Say, I hope this Mr. Hoover of ours gets through trying to feed the world before another fall. It's a cute little idea all right and ought to get us in strong with a whole lot of people, but if he don't quit I know of one party whose reputation as a gentleman farmer is going to be wrecked beyond repair. And that's me.
I don't know whether it was Vee's auntie that started me out reckless on this food producin' career, or old Leon Battou, or Mr. G. Basil Pyne. Maybe they all helped, in their own peculiar way. Auntie's method, of course, is by throwin' out the scornful sniff. It was while she was payin' us a month's visit one week way last summer, out at our four-acre estate on Long Island, that she pulls this sarcastic stuff. Havin' inspected the baby critical without findin' anything special to kick about, she suggests that she'd like to look over the grounds.
"Oh, yes, Torchy," chimes in Vee, "do show Auntie your garden."
Maybe you don't get that "your garden." It's only Vee's way of playin' me as a useful and industrious citizen. Course, I did buy the seeds and all the shiny hoes and rakes and things, and I studied up the catalogues until I could tell the carrots from the cucumbers; but I must admit that beyond givin' the different beds the once-over every now and then, and pullin' up a few tomato plants that I thought was weeds, I didn't do much more than underwrite the enterprise.
As a matter of fact, it was mostly Leon Battou, the old Frenchy who does our cookin', that really ran the garden. Say, that old boy would have something green growin' if he lived in the subway and had to bring down his real estate in paper bags. It was partly on his account, you know, that we left our studio apartment and moved out in the forty-five minutes commutin' zone. Then, too, there was Joe Cirollo, who comes in by the day to cut the grass and keep the flower beds slicked up, and do the heavy spadin'. And with Vee keepin' books on what was spent and what we got you can guess I wasn't overworked. Also it's a cinch that garden plot just had to hump itself and make good.
Auntie ain't wise to all this, though. So she raises her eyebrows and remarks: "A garden? Really! I should like to see it. A few radishes and spindly lettuce, I suppose?"
"Say, come have a look!" says I.
And when I'd pointed out the half acre of potatoes, and the long rows of corn and string beans and peas--and I hope I called 'em all by their right names--I sure had the old girl hedgin' some. But trust her!
"With so much land, though," she goes on, "it seems to me you ought to be raising your eggs and chickens as well."
"Oh, we've planned for all that," says I, "ducks and hens and geese and turkeys; maybe pheasants and quail."
"Quail!" says Auntie. "Why, I didn't know one could raise quail. I thought they----"
"When I get started raisin' things," says I, "I'm apt to go the limit."
"I shall be interested to see what success you have," says she.
"Sure!" says I. "Drop around again--next fall."
You wouldn't have thought she'd been disagreeable enough to go and rehearse all this innocent little bluff of mine to Vee, would you? But she does, it seems. And of course Vee has to back me up.
"But, Torchy!" she protests, after Auntie's gone. "How could you tell her such whoppers?"
"Easiest thing I do," says I. "But who knows what we'll do next in the nourishment producin' line? Hasn't old Leon been beggin' to go into the duck and chicken business for months? With eggs near a dollar a dozen maybe it would be a good scheme. And if we go in for poultry, why not have all kinds, turkeys as well?"
So a few days later I put it up to him. Leon shakes his head. "The chickens and the ducks, yes; but the turkey----" Here he shrugs his shoulders desperate. "Je ne connais pas."
"You jennie what?" says I. "Ah, come, Leon, don't be a quitter."
He explains that the ways of our national bird are a complete mystery to him. He'd as soon think of tryin' to hatch out ostriches or canaries. So for the time being we pass up the turkeys and splurge heavy on cacklers and quackers. Between him and Joe they fixed up part of the old carriage shed as a poultry barracks and with a mile or so of nettin' they fenced off a run down to the little pond. And by the middle of August we had all sorts of music to wake us up for an early breakfast. I nearly laughed a rib loose watchin' them baby ducks waddle around solemn, every one with that cut-up look in his eye. Say, they're born comedians, ducks are. I'll bet if you could translate that quack-quack patter of theirs you'd get lines that would be a reg'lar scream on the big time circuit.
And then along in the fall we begun gettin' acquainted with our new neighbors that had taken that cute little stucco cottage halfway down to the station from us. The Basil Pynes, a young English couple, we found out they were. Course, Vee started it by callin' and followin' that up by a donation of some of our garden truck. Pretty soon we were swappin' visits reg'lar.
I can't say I was crazy over 'em. She's a little mouse of a woman, big eyed and quiet, but Vee seems to like her. Pyne, he's a tall, slim gink with stooped shoulders and so short sighted that he has to wear extra thick eyeglasses. He'd come over to work for some book publishin' house but it seems he wrote things himself. He'd landed one book and was pluggin' away on another; not a novel, I understands, but something different.
"Huh!" says I to Vee. "No wonder he had to go into the lit'ry game, with that monicker hung on him. Basil Pyne! The worst of it is, he looks it, too."
"Now, Torchy!" protests Vee. "I'm sure you'll find him real interesting when you know him better."
As usual, she's right. Anyway, it turns out that Basil has his good points. For one thing he's the most entertaining listener I ever talked to. Maybe you know the kind. Never has anything to say about himself but whatever you start, that's what he wants to know about. And from the friendly look in the mild gray eyes behind the thick panes, and the earnest way he has of stretchin' his ear you'd think that what you was tellin' him was the very thing he'd been livin' all these years to hear. Then he has that trick of throwin' in "My word!" and "Just fancy that!" sort of admirin' and enthusiastic, until you almost believe that you're a lot cleverer and smarter than you'd suspected.
So when I gets on the subject of how we ducked payin' war prices for vegetables to the local profiteers by raisin' our own he wants to know all about it. With the help of Vee's set of books and a little promptin' from her I gives him an earful. I even tows him down cellar and points out the various bins and barrels full of stuff we've got stowed away for winter. And next I has to drag him out and exhibit the poultry side line.
"Oh, I say!" exclaims Basil. "Isn't that perfectly rippin'! You have fresh eggs right along?"
"All we can use," says I. "And we're eatin' the he--hens whenever we want 'em. Ducks, too."
"How clever!" says Basil. "But you Americans are always so good at whatever you take up. And you such a hard drivin' business man, too! I don't see how you manage it."
"Oh, it comes easy enough once you get the hang of it," says I. "As a matter of fact, I'm only just startin' in. Next thing I mean to have is a lot of turkeys. Might as well live high."
"Turkeys!" says Basil. "And I've heard they were so difficult to raise. But I've no doubt you will make a huge success with them."
"Guess I'll just have to show you," says I, waggin' my head.
I was for gettin' some turkey eggs right away and rushin' along a flock so they'd be ready by Christmas, but both Vee and Leon insists that it can't be done. Seems it's too late in the season or something. They want to wait until next spring.
"Not me," says I. "I've promised your Auntie I'd raise turkeys and I gotta deliver the goods. If we can't start 'em from the seed what's the matter with gettin' some sprouts? Ain't anybody got any young turkeys that need bringin' up scientific?"
Well, I set Joe Cirollo to scoutin' around and inside of a week he has connected with half a dozen. They comes in a crate as big as a piano box and we turns 'em loose in the chicken yard. When I paid the bill I was sure Joe had been stuck about two prices, but after I've discovered what they're askin' for turkeys in the city markets I has to take it back.
"Oh, well," says I, "if we can fatten 'em up maybe we'll come out winners, after all."
"Sure!" says Joe. "We maka dem biga fat."
After I'd bought a few bags of feed though, I quit figurin'. I knew that no matter how they was cooked they'd taste of money. All I was doubtful of now was whether they was the right breed of turkeys.
"What's all that red flannel stuff on their necks?" I asks Joe. "Ain't got sore throats, have they!"
"Heem?" says Joe. "No, no. Dey gooda turk. All time data way."
"All right," says I, "if it's the fashion. I don't eat the neck, anyway."
I couldn't get Leon at all excited over my gobblers, though. All he'll do is shake his head dubious. "They walk with such pride and still they behave so foolish," says he.
"It ain't their manners I'm fond of," says I, "so much as it is their white meat. Even at that, when it comes to foolish notions, they've got nothing on your ducks."
"Mais non," says Leon, meaning nothing sensible, "you do not understand the duck perhaps. Me, I raised them as a boy in Perronne. But the turkey! Pouff! He is what you call silly in the head. One cannot say what they will do next. Anything may happen to such birds."
He makes such a fuss over the way they hog the grain at feedin' time that I have to have a separate run built for 'em. You'd almost think he was jealous. But Joe, on the other hand, treats 'em like pets. I don't know how many times a day he feeds 'em, and he's always luggin' one up to me to show how heavy they're gettin'. I was waitin' until they got into top notch condition before springin' 'em on Basil Pyne. I meant to get a gasp out of him when I did.
Finally I set a day for the private view and asked the Pynes to come over special. Basil, he's all prepared to be thrilled as I tows him out. "But you don't mean to say this is your first venture at turkey raising?" he demands.
"Ab-so-lutely," says I.
"Strordinary!" says Basil.
At the end of the turkey run though I finds Joe starin' through the wire with a panicky look on his face. "Well, Joe," says I, "anything wrong with the flock?"
"I dunno," says he. "Maybe da go bughouse, maybe da got jag on. See!"
Blamed if it don't look like he'd made two close guesses. Honest, every one of them gobblers was staggerin' 'round, bumpin' against each other and runnin' into the fence, with their tails spread and their long necks wavin' absurd. A 3 a.m. bunch of New Year's Eve booze punishers couldn't have given a more scandalous exhibition.
"My word!" says Basil.
Course, it's up to me to produce an explanation. Which I does prompt. "Oh, that's nothing!" says I. "They're just tryin' the duck waddle, imitatin' their neighbors in the next run. Turkeys always do that sooner or later if you have ducks near 'em. They keep at it until they're dizzy."
"Really, now?" says Basil. "I never heard that before."
"Not many people have," says I. "But they'll get over it in an hour or so. Look in tomorrow and you'll see."
Basil says he will. And after he's gone I opens the court martial.
"Joe," I demands, "what you been feedin' them turks?"
It took five minutes of cross examination before I got him to remember that just before breakfast he'd sneaked out and swiped a pail of stuff that he thought Leon was savin' for his ducks. And what do you guess? Well, him and Leon had gone into the home-made wine business last fall, utilizin' all them grapes we grew out in the back lot, and only the day before they'd gone through the process of rackin' it from one barrel into another. It was the stuff that was left in the bottom that Joe had swiped for his pets.
"Huh!" says I. "And now you've not only disgraced those turkeys for life but you've made me hand Mr. Pyne some raw nature-fakin' stuff that nobody but a fool author would swallow."
"I mucha sorry," says Joe, hangin' his head.
"All right," says I. "I expect you meant well. But it was a bum hunch. Now see they have plenty of water to drink and by mornin' maybe they'll sober up."
I meant to keep an eye on 'em myself for the rest of the day, but right after luncheon Auntie blows in again, to pay a farewell visit before startin' South, and the turkeys slipped my mind. Not until she asks how I'm gettin' on with my flock of quail did I remember.
"Oh, quail!" says I. "No, I had to ditch that. Couldn't get the right sort of eggs."
Auntie smiles sarcastic. "What a pity!" says she. "But the various kinds of poultry you were going in for? Did you----"
"Did I?" says I. "Say, you just come out and---- Well, Leon, anything you want special?"
"Pardon, m'sieu," says old Leon, scrapin' his foot, "but--but the turkeys."
"Yes, I know," says I. "They're doing that new trot Joe's been teaching 'em."
"But no, m'sieu," says Leon. "They have become deceased--utterly."
"Wha-a-a-at?" says I. "Oh, oh, I guess it ain't as bad as that."
"Pardon," says Leon, "but I discover them steef, les pieds dans le ciel. Thus!" And he illustrates by holdin' both hands above his head.
"Perhaps it would be best to investigate," suggests Auntie. "I have no doubt Leon is right. Turkeys require expert care and handling, and when you were so sure of raising them I quite expected something like this."
"Yes, I know you did," says I. "Anyway, let's take a look."
And there they were, all six of 'em, with their feet in the air, and as stiff as if they'd just come from cold storage.
"Like somebody had thrown in a gas attack on 'em," says I. "Good night, turks! You sure did make it unanimous, didn't you?"
I expect my smile was kind of a sickly performance, for the last person I'd have wanted to be in on the obsequies was Auntie. I will say, though, that she don't try to rub it in. No, she tells of similar cases she's known of when she was a girl, about whole flocks bein' poisoned by something they'd found to eat.
"The only thing to do now," says she, "is to save the feathers."
"Eh?" says I, gawpin'.
"The long tail and wing feathers can be used for making fans and trimming hats," says Auntie, "while the smaller ones are excellent for stuffing pillows. They must be picked at once."
"Oh, I'm satisfied to call 'em a total loss," says I.
Auntie wouldn't have it, though. She sends Leon for a big apron and a couple of baskets and has me round up Joe to help. When I left they were all three busy and the turkey feathers were coming off fast. All there was left for me to do was to go in and break the sad news to Vee.
"As a turkey raiser, I'm a flivver," says I.
"But I can't see that it's your fault at all," says Vee.
"Can't you?" says I. "Ask Auntie."
If the next day hadn't been Sunday, I could have sneaked off to town and dodged the little talk Auntie insists on givin' about the folly of amateurs tacklin' jobs they know nothing about. As it is I has to stick around and take the gaff. Then about ten o'clock Basil Pyne has to show up and reopen the subject.
"Oh, by the way," says he, "how are the turkeys this morning? Are they still practicing that wonderful duck walk you were telling me about?"
Auntie has just fixed an accusin' eye on me, and I was wonderin' if it would be any sin to take Basil out back somewhere and choke him, when in rushes old Leon with a wild look on his face. He's so excited that he's almost speechless and all he can get out is a throaty gurgle.
"For the love of soup, let's have it," says I. "What's gone wrong now?"
"O-o-o la la!" says Leon. "O-o-o la la!"
"That's right, sing it if you can't say it," says I.
"Parbleu! Nom de Dieu! Les dindons!" he gasps.
"Ah, can the ding-dong stuff, Leon," says I, "and let's hear the English of it."
"The--the turkeys!" he pants out.
And that did get a groan out of me. "Once more!" says I. "Say, have a heart! Can't anybody think of a more cheerful line? Turkeys! Well, shoot it. They're still dead, I suppose?"
"But no," says Leon. "They--they have return to life."
"Oh come, Leon!" says I. "You must have been sampling some of them wine dregs yourself. Do you mean to say----"
"If M'sieu would but go and observe," puts in Leon. "Me, I have seen them with my eye. Truly they are as in life."
"Why, after we picked them last night I saw you throw them over the fence," says I.
"Even so," says Leon. "But come."
Well, this time we had a full committee--Vee, Auntie, Basil, Madame Battou, old Leon and myself--and we all trails out to the back lot. And say, once again Leon is right. There they are, all huddled together on the lowest branch of a bent-over apple tree and every last one of 'em as shy of feathers as the back of your hand. It's the most indecent poultry exhibit I ever saw.
"My word!" says Basil, starin' through his thick glasses.
"That don't half express it, Basil," says I.
"But--but what happened to them?" he insists.
"I hate to admit it," says I, "but they had a party yesterday. Uh-huh. Wine dregs. And they got soused to the limit--paralyzed. Then, on the advice of a turkey expert"--here I glances at Auntie--"we decided that they were dead, and we picked 'em to conserve their feathers. Swell idea, eh? Just a little mistake about their being utterly deceased, as Leon put it. They were down, but not out. Look at the poor things now, though."
And then Vee has to snicker. "Aren't they just too absurd!" says she. "See them shiver."
"I should think they'd be blushin'," says I. "What's the next move?" I asks Auntie. "Do I put in steam heat for 'em?"
It takes Auntie a few minutes to recover, but when she does she's right there with the bright little scheme. "We must make jackets for them," says she.
"Eh?" says I.
"Certainly," she goes on. "They'll freeze if we don't. And it's perfectly practical. Of course, I've never seen it done, but I'm sure they'll get along just as well if their feathers were replaced by something that will keep them warm."
"Couldn't get the Red Cross ladies to knit sweaters for 'em, could we?" I suggests.
Auntie pays no attention to this, but asks Vee if she hasn't some old flannel shirts, or something of the kind.
Well, while they're plannin' out the new winter styles of turkey costumes, Joe and Leon rigs up a wood stove in their coop, shoos the flock in, and proceeds to warm 'em up. They took turns that night keeping the fire going, I understand.
And when I comes home Monday afternoon from the office I ain't even allowed to say howdy to the youngster until I've been dragged out and introduced triumphant to the only flock of custom-tailored turkeys in the country. Auntie and Vee and Madame Battou sure had done a neat job of costumin', considerin' the fact that they'd had no paper patterns to go by. But somehow they'd doped out a one-piece union suit cut high in the neck with sort of a knickerbocker effect to the lower end. Mostly they seemed to have used an old near-silk quilted bathrobe of mine, but I also recognized a khaki army shirt that I had no notion of throwin' in the discard yet awhile. And if you'll believe it them gobblers was struttin' around as chesty as if they hadn't lost a feather.
"Aren't they just too cute for anything?" demands Vee.
"Worse than that," says I, "they look almost as human as so many floor-walkers. I hope they ain't going to be hard on clothes, for my wardrobe wouldn't stand many such raids."
"Oh, don't worry about that," says Vee. "We shall be eating one every week or so."
"Then don't let me know when the executions take place," says I. "As for me, I shouldn't feel like tellin' Joe to kill one without an order from the High Sheriff of the county."
And say, if I'm ever buffaloed into buyin' any more live turkeys, I'm going to demand a written guarantee that they're Prohibitionists.
