by Timothy Jung (6th)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11TH, 1963

A wake up with a start. It’s not easy, life on an enormous boat with a bunch of turkey hunters doing all the sailing. Most days there’s just silence, and other days there’s massive rocking. On Sunday I tried to cheer some people up, but no one really hears me. It’s like being in an empty tomb, without anybody near me, just darkness and the dripping of water. Wait, what? Water dripping? I look up. Oh no, I think to myself. This place has a water leak, and we turkeys can’t fly.

“Clark…” I nudge his cage. “Clark!” “What is it?!” he answers back, but as soon as he sees and hears the dripping he clucks out the news, which was probably not the smartest choice. All of a sudden, there’s commotion, chaos, and panic.

“Hey, hey!” I shout out loud, trying to get their attention. Everyone turns to me, and immediately all cage wrecking is stopped. “Listen up!” I tell everyone. Even Flappy takes his head out of his wings.”Who here can fly?” I ask, not very hopeful.

To my surprise, everyone’s wings except for Flappy’s and mine are up. I take a good look at how many birds are in the boat. Around 50 birds are here. That’s good enough. I look up at the turkey above my cage, and he looks like an impressive flyer, which, of course, I wouldn’t know about.

I ask him, “What’s your name,” and he says that he’s “Turkish Baron”, which I have no idea what that means, so I ask him, “Can you carry a young one on your back?”

He answers, “Let me ask you this, have you ever heard of ‘Turkish Baron’?” So it’s settled. Once I create an exit with my beak, all of the birds will fly one at a time, starting from oldest to youngest. Clark has agreed to carry me on his back, and we’re all set. The problem is that it’s a total risk of our lives, so we first need to send out some of them at a time to tell us how far away from land we are.

Turkish Baron comes back to report that the distance is close enough, so it’s all set, tommorow, we’ll be leaving, at least the most of us. Some turkeys decided it isn’t right for them to leave the boat, since their wings are mostly rusty. Other than that, we’re all going. The mainland is coming ever closer, and by tomorrow, we’ll be free.

 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12TH, 1947

Today’s the day. We all get out of our cages, without too much trouble. What to do. Everything is set, and we’re all in position. Hopefully we’re going to all make it. And I don’t doubt Turkish Baron one bit. It’s what Flappy decides to do that scares me. I just hope he doesn’t hop off because he’s anxious. Flappy doesn’t even know how to reply to us, so we pretty much don’t know what he’ll be doing.

We’re all set and ready to go. On Turkish Baron’s signal, we all start creating a hole in the top corner of the cage room. We put cages on top of each other, having a little difficulty with that, but not too much. Once we finally get up to the top corner, we notice a slight problem. The boat is made out of some sort of hard substance called metal. Pecking through it is hard, and it makes our beaks tingle at contact.

After many attempts, we have to stop. Then Clark exclaims, “Make way for the expert!” The expert? How can there be someone who can get through this thing?

I quickly put myself in the crowd, and then a great big turkey came out. Clark shouts, “Drillz, I need you to get through this ‘metal’ in one day, understand?” Drillz, another name.

Drillz responds in a low, gruff voice, “Metal? What type of metal? Steel? Iron? Copper? Gold? You need to be more specific.” Clark is confused. “Some sort of unknown metal?”

Drillz looks up at the tiny hole we other turkeys made. “It’s only copper. Give me a day or two.” I step out of the crowd. “Then it’s all set,” I cluck happily. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”

 

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH, 1947

The drilling goes all the way through the night, and none of us get any sleep. But it’ll be fine, since  we’ll all be away from here. But the water puddle is getting ever bigger, and I’m not sure we’re going to make it. All of a sudden, water is gushing through holes in the bottom, and everyone is trying to stop them. Even the elderly are trying to block them with their bodies.

Everyone is panicking, except for Drillz.

He calmly pecks away at the metal, without any flinching caused by the panic. Drillz finally gets up from his work and says, “Is this hole big enough?”

And we all turn. The hole is as big as Drillz himself. Turkish Baron rushes. “Let’s go, in formation! One at a time.” Clark and I go, saying goodbye to the elderly first. Then we see Turkish Baron and Flappy come out right before the room starts getting filled by water. Finally, I see Drillz ahead of us, along with the others in the group. I count.

43 turkeys left. The 7 elders gave us the wisdom to continue, even though they could not continue themselves. In the evening, we take a break on an island, and a selected few will bring 7 stones to the mainland to recognize the elders. On the island, Clark comes over to me. “Have a name yet?” He asks.

“Not today. Not after this. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”