One Of The Boys

There was precious little to occupy the minds and hands of the boys of Cipher in the 1940s. Most of the state and national interest was being poured into the war effort, and all the able-bodied men were gone. The women left behind had to scrabble a living out of the dusty earth, which left them little time to be watchdogs or disciplinarians. The tradition for the youth was to run free and to engage in wonder. During wartime this tradition was carried to its extreme, and the wonder had more to do with mischief than any other experiential education.

Garven solidified his positive social standing as rapidly as he could. The trouble came because Lyle Durche loved Indians—the Hollywood variety, not the local reservation types—with their war paint and feathers, especially their feathers. He knew the location of a virtually unlimited source of feathers—McNaughton’s turkey farm. Clarence McNaughton was an elderly holdout against the failure of the turkey ranches that had once dotted the countryside around Cipher. He still had a few dozen of the stupid birds. His turkeys were the old brown-gray color instead of the newly favored white variety, and the feathers looked every bit like eagle feathers to the boys.

Clarence was not much inclined to change. He had survived decades of problems with turkeys and had a balanced love-hate relationship with them. Once he lost almost every bird when a chance sudden rainstorm descended on Cipher. The turkeys all looked up curiously at the rain, opened their mouths for some inexplicable reason, and drowned. He hated them for being stupid.

But Clarence also loved them. For all their animal dumbness and despite the trouble they caused him, they were his sole source of livelihood. He protected them as he would his own children, better, in fact, as it turned out, according to his sons. He had become a virtual recluse, never daring to leave for fear men would rustle his whole flock, the women of the town would make off with a dinner or two, or the kids—the pesky rapscallious kids—would come and torment them.

To their credit, it was not Lyle, Garven, Tadd, or Teddy’s desire to torment Clarence McNaughton’s turkeys. All they wanted was a few tail feathers.

The four boys slipped out of the copse of quaking aspens at the edge of the cornfields that bordered the turkey enclosure. They crawled under the barbed wire fence and frog walked in among the domesticated birds. Their presence caused a minor stir among the flock, and when a tail feather was extracted from a tom’s backside, the noisy bird gobbled loudly and trotted around for a while before settling back down. Lyle figured that Clarence would presume that the birds were just naturally restless.

Garven was the first to recognize that Lyle had figured wrong. He saw the sheriff’s car moving slowly down the dirt road between Packer’s and McNaughton’s corn fields.

“Cops!” he whispered loudly to Lyle. “Let’s get out of here.”

Lyle looked up and just then saw the old turkey rancher making his way towards the enclosure containing the boys and the birds in a most resolute way. He could tell the man was in earnest by the over and under twelve gauge he was carrying.

“Teddy! Tadd! Get your butts outta here! Cops! And Clarence has his shotgun!”

The three older boys had had some little experience with farmers’ shot guns loaded with rock salt and bacon rind, and it took no convincing to get them all moving. The four youths made a beeline for the weak point they had made in the barbed wire fence.

Clarence yelled, “Stop, you little varmints! Stop or I’ll shoot you. I swear I will. I’ll teach you to molest my turkeys!”

Stopping--as an option--was never even entertained as a thought let alone as a subject for discussion. As soon as Clarence hollered, the boys took off as hard as they could go, all attempts at further concealment abandoned to the practical need to put distance between themselves and the dreaded rock salt and bacon rind. One shot blasted out with the noise of a field artillery piece, but with no indication that it had come anywhere near any of the fleeing boys.

Sheriff Rantel yelled from somewhere in the corn fields, “Stop! Stop in the name of the law!”

The sheriff used his favorite movie line as often as he could.

Garven was the first one under the fence, the first one into the corn patch, and the first one to reach the grove of quaking aspens. He dug in under a pile of deadfall and stayed there scarcely breathing. Lyle’s enthusiasm was kindled to the maximum by a second shotgun blast that sent the small missiles close enough to his head to be heard clearly. He headed abruptly to the left as soon as he hit the cornfield; and when he reached the middle of the thick tall stalks, he lay down and did not move again that afternoon. Tadd and Teddy made it to the canal and jumped in just ahead of the sheriff and the deputy. The old banks of the partly full canal were undercut, leaving room to hide effectively for field rats, raccoons, a passel of water snakes, rowdy boys, and other varmints.

“Ketch them kids, sheriff, or I’ll have yer job!” Clarence stormed about shouting impotently.

“I will do the very best I can. But you know these town kids; they can hide better’n Indians. I don’t know what is gonna become of this next generation. Used to be kids obeyed their parents; then at least when a policeman said ‘no’, they knew he meant it. But now they don’t even give no respect to law enforcement. Just wonder where it’s all gonna lead.”

“Stop yer jabberin’ and look. Election is comin’ right up. Believe me, you are in a peck of trouble if you don’t get them rotten kids!” Clarence ranted.

Sheriff Rantel let Clarence get out of earshot, not too far a distance since the old man was so hard of hearing, then said to his deputy, “Zeke, you scour this place. Look in every hidey hole you can remember from when you were a kid a botherin’ Clarence’s turkeys. We can’t afford to have those brats put one over on us. We got a election comin’ right up. We have to show everybody that we are effective guardians of the law.”

Zeke, the deputy, looked hurt at the suggestion that he had had a semi-criminal past; but since he was a doer--not a talker--he set out methodically to probe every niche and pile. The deputies/hunters walked and crawled and drove about in their vehicles. The hunted stayed silently in their places. Six hours passed; and it was fully dark when the sheriff, his deputy, and the irate farmer had to concede defeat. Rantel vowed to come back first thing in the morning. Garven and his friends left their hidey holes as soon as the first light of false dawn provided enough visibility. All four boys got a well-deserved licking when they finally got home. No one ever told the cops. Families took care of their own.