Billy and the Turkey
Shoot
A Thanksgiving Story
By Danny Tillman
The four couples emerge from the two rooms 10 minutes later decked-out in soft fringed leather deerskin shirts, pants, moccasins and colorful woolen ponchos with beautifully woven patterns. Eagle feathers elegantly adorn their long hair. Suspended from intricately beaded strands around their necks, are skillful and delicate carvings of the luna moth and the eagle.
"Okay folks, let's move out the back way, if-n y'all don't mind. Be as inconspicuous as possible. We don't wont a audience at this p'int—that'll come later … oh Miss Mary, I fergot to ask you … can you bring two blankets … AND a first-aid kit? And Rufus … do you happen to have a couple of fence posts layin' around that you're not using rat at the moment?"
Mary and Betty slipped off and soon returned, each holding a blanket with Mary carrying a box of medical supplies, and the whole group filed quietly out onto the back porch, and then out the back door. Rufus stopped by the garage to grab two fence posts and rejoined the pro bono mercenaries, and they all melted unseen into the back woods toward the house of the Knife Lady.
MEANWHILE, Bernny and Ernny were still driving east on Atlantic Boulevard. (If they'd kept on east far enough, they would've crossed the Intracoastal Waterway where Newt Gainey, Ronnie and Fletcher's daddy, manned his station to raise the bridge for the taller boats to go under. Then further still they would have ended up at Atlantic Beach with the village of Mayport and the Navy base, further north, tucked beneath the final meander in the mighty St. John's River as it enters the Atlantic Ocean. The little community of Wonderwood was there too, where was located the meeting place of the Baptist Church[1] (aka Baptist Chapel) to which Rufus and Mary belonged.
Aunt Mary's house was, as Deuie used to hear his daddy say, "5 miles from The Beaches." The actual city of Jacksonville was farther west. But before all of the above, even before reaching the Waterway, they slow down at San Pablo Road, where they turn right and head south for several miles and slow down at a small sign on the left, that reads:
DCRGBKBPLBC
Duval County Rod, Gun, Bow, Knife,
Black Powder & Long Beards' Club
[1] To see the history of Wonderwood Baptist Chapel (now called "1st Baptist Church of Atlantic Beach"), click on or paste this link in your browser: https://fbatlbch.org/history/