(WESTERN THEME)
VC: The Lives of the Cowboys....brought to you by James Brothers Skin Moisturizer....it softens dry, scaly, leathery, cracked, lizard-like skin and makes it--- almost attractive....And now....the Lives of the Cowboys.
(GALLOPING HORSE HOOVES APPROACH, GK WHOOPS)
GK: Whoa! Whoa. (WHINNY AND HORSE COMES TO STOP) Easy, boy. Whoa. Easy. (WHINNY, CHUFFING). Whoa. (OUTDOORS AMBIENCE W. CATTLE) (HE DISMOUNTS) (WHINNY) (LONG SERIES OF FOOTSTEPS ON GRAVEL, SPURS. FOOTSTEPS STOP)
TR: So? You find any turkeys?
GK: I saw some but they run away from me, Dusty.
TR: I heard gunshots.
GK: I was blasting away and didn't hit nary a one of em. They're cagy critters. TR: How many turkeys you see? GK: I bet I seen a hunnerd of em.
TR: You saw hunters?
GK: Saw a hunnerd turkeys. They were nesting in a potato field, next to the cranberry bog. I commenced firing and the air was filled with hot lead and not a bird was so much as injured.
TR: How about up there in that pine tree? I see about four turkeys sitting up there.
GK: Those're buzzards.
TR: Oh.
GK: Yeah. Those're buzzards. Sitting up there waiting for us to die out here and then it'll be Thanksgiving for them.
TR: How many shotgun shells you got left?
GK: Got two left, Dusty.
TR: Two! We're going to have t' employ great cunning, Lefty. The wiles of the old turkey hunter.
GK: What do you suggest, Dusty?
TR: First of all, we take a big bag of dry bread crumbs out there and scatter em around, and then we wait for the turkeys to come and eat em all up, and when they're stuffed, we grab em.
GK: Okay, but we don't have any bread crumbs, Dusty.
TR: I was just about to get to that. What we do is we rattle some dry stuff around in a bag like it was bread crumbs and we go out there like we was scatterin the crumbs around and then----
GK: Yes?
TR: Then we do our turkey mating calls and arouse enough lust in the males so as to overcome their common sense and they run towards us with their tailfeathers spread out like spinnakers and beating their wings against their breasts and at their moment of great ecstasy, we blow their little heads off, what do you say?
GK: Seems almost cruel, don't it.
TR: Almost, yes.
GK: A man is inflamed with passion at the sound of a woman's voice and he shakes his wattles and claws the dirt and then he smells beer and looks up and two unshaven guys are pointing sticks at him and he gets the old Shotgun Surprise.
TR: Heck, that's exactly how I'd want to go, pardner. In the prime of youth.
GK: You would?
TR: Of course. What? you think a male turkey is hoping to go to a turkey nursing home and lie there with IVs in his wings and a oxygen mask over his beak?
GK: No, I didn't say that.
TR: The American Association of Retired Turkeys? You think we need that?
GK: No, I don't.
TR: What better time to go than when you're in love. (TR TURKEY CALL)
GK: What's that?
TR: That's a female mating call.
GK: That's not how you do that. You do it like this. (GK CALL)
TR: Well now you've scared him off. He thinks she's sick now. Sick or depressed. (TR CALL) There. That'll bring him in.
GK: Didn't sound very seductive to me. (GK CALL)
TR: My gosh. A turkey hears that, he's going to be flat on his back laughing his comb off.
GK: Won't either. He's going to spritz a little cologne under his ears and make a reservation at a restaurant and come a running as fast as he can. (GK CALL)
(VC TURKEY CALL, OFF)
GK: There he is. Hear him? You hear him? He's interested. (GK CALL)
(PAUSE. DISTANT VC CALL)
TR: Sounds like he's going in the other direction.
GK: I'll get him. (PICKS UP HIS GUITAR. STRUMS. ONE FLAT STRING. HE TUNES.)
TR: What are you doing?
GK: This is an old turkey herding song, Dusty. (SINGS: TWILIGHT ON THE TRAIL) Used t' sing this back when I worked for the Lazy T ranch and we used to take 60-70,000 Gobblers up the trail every fall.
Herdin turkeys on the trail
Through the tall pine trees.
I hear their funny gobble
And I'm certain that this job'll
Be a breeze.
Herdin turkeys on the trail
To this melody
Cause turkeys ain't that bright
So I know this job's the right
One for me.
Never ever thought about the deeper things
Never had a nickel to my name
Never ever wondered what tomorrow brings
Turkeys are much the same.
Herding turkeys down the trail
Sing my serenade
Til the turkeys find their rest
In the plant where they're processed,
And I'm paid.
(HE YODELS)
(FOOTSTEPS, APPROACHING. STOP. VC TURKEY CALL)
GK: It's a woman, Dusty.
TR: I see that.
GK: And she's not a turkey.
TR: I don't believe so.
GK: She's walking right straight this way.
VC: The name's Theresa, boys. Passing by, on my way to a job as a floozy in Bozeman, and heard your call and something about it resonated with me in a way I find it hard to explain.
GK: Why, thank you.
VC: I can tell you're a cowboy by the way you look down at your boots whenever someone talks about feelings.
GK: Yeah. Well. (HE HAWKS, SPITS) This here's my partner, Dusty.
TR: Howdy, ma'am. We--- we was just calling turkeys, and---
VC: Cowboys like you are terrified of women like me, aren't you. Women who dare to admit their feelings openly. Dare to tell you that you're very attractive. Which you are.
GK: You say you're a floozy?
VC: I've been floozing since I was eighteen. I floze in Salt Lake City last summer. I've flozen in Tucson, Denver, Dallas, you name it.
TR: What kind of floice do you flooze?
VC: Mostly, I flooze flice.
TR: I see.
GK: I thought most floozies smoked cigarettes and painted their lips bright red and wore black net stockings and were what you might call statuesque --- the ones I knew had balconies you could do Shakespeare on.
VC: I don't know what floozies you knew, but that's not the kind of floozy I am.
GK: What kind are you?
VC: I'm a romantic. I am a follower of....passion. And I've got a big one for you....you and your hat.
TR: You talkin about my hat?
VC: That's a hat I wouldn't mind someone hanging on my bedpost, mister.
TR: I took this hat off a dead man.
VC: (PAUSE) He was dead?
TR: Appeared to be. Didn't say anything when I took his hat. So I took his gun too. It hadn't done him much good evidently.
VC: (PAUSE) How'd he die?
GK: He died for the love of a woman, how else? that's what kills most guys. A woman comes along and drives em wild and they go off and do things they never woulda done in a calm reflective moment and before you know it, they're lying there with coins on their eyes and lilies on their chest.
VC: I'm feel more attached to you fellows the longer we stand here and talk.
GK: You care for some coffee?
VC: You don't know how to deal with that, do you? A woman being frank about her feelings.
GK: What's for supper tonight, Dusty?
TR: Don't look like it's goin' to be turkey.
VC: I fell for you the minute I heard your voice come drifting over the desert, and in the past couple of minutes, you've suddenly become something of an obsession with me.
GK: I don't think you oughta be goin around sayin that to a man, ma'am. It ain't nice.
TR: Whose voice was it you heard, ma'am?
VC: It was sort of a warbly animal-like cry---- it was so honest, so expressive, so full of emotion and need ----
TR: You mean this? (TR TURKEY CALL)
VC: The sound of that excites me in a way that I can't express except by saying ---- VC TURKEY CALL.
GK: I am shocked that a woman who was properly raised would say what you just said.
VC: You're afraid of a woman's passion, aren't you---- that's what drove you to this life on the lonesome prairie ---- you're afraid of the power that can be released in a woman ---- power that you may not be able to control. (VC TURKEY CALL)
GK: If your mother was here right now, she would be ashamed of you using language of that sort.
VC: I am beyond the reach of guilt. I have released that wild bird in me that longs to take flight. (VC BIG TURKEY CRY)
GK: Dusty, don't respond to that.
TR: Why not?
GK: Don't do it.
TR: What if I want to?
GK: This is nothing but trouble, Dusty.
TR: This is the kind of trouble I been looking for.
GK: You make that turkey call, and you're making promises that you can't keep.
TR: That's what love is, Lefty.
GK: She's a woman. She can only make you crazy.
TR: Maybe craziness is preferable to loneliness.
GK: Lonely! You're telling me you're lonely! After all I done to entertain you---- I've read to you aloud from the Letters to the Editor, I've told you jokes, I've played poker with y', I've sung to y'. I've showed you m' slides. Well, all right. I can tell when I am no longer wanted. (FOOTSTEPS) (DISTANT TURKEY) (FOOTSTEPS STOP) I heard him out there. I think I see him. (SHOTGUN BLAST, THEN ANOTHER. DISTANT TURKEY) Darn. Missed him.
VC: Step aside, cowboy.
GK: Huh?
(TWO GUNSHOTS) (LONG PAUSE)
VC: I want you to go build a fire, cowboy.
GK: You got him.
VC: I want you to get water out of the crick that's a couple miles east of here, bring it back, heat it up, pluck the bird, and wrap him in tinfoil that you'll find at the general store about fifteen miles north of here and don't forget to get bread and onions and sweet potato and pecans and flour and brown sugar and butter, and then come back here 'n heat that campfire up to 450 degrees and stuff that bird with dry bread crumbs and sage which you'll find on the sagebrush, and put the bird in the middle of the hot coals, and bake him for about two hours, during which you can make the pecan pie, and when the turkey's done, you put on the pie and make the gravy, and then you bake the biscuits. And then you come over here and you whoop and wake up me and Handsome here, and we'll come join you for Thanksgiving dinner, and we'll have something to be truly thankful for. Okay?
GK: Okay.
(DISTANT HOWL) (THEME)
TR: Join us again soon for.... The Lives of the Cowboys....brought to you by Santa Fe Antacid....if rotgut whiskey tends to affect your digestion, just drop two Santa Fe Antacid tablets (TWO LITTLE SPLASHES, FIZZ) in a glass of rotgut whiskey and see if that don't help. (THEME OUT)
© 1996 BY GARRISON KEILLOR