Billy and the Turkey
Shoot
A Thanksgiving Story
By Danny Tillman
Yark and Company battle the Knife Lady!
Albey has just hailed the house of the knife lady and is standing stock still at the far edge of Raschelle's yard, facing the empty back porch and the open door. No answer comes from within. He waits in silence for a minute. A rapid swishing, whipping, sound emits from the darkened door opening. A blurring shining, spinning light, moving at 90 miles per hour, at chest level. A silver whirlamajig, a whirling dervish of death makes a beeline streak straight and clean toward Albey's heart. Yark's mind does a million lightning calculations in a microsecond: "Got me dead on. Too fast to sidestep. Rotate 90 degrees."
Yark rotates just in time as the blade cuts through the threads of the 2nd-to-the-top button of his black three quarter length coat. The button goes flying off and lands in the dirt. The blade ends up stuck in a tree, somewhere out in the woods.
He makes several steps forward, at the same time--like in a game of "Red Light Green Light," when the person who is "it" yells "Green light!"-- trying to advance as fast as he can toward her, yet being ready to stop and brace for the call "Red light!". That and another thought comes into his mind at this point, of another game he used to play with his siblings at home in the hills back in Tennessee: He could hear his sister command him saying, "Albey, take 3 giant steps," and could hear himself answering, "Mother, may I?"
Well, he takes only 2 steps forward, while at the same time, X, twenty feet to his left and Tom-Tom, twenty feet away to his right, step out into the yard.
Yark is about to resume a cautious advance when the Knife Lady herself, and in person, appears in the doorway dragging a Number 2 washtub which seems to be running over with knives. She has crossed bandoliers strapped around her upper torso. The belts had been designed with sheaths to hold multiple Bowie Knives. She had another knife-infested belt around her waist, and she had a firm bite on a knife blade between her front teeth.
"She's definitely loaded fer b'ar!" Albey thinks, as Raschelle extracts the knife from her mouth and flings it toward him. But being as she was distracted at the last instant by X and Tom's sudden appearance, the flight of the knife goes wide to Yark's left, between him and X.