Turkeys are important to me. I don’t make them often and only on special occasions. This makes them more special, if you see what I mean. I didn’t make a turkey this Thanksgiving, nor at Christmas. So when I saw some turkeys in the fresh meats cooler a few days ago at the supermarket I decided to get one, thinking (as I do about most things in my life), better late than never. But I saw from the label name that they were local turkeys and this gave me pause. I had only ever bought imported American Butterball turkeys, and not even so many of those. I’m not what you’d call an old hand at making turkey, and can never remember whether you’re supposed to put them in the pan boob-side up or down, or what to do with those fleshy bits that they wrap in paper and hide inside the body cavity. Also, do you cover it while it cooks? I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that just getting something as big as a turkey into an oven is achievement enough and once it’s in there it’s on its own.
I decided to go look in the frozen foods section to see if I could find a Butterball.
But here I had a problem. I wasn’t in comfortable shoes and I’d already walked up and down most of the aisles of the huge supermarket. That morning when I’d left the house M wasn’t up yet. I knew he’d slept poorly during the night and so when I got up I crept quietly out of the room and closed the door behind me, leaving him to it. I really wanted to get the store early, before it got busy, but I didn’t want to wake him up to get my clothes and shoes from the room. By eight-thirty when the light still hadn’t come on under the door I decided he was either having a good catch-up or had slipped into coma. In neither case would my barging into the room be useful so I wore the only clothes I had access to, which was a pair of very saggy cargo pants that look like pyjama bottoms, and slip-on shoes with a bit of height in the heel. It wasn’t exactly like going to the store in pyjamas and pumps but wasn’t that far off, either. I put on a long coat and hoped no one looked too closely.
By the time I stood in front of the local turkeys my toes, having been rammed downward into the front of the shoe with each step, were mangled like a pack of sausages which have been bent in half and sat on, or so I imagined. Without enthusiasm I leaned over my shopping cart and pushed off toward the frozen foods section.
There were a lot of very long freezers and I walked up and down beside them all but could find no turkeys. All right then, I said. Fresh, local gobbler it is to be. Heading back to the fresh meats cooler, I pulled my shopping cart by the front end because it was so weighted down I couldn’t steer it from the back anymore. Along the way I picked up more things. The weight of the cart gave it tremendous momentum and once we got rolling on the straightaways it behaved as if it was powered by an unseen motor, which is unnerving when you’re behind it but downright terrifying when you’re in front and it starts gaining speed. I took out a row of instant pudding boxes trying to navigate a corner and an old man had to jump out of the way as we thundered past the cheese and olive counter but by throwing my weight backwards I managed to bring the cart to stop, once again, in front of the fresh turkeys. I resolved to take one whether it spoke English or not.
Reaching for the smallest one, I was taken aback to discover that it was not a turkey but a chicken. Bending to read the label, I saw that it weighed almost 4 kilos. Since when have there been chickens that size? What would you have to feed one to get it that large? There were actually only two turkeys and I took the smaller of the two, at 6 kilos.
At the cash register as I was paying for my groceries I saw an extraordinary thing. My turkey had dribbled a bit of body fluids onto the rubber mat of the conveyor belt and the cash girl commenced to clean it off with a tissue and some spray. But what was so striking was that she pressed a button and the empty conveyor belt rolled around, quietly and efficiently, while she sprayed and wiped. It was the first time I had ever seen any cashier at a grocery store in this country use the conveyor belt. They all have them, they just don’t use them. I had always assumed they weren’t hooked up or something. Every single time I’d been through a check-out, including just moments before this when the cashier had rung through my mountain of groceries, the bag boy piled everything onto the conveyor belt and then patiently moved things by hand, item by item, closer to the cashier as she cleared a space on the belt immediately beside her.
It is a mystery.
At home I shoved the turkey into the fridge and forgot about it till late in the afternoon when there really wasn’t enough time to cook it for dinner. Well, I had thought there was enough time. Along with everything else about roasting a turkey I had forgotten how long it takes. I was thinking something along the lines of an hour and a-half. But when I looked it up on the internet and saw that I needed something like 3 hours I realized that the best thing would be to keep it in the fridge till the next day. But I couldn’t do that. Instead I rushed to the kitchen, turned on the oven, hauled the bird out of the fridge and washed it in the sink in a mad panic, splashing water and epidermis all over the place, polished it up with some butter and herbs and tipped it into the oven.
It struck me that there was something odd about the turkey. I was in such a hurry to get it into the oven that I hadn’t stopped to think about it being rather an unusual shape. Unlike the rotund, trussed, North American turkeys this one was long and sort of lean. The impression was one of athleticism and self restraint.
As it cooked it bore out the appearance of being less fatty than a Butterball. I’d always been able to make gravy from what dripped down off the turkey while it cooked but this bird didn’t drip. It just sat there turning brown and sinewy as the hours crept by. I kept adding water to the pan so that the two or three drops of butter that had rolled off the skin and landed there wouldn’t burn. I must have added a litre by the time the carcass, almost done, reluctantly released a modest dribble of juice.
I stood looking at it, oven-mitted hands on hips, for some minutes after hauling it out of the oven. It was a remarkable sight. Its legs stuck straight out like it had been running for its life at the very moment the heat and flame engulfed it. The elongated, muscular body added to the effect. But the colour was the most striking feature. It wasn’t so much golden-brown as sunburn-red. As the reddest parts were all on the top surface of the bird it looked uncannily like a beach-goer who has fallen asleep on the beach under a noonday sun.
The kids were starving by then and I put aside my reflections to slice some breast meat off for our meal. Since M never knows what time he’ll get home, and it’s usually late, we are in the habit of eating dinner whether he’s back yet or not. The meat was good and not dry like I had expected. The gravy wasn’t great, but that was no surprise since I’d had almost no drippings to work with.
Shortly after we’d eaten, and before I’d got up to carve up the rest of the turkey, M came in the door. He set his briefcase down, drew in a breath and said, “Mmm, what have you been cooking?”
Turning to the kitchen, his face froze. Sunburnt, stretched out beyond the ends of the roasting pan in a pose of agonized rigor mortis, the turkey was a grotesque sight to behold.
“What —?” he faltered. “What is that?”
“Oh, that’s a turkey,” I said casually.
“Thank God,” he said, “For a moment there I thought you’d cooked somebody’s dog.”
“It’s a Lebanese turkey,” I said.
“Ah.”
“And quite tasty.”
“Oh?“
“Yes. I think this was a turkey who took care of himself.”
“Very good. So what’s the occasion?”
“Well, no occasion, really. I just thought, I didn’t make one at Christmas and all, so why not.”
“Hm.” M went into the bedroom to change. When he came back to the kitchen he said, “Have you been watching the news?”
“Of course not. You know me. Canada could have decided that beavers are getting too much power and it’s high time another animal had a turn on the nickel and I wouldn’t know about it till someone told me.”
“That’s what I thought. So you haven’t heard that our government here has collapsed?”
“What? Here? The government collapsed?” I whipped my head around to stare out the window, though what I expected to see I can’t tell you.
“Yes.”
“Well, what does it mean? Should we be packing our bags, fleeing the country etc.?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so. Nothing like that.”
“We just carry on as usual, then?”
“Right.”
We sat quietly for a moment.
“Well. All right then. Let’s get you some dinner.”
And I shuffled over to the stove and began to saw at the turkey.