puzzled look—and she liked his hair, which stuck out in licked-looking yellow spikes beneath the hat. She smiled at him, ignoring the turkey.
“Are you really going to let him just walk off?” he said.
“Sure,” said Elizabeth, and did—rose and brushed off her dungarees, stood on the edge of the bank to watch the turkey cross the road at an angle and start up someone’s back yard. Finally he was only a jerking coppery dot among the trees. “Now I have to go to the grocery store,” she said. “Anything you need?”
“Maybe I could take you there.”
“Oh no, I like to drive. You could get