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Buck grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania with well-manicured lawns and evergreen hedges and sidewalks untouched by children’s chalk. He did not grow up with turkeys. Rio Grande wild turkeys, to be exact.
He’d furiously googled them in the engine on the trip to South Pasadena and knew that the featherless blue head and big red waddle meant that this was a male that was currently terrorizing the clientele of Mike’s Eatery. And it was his and Eddie’s job to catch it.
As he cupped his hands to peek into the restaurant through the large bank of windows, he spied it strutting around the main room, lifting each foot high off the ground as if testing the air before placing it back down. Its neck looked like a stretched-out ‘S’ as it cautiously peered around, a king surveying his newly conquered territory.
With its puffed out feathers, it looked like every Plymouth Rock Thanksgiving turkey Buck had ever drawn in elementary school, but unlike the sweet gobbles of his elementary school drawings, his internet search had warned him of sharp spurs, a vicious beak and flapping wings. As terrified adults and children were led to safety by Chimney and Hen, Buck cradled the net gun in his hands. This aggressive tom wouldn’t be headed to a Thanksgiving table; it needed to be taken alive and removed to less crowded environs.
Eddie brushed up against his shoulder and planted his face next to him, peering into the room. “You ready for a turkey tussle?”
Was he? It was actually kinda big when you saw it up close. With a really ugly head. A life in the ‘burbs hadn’t prepared him for coming face to face with Turkey Lurkey. The turkey cocked its head as if looking at them through the windows and Buck stepped back.
The sun shone down from a cloudless sky warming his shoulders, and there was a light breeze on his face, and nothing went wrong on beautiful days, did it? He rolled his shoulders. Of course he could do this. …He was pretty sure. He rubbed the back of his head. “Uh, ready.” It wasn’t the most confident-sounding, so he straightened up. “I mean, let’s do this.”
Eddie slapped him on the back. “Alright.”
They slipped into the restaurant and surveyed the main room from the door. It was a large building with heavy oak flooring that matched the exposed wood beams and lofted ceiling. It was a beautiful place, but it was packed with wooden tables. It gave the tom a lot of aisles to roam down, and none of them were suitable for the wide open spaces needed for a net gun.
“Plan B?” Buck said.
Eddie gave a shrug. “Two minutes in and we’re already off to a roaring start.”
The owner, Mike, waved through a round window from behind the swinging kitchen doors. Passing by the front hostess stand, they slid their way along the left-hand wall till they reached the back of the restaurant. Mike swung open the metal doors and shooed them through with frantic motions. “Hurry. It’ll see you.”
Eddie looked bemused at all the subterfuge. “Not sure why there’s all the fuss. It weighs, what… twenty-five pounds? I could curl twice that thing with one arm.”
Mike looked more suited to chopping down trees than serving lemon ricotta pancakes so the fact he was calling in help for this particular turkey made Buck sweat. His frantic googling hadn’t covered “turkeys who make lumberjacks nervous.”
What he had researched: wild turkeys were supposed to be more scared of you than you were of them. What he was beginning to fear: this turkey didn’t read ridmycritters.com.
“Thank god you guys are here,” Mike said.
“Uh, sure,” Eddie said, still puzzled. ”We’ll shoo him out for you, okay?” He looked at the useless net gun in Buck’s hand. “Do you have a couple brooms?”
“You want brooms?” Mike smoothed his thick beard nervously. “I thought you’d be more advanced than that.”
“Sometimes the easiest ways are the best,” Eddie said, looking calm and in command. Buck deferred to Eddie. He looked like he knew what he was doing. Sure. It was just a bird. He’d seen bigger ones at the zoo with Christopher. Easy peasy.
Eddie passed a broom over to Buck. “Radio Cap to open the door and we can push the turkey towards the door. Then we’ll use the net gun outside.”
Buck set aside the net gun and relayed the request into his mic and soon the big doors swung open, letting a swath of outside light bathe the front of the restaurant. “Alright,” Eddie said, brandishing his broom. “Let’s get this bird out of here and get back to Pasta Tuesday.”
They were sweeping up the aisles, confident this would all be over with soon, when Eddie let out a squawk. The bird had spied him with its 270 degree vision and boldly raced towards him, lashing out with its razor-sharp spurs on its legs. Eddie beat a hasty line back through the swinging doors into the kitchen. Buck stood with his broom, now exposed in the middle of the room, with the bird between him and Eddie. It turned and spied him with its near superhuman vision and raced towards Buck on long, powerful legs.
Buck jumped on top of the nearest chair, but the ballsy bird actually pecked his leg with its pointy beak, so he leaped up onto the table. It tipped to the side, a bistro rocking horse, and he pinwheeled his arms, barely catching himself from sliding off.
“Holy cannoli,” Buck said, rubbing his leg. “That hurt.” He looked back at the kitchen door where Eddie peered out the right window and Mike peered out the left. “Sorry about the shoes,” he called, looking down at his footprints on the table.
“We’ll have to deep-clean after this anyway,” Mike said with a sigh.
“Any other bright ideas, Eddie?” Maybe it was a little unfair to dump it all on him, but they were coming off a humdinger of a domestic fight about the garbage can that morning and he wasn’t feeling too charitable right then, stranded as he was on top of a tippy restaurant table.
Eddie slipped out the swinging door into the server station with an open umbrella Mike must have rounded up for him. He used it to block off the end of the long cubby. It was better. This way they didn’t need to holler through the door.
“We should just need to maintain eye contact and make ourselves look big.” Eddie’s gaze tennis balled between him and Buck. “We are big. And I had eye contact. It didn’t care. Mal de ojo,” he said under his breath. The evil eye.
“I thought you were the big hunter man from Texas. Can’t you, like, go outside and call it? They’re always doing turkey calls on those infomercials.”
“It’s a marauding turkey, I don’t think it wants to talk right now,” Eddie said snarkily from behind the umbrella.
Okay, maybe Eddie was still a little grouchy about the fight that morning too. Living together, while filled with wondrous possibilities, was still new and Eddie hadn’t liked the way Buck kept pushing the garbage down in the can, complaining it made it into a heavy, bag-stretching bundle that was hard to take out to the street. But Buck thought Eddie was being a whiny baby. He bought leak-proof and puncture-resistant bags just for that reason. There was no reason to take it out half-full. It wasted plastic and was horrible for the environment.
Buck plopped down crossed legged on the table top in frustration, choosing to sit before he got tipped off by the wobbly table. He’d only been chasing this turkey for five minutes and he could tell this wasn’t going to be as easy as Chimney had sold it.
The turkey gobbled, circling around the table like a shark that had scented blood in the water. He reached down to his lower leg and, indeed, came back with blood on his fingers. Oh god. He curled his legs up. He was going to get eaten, his limbs picked off one by one, like the shipwrecked Navy men in WWII, floating in the ocean and plucked away from their friends in the dark of the night by feasting sharks. This was his own long, dark night of the soul.
“I think he likes you,” Eddie said, trying to catch his eye to distract him. “Maybe it knows your policy on garbage.”
The silly distraction worked. “It’s seagulls that like garbage. Unless this is a very weird-shaped seagull, that makes no sense.”
“I dunno… he seems kinda smitten.”
“He probably ate too much plastic at the landfill and it scrambled its brains,” Buck shot back. But he was settling down. It was just a bird. A possibly brains-addled-by-plastic bird, but a bird nonetheless. He sent out a quiet thank you to Eddie who returned a comforting smile.
Buck had to laugh. He was sitting on a table stalked by a turkey in a perfectly quaint eatery that probably shoved its garbage down too.
“Hey, Mike,” he called out. “Do you smash your trash?”
Mike blinked, torn away from his turkey nightmare by the sheer absurdity of the question. “Of course, it saves room in the dumpster. Means less money,” he said, his voice muffled from behind his safe metal door. “And the less trips to the dumpster, the less time the employees spend away from their station.”
Buck shot a look to Eddie. Ha.
“The next time you use a dumpster and call the kitchen a “station”, I’ll consider it,” Eddie said. “Until then, no go.”
“That’s it, you’re cut off,” Buck huffed.
Eddie stood up straight. “Woah, let’s not get hasty.”
Buck preened inwardly. He still had it. They may have morphed into an old married couple ever since they moved into Eddie’s together, but the sex was still amazing. Take that, garbage fight. A crowd of people stood outside the long bank of windows shading their eyes to stare in at the Big Turkey Hunt of ‘26 so Buck decided to let Eddie off the hook. He could make up for his smacktalk later. In many delicious ways.
“What we need are our turnouts,” Buck said, rubbing his leg. “He couldn’t slice or peck through those.”
“And they’re back at the station.”
Buck made a note to himself for future reference. Turkeys = turnouts. He’d never be unprepared for battle again.
As he tried to think of his next move, the turkey walked away on its own… over to a tall mirror. He remembered his frantic googling from earlier. “Shit, Eddie. We can’t let him see himself in the mirror.”
Eddie blinked. “Is it a… particularly ugly turkey?”
“No, it’ll think it’s a rival and it will fight itself." Already the bird was strutting in front of the mirror, puffing up his feathers, tilting its head and circling its rival in the mirror. As rattled as the bird made him, the need to protect it surged in Buck’s chest. He couldn’t let the bird hurt itself. Not if he could save it.
Eddie called into Mike. “Mike, do you have a tablecloth?”
Big Mike’s eyes got wide. “Don’t let it kill itself on my mirror. The Yelp reviews will sink me.” He raced off to find a tablecloth. He stuck his hand out the swinging door and tossed the white cloth at Eddie before yanking his hand back to safety.
Buck scoffed. The picture the three of them made…
Eddie shook out the tablecloth. “You come from the right, I’ll come from the left.”
Buck nodded. On the count of three they both raced towards the turkey, Eddie thrust out one end of the tablecloth to Buck, and they each tossed an end over the mirror. Which left them and the bird suddenly looking at each other.
“This way,” Buck called, already on the move. He darted for a six-top and leaped up on top of the table, bounding from floor to table top in a single leap. Eddie slowed down to pull out a chair and almost got pecked for his slowness.
In a familiar spot, Buck took a seat on the table again. Eddie joined him, sitting crossed legged across from him.
“Suddenly me pushing down the garbage doesn’t look like such a big deal, does it?” Buck said.
“Nope,” Eddie said. “Still irritating.”
Buck huffed and shuffled his way around so his back was to Eddie. “Fine, you can deal with the bird yourself.”
Eddie leaned in behind him, his voice a low whisper into his ear. “Baby, come on.”
Buck loved that whisper, and in the middle of a turkey tussle it was a pleasant surprise but— “Wait,” he said. “...Surprise!”
“What?” Eddie said, leaning back with wide eyes.
Buck shuffled back around. “We’ll surprise the bird. Instead of a slow methodical sweep, let’s just jump down and race at it. We’ll scare it out the door.”
Eddie looked doubtful. “I don’t think—”
But Buck was already moving. No time to think, no time to dwell on spurs and beaks and wings, only time to leap into the abyss. He sprang off the table in the direction of the bird and raced towards it, his hands out in front of him like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And the bird ran away from him. It was working!
Then the bird, instead of racing to the door, veered off to the right and flew up in the air, landing on a shelf that was filled with glasses. The beating of its wings sent glasses flying to the ground and shattering on the wooden floor in a swath of destruction. The flapping bird sent Buck racing back to the table, shocked by how quickly it had all gone amazingly wrong. He joined Eddie back in a crossed-legged position while the bird fluttered away from the wreckage, soon settling back into its slow, methodical, foot-in-the-air strut.
Mike watched with great concern from behind the swinging doors.
“Um, sorry?” Buck called out to him.
Mike sighed.
“Do you believe me now?” Eddie said. “It’s sometimes worth listening to me.”
“Like the garbage,” he said with a groan.
“LIke the garbage,” Eddie said.
“I told you, I get the leak-proof and tear-resistant bags. You just have to trust me.” The oft-repeated refrain took his mind off the rampaging turkey and settled his nerves.
“Well, fine. I don’t want to have to wrestle the bag out after you’ve smashed the garbage down into a Tetris trap. It’s like it’s vacuum sealed in there.”
“Uh, guys?” Mike called out. “The turkey?”
Buck and Eddie both waved. Twenty-five pounds was a good cooking weight, Buck thought. And Turkey Lurkey was currently taking center stage in a luxurious dinner in his head—herb-roasted and crammed with stuffing. It would go lovely with candied sweet potatoes.
As he dreamed of sides, Eddie got back to the task at hand. “We obviously can’t send this thing outside. There’s too many people out there. Who knows what it would do. And it has done everything under its power to avoid the sun.”
“Do you think it’s a vampire turkey?”
“Yes, Buck, that’s exactly it. It’s a vampire turkey.”
A new fear unlocked in Buck’s head.
With a decisive look, Eddie called back out. “MIke? Can you get us another tablecloth and an empty garbage can? With a lid?”
Buck looked at him. “For what?”
“Now you’ll have to trust me.”
“Fine.”
“Just like that? Fine?”
“I trust you, Eddie. With both my garbage and my life.” Buck ran his hand down quickly down Eddie’s shin.
“Aww. That would almost be sweet if it wasn’t so weird.”
And like that Buck was smitten all over again. When it came down to it, they made a good team and a little dispute over housekeeping wasn’t going to wreck their mojo. And in fact had probably saved him from degenerating into a turkey-inspired spiral.
Mike inched open the swinging doors to roll out a 55-gallon trash can on its side and tossed another folded-up table cloth on top of a nearby table before scurrying back behind the reassuring metal.
“We are taking the fight to the turkey,” Eddie declared.
Buck eyed the implements. “We run him into a corner, toss the tablecloth on him, and shove him in the garbage can?”
“Bingo,” Eddie said with a finger gun. Yes, sometimes the simplest ways were the best.
People outside, alerted to something exciting finally happening, crowded back to the bank of windows. But they stayed quiet as Chimney had instructed them. They remained a silent line of eyes ready to witness their shining victory or stunning defeat. He noticed phones going up and thought dear god, please let this work.
Buck had his doubts but like he’d said to Eddie, he trusted him. He really did think they had staying power and he wasn’t going to let a smooshed-down garbage bag, or a blood-crazed turkey, get in their way.
“Let’s do it,” Eddie said.
On the count of three, they leaped off the table and raced towards the bird with their hands waving over their heads, terrorizing it back towards the garbage can. Eddie grabbed the tablecloth and tried to unfurl it and in a disastrous turn of events tripped over an errant chair leg. “Oh shit,” he said as he went down in a slow-motion sprawl, dropping the cloth on the ground.
Buck pulled up short at Eddie’s exclamation. His insides shriveled seeing him down on the floor, a fallen warrior in battle. His gaze flew between the puddled cloth and the cantankerous bird. Eddie was crawling to his feet but the bird was quickly regaining its composure, scanning him with its beady eyes. He had to save Eddie. It was now or never.
Buck snagged the tablecloth off the ground, unfurled it, and threw it over the bird in one smooth, awe-inspiring swirl. With a small grunt, he shoved the bird into the garbage can and set it upright. He slammed the lid down. “And that’s how it’s done, boys and girls.”
His body soared. He’d done it. He looked back on the initial trip down here, frantically googling turkeys, clueless about the inner workings of the feathered fowl, and now he was the master of one. A grin split his face, and he could feel the stretch in his cheeks.
A round of applause and chorus of woohoos erupted from outside the windows.
“Thanks, babe,” Eddie said dusting off his hands and giving him a proud smile. “I knew you had it in you.”
Warmth bloomed in his stomach and Buck felt an internal dial tick to the right, from sexy living partners to full-on, bam, right-in-the-solar-plexus love.
Eddie grabbed one of the handles of the garbage can. “Let’s get this guy out of here.”
Buoyed by success and his newfound emotions, Buck grabbed the other handle and strutted down the aisle. He puffed out his chest. They had earned that applause.
As they walked out of the eatery, Buck saw a big pickup truck pull up filled with special compartments in the bed. A decal proclaimed it from the Pasadena Humane Wildlife Rescue. A jovial pot-bellied man with a nametag that said Rick walked up with a healthy smile. “I hear you’ve got a friend for us today.”
His sore bird-pecked leg twinged. “A friend. Sure,” Buck said. “He’s right here.”
Eddie happily handed the tom over and Rick shooed the bird out of the trash can into a compartment.
Now that the bird was going, Buck felt a small loss, like he was losing a worthy rival. He stood straight and saluted the turkey with respect. Eddie walked by. “You’re such a dork.”
“He’s a fallen adversary,” Buck said, his face solemn. Then he dropped his hand. “But we should probably get my wounds cleaned. Just in case.”
Eddie tsked and led him back to the rescue ambulance. Hands ducked out of the crowd of onlookers to pat them on the back and one eager young man with bright eyes behind oversized glasses held up his phone and declared, “I’m calling the video The Takedown of the Tyrannical Turkey. I might get at least fifty views for this!”
Hen met them at the back. “It’s the Bouncing Buckaroo, defender of diners, trickster of turkeys, foiler of fowls everywhere.”
“Ha ha, how long did it take you to think that up?”
“About as long as you’ve been chasing that turkey. And it was marvelous,” she proclaimed. “10/10. Would watch again. Now jump up and I’ll check out that leg.”
After she cleaned up a few pecks, he was finally let free. As Hen left to check in with Chimney, Eddie did a quick scout to make sure no one else was nearby, then grabbed a quick kiss. “I do love having you live with me,” he said. “10/10. Would live together again.” He grew serious. “I love living with you. You make my day better.”
It was like a Shakespeare sonnet coming from Eddie. “I love living with you too.” He took a deep breath. “And I love you.”
Eddie stiffened, then stared at him. “Really?”
Buck nodded. “I think I have for years, to be honest.” Tommy knew. Maddie knew. Hell, the astronauts on the International Space Station probably knew before he did. But looking back, he couldn’t deny it. He had been smiling at people who congratulated him on his lovely family for eight years. Yeah, it was so huge, you could see it from space, like a category 5 hurricane.
A small smile crept onto Eddie’s face, hesitant but joyous. “Yeah. Me too.”
Buck grinned. They weren’t quite the three words he was hoping to hear but his pulse quickened at the sentiment.
Eddie grabbed his hand. “And as the turkey would tell you, we obviously work together well. So… we compromise on the garbage.”
Buck nodded. Eddie had almost told him he loved him. He was feeling magnanimous. “Okay, I vow to shove down the garbage a little less—the landfills will forgive me. Can you live with that?”
“Okay, but if you do forget and shove it down too much, you have to take the garbage out to the can.”
Was that all it took? “Easy deal.” They really were killing this living together thing.
Eddie slid his hand down the back of Buck’s hair and leaned in for a kiss on his birthmark. “God, I love you.”
And there it was. Every nerve ending tingled. A dopamine rush zinged through his brain. “We are going to be together forever,” he breathed out.
Eddie smiled and put an arm around his shoulders. “Now, about the way you load the dishwasher…”
~