Turkey Day

By Armando D. Muñoz

On Thanksgiving morning, Kelly and her wife Angela return to Kelly’s rural childhood home for a family reunion and holiday dinner. Not everyone welcomes them to the feast; like the country, they are a family divided. Also in attendance is a secret guest in an intricate turkey costume, somebody influenced by the holiday’s darker history, somebody who hollows out humans and decorates with their insides. Not even Jerky and Giblet, the turkeys kept in the coop out back, will receive a pardon from Turkey’s slaughter. Can Kelly and Angela survive until dinner, and will anyone be alive for a slice of pumpkin pie?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Armando D. Muñoz
• Release date: Nov 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370144921

Armando D. Muñoz

Author Clive Barker on Hoarder and Turkey Day by Armando D. Muñoz - "Your prose is beautifully crafted. You have an instinctive understanding of the complex challenges of horror story-telling. Consider me a new fan."Along with being a horror novelist, Armando D. Muñoz writes and directs horror films, including Mime After Midnight, Pervula and Panty Kill, creates bloody special FX, and performs as horror DJ Pervula. His first novel Hoarder was called “dynamite – a sickening, imaginative shocker” in the pages of Fangoria Magazine.He is currently cooking up a follow-up to Turkey Day titled Turkey Kitchen.

Book preview

This novel was many Turkey Days in the making, and a number of individuals assisted in the recipe. Extra special thanks to editors Kevin Mangold, Jeff Fenner, and Louis Buchhold III.

For their feedback during the earliest incarnation of this story, thank you Tori Pulkka and Zoie Pulkka.

For continued support and encouragement, thank you Robert Firth, John Heller, Sean Abley, Jackie Kong, Ron Gutierrez, Salim Abdur-Rahman Najjar, Nathaniel Mathis, Chris Alexander, Denise Gossett, and Tertulia Literary Salon.

Thank you to those who fought against California’s discriminatory Proposition 8.

And thank you Clive Barker.

For family.

PROLOGUE

The First Feast

The establishing feast for the modern calendar date known as Turkey Day occurred in 1621. Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrating America’s origin story, has been simplified over the centuries into a myth meant for elementary school kids and greeting cards. It goes something like this: the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and could not sustain themselves, so the native Indians showed them how to farm and shared their recipes, and after the first harvest, they all celebrated with a Thanksgiving feast. The Pilgrims and Indians sat at the same table, sharing turkey and yams and pumpkin pie. Isn’t that a sweet story?

Only simplified is really sanitized. The more educated know the truth of the first Thanksgiving story, that the myth is offensive in its omissions. The Pilgrims did not pay the natives back with potatoes; they paid them back with plague. Dessert was a poison pie, served slice by slice over the centuries. The settlers took the indigenous peoples’ recipes, then their land, then their lives. If one meal could be considered the symbolic start of a long, systematic genocide, that dubious honor goes to the first Thanksgiving feast.

In the century and a half following the first Thanksgiving, the holiday was only sporadically celebrated, at different times of the year in select states. But the spirit of the holiday persevered, and in the fall of 1789, the first American president George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving Day to be observed on Thursday the 26th of November. Washington’s proclamation fittingly included a plea to the Lord, to pardon our national and other transgressions. After all, by this year, there were far fewer indigenous people around to share their recipes.

Not all presidents following Washington upheld the Thanksgiving Day tradition. Adams and Madison wanted their potatoes and pie, while Jefferson did not. Perhaps Jefferson was too busy trying to get the natives to assimilate to western European culture as he pushed their tribes west of the Mississippi. That is also putting it nicely, another prettified history lesson.

In 1835, in the later years of his presidency, Andrew Jackson issued his own Thanksgiving proclamation. Jackson had an intimate connection to Thanksgiving’s darker heritage. No friend of Native Americans, Old Hickory signed into law the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Written as a forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation off of its native lands, the act’s execution amounted to executions, a years long ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee tribe. The Thanksgiving legacy is also that of the Trail of Tears, running through America’s history like a river of rare blood.

The Native Americans never won their freedom or reparations, nor were they the only minority to have a Trail of Tears. Slavery and oppression greeted every American whose skin was not white or whose gender was not male, always written into law and co-signed by an unseen God - his signature was in invisible ink.

Thankfully, the oppressed minorities that followed the Indians would not suffer the same ultimate fate, reduced to near extinct pockets on unsustainable land. Twentieth century Americans would see the black revolution in the 1960s, along with the women’s movement and the integration of all skin pigments into American society. Hundreds of discriminatory laws were wiped from the books. Voting booths allowed a more colorful constituency. No minority’s rights were ever fully granted; they had to be continuously fought for with diligence.

The first decade of the 21st century would end with America’s first African American president, and the Thanksgiving tradition endured. However, there was another minority in America still under attack. Their otherness was not in flesh or faith, but in their passions - America’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens, the sexual minorities.

Even today, hundreds of draconian anti-gay laws remain emblazoned in the law books, often enforced by brute force. Once again, God is said to be co-sponsoring this discriminatory legislation. The LGBT community’s fight for equal rights is said by their detractors to be a sinful siege of special rights, marriage being the most offensive of all.

The Defense of Marriage Act was rescinded, and yet marriage discrimination still occurs in scores of states. In many locales, it remains legal to fire somebody from their job for being gay or just being perceived as such. LGBT citizens can be denied adoption rights, equal housing opportunities, and the right to commit sodomy behind closed doors. Cops engage in gay stings, eager to lock up queers, and they use outing as a weapon to publicly shame, especially in smaller, faith-based communities. The LGBT community is routinely demonized in the media, political campaigns, and the pulpit with claims of plague, immorality, pedophilia, bestiality, and a fixation with eating feces. Despite the passing of hate crime legislation, there are exceptions to the law that allow discrimination for anyone who says their religion dictates fag bashing.

With the amount of homophobia, violence, and murder that LGBT citizens deal with on a daily basis, they can give thanks if they’re lucky enough to be given a seat at America’s Thanksgiving feast, and survive it.

Their Trail of Tears still runs through the country, and it’s overflowing its banks.

1

The Pardons

Near the middle of the 20th century, the US government instituted a new holiday observance, the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. Today, the event is known as The Pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey, and it makes for a great pre-holiday headline on the news. Unless there’s a war in progress, and then its bumped to feel good follow-up position.

This tradition, like most of America’s legacies, has a storied history steeped in blood, and gravy.

Harry S. Truman was the first president to partake in this presentation, outside the White House in 1947. Reports that this was the first turkey pardoning are erroneous. Truman admitted to eating the turkeys he received from the Poultry and Egg National Board. Records also indicate that Eisenhower devoured the turkeys of his two terms.

Kennedy, however, did not. Kennedy spared a turkey due to its enormous size, but it was not an official presidential pardon. This big bird ended up outliving the president. Four days later, Kennedy was dead.

The first American president to offer an official turkey pardon was Ronald Reagan in 1987. This pardon was not born of compassion; it was a stunt to trivialize the pardoning of Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal. Regardless, this act shows that Reagan had more compassion for the poultry of this era than he had for the AIDS victims during the initial years of the epidemic. Reagan was also a one-pardon president, and he ate the bird the final year of his second term.

It was George H.W. Bush who made the turkey pardon a permanent fixture of the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation during the first year of his presidency. Typically, the chosen turkey has a back up in waiting, and the pardon is extended to both birds. Most pardoned turkeys are sent to sanctuaries to live out the remainder of their short lives, the side effect of their being so plump and juicy. A few pardoned birds have had to serve as grand marshals of Disney’s Thanksgiving Day parade, probably working for less than minimum grain.

On Wednesday the 23rd of November 2011, President Barack Obama pardoned a forty-five-pound bird named Liberty and its back up, Peace. The pardoned turkeys were sent to the estate of George Washington on Mount Vernon, providing a connection to America’s first president and Thanksgiving Day proclamation.

At 4:55 a.m. on Thursday the 24th of November 2011, beneath a crescent moon in the turkey pen behind the Fawcett homestead, two turkeys were about to receive their pardons. There were three turkeys in the pen.

About fifty yards east atop a minor incline stood a tool shed. The wooden structure had only one window on its west side. From inside, the window provided a hazy view of the turkey pen across the backyard, due to a thick layer of dust over the glass, many seasons in the making.

The shed door was opened from outside by an adult in a butcher’s apron. Black leather work boots took three measured steps into the darkness and stopped. A hand in a rubber glove pulled a string knotted at the end, and the shed’s one bare, swinging bulb flickered to life.

Both gloved hands were empty, the reason for the pre-dawn visit to the shed. What good was a butcher without a blade to ply his or her trade?

The shed walls held a cornucopia of cutting implements for the butcher’s choosing. Both hands wrapped around the handle of the medium sized axe, with a one sided, eight-inch tall blade. The tool was lifted off its hanging pegs. The sharp edge was chipped, and pockets of rust speckled the side. The blade’s blemishes were inconsequential. It was not a tool intended for comfort.

The axe would be good for chopping wood, but it would be better for chopping flesh and bone, which was the butcher’s intention this early morning.

The boots walked with purpose out of the shed and down the incline in the direction of the turkey pen. The axe swung down at the butcher’s side, the hand getting a feel for the handle’s heft. The boots and swinging axe passed the tree stump chopping block, which marked the expansive backyard’s center point.

The butcher was drawn to the light. One bulb was mounted over the gate to illuminate the pen and its prisoners. The chicken wire fence stood eight feet tall and had a covered top. A wooden coop was attached to the left of the pen. This early morning the temperature was cool and crisp, but mild for this time of year.

The day’s fair weather start was not expected to last long. Area forecasts warned of a massive midday rainstorm that could sweep in and interrupt the power during the final crucial hours of dinner preparation.

The butcher’s empty hand unlatched and opened the gate, and the boots passed through. The pen’s three occupants were not alarmed by the intruder in their midst. These turkeys were of the Broad Breasted White variety, the same as those pardoned at the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation.

The elder bird of the bunch, Gypsy, was two and a half years old and a plump thirty-three pounds. The middle bird, Jerky, was six months younger and weighed twenty-five pounds. Giblet was the runt of the bunch, at sixteen months and pounds. The birds did not flee or fuss as the butcher walked among them, and why would they? They were all part of the Fawcett family.

A gloved hand seized Gypsy’s neck, lifting the heaviest bird effortlessly off the dirt. Gypsy flapped her wings and put up a fight, as any seized animal would. Jerky and Giblet went into a gobbling frenzy as the butcher carried Gypsy away. The gate was slammed and shaken to make sure the latch was securely engaged.

While there were no flashbulbs or fanfare, Jerky and Giblet had received their pardons.

Gypsy did not live to see the dawn, but the turkey did see the chopping block just before her neck was stretched across it.

The descending axe hit its mark. There was no need for a second swing. It was not yet light out, but Turkey Day was already off to a blood spurting start.

It was a shame that despite Gypsy’s sacrifice and daylong cooking, the bird would go uneaten by those it was prepared for.

2

Trail to Washoe

When the sun broke over the eastern horizon, Jerky and Giblet greeted it with agitation. They could smell their breed’s blood in the dew dense air.

Seventy-five miles south of the Fawcett’s Washoe County homestead, Angela greeted the golden dawn behind the wheel of her car. Her wife Kelly slept in the passenger seat with a tilted head.

They had been on the road since just after midnight, and crossed the California/Nevada border at Topaz Lake at 6:55 a.m., five minutes after sunrise. Angela had been behind the wheel ever since they left their Silver Lake, Los Angeles apartment, with only one bathroom break, one rest stop stretch, and one stop for coffee three hours in, the largest cup the gas station had.

Angela considered herself a capable marathon driver, and enjoyed driving at night when the roads were open so she could fly. Kelly had slept for the majority of the ride, but her dereliction of driving duty was not the result of Kelly’s laziness or Angela’s reluctance to relinquish the wheel of her car.

Kelly did not have a driver’s license. She was that rare adult that did not drive, by choice. Angela had questioned her about it numerous times, and was astonished by her complete lack of interest. Angela thought the concept was crazy, perhaps even cruel self-deprivation. Driving was freedom, and what person didn’t want that easily attainable luxury as soon as they were of age for it? Angela’s own teenage jaunts on the road from town to city had exposed her to culture and given her a literal direction into adulthood. Many of Angela’s milestones included mile markers.

Angela could have woken Kelly at any time, since Kelly agreed to be her navigator. It was easier to stay awake behind the wheel when she had somebody to have a discussion with. Plus, Nevada was alien territory to her. This was Kelly’s long abandoned neck of the woods – actually desert. Angela had grown up a Northwest girl, centered in Olympia, Washington. Her road trips had extended either north to Seattle or south to Portland, Oregon. Angela’s world had been rain and rust, so these barren, dusty cow fields with tumbling tumbleweeds were a foreign domestic landscape.

Regardless, Angela didn’t want to wake Kelly. She was more concerned that her wife rest up for what would likely be an emotionally turbulent day.

At 8:09 a.m., Angela pulled the car off of Highway 395 onto East Lake Boulevard, the country road that would get them to New Washoe City. She really didn’t need Kelly to navigate with her GPS programmed.

Kelly’s sleep throughout the night had been fitful, and could not be attributed to sleeping in the car. Angela had seen Kelly’s nightly disturbances slowly escalate over the past few weeks. Angela was normally the restless sleeper, not Kelly, and Kelly’s increasing bad dreams, groaning, tossing, night sweats, and sheet hogging had not gone unnoticed by them both. They had given the symptoms brief discussion, mostly joked about them, but they did not need to dissect the cause. They were both aware of the reason. It had everything to do with their destination today.

Angela glanced over at Kelly. The early sunlight piercing through the windshield gave Kelly’s dark blonde hair a golden shine and made her porcelain skin glow. Angela was thankful for her wife. She wasn’t giving thanks for Thanksgiving’s sake. She was thankful everyday.

Angela looked back out the windshield at the empty country road. She saw a glint of the early light on the wedding band on her left hand. Angela had at first welcomed the sun’s spotlight; it would give her a non-caffeine boost to take her through the final stretch. What the hard light was really doing was hurting her eyes, and her eyelids wanted to close against it, and they had to, just for a second.

One second stretched to another, and another, and Angela’s eyelids did not open.

The car drifted to the left toward the embankment. Her foot unknowingly increased its pressure on the gas pedal, and the car sped toward its doom.

It was the noisy acceleration that triggered Angela’s eyes back open. The sight of the incoming gravel and the barb wire fence twelve feet beyond almost made her scream, but that would waste time she didn’t have. Angela seized the wheel and cranked it to the right as she let up on the gas.

The left front tire touched roadside gravel for a few rotations before turning back onto the road toward its designated lane.

Angela’s focus on the road intensified as her adrenaline surged from her close call. She corrected herself, their close call. She was upset with herself for letting her eyes slip closed even once. She should have stopped in Carson City for another coffee. Tired driving was as bad as drunk driving, since both too often ended with a body count.

Angela was thankful for myriad reasons. She was thankful there was no oncoming traffic, or cops to ticket her or scrape up her potentially fatal mistake. She was thankful she hadn’t crippled them both, and she was thankful she wasn’t looking at her headless body sitting behind the wheel from where her head landed on the asphalt…

Good morning.

Angela reacted to Kelly’s soft greeting with a guilty gasp. She looked at her passenger, hoping that her face didn’t reflect the distress she felt.

Kelly smiled at her driver with waking eyes and a stiff neck. Angela could tell from Kelly’s calm that she wasn’t aware of their close call, although the careening of the car may have been responsible for her waking. If Kelly did know about it, she wasn’t letting on.

Angela’s response was not the typical one she greeted Kelly with every morning in bed, but it expressed her gratitude. Yeah, it’s good.

Kelly could tell Angela was shaking off a scare, but she figured it was due to the sudden intrusion of her voice after hours of silence. She also knew Angela had her own demons to deal with today, and she didn’t want to push her into an uncomfortable discussion, especially this early. She’d only discuss the rough stuff if Angela brought it up first.

A pick-up truck passed, the first vehicle to go by since Angela turned off of Highway 395. With the truck behind them, there were no other cars in sight. Angela was used to empty streets on the major holidays, or federal days as she thought of them. But not this empty. On this road, going to a small town she’d never heard of until she met Kelly, Angela felt like they were crossing a moonscape.

Kelly took her sunglasses out of the purse at her feet and slipped them on against the early morning light.

I need some coffee, or a rest stop, Angela admitted. She knew she needed a sleep-drunk driving intervention. The talking cure wasn’t enough, and she wasn’t going to let Jesus take the wheel. She didn’t want Him as a back seat passenger either.

We can get coffee at the Outpost. Should be coming up any minute.

How can you tell? All these sticks look the same. Angela caught herself just in time; sticks had nearly come out as craters.

I can tell, Kelly was regretful to admit. Kelly’s distaste for her native land could not be disguised. Want to try the radio?

I tried at Topaz. I got nothing but sermons and right wing talk shows. And I don’t drive well angry.

I’m not surprised. None of our shows here. Kelly didn’t need to list their favorites. Angela would know which women she meant: Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Miller, and Randi Rhodes.

Is that it? Angela inquired. Kelly looked through the windshield and saw the one story structure in the barren distance on the side of the road.

Right where it’s always been, Kelly confirmed.

Angela found it ironic that the general store ahead was called the Outpost. It was the perfect name for a business on the moon.

3

The Outpost

Angela pulled her car into the parking lot before the store, if five empty spots in a line up front qualified as a lot – certainly not by Silver Lake standards. With all of the spaces open, Angela would have thought the general store was closed if not for an electric sign in a front window declaring it OPEN.

Angela pulled into the parking spot nearest the entrance door and noticed there were no handicap spots, another city no-no. What Kelly noticed was a strange convergence of holidays before the store. On the left end of the porch was the season’s final pumpkin patch, with about a dozen oversized and misshapen rejects left, not chosen for jack-o-lanterns or pies due to their deformities. On the right end of the porch were the season’s first eight Christmas trees, six to eight feet tall. Between Halloween and Christmas, taped up inside the glass entrance door, were a cartoon turkey and HAPPY THANKSGIVING sign.

Kelly hoped that Angela wouldn’t notice the Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas trifecta. One holiday was bad enough for Angela. She didn’t need to be bombarded by three.

Kelly and Angela got out of the car and felt the bitter chill. Kelly was wearing the woolen sweater she slept in, as soft and snug as a blanket, but she still wrapped her arms around herself to keep out the cold air fingers trying to creep up from the bottom. Angela shivered more severely as she zipped the jacket she had worn open while driving. She thought the temperature must be twenty degrees cooler than Thanksgiving morning in Los Angeles (she was almost right, it was nineteen degrees cooler, which in this region qualified as a high).

Kelly started up the porch steps and Angela caught up beside her, the blonde and the brunette ascending the steps together. They were a complimentary couple, neither mirrors nor opposites of each other. In no way did they look or flaunt their sexual orientation. Both women looked modern and from the city. That was their defining otherness as they approached the entrance to the Outpost.

Kelly reached out for the handle to the glass entrance door, marveling at how unpleasant it felt to be opening this familiar door again after being gone for over a decade. Granted, the door felt unpleasant during her years growing up here, when she had gone to this store regularly. There was a sharp double ding from the opening door that Kelly regrettably recognized. She hated it before, and she hated it now.

Kelly knew the Outpost was a faith-based business, and ordinarily she would have avoided a place of this type, one that mistook open for service for open for sermon. Kelly and Angela were political with their purchases, and they tried not to spend money at any business they knew would use their dollars to fund legislation that would deny them their rights.

In Washoe County, Nevada, Kelly knew their shopping choices were severely limited, and there might not be a non-faith based business for many miles. Today they were lucky to find any stores open at all. And at this early hour, coffee was just coffee, not a check for Christ.

When Kelly and Angela stepped inside the Outpost, it wasn’t coffee they smelled. It was turkey. From the smell of it, the turkey had been baking for hours.

There were no customers or staff in sight. Angela thought that was appropriate for an outpost. Only somebody was here, someone was cooking, and Angela didn’t like the smell of it one bit. She covered her nose with her hand.

Smells like Turkey Day, Kelly announced.

Gross me out, Angela said with distaste, then was sorry she spoke at all. She could taste the meat in the air.

Coffee’s in the back deli. Can you get me one while I look for a welcome gift?

Angela didn’t say no on the coffee, but about the other thing, We already got a gift.

I know, Kelly agreed. I just want to get something else a little less political.

Okay. Angela shook her head as she headed back for the deli. That was all the protest she would give to this disagreement. And Kelly was right. Her choice of gift was political, and for an issue that she and Kelly did not fully agree on.

Kelly saw Angela’s subtle headshake, but was relieved that she relented without argument. Today’s dinner gathering would have the makings of a political summit. Opposing parties would be seated together at the same table, and debate was inevitable. Kelly thought it useful to bring a gift that was as neutral as possible. She knew her family best.

Kelly spotted a rotating rack of greetings cards, a minor selection that would have to suffice. What was more neutral than a greeting card?

At the drink counter, Angela filled the first of two coffee cups from the self-serve pot. She didn’t have the biggest sized cups they had, she had the only sized cups they had, and it wasn’t as big as she’d have liked in the final stretch of an all-nighter. She preferred a Big Coffee Gulp.

To the right of the drink counter were the hot deli cases, still empty as the food cooked in back. Behind the deli counter, the swinging doors pushed out as an older woman exited the kitchen with a large glass bowl of garden salad.

The first thing Angela thought upon seeing her was that woman is huge! - huge as in husky. The woman looked like she had bulging muscles stuffed inside a white wool lined jean jacket. She was wearing Wranglers held up by a leather belt with a silver U.S.A. belt buckle. Angela figured this woman was straight, and she probably had no idea how much she looked like a diesel dyke.

The husky woman also appeared to have a big heart in her beer barrel chest as she greeted her guest with a hearty smile. Happy Thanksgiving.

Angela would have been happier with a simple hi, but she offered the greeting back. You too. Are you having turkey for breakfast?

I’ve got three thirty pounders roasting. Dinner will be ready by noon.

Three turkeys?

Got some hungry truckers coming through today counting on Mama Outpost to give them the bird.

Angela smiled as she held back the laugh that threatened to escape her. She didn’t want to upset the store’s owner, who she was sure this woman was. Giving truckers the bird was humorous, but it was the odd moniker Mama Outpost that nearly made her laugh. It was easy for her to see the woman draped in an animal skin instead of a jean jacket, feeding the weary settlers passing through the plains. Or perhaps this woman thought herself Queen of the Moon, serving meat moon pies.

Angela turned to fill the second coffee before her grin grew. She did not see Mama Outpost’s smile falter.

As Mama Outpost set the glass salad bowl in a bed of ice chips in the cool case, she looked at Angela closely. This was not the way she viewed her regular customers. This was the look she reserved for interlopers and infidels.

Had Kelly seen whom Angela just met, she could have warned her that Mama Outpost was a woman with little good will and even less laughs. Instead, Kelly was spinning the rounder of greeting cards, and found none of them to her liking. These cards were more Watchtower than Hallmark, made up entirely of religious sentiments. They definitely didn’t qualify as neutral.

Kelly gave the card rack a spin as she stepped away, still searching for a peace offering without a political agenda attached. But she wondered, wasn’t peace itself political?

As Kelly searched, Angela looked over the self-serve pastries, which included donuts, jellyrolls, and cinnamon rolls. Behind the counter, Mama Outpost sliced fresh tomatoes on a cutting board to add to the salad bowl. She looked up at Angela, her eyes off of the knife that kept on cutting.

Sure you don’t want some pigs in a blanket? I can have those squealers ready in five minutes flat, Mama Outpost offered.

No! Angela exclaimed, instantly regretful for the forcefulness of her answer. Thank you, she added to balance her response.

Okay. Just looks like you could use a little more meat on your bones, Mama Outpost added before returning to her slicing.

It was a good thing Mama Outpost was looking down at her cutting board, because Angela could not hide her revulsion at the woman’s comments. For one thing, Angela was offended by her insinuation that she needed more meat on her bones. She and Kelly were fit and not too thin, and it was not due to dieting or pharmaceuticals. They were always active and ate healthy; it was as simple as that. They consumed some junk food, but they balanced it with more good food. She would feel no shame for her hot body, even if this woman thought she should be chunkier, as the majority of women in this locale probably were.

Second thing, the air was already thick with the burning meat of the three turkeys. Adding pork to the mix would make her gag. Pigs in a blanket made it sound so cute, but she didn’t find the idea of any animal in her belly cute. She thought the pigs would agree.

A hand landed on Angela’s shoulder, and she had her second fright of the morning. It was Kelly. Angela recognized there was no reason to be so jumpy. Yet she was.

Sorry, Kelly said. Grab me a pastry too. Something strawberry.

Kelly removed her hand from Angela’s shoulder and noticed the woman behind the deli counter. She recognized Mama Outpost right away. The woman looked older but basically the same as she remembered, course and cold. Mama Outpost had a lot to say when it came to Bible talk, which meant Kelly had barely talked to her in all her years growing up here. She was sure Mama Outpost had her pegged as a former local that had not attended the church. Why wouldn’t this woman remember a long gone customer the way she remembered this long forgotten storeowner?

Kelly saw Mama Outpost studying her. She just had a hand on Angela’s shoulder, so there was a possible signifier of their sexuality. If that was the storeowner’s issue, then so be it. She and Angela were long past the point of caring what strangers thought of them or their relationship. Nobody they knew back home cared, or more correctly, everyone cared for them as they were.

The turkey smells good, Kelly said. Why not start fresh with this woman, with a complement.

I bake them in a buttery broth, Mama Outpost said by rote. Her eyes were studying her early customers, far more than they knew. Kelly had forgotten one sexuality signifier that Mama Outpost caught instantly. These young women were wearing matching wedding bands, and there were no husbands around. But there was something more significant than that, more critical, a memory that was revealing itself to Mama Outpost with the force of a God sent revelation.

Find a gift yet? Angela asked, turning Kelly’s attention away from the woman behind the counter.

Not yet.

Rolling her eyes for Angela’s amusement, Kelly turned away to resume her search. Angela watched her go, and then looked back behind the deli counter. Mama Outpost wasn’t there. The swinging doors to the kitchen were in motion, slowing to a stop.

What lay beyond the back kitchen, out of public view, was Mama’s hidden Outpost. The back of the building held more square footage than the store up front, and far more supplies. She wasn’t just a shopkeeper, she was a doomsday prepper, and this Outpost was her bug out location. Her doomsday of choice was total economic collapse during a race war triggered by America’s current black president, who she’d heard from good authority was actually the Anti-Christ.

The Outpost wasn’t her home; that was half a mile up a dirt road behind the general store. What the Outpost provided most was storage, for food, water, survival supplies, and weapons. It was better than home, and where she spent the majority of her time. For most preppers, a bug out location was remote and hard for anyone to find. Everyone knew where the Outpost was on the side of the road, but she would boldly challenge anyone to try to breach it. Her faith and her Outpost were impenetrable.

The room that Mama Outpost went to first was a storage room of salvation supplies. It included shelves of King James Bibles (because a higher number meant her odds of getting into heaven increased proportionally), big signs of religious proclamations often displayed in her store (The Devil is a Demon-crat was her favorite, because she’d thought it up herself), and a six-foot light-up Jesus that would be coming out the first of December, to help herald in His birthday with a white light body, a red light exposed heart, and flashing red eyes. She thought this Jesus-Christ-Light was more of a man than her late husband had been. He certainly hadn’t liked it when she placed J-C-L in their bedroom, a life-sized nightlight. Once her husband passed in a gun accident (yeah, right!), the security guard against sin had been moved out of the bedroom and into this compound.

Mama Outpost went to a stack of over twenty file boxes stored in a corner, each one labeled by magic marker with a year, going back two decades. She did not need to pick and choose; she grabbed the box labeled 2008 and pulled it out.

Mama Outpost dug through the periodicals inside the box. They were all issues of The Christian Watchdog, a popular Baptist bi-monthly magazine that had been going strong for twenty-two years, as attested by the twenty-two labeled boxes in Mama Outpost’s storage room. They were printed on cheap newsprint paper, but they were still good for collecting in her opinion (while the numerous silverfish in those boxes found them good for tasting). Each issue held the words and plans of her savior, and she could not see herself trashing Jesus’ word, ever - she was a doomsday prepper with holy hoarding tendencies. This magazine had to be stored and shared with humanity in the future. Each issue had the importance of Moses’ stone tablets in her eyes.

It never occurred to Mama Outpost to insert the magazines into plastic bags to protect them for future reading. Silverfish weren’t the only pests to feed and shit on them.

Mama Outpost wore a scowl as she searched the yellowing periodicals. She saw flashes of the sensational covers with outraged headlines: Lascivious Liberals!, Planned Murderhood in Your Neighborhood!, ACLU – Suing for SATAN!

Mama Outpost made it to the middle of the box where she found the final June issue. She pulled the magazine out and studied the cover. Her scowl turned up into a righteous smile.

She thanked the Lord.

Mama Outpost’s next stop was another private room that required a key. She couldn’t leave her arsenal unlocked.

4

Showdown