Turkey in the Snow Read Free Page A

The one thing that had been getting him through this day had been his workout. That had been cut short, and he apparently had a commitment with this… person in his future, and he was hanging onto his patience with a very, very fine thread.
    Still, he couldn’t help but hear the naked hurt in Justin’s voice when he spoke next, and yeah. He felt like shit.
    “But, if you don’t have a problem with gay people, why do you always seem like…” Justin was waving his hands and trying to find the right words, and Hank realized he’d have to put the guy out of his misery. Justin was still wearing the company uniform, and he really had been nothing but professional.
    “Look, I’m sorry if I’ve been a complete dick,” he said, and looking at Justin’s helplessness and his kindness, he realized he meant it, too. “I am. It’s not the gay, Justin—it’s the drama. I mean, people like you are fun to be around, right up until they let you down. I totally appreciate the help with Josie, and I’m going to take you up on it, because, I’ll admit it, I’m desperate, but….” His head was starting to ache, and he hoped the rolls of cookie dough he had in the refrigerator had enough sugar to counteract that little problem. Maybe the coffee drinks he had in the fridge would help too.
    “But what?” Justin asked, curiosity apparently warring with the hurt. He was worrying his lower lip, and it was becoming sort of succulent and red, and Hank realized he’d wandered off in the middle of his sentence.
    “But what? Oh.” He flushed. “I guess I just mean, I can’t count on you, that’s all. Believe me. I’ve lived through drama. At the end of the day, it just gets you tired.”
    Justin just looked at him, his eyes dark with hurt, his mouth opening and closing, and Hank felt that curious sense of needing to make him feel better.
    “It’s like turkeys,” he said, out of the blue, and Justin blinked.
    “Turkeys?”
    “Yeah! Turkeys in the snow.” Hank sighed and set his gym bag down. “See, turkeys are like the drama queens of the animal world. They freak out at any little thing, but they ignore all the really important things. So, you put a bunch of turkeys in a pen, and let a fox in there, and they look at him and think, ‘Hey! It’s a fox! So the hell what?’ Which is bad because the fox is eating the turkeys, right? But these same turkeys see a snowflake, and they’re like, ‘Omigodomigodomigod’, and they run around the pen just freaking out, until they trample the other turkeys in the pen, and they hurt them too.”
    Justin was starting to giggle, and Hank closed his eyes, realizing that he’d sort of flapped his arms and made “Omigodomigodomigod” sound a lot like “gobble gobble gobble.”
    “Oh no,” Hank said, sighing and hating himself a lot.
    “Oh yes!” Justin crowed.
    “No, you didn’t get the point—”
    “Oh, I totally did!” Justin was laughing and Hank grabbed his workout bag again and slung it over his shoulder.
    “No, no, no, no—” He said, trying to get out of the locker room before he had to hear Justin say it.
    “Omigah, Mr. Calder! You sounded totally gay !”
    Hank sighed and just kept right on walking. “Yeah,” he muttered, “I totally know.” This sent Justin into another paroxysm of laughter, which Hank heard rattling around in his head for the rest of the interminable night.
     
     
    H OME . Finally. Mac and cheese, rolling out the refrigerated cookie dough and cutting shapes, icing them, quick bath, bedtime a half an hour too late.
    Josie was happy rolling out the cookies, but unhappy with the icing. It wasn’t perfect, wasn’t pretty, wasn’t shiny. Hank had bought the sprinkle things, and that helped, but generally, there was whininess and dissatisfaction about the entire affair.
    “You don’t know anything!” she shouted at him when he told her that he thought her Christmas tree was the prettiest. “It’s ugly! Mom says the best Christmas trees