Down through the farm, between the farmer's house the barn and the pig house on one side, and the goat pen the grazing fields on the other side, ran a road, down to the covered bridge which spanned the creek.
In Northern New England, covered bridges survive, but this one is blocked off to motorized traffic. Only bicycles and walkers can cross it.
Every day, on his way down that road a man on a bicycle passed, on his way down to cross the creek on the bridge.
One July day, he stopped to look at the young turkeys in the fenced in field next to the road, where the newly arrived white turkeys bobbed and shuffled and strutted. He dismounted his bicycle and walked up to the fence corralling the young birds, and they pushed up to the fence because they mistook him for the farmer and hoped he might be carrying feed.
The man spoke to the turkeys: "You are all Death Row Turkeys."
But the turkeys never replied; they only gawked at him and looked disappointed at his empty hands and dearth of feed.
Some days later, a flock of wild turkeys walked up to the fence, on the field side, the open side where the cows and lamas roamed.
The white, domestic turkeys had never seen wild turkeys. The whites had only been on the farm just over a week and all they had seen in the hatchery were other white turkeys. But now, these very different looking dark, large, muscled turkeys gathered round the fence and it was clear they, too, were some sort of turkey.
A large Tom, Thomas in fact was his name, stepped forward and looked into the puzzled pink and crimson faces across the fence, as if looking for a leader, the smartest bird, with whom to communicate. Not finding what he was looking for, he straightened up and spoke in a loud voice. "You need help."
After considerable incoherent gobbling, Thomas spoke again: "Do you think you are safe?"
The white turkeys said, "This is our home. This is where we belong. We are proud to live here, proud to be farmer Brown's turkeys!"
"Your farmer raises no grain, no corn, no apples. How do you think he makes his living?"
This meant nothing to the white turkeys. "Proud to be farmer Brown's turkeys," they repeated. " We are happy here. Farmer Brown feeds us. And this fence protects us. We've seen the foxes on the other side of the fence. We've seen the coyotes. We've heard the fisher cats howl. We are safe here. We are free range turkeys. We are free!"
"You had better think about who you can believe," said Thomas. "You think you are free, but you are only free to walk behind this fence."
"You can fly," the white turkeys told the wild turkeys. "We can barely hop up on a haystack. The fox comes for you and you just flap up to the trees. We would be dead meat."
"You are turkeys. We can teach you to fly," said Thomas.
"No, we can't learn," said the white ones. "We cannot learn."
And there was some truth in what the white turkeys said. They had been bred with huge breasts and small wings. No white turkey had ever left the ground more than two feet. One of the turkeys had heard farmer Brown tell his hired man, "Four feet is high enough for that fence. Not a one of these big breasted birds can get half that high."
One of the white turkeys, a bird named Brooks, stepped forward and spoke to the wild turkeys through the fence: "The bicycle man stopped a few days ago and he said, 'You are Death Row Turkeys.' What did he mean?"
Thomas,said, "He means you are living on borrowed time."
"What does that mean?"
"The farmer," said Thomas. "He is the clock keeper. He will betray you."
"No, farmer Brown feeds us!" came a chorus from the birds. "He says we are beautiful. He says we will win prizes at the fair. He would never hurt us. He told us about you wild turkeys. You cannot be trusted. What you say is wrong. He loves us."
"The first week of November, after the harvest moon," Thomas said, "The big silver truck will arrive."
"He has built us a fence! He keeps us safe from the foxes and the coyotes and the fisher cats. He is our savior!" the white turkeys protested.
"You have just arrived," said Thomas. "Wild turkeys have seen this before. We know history."
The white turkeys fell into several groups: One group reacted angrily.
"Oh, you can't trust them," said Chrissie, a very pretty turkey, who was very proud of her big breast. "They are only interested in one thing. That Thomas wants us the way every male turkey wants us."
The other turkeys nodded and agreed the wild turkeys could not be trusted. And they were dark, ugly birds. They smelled bad and they were not much concerned with cleanliness. Chrissie fluffed up her feathers. "They aren't like us."
Others decided the wild turkeys looked down on them. "They are so full of themselves because they can fly, because they find their own food. I heard one of them say that we are nothing better than 'trailer trash.' That's what they think of us.
Some simply did not know what to think, but they knew, deep down, they had no options. The wild turkeys could fly. The white turkeys got out of breath just walking around the penned in yard. And if they had to compete with the chickens for food, who knows what would happen?
But for some of the white turkeys, the visits from the bicycle man and now from the wild turkeys were disquieting. One seemed to confirm what the others said.
One night turkey Brooks told two other turkeys, two of the smartest and biggest turkeys, "We should consult the goats. Goats are very clever. I'll ask the goats if they will meet with us."
The goat pen was on the other side of the fence from the turkeys and there the goats hung out with the two lamas, who slept fenced in at night but the lamas were allowed to roam the fields during the days and the goats could walk across the road to a field fenced off with electric wire to keep the cows from wandering.
After the farmer and his hired men had gone to bed, on a moon lit night, three white turkeys visited the goat pen for the meeting.
Brooks led the other two turkeys, Will and Chamberlain.
"The bicycle man said we were Death Row Turkeys," Brooks told the goats.
"We do not know for sure what he meant or how he would know that."
Before any goat could reply, a hedgehog thrust up his head from a hole next to the fence, and then his whole body and he announced: "The farmer will kill you all." Then he disappeared below the ground.
This startled the turkeys, but they were there to talk with the goats.
"What does a hedgehog know?" asked Chamberlain.
"This is an odd way to begin a meeting," said Will. The white turkeys looked to the goats. The goats looked at one another and exchanged looks but none of them spoke, at first.
"Tell us," Brooks pleaded. "You have lived on this farm for years. We have only just hatched three months ago."
Delphi, one of the young strong goats, looked to the head goat who had a name but none of the turkeys knew it. The head goat never spoke to the turkeys nor to any but the cleverest two or three goats. The turkeys simply knew him as "the old goat."
Now the old goat nodded and Delphi spoke,"The bicycle man is right. The hedgehog is correct. You are Death Row Turkeys. The farmer is not your friend. He is playing you. It's a con."
(Continued, Part 2)
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