Equal Access by A. E. Branson

finally
replied a few seconds after his stammer.
    Although Dulsie’s revelation was one of the
last things he wanted to hear about right now, Shad knew she was
looking out for his best interests. Dulsie, after all, was the
unexpected answer to his most desperate prayers.
     

Chapter Four
    A man is what he is, not what he used to be.
    --Yiddish proverb
     
    Dulsie thought about the future as usual that
Saturday morning while she harvested some vegetables from the
garden with Shad’s help and the dog’s supervision.
    The garden was the only cultivated ground on
the little five-acre farm the two of them rented. It was a small
plot, not nearly as large as Dulsie planned on tending someday, but
this morning she still had a decent harvest of squash, beans,
tomatoes and okra. The garden was laid out behind and to the side
of the compact, single-story farmhouse they lived in. More directly
behind the house was a modest and weathered wood shed where they
kept the lawn mower and garden tools. Farther back and to the other
side of the home was the gate to the turkey pasture which claimed
most of what remained of the land. Since they lived on the backside
of the property owner’s farm, there was plenty of other land around
them, with the nearest neighbor living half a mile down the
road.
    With the owner’s permission they improved the
fencing around that field when Dulsie and Shad moved in three years
ago. Immediately afterward they built a simple shed that was just
large enough to house thirty turkeys. Finally Dulsie purchased
twenty-five poults and a Great Pyrenees puppy, and began the task
of establishing her future heritage turkey farm.
    These weren’t the commercial, broad-breasted
white turkeys like Dad raised for almost forty years. During her
childhood Dulsie wondered where all the turkeys were that looked
like the ones decorating the school around Thanksgiving, so she
developed a quest to find them. Dulsie received an education on the
history of turkey raising and eventually discovered the foundation
stock for the commercial birds were the “standard” bronze variety
that were more reminiscent of the wild turkeys. This variety had
become rare, so Dulsie became part of a group dedicated to
preserving the old-fashioned birds. As an added benefit their silly
antics amused her, and Dulsie was convinced that turkeys were proof
God had a sense of humor.
    The numbers fluctuated as surplus toms and
cull hens were sold or butchered and more poults hatched in the
spring. But Dulsie’s little flock had grown to the size their small
acreage could handle. When her parents proposed earlier this year
to sell their own farm to Dulsie and Shad next spring, after Mom
retired from her job with the electric cooperative, Dulsie was
elated.
    Dad was sixty-three years old now, and her
parents had more stumbled into turkey farming than planned on it.
While they were a young couple looking for a farm to buy, an
eighty-acre place with four barns and a rather neglected house came
up for sale. Since Dad had heard that the only thing dumber than
turkeys was the person who raised them, he figured he qualified for
the work. Unlike Uncle Pax, who planned on remaining with the
family farm until he was either too weak or too muddled to labor in
the fields anymore, Dad always planned on retiring while he had
many good years left in him. Her parents hoped to buy a nice little
house around the nearby old German community of Westphalia.
    Since both of Dulsie’s older brothers had
relocated into other parts of the state and were leading lives that
didn’t involve turkeys – at least not the feathered variety – and
Dulsie apparently had succumbed to some kind of genetic defect that
caused her to be interested in turkeys, her parents figured she
would have use for the farm. When Dad told them a few months ago
that by spring next year they’d like to move on, he pointed out
that Shad, who had lots of experience in property transfers, could
take care of