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“Yes, obviously,” Alex says. He glances at Cornbread and cringes. “Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into yoursoul.Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.”
He hears a rustling over the phone, and he pictures Henry in his heather-gray pajama shirt, rolling over in bed and maybe switching on a lamp. “Let’s hear the cursed gobble, then.”
“Okay, brace yourself,” he says, and he switches to speaker and gravely holds out the phone.
Nothing. Ten long seconds of nothing.
“Truly harrowing,” Henry’s voice says tinnily over the speaker.
“It—okay, this is not representative,” Alex says hotly. “They’ve been gobbling all fucking night, I swear.”
“Sure they were,” Henry says, mock-gently.
“No, hang on,” Alex says. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna get one to gobble.”
He hops off the bed and edges up to Cornbread’s cage, feeling very much like he is taking his life into his own hands and also very much like he has a point to prove, which is an intersection at which he finds himself often.
“Um,” he says. “How do you get a turkey to gobble?”
“Try gobbling,” Henry says, “and see if he gobbles back.”
Alex blinks. “Are you serious?”
“We hunt loads of wild turkeys in the spring,” Henry says sagely. “The trick is to get into the mind of the turkey.”
“How the hell do I do that?”
“So,” Henry instructs. “Do as I say. You have to get quite close to the turkey, like, physically.”
Carefully, still cradling the phone close, Alex leans toward the wire bars. “Okay.”
“Make eye contact with the turkey. Do you have it?”
Alex follows Henry’s instructions in his ear, planting his feet and bending his knees so he’s at Cornbread’s eye level,a chill running down his spine when his own eyes lock on the beady, black little murder eyes. “Yeah.”
“Right, now hold it,” Henry says. “Connect with the turkey, earn the turkey’s trust… befriend the turkey…”
“Okay…”
“Buy a summer home in Majorca with the turkey…”
“Oh, Ifuckinghate you!” Alex shouts as Henry laughs at his own idiotic prank, and his indignant flailing startles a loud gobble out of Cornbread, which in turn startles a very unmanly scream out of Alex. “Goddammit!Did you hear that?”
“Sorry, what?” Henry says. “I’ve been stricken deaf.”
“You’re such adick,” Alex says. “Have you ever evenbeenturkey hunting?”
“Alex, you can’t even hunt them in Britain.”
Alex returns to his bed and face-plants into a pillow. “I hope Cornbread does kill me.”
“No, all right, I did hear it, and it was… proper frightening,” Henry says. “So, I understand. Where’s June for all this?”
“She’s having some kind of girls’ night with Nora, and when I texted them for backup, they sent back,” he reads out in a monotone, “‘hahahahahahahaha good luck with that,’ and then a turkey emoji and a poop emoji.”
“That’s fair,” Henry says. Alex can picture him nodding solemnly. “So what are you going to do now? Are you going to stay up all night with them?”
“I don’t know! I guess! I don’t know what else to do!”
