“Ladies and gentlemen!” boomed a deep, resonant voice from inside Ballroom 2B, far too loudly for this early in the morning. “Here to teach you all the ins and outs of mounting a strutting turkey—pun intended, ha-ha—is two-time winner of the Simon T. Blackshaw Award for the Judges’ Choice Best of Show, our very own Mister … Hamish … Buchannan!”
That was our cue. It was go time.
Dad straightened his glasses, cleared his throat, and gave one curt little nod—his standard psych-up routine when he was about to give a big presentation. It made him seem weirdly vulnerable and human, and for a second, my stomach ached with the thought of what I was about to do. Sabotaging his presentation at a conference this important was kind of a big deal.
But Phoebe was right; he had sabotaged my life, and that mattered way more. He had absolutely no right to go over my head and decide where I wanted to live. I wasn’t some dead animal he could bend to his will; I had my own thoughts and feelings. It was time for him to learn that the hard way.
My dad turned and strode into the ballroom, both hands raised to the cheering, whistling crowd like an evangelical preacher. I slipped behind the demo table and made sure all my supplies were in place while he introduced himself. I had assisted him on this demo a bunch of times before, but never for a crowd this big. Every seat was filled, and the back and sides of the room were packed with even more people willing to stand. Jeremy was in the center, three rows back, and Dad’s rival Harley was in the front row on the left side, totally unaware of how amazing his day was about to get.
Then I saw Phoebe waving at me through the open door to the hallway. When she had my attention, she gave me a big, cheesy thumbs-up, and I couldn’t help smiling. It was super nice of her to come, especially when she wasn’t even allowed inside the room, and it made me feel better to know someone had my back.
My dad joined me at the table. “For the purposes of this class,” he began, “we’ll start with a turkey skin that has been chemically cleaned, tanned in True-Tan Bird Tan solution, drained, and tumble-dried in puffed borax.” He held out his hand for the first skin, and it occurred to me that he hadn’t even bothered to introduce me as his assistant. Rage bubbled like lava in the pit of my stomach as I passed him the skin and watched him spread the right wing under the overhead camera, which projected its image onto a screen. He didn’t thank me.
Considering how little he clearly thought of me, why the hell was he even trying to prevent me from going to Arizona? Was he just using me as a tool to punish my mom?
“We’ll begin with the wings,” my dad said, his voice infuriatingly calm. “When a turkey is mounted in the closed-wing position, you’ll need twelve-gauge wires to help support them. I like to use ten-gauge for my flying turkeys.” Without even looking at me, he indicated that I should hand him the wire, and I passed over the one I had dulled with Phoebe’s nail file. “I’ve cut a thirty-six-inch length and sharpened the end, which I’ll now insert it through the metacarpal, past the radius, ulna, and humerus, like so …”
Dad gritted his teeth as he struggled to push the dull end of the wire through the turkey’s wing, then sucked in his breath as it bent and nicked his finger. I held my breath and eyed the audience, wondering if they would judge him for seeming unprepared. But instead they all laughed when he quipped, “This is one tough old bird,” then waited patiently while he pulled a sharpener out of his kit and undid my careful wire sabotage. They even chuckled in sympathy at the story he told in the meantime about the hunter who brought him twelve turkeys at once and demanded that they be mounted by the next day.
Callie: zero, Dad: one. That was fine, though. The score would even up soon enough.
Dad sewed the wing incision closed and walked his audience through the process of stuffing tow filler around the wing bones to give the illusion of muscle and cartilage. Then he asked for the WASCO clay to reinforce the skin between the body and the wing joint, and I handed it over. I had to work hard to maintain a straight face as he dug his fingers in, blissfully unaware of the lotion I had mixed with the clay. Now all I had to do was wait for it to work its magic.
Dad’s lanolin allergy kicked in about twenty minutes later, when he was beginning to explain the bonded tail-mounting method. As he fanned the turkey’s tail feathers over a curved cardboard frame, he had to keep stopping to scratch the tiny red welts that had begun to pop up all over his skin. But he didn’t excuse himself to wash his hands. He just wiped them on a towel and carried on applying the filler that would hold the turkey’s tail feathers in place. It almost hurt to see how uncomfortable he was, and I wondered if I’d used too much lotion.
He deserves this, I reminded myself. Think of all the times he’s made you uncomfortable. How he’s ignored you and bossed you around and humiliated you. How he acts like your feelings don’t even matter.
Dad dug his nails into the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. Callie: one, Dad: one.
As the turkey tail set, I passed Dad the second demonstration skin, which had finished wings and a fully mounted tail, and he started explaining how to fit it around the manikin. “Never stretch a turkey’s skin to make it fit over your form,” he said as he eased the feathers closed over the rubbery manikin. “Trying to force it will cause it to tear, and pulling the skin too tightly will—aauughh.” Scratch scratch scratch. Scratch. “Excuse me. Pulling the skin too tightly will make it impossible to properly adjust the feathers. See how easily this skin can be positioned around the form? If your skin doesn’t—doesn’t close—easily—gah.” Dad clawed at the red bumps on his wrist so fiercely that I saw a few people in the front row flinch.
“Everything okay?” I asked, all wide-eyed innocence.
“I seem to be having … never mind. A fresh towel, please. As I was saying, today I’m using a Sportsman Series standing turkey form …”
Between scratches, Dad attached the wing wires to the body, then gestured for me to pass him the container of hide paste. He hesitated and stared into the sticky white goop for a moment too long, and my heart skipped as I worried he might be getting wise to my sabotage. But he seemed to decide that his beloved taxidermy supplies couldn’t possibly be at fault, and he scooped out a dollop of paste with his fingers. Callie: two, Dad: one.
“Now I’ll apply a layer of stiff Sallie Dahmes Hide Paste to the back and sides of the manikin,” said Dad. “This bonds the form to the skin and provides support for the feather roots.” He smoothed on the paste, and I crossed my fingers that the Nair and the blow-dryer would do what I’d anticipated.
A few minutes later, Dad scrubbed the extra hide paste off his hands with the fresh towel I’d brought him and handed it back to me. I surreptitiously unfolded it under the table, and when I saw a handful of dark knuckle hairs mixed in with the white paste, I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. This was going to be epic.
Seemingly unaware that his hands were now totally bald, Dad moved on to showing off his prepared turkey feet and legs. I waited patiently, eyeing the body while he explained the “musculature” he’d created on the legs out of tow and thread. And then the time came to attach a leg to the body, and I held my breath.
“Insert the leg wire through the pre-drilled hole,” Dad instructed, “and then reverse it into a U-shape and push it back into the manikin, like so.” He grabbed the body firmly … and a handful of feathers came off.
My dad broke off in the middle of a sentence and stared down at the turkey like it had betrayed him. He rubbed his thumb across the hide, and a whole new row of loose feathers tumbled onto the prep table. I heard a murmur of surprise ripple through the crowd, and he shot them a scowl. “It’s perfectly fine to lose a few feathers,” he snapped. “That can be corrected during grooming. We’ll just turn that part to the back—”
Dad lifted the turkey, and the skin slid and bunched under his fingers. A few stitches ripped loose as one of the wings drooped precipitously to the left, and when he tried to correct it, another huge handful of feathers pulled loose. Sure, losing a few feathers was normal and expected, even for someone experienced. But Dad’s turkey now had an enormous bald patch on its side. This kind of thing only happened to amateurs. It was even more perfect than I’d imagined.
Callie: a million, Dad: one.
My dad stared at the ruined bird, his face a mask of shock, and everyone in the audience went dead silent and still. And that’s why we could all hear when a woman in the second row leaned over to the man next to her and whispered, “I thought he was supposed to be the turkey man?” Someone else laughed, and then murmurs and whispers broke out all over the room. When I glanced over at Jeremy, his eyes were wide, and he had one hand clapped over his mouth.
My mistake was looking at Harley Stuyvesant. He was sitting on the very edge of his chair in his insane, patriotic button-down shirt, gripping both sides of the seat and grinning like he’d been offered a legally obtained dead panda to stuff. With his bushy beard and his little paunch, he looked like a deranged Santa Claus, and I just couldn’t keep it together. I let out a snort-laugh.
My dad’s head snapped up. For the first time all day, he looked directly at me, and his face flushed a dangerous shade of red. I wasn’t sure he understood the reason for what I’d done, but he definitely knew this was my fault. I flinched back a little as his eyes bored into me, sharp as a scalpel.
I forced myself not to look away first. The deed was done, and there was nothing either of us could do to reverse it now. I reached down inside myself, and I found that glowing seed of triumph, and I held on to it tightly. My dad deserved to be exposed for what he was—a smooth, flawless surface with something rotten underneath.
He stared me down, a challenge in his eyes, and I held his gaze. Still want me at home for the whole summer, Dad?
He scratched his hairless hands very slowly. He breathed in and out, once, twice, three times. And then he forced a smile onto his face and turned back to the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just learned an important lesson about checking the expiration dates on our chemicals.” His voice sounded impressively calm, like this was all a big joke. “Hide paste that’s past its prime does not adhere skin to form properly, as you can see from this poor turkey. Fortunately, it was almost time to move on to our finished mount so we can talk about shingling and placing the feather groups.” He turned back to me. “You can sit down, Callie. I won’t be needing any more assistance.”
I could hear the I’ll deal with you later lurking under his words, but I still wasn’t scared. I had way more ammunition on him than he did on me, and I was ready for the fight that was coming.
Dad reached down and removed a finished, ungroomed turkey from the box at his feet, the only one I hadn’t messed with. “Now, when a gobbler struts, he bristles his feathers out along his sides and back to make himself look even larger and more impressive. This is called shingling. Let’s talk about how to achieve that effect …”
I moved off to the side of the room. There weren’t any open seats, so I sat down on the floor opposite the door. And when I looked up, there was Phoebe, still watching from the hallway. She pumped both her bandaged fists like she’d scored a touchdown, and I smiled at her and raised both arms above my head, fingers forming Vs for victory. I had won, and I didn’t care if everyone in the room knew.