I’d forgotten how hard it can be to cross the dunes.
“Cerdded â chŵn,” said Leggs, a boxer. Rhian Cull, one of his two human mothers, is Welsh. Leggs has picked up a bit of the language.
“English, please?” I asked, struggling for breath.
“Walkies,” said Leggs. He rushed back down the dune, circled me a few times, and then nudged me with his nose. “Forward ho!”
I wanted Leggs with me as I headed into the dunes to speak to the Counsel of Herons as part of my ongoing investigation into the shooting of Smoochie Chute. Leggs often walks the dunes with Cull and his other mother, Roxanne “Roxy” Layton. He is well acquainted with the terrain. I am not.
Smoochie, for those whose memories are short, is the East End cat living with a bullet in his throat. His unknown assailant is still on the loose. Gypsy, the foul-mouthed terrier, told me that the mysterious Counsel of Herons could shed some light on what happened. But locating this siege of herons was proving elusive.
It was late afternoon, and I feared being lost in the dunes after dark. “Let me reference the map again,” I said, unzipping my cross-body bag where Marcel the Hamster, who is a noted local explorer and zoologist, was sleeping. Marcel insisted that the birds would be found in an inlet not far from where we stood. I lifted a scrap of paper from between his tiny hands. I had drawn this map to Marcel’s exact specifications, but now it seemed woefully lacking in detail.
“Birds ahead,” shouted Leggs from at least two dunes forward of Marcel and me.
“What kind of birds?” I yelled back.
“Large birds,” he said and dashed off.
Panting and wheezing, I finally caught up to him. Leggs was sitting in a leisurely way at the edge of a growth of scrubby pines. There were no herons in sight, but I spotted one wild turkey.
That turkey also spotted me. It let out a soft yelp, and almost immediately more turkeys began appearing from the brush. Others descended from the trees. Within moments we were toe to toe with at least two dozen wild turkeys.
Leggs gave me a side-eyed glance. No one does side-eye like a boxer.
“Their necks,” Leggs whispered. “Ghastly.”
“Marcel, wake up,” I said. “We’ve taken a wrong turn.”
Marcel peeked out of the bag and let out a small moan. “A turkey gang,” he said. “Fowl most foul.”
“Do y’all need something?” said one sort of grandmotherly turkey with a country twang.
“Gadewch inni basio,” barked Leggs. “You are the wrong birds. Let us pass.”
A low gobble circulated among the gang.
“I don’t think we’re going to do that,” said Grandma, looking at me with a smile. Well, a turkey smile: it’s a difficult thing to describe, but trust me when I say it had an edge.
“Mister, would you please remove your little dog from our nesting grounds?” asked Grandma.
“I am a big dog,” barked Leggs.
“But you have such skinny calves,” said Grandma. Marcel and I both gasped. No insult cuts more quickly to the heart of a boxer.
“My calves are A.K.A. perfect,” said Leggs, his voice cracking with outrage. “Rude.”
“Let’s not do this,” I said, stepping between them. They each moved a few paces back but didn’t break eye contact.
“I would like to acknowledge that the wild turkeys of Massachusetts played a big part in the history of this state,” I said, trying to appease the gang. “For your part in that, we humbly thank you. I would also like to add that all three of us are vegans.”
This is not at all true, but I stand by my choices in the face of a potential turkey attack.
“You want to talk turkey,” said Grandma, “I’ve got some news for you: The last of the original Massachusetts turkeys was killed in 1851. We were kidnapped from our homes in the South and relocated here by force about 50 years ago.”
“From … Alabama?” I asked.
“Turkeys are originally from Mexico,” whispered Marcel.
“Connecticut,” said Grandma. “But now we claim this state as rightfully ours. We are self-governing turkeys. We reject human interference and domestication. This here is Turkey Freedom Land.”
A roar went up from the rest of the gang. Marcel ducked to the bottom of my bag.
“Zipper, please,” he said.
“I think y’all had best get to leaving,” said Grandma.
I grabbed Leggs by the collar and pulled him toward the car. I couldn’t return him to Rhian and Roxy pecked by turkeys.
As we hurried away, one of the turkeys shouted, “Trump 2024!”
“Try not to run,” I said to Leggs, but by then we were both running.
We were mostly silent on the way back to Leggs’s place, each of us shaken by our unexpected encounter with danger.
Alone after I delivered Marcel back to his lodgings, I shuddered as I watched the sun set behind the dunes in Provincetown. Had that encounter really happened? It was already becoming hard to imagine. I got my Butterball out of the refrigerator and set to work on the brine.
