LET BORRRREEEEDOM RING!

I'm going to try to make this as boring as I possibly can. But I shan't erase, nor shall I edit. Let's see how long I can hold out...

Thanksgiving is coming up. I talked with my mom today and she suggested that I bring something to the feast.

"What should I bring?" I asked her.

There was a pause on the other end of my cellular telephone. My mom then said, "Adam, how about you bring some fruit salad?"

"Okay. Mom."

"And, Adam?"

"Yes, Mom?"

"Would it be too much to ask for you to bring cider, too? A *big* container of cider?"

"No, Mom, that's no problem, at all," I answered.

Static silence.

My mother said, "Adam? Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah, Mom," I answered, "I'm doing just fine."

"Okay, well, good," she said, and then we exchanged pleasantries and we both disconnected the telephone call.

Thanksgiving. Wow. Wow. Talk about a *feast*! You have the big bird (turkey) and you also have the stuffing and the sweet potatoes and tossed salads and fruit salads and cider and coffee and gravy and the like. Wow. What a feast.

I've been led to believe that this particular holiday celebration hearkens back to the days of the pioneers and Native Americans. Apparently, the Native Americans took the slightly-paler interlopers under their proverbial wings and taught them to grow maize (that's "corn") and potatoes (that's "potatoes"). The pioneers/Mayflower madmen were quite grateful to their pleasantly-browned guests, but, secretly? Inside? They thought them "savages."

--Okay. Hold on a second. I'm losing my Boring thread. Which is easy to do--it's thin, ya see.--

After I disconnected the telephone call from my mother, I thought, goodness, I'll need to go and buy some fruit...and also some vanilla yogurt. Oh my.

I was sitting in my work van, waiting for, well, work. The radio squawked. "Three-Five-Nine?"

"Three-Five-Nine," I immediately answered.

"Got a gas leak for you in Bloomfield."

"Okay. Send it," I said. *Okay. Send it*, I thought.

As I waited for the gas leak order to be sent to my computer, I thought, again, of Thanksgiving. *Won't it be joyous*? I thought. *All the family together and good food upon the table. Why, it'll simply be *joyous*! I felt a small smile touch my lips, then, and I felt at peace with the world....

Smile....

***

A terrible dream in which a turkey had come back to life. My sister--as a ritual, perhaps?--always eats the turkey's neck. In my dream, Thomas the Turkmeister was having none of it.

"Gimme back my fucking neck!" a disembodied voice rose from the golden-brown of the carcass. "Gimme back. My. Fucking. Neck. You gosh-damned Carnivore!"

The reaction was instantaneous. My father, in my dream, had leapt up, from his chair, and his thighs had collided heavily with the underside of the lengthened dining room table. Boiling gravy had spilled from its delicate china house and had slid across the table, and over, into the lap of my sister. She screamed with rage and pain.

"I WANTED that gravy!" she curdled.

Her husband rose to her defense but was soon rendered powerless by the flying baked potatoes. One after another hit him, square in the forehead--like a cartoon! whee!--until he finally sagged to his knees.

I was watching all this happen like I was no longer present at the Table of Feast. I could have stepped in...but I chose not to.

My mother sprang from her seat and rushed over to where my father was lying on the floor, under the Dessert Table, clutching his left knee and howling in pain.

"Rob! Rob! Are you all right?!" she screamed.

The air had turned foggy. The golden-brown carcass now danced on the table...with...no...legs.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the disembodied voice...wafted, "you are privy to the First Annual Turkey Revolution. May I ask that you file to the living room and lie on the floor with your hands locked behind your head, please?"

My grandmother began to spring into a fighting song and was cold-cocked with a drumstick. She sank back against her seat, out cold.

"I NEEDED that," spat the carcass. "Yam! Help me!" A yam sprang at its name. It butted and spun the drumstick to near where the carcass "stood" and, somehow, trampolined the appendage back to the beast.

"Good. Tank ya, Yam."--the Yam nodded, recognized--"Now, people! To the living room, gosh-damn you!"

I was still, I thought, in the Cloud of Dream.

"You, too, Ghost-Boy!" screamed the carcass, stuffing flying out of its.... But?

But, I still didn't believe it. "This must be a dream," I said.

The carcass spun to the sound of my voice. "Dream? Think whatever you want, Baldy."

"Hey, fuck you, chicken. That's out of line!"

The turkey's carcass flew through the air, then, much like the protagonist from "The Matrix" had. It landed greasily in front of my placemat. "CHICKEN! CHICKEN?! Little boy? You have MUCH to learn!"

And then it, I assume, cold-cocked me with its full breast.

***

I awoke to see a honey-brown turkey carcass above me. On my chest, in fact. I tried to move my arms, but they were pinned to the floor, like bugs under glass, by scores of yams, sweet potatoes and, well, *regular* potatoes. The carcass had somehow attached a large cleaver to its little itty-bitty golden-brown wing. (Its drumstick hung by threads of sinew.) It raised the cleaver high over the point where its head should have been.

"This is for my father Tom and this is for my grandfather Tom and this is for my Uncle Tom and for my great-uncle Tom! This is for my sister Henny!" With that, the bird-corpse swung the guilotine's blade, this time, instead, a meat cleaver from K-Mart.

I saw it fall, and I saw it fall, and I saw it fall, but my stomach didn't waver. I knew it was crazy dream-shit, so I let the hammer/cleaver fall. As my eyes crossed to take in the slow-motion fall of the cleaver, I heard, distantly, threefivenine.... Three-Five-Nine? Adam, where're ya at? Gotta a gas leak for you....

***

I awoke to the sound of my radio. Spittle had dried on my chin and my baseball cap had been raked at an obtuse angle. I'd fallen asleep in my van. Clouds floated before my gummy eyes and my back felt as though it had been broken nineteen times. My right arm snaked out to my microphone.

"359?" I managed.

""Adam, gotta gas leak for you."

"Send it," I said, and collapsed back against the window.

I got the gas leak and drove down Opdyke Road to investigate a leak near the range.

I used my windshield wiper fluid to get rid of the grease-smear on the glass.

***

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! EAT AND BE MERRY!