CHAPTER VI

TURKEYS ON THE SIDE

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 cuc.u.mbers; 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 gra.s.s 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 pa.s.s 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 eyegla.s.ses. 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."