In1973, TurkeyMan kidnapped the National Zoo's only caged turkey in the name of the American Indian, a classic tactic of asymmetrical warfare that diverted the Feds' attention long enough for an airdrop to resupply the Wounded Knee Siege. To all who seek freedom, including Dakota Access Pipeline resistors, TurkeyMan's story is a beacon to fearless feathered warriors everywhere.

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Putting Vietnam author Tim O'Brien's spurious signature aside, I licked my TurkeyMan wounds, and tried to find a reason for his nom de plume accusation; in effect labeling me the nefarious TurkeyMan Terrorist, on the title page of If I Die in a Combat Zone.

What did he know about turkeys, I wondered? And when did he know it?

True, he was a Washington Post reporter in 1973 in the midst of the Watergate Scandal, and surely familiar with the National Zoo's shocking Turkey-napping in the Name of the American Indian, reported by the Post, that rocked the nation.

Why would he not admit it? Is he concealing something?

Upon reading his novel, If I Die in a Combat Zone, I soon learned some troubling facts. O'Brien's home state of Minnesota is the largest turkey producing state in the nation, and his home town of Worthington calls itself the Turkey Capital of the World, and holds a turkey parade, with a cult-like celebration, on the 2nd week of September.

O'Brien's turkey past is troubling. He could be in the crowd. He could be the boy with the stick. He could be a true turkey aficionado, with a hidden gobbler agenda, that possibly drives a poultry prejudice of unsavory proportions, a person who might take immense effrontery at anyone desecrating the town's divine-turkey demigod image. A terrorist who would dare kidnap the celebrated Sphinx-like bird, in O'Brien's mind, might possibly deserve to suffer a barrage of fire and brimstone, if not penetration by impending turkey crossfire quills, directed by the scribe O'Brien himself.

Yet, on page 14 of Combat Zone, O'Brien does not write fondly of his boyhood Turkey Days:

Turkey Day climaxed when the farmers herded a billion strutting, stinking, beady-eyed birds down the center of town, past the old Gobbler Cafe', past Woolworth's and the Ben Franklin store and the Standard Oil service station. Feathers and droppings and popcorn mixed together in tribute to the town and the prairie. We were young. We stood on the curb and blasted the animals with ammunition from our peashooters.

Elsewhere in the book, he describes big artillery guns bombing the Vietcong as a Turkeyshoot. He writes of turkey dressing served to troops during Thanksgiving.

Beneath the surface, there is a definite turkey meme, and turkey may be in his blood.

In the war, O'Brien surely killed men, which is legal. Ostensibly, I kidnapped a turkey, which is illegal, probably a sin, undoubtedly a red-wattle flag blocking the parapets of Heaven's Winged Gate--which is the only way I would get in--never through the front door. I have no Trump Tower pass. As turkey time flies, I am a mere peasant. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Yet, never underestimate a citizenry's passion for our nation's turkey.

Above, Worthington citizens participate in a turkey race with fanatic, wattle-gobbled, red-shirted zealotry. Does this look normal I ask?

But me?--a tormentor of toms?--a filcher of feathered birds?--I am no Indian. Ok, maybe part-time, if I was unjustifiably framed. A few turkey feathers on my coat means nothing. Suggests no proclivity for poultry-napping. Maybe a passion for feather dusters and cleanliness, a military trait. Oops, maybe I speak too much.

Yet, it all comes back, at least some does. The voices never go away. Indian Butch's mocking face materializes at the worst moments, "My confidant and brother", my partner in Indian insanity. At the strangest times, I find myself hitchhiking back to my Alaskan haunts down the dreary Tok Junction Highway.

"Not much luck"--I remember Butch saying. We gazed at the graveled road that stretched into the drizzle of Alaskan infinity.

"Who is going to pick up a guy hitching with an Indian?", I muttered. We had been walking for miles.

"Maybe it's the damn Boy Scout flag you stole?" He glared at my festive but patriotic garb.

"Don't be a hater," I said.

I was a boy scout in my youth. So, in a way, I only borrowed the Tok Junction flag. True, we broke into the Scout shack to stay warm, and the big flag around my shoulders helped, even if it did say Tok Junction Boy Scouts in big red letters, and made me look like a nylon-wrapped dancing bear. But stealing?--resourceful is the word I like. I pulled my stocking cap down.

"Do you know where this road goes?" I asked.

"You tell me," Butch said deprecatingly. "Apparently, you're the scout."

Yes, there were times I hated him. There were scouts, and there were Boy Scouts, and there were boys. Even now, with the O'Brien conundrum back here in Spokane, all kind of Indian sleights, and I don't mean sleights of hand, seem to simmer beneath the surface. Spokane is named for the Spokane tribe, Children of the Sun. Tell me that in the dark winter. I remember Native American author Sherman Alexie, a year ago, when he visited Spokane (near his former Wellpinit Reservation) say that O'Brien's Vietnam novel, The Things They Carried, was his favorite book. Why would Alexie like a book about killing Vietnamese?--no matter how masterfully crafted? What could O'Brien know about Indians, anyway, back in Minnesota?

Anyway, Butch and I decided to split up. Out in the Far North, it was more likely a single Indian would get a ride. A single brave, I thought as I watched Butch head up the road. He still wore his tin hat, for some god-awful reason. Maybe he thought he was a tin soldier. A poor disguise.

Later, of course, I learned that O'Brien knew more about Indians than I thought. He mentions a "celebrated" Minnesota massacre without going into detail. I found that curious. It raised my pin feathers.

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(Article changed on February 19, 2017 at 23:08)

Authors Bio:

Conceived on west coast, born on east coast, returned to northwest spawning grounds. Never far from water.