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By Root 2342 0

on the other side. He had to stop at the hedge and catch his breath and he could see the turkey on the other side through the leaves, lying on its neck, its whole body moving up and down with the panting. He could see the tip of its tongue going up and down in its opened bill. If he could stick his arm through, he might could get it while it was still too tired to move. He pushed up closer to the hedge and eased his hand through and then gripped it quickly around the turkey’s tail. There was no movement from the other side. Maybe the turkey had dropped dead. He put his face close to the leaves to look through. He pushed the twigs aside with one hand but they would not stay. He let go the turkey and pulled his other hand through to hold them. Through the hole he had made, he saw the bird wobbling off drunkenly. He ran back to where the hedge began and got on the other side. He’d get it yet. It needn’t think it was so smart, he muttered.

It zigged across the middle of the field and toward the woods again. It couldn’t go into the woods! He’d never get it! He dashed behind it, keeping his eyes sharp on it until suddenly something hit his chest and knocked the breath black out of him. He fell back on the ground and forgot the turkey for the cutting in his chest. He lay there for a while with things rocking on either side of him. Finally he sat up. He was facing the tree he had run into. He rubbed his hands over his face and arms and the long scratches began to sting. He would have taken it in slung over his shoulder and they would have jumped up and yelled, “Good Lord look at Ruller! Ruller! Where did you get that wild turkey?” and his father would have said, “Man! That’s a bird if I ever saw one!” He kicked a stone away from his foot. He’d never see the turkey now. He wondered why he had seen it in the first place if he wasn’t going to be able to get it.

It was like somebody had played a dirty trick on him.

All that running for nothing. He sat there looking sullenly at his white ankles sticking out of his trouser legs and into his shoes. “Nuts,” he muttered. He turned over on his stomach and let his cheek rest right on the ground, dirty or not. He had torn his shirt and scratched his arms and got a knot on his forehead-he could feel it rising just a little, it was going to be a big one all right-all for nothing. The ground was cool to his face, but the grit bruised it and he had to turn over.

Oh hell, he thought.

“Oh hell,” he said cautiously.

Then in a minute he said just, “Hell.”

Then he said it like Hane said it, pulling the e-ull out and trying to get the look in his eye that Hane got. Once Hane said, “God!” and his mother stomped after him and said, “I don’t want to hear you say that again. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, Thy God, in vain. Do you hear me?” and he guessed that shut Hane up. Hal He guessed she dressed him off that time.

“God,” he said.

He looked studiedly at the ground, making circles in the dust with his finger. “God!” he repeated.

“God dammit,” he said softly. He could feel his face getting hot and his chest thumping all of a sudden inside. ”God dammit to hell,” he said almost inaudibly. He looked over his shoulder but no one was there.

“God dammit to hell, good Lord from Jerusalem,” he said. His uncle said “Good Lord from Jerusalem.”

“Good Father, good God, sweep the chickens out the yard,” he said and began to giggle. His face was very red. He sat up and looked at his white ankles sticking out of his pants legs into his shoes. They looked like they didn’t belong to him. He gripped a hand around each ankle and bent his knees up and rested his chin on a knee. “Our Father Who art in heaven, shoot ‘em six and roll ‘em seven,” he said, giggling again. Boy, she’d smack his head in if she could hear him. God dammit, she’d smack his goddam head in. He rolled over in a fit of laughter. God dammit, she’d dress him off and wring his goddam neck like a goddam chicken. The laughing cut his side and he tried to hold it in, but every time he thought of his goddam neck, he shook again. He lay back