Here is another story in Library Lady’s Christmas Stories series.
TURKEYS TURNING THE TABLES
By W. D. Howells
Edited by Jane Mouttet
“Well, you see,” Papa began on Christmas morning when his little girl had snuggled in his lap into just the right shape for listening. It was the night after Thanksgiving, and you know how everybody feels the night after Thanksgiving.”
“Yes, but you needn’t begin that way, Papa,” said the little girl; “I’m not going to have any moral to it this time.”
“No, indeed! But it can be a true story, can’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said the little girl; “I like made-up ones.”
“Well, this is going to be true, anyway, and it’s no use talking.”
All the relations in the neighborhood had come to dinner and then returned to their own houses. Still, some of the relations had come from a distance, and these had to stay all night at the grandfather’s. But whether they went or stayed, they all told the grandmother that they did believe it was the best Thanksgiving dinner they had ever eaten. They had had cranberry sauce, and they’d had mashed potato, and they’d had mince-pie and pandowdy, and they’d had celery, and they’d had Hubbard squash, and they’d had tea and coffee both, and they’d had apple-dumpling with sauce, and they’d had hot biscuit and sweet pickle, and mangoes, and frosted cake, and nuts, and cauliflower—
“Don’t mix them all up so!” pleaded the little girl. “It’s perfectly confusing. I can’t hardly tell what they had now.”
“Well, they mixed them up just in the same way, and I suppose that’s one of the reasons why it happened.”
Whenever a child wanted to go back from dumpling and frosted cake to mashed potato and Hubbard squash—they were old-fashioned kind of people, and they had everything on the table at once because the grandmother and the aunties cooked it, and they couldn’t keep jumping up all the time to change the plates—and its mother said it shouldn’t, its grandmother said, Indeed it should, then, and helped it herself; and the child’s father would say, Well, he guessed he would go back, too, for a change; and the child’s mother would say, She should think he would be ashamed; and then they would get to going back, till everything was perfectly higgledy-piggledy.
“Oh, shouldn’t you like to have been there, Papa?” sighed the little girl.
“You mustn’t interrupt. Where was I?”
“Higgledy-piggledy.”
“Oh yes!”
Well, the most remarkable thing of all was the turkey that they had. I tell you, it was a gobbler nearly as big as a giraffe.
“Papa!”
It took the premium at the county fair. When it was dressed, it weighed fifteen pounds—well, maybe twenty—and it was so heavy that the grandmothers and the aunties couldn’t put it on the table, and they had to get one of the papas to do it. You should have heard the hurrahing when the children saw him coming in from the kitchen with it. It seemed they couldn’t hardly talk of anything but that turkey the whole dinner time.
The grandfather hated carving, so one of the papas did it. Whenever he gave anybody a piece, the grandfather would tell some new story about the turkey until pretty soon, the aunties said, “Now, Father, stop!” One said it made it seem like the gobbler was walking about on the table to hear so much about him, which took her appetite away. That made the papas ask the grandfather more and more about the turkey.
“Yes,” said the little girl thoughtfully; “I know what papas are.”
“Yes, they’re pretty much all alike.”
The mammas began to say they acted like many silly boys; what would the children think? But nothing could stop it, and all through the afternoon and evening, whenever the papas saw any of the aunties or mammas round, they would begin to ask the grandfather more particulars about the turkey. The grandfather was forgetful, and he told the same things right over. Well, and so it went on till it came bedtime. Then the mammas and aunties laughed and whispered together, saying they believed they should dream about that turkey. When the papas kissed the grandmother good night, they said, Well, they must have his mate for Christmas; and then they put their arms around the mammas and went out haw-hawing.
“I don’t think they behaved very dignified,” said the little girl.
“Well, you see, they were just funning and had got going, and it was Thanksgiving, anyway.”
Well, in about half an hour, everybody was fast asleep and dreaming—
“Is it going to be a dream?” asked the little girl with some reluctance.
“Didn’t I say it would be a true story?”
“Yes.”
“How can it be a dream, then?”
“You said everybody was fast asleep and dreaming.”
“Well, but I hadn’t got through. Everybody except one little girl.”
“Now, Papa!”
“What?”
“Don’t you say her name was the same as mine and her eyes the same color?”
“What an idea!”
This was a very good little girl, respectful to her papa, and didn’t suspect him of tricks but believed everything he said. And she was a very pretty little girl, and had red eyes, and blue cheeks, and straight hair, and a curly nose—
“Now, papa, if you get to cutting up—”
“Well, I won’t, then!”
Well, she was a delicate little girl, and whenever she over-ate or anything,
“Have bad dreams! Aha! I told you it was going to be a dream.”
“You wait till I get through.”
She was apt to lie awake, and some of her thoughts were pretty dismal. Well, that night, instead of thinking, tossing, turning, and counting a thousand, it seemed to this other little girl that she began seeing things as soon as she got warm in bed and before. And the first thing she saw was a large, bronze-colored—
“Turkey gobbler!”
“No, ma’am. Turkey gobbler’s ghost.”
“Foo!” said the little girl uneasily; “whoever heard of a turkey’s ghost, I should like to know?”
“Never mind, that,” said the Papa. “If it hadn’t been a ghost, could the moonlight have shone through it? No, indeed! The stuffing wouldn’t have let it. So you see, it must have been a ghost.”
It had a red pasteboard placard around its neck, with First Premium printed on it, so she knew it was the ghost of the very turkey they had had for dinner. It was perfectly awful when it put up its tail, dropped its wings, and strutted just as the grandfather said it used to do. It seemed to be in a large pasture, like that back of the house. The children had to cross it to get home, and they were all afraid of the turkey that kept gobbling at them and threatening them because they had eaten him up. At last, one of the boys—the other little girl’s brother—said he would run across and get his papa to come out and help them. The first thing she knew, the turkey was after him, gaining, gaining, gaining. All the grass was full of hen turkeys and turkey chicks, running after him, and gaining, gaining, gaining, and just as he was getting to the wall, he tripped and fell over a turkey pen, and all at once, she was in one of the aunties’ room,. The aunty was in bed, and the turkeys were walking up and down over her, stretching out their wings, and blaming her. Two of them carried a platter of chicken pie, and a large pumpkin jack-o’-lantern was hanging to the bedpost to light the room. It looked just like the other little girl’s brother in the face, but it was perfectly ridiculous.
Then the old gobbler, First Premium, clapped his wings and said, “Come on, chick-chickledren!” they all seemed to be in her room. She was standing in the middle of it in her nightgown and tied around with ribbons so she couldn’t move her hands or feet. The old gobbler, First Premium, said they would turn the tables now. She knew what he meant, for they had had that in the reader at school just before vacation, and the teacher had explained it. He made a long speech with his hat on and kept pointing at her with one of his wings while he told the other turkeys that her grandfather had done it, and now it was their turn. He said that human beings had been eating turkeys ever since the discovery of America, and it was time for the turkeys to begin paying them back if they were ever going to. He said she was pretty young, but she was as big as he was, and he had no doubt they would enjoy her.
The other little girl tried to tell him she was not to blame and had only taken a small piece.
“But it was right off the breast,” said the gobbler, and he shed tears, so the other little girl cried, too. She didn’t have much hope; they all seemed so spiteful, especially the little turkey chicks, but she told them she was very tender-hearted and never hurt anything. She tried to make them understand there was a big difference between eating people and eating turkeys.
“What difference, I should like to know?” says the old hen-turkey, pretty snappishly.
“People have got souls, and turkeys haven’t,” says the other little girl.
“I don’t see how that makes it any better,” says the old hen-turkey. “It doesn’t make it any better for the turkeys. If we haven’t got any souls, we can’t live after we’ve been eaten up, and you can.”
The other little girl was awfully frightened to have the hen turkey take that tack.
“I should think she would ‘a’ been,” said the little girl, and she cuddled snugger into Papa’s arms. “What could she say? Ugh! Go on.”
Well, she didn’t know what to say, that’s a fact. You see, she never thought of it in that light before. She could only say, “Well, people have a reason, anyway, and turkeys have only instinct, so there!”
“You’d better look out,” says the old hen-turkey. All the little turkey chicks got so mad they just hopped. The oldest little he-turkey, who was just beginning to be a gobbler, dropped his wings, spread his tail just like his father, and walked around the other little girl until it was perfectly frightful.
“I should think they would ‘a’ been ashamed.”
Perhaps old First Premium was a little because he stopped them. “My dear,” he says to the old hen-turkey and chick-chickledren, “you forget yourselves; you should have a little consideration. Perhaps you wouldn’t behave much better yourselves if you were just going to be eaten.”
And they all began to scream and to cry, “We’ve been eaten, and we’re nothing but turkey ghosts.”
“There, now, Papa,” says his little girl, sitting up straight to argue better, “I knew it wasn’t true all along. How could turkeys have ghosts if they don’t have souls? I should like to know?”
“Oh, easily,” said Papa.
“Tell how,” said his little girl.
“Now look here,” said Papa, “are you telling this story, or am I?”
“You are,” said his little girl, and she cuddled down again. “Go on.”
“Well, then, don’t you interrupt. Where was I? Oh yes.”
He couldn’t do anything with them; old First Premium couldn’t. They acted perfectly ridiculous, and one little brat of a spiteful little chick piped out, “I speak for a drumstick, ma!” and then they all began: “I want a wing, ma!” and “I’m going to have the wish-bone!” and “I shall have just as much stuffing as ever I please, shan’t I, ma?” till the other little girl was perfectly disgusted with them; she thought they oughtn’t to say it before her, anyway; but she had hardly thought this before they all screamed out, “They used to say it before us,” and then she didn’t know what to say, because she knew how people talked before animals.
“I don’t believe I ever did,” said the little girl. “Go on.”
Well, old First Premium tried to quiet them again, and when he couldn’t, he apologized to the other little girl so nicely that she began to like him. He said they didn’t mean any harm by it; they were just excited, and chickledren would be chickledren.
“Yes,” said the other little girl, “but I think you might take some older person. It’s a perfect shame to begin with a little girl.”
“Begin!” says old First Premium. “Do you think we’re just beginning? Why, when do you think it is?”
“The night after Thanksgiving.”
“What year?”
“1886.”
They all gave a perfect screech. “Why, it’s Christmas Eve, 1900, and every one of your friends has been eaten up long ago,” says old First Premium, and he began to cry over her. The old hen turkey and the little turkey chicks began wiping their eyes on their wings’ backs.
“I don’t think they were very neat,” said the little girl.
They were kind-hearted anyway and felt sorry for the other little girl. She began to think she had made some little impression on them when she noticed the old hen turkey beginning to untie her bonnet strings. The turkey chicks started to spread around her in a circle, with the points of their wings touching so she couldn’t get out. They commenced dancing and singing, and after a while, that little he-turkey said, “Who’s it?” the other little girl, who didn’t know why, said, “I’m it.” Old First Premium says, “Do you promise?” the other little girl says, “Yes, I promise.” She knew she was promising that people should never eat turkeys anymore if they would let her go. And the moon began to shine brighter and brighter through the turkeys, and pretty soon it was the sun, and then it was not the turkeys, but the window curtains—it was one of those old farm-houses where they don’t have blinds—and the other little girl—
“Woke up!” shouted the little girl. “There now, Papa Papa, what did I tell you? I knew it was a dream all along.”
“No, she didn’t,” said Papa, “and it wasn’t a dream.”
“What was it, then?”
“It was a—trance.”
The little girl turned around and knelt in Papa’s lap, taking him by the shoulders and giving him a good shake. That made him promise to be good, pretty quick.
“Very well, then,” says the little girl; “if it wasn’t a dream, you’ve got to prove it.”
“But how can I prove it?” said Papa.
“By going on with the story,” said his little girl, and she cuddled down again.
“Oh, well, that’s easy enough.”
As soon as it was light in the room, the other little girl could see that the place was full of people, crammed and jammed. They were excited and kept yelling, “Down with the traitor!” “Away with the renegade!” “Shame on the little sneak!” until it was worse than the turkeys, ten times.
She knew that they meant her, and she tried to explain that she just had to promise and that if they had been in her place, they would have promised, too. Of course, they could do as they pleased about keeping her word, but she was going to keep it, anyway, and never, never, never eat another piece of turkey either at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
“Very well, then,” says an old lady who looked like her grandmother and began to wear a crown and turn into Queen Victoria. ” What can we have?”
“Well,” the other little girl said, “you can have oyster soup.”
“What else?”
“And you can have cranberry sauce.”
“What else?”
“You can have mashed potatoes, Hubbard squash, celery, turnip, and cauliflower.”
“What else?”
“You can have mince pie, pandowdy, and plum pudding.”
“And not a thing on the list,” says the Queen, “doesn’t go with turkey! Now you see.”
Papa stopped.
“Go on,” said his little girl.
“There isn’t anymore.”
The little girl turned round, got up on her knees, took him by the shoulders, and shook him fearfully. “Now, then,” she said while Papa let his head wag after the shaking like a Chinese mandarin’s, and it was a good thing he did not let his tongue stick out. Now, will you go on? What did the people eat in place of turkey?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, you awful Papa! Well, then, what did the little girl eat?”
“She?” Papa freed himself and made his preparations to escape. “Why she—oh, she ate goose. Goose is tenderer than turkey, anyway, and more digestible; and there isn’t so much of it, and you can’t overeat yourself and have bad—”
“Dreams!” cried his little girl.
“Trances,” said Papa, and she began to chase him around the room.
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