Our Dad, William James Stevens, was born in Castle Hill, in Aroostook County, Maine on January 19, 1915, the oldest son of James William Stevens and Eunice Robinson. Being of Scot and Swedish ancestry, in adulthood, he stood about six feet tall and weighed around one hundred sixty-five pounds. As long as he lived, his weight never did catch-up to his raw-boned frame.
When he was nineteen, Dad contracted a serious disease called St. Vitas Dance and he lost most of his hair as a result. The remaining fringe of hair ringed his baldhead like a blond halo and he'd been blessed the clear skin of his mother's side and bright blue eyes. I never did see my father with a full head of hair and I often wondered over the years what he would have looked like with all his hair.
Dad was the second oldest of four children. He had an older sister, Ada, and two younger brothers, Arnold and Herbie. He didn't talk too much about his childhood or his father, James Stevens, except to say that his father used to beat his mother every time he got drunk and we knew that Dad was very close to his mother. His given name was William James but Grammy Stevens had always called him "Willy," since he was a young child.
Dad once told me the story of how he and his two younger brothers, Herbie and Johnny, played "Cowboys and Indians" and how this simple childhood game was nearly the death of them.
It was a Saturday night and as was their custom, his parents left for their weekly shopping trip to Ashland with a lengthy stopover by grandfather at the local bar before returning home. The three boys were left with their older sister Ada, to baby-sit them.
As soon as their parent's old car rounded the bend in the Garfield Road, Ada sent them outdoors to play. They played "Hide and Go Seek" for a while, then "Kick the Can" and "Red Rover," and when they got tired of those games, Dad came up with the idea that they should play "Cowboys and Indians." But Herbie and Johnny rebelled because they didn't want to be the Indians. Dad didn't know what to do because you couldn't play the game without any Indians.
It was at that instant that Dad heard the gobble of the turkeys that his father kept penned up by the side of the barn. Grandfather had made a long and arduous trip to Canada to buy the dozen turkeys and he valued them more than anything. They meant the difference between having a good stiff drink on a frigid, winter's evening or goin stone cold sober and he really preferred to greet the world each day just a little "three sheets to the wind."
Dad had an idea and he motioned for his two younger brothers to follow him around the back of the house and out to the side of the barn where the turkeys were penned up. Dad said that it took a little while before his brothers got the idea. Dad pointed to the turkeys. "Turkeys?" they asked and they turned and looked at Dad. Dad nodded and said, "Turkeys! Turkeys have feathers! Indians have feathers! Turkeys are Indians!" It was rather a simple deduction or so he thought. Finally, his brothers got it! The three boys whooped, and hollered and danced around the penned-up turkeys. They finally had some Indians to capture!
They knew that setting all of the turkeys free at once and then rounding them up would be too much work. So they decided to let only one out at a time and after they'd caught that one, they'd let another one out.
Dad, being the oldest, had the honor of letting the first turkey out and he lifted the latch and opened the door a little but the turkey nearest the gate only stood where it was. It twisted its head from side to side and looked at him with its little, beady black eyes. Then it gobbled a couple of times and that was it. It didn't move and it didn't come out of the cage. Impatient for the game to begin, Dad reached inside the cage and drug the stupid turkey out by the neck. The turkey, outraged by the rough treatment, whipped its head around, bit Dad real hard on the arm and the "Cowboy and Turkey War" was on!
The turkey, sensing that it's time for living was short, took off across the yard with the three boys, whoopin and yellin right behind it. They chased the twenty pound bird around the yard several times and then it suddenly keeled over right in front of them. They ran back to Grandmother's clothes line and ripped a length of rope off and hung that turkey from the crossbeam of the clothes line! Dad said that it wasn't too long before all eleven turkeys were swinging right alongside the first one. The three boys danced and whooped beneath the dangling turkeys until the turkey's had stopped kicking and it was then that they realized the enormity of what they'd done. Their father, never one to spare the rod and spoil the child, would certainly kill them when he found out what they'd done to his guaranteed liquor supply and this time their mother wouldn't be able to cover for them.
They stood around looking at the dead turkeys for the longest while and then Dad knew what to do. No dead turkeys, no evidence! He cut those turkeys down and they drug them down over the hill into the woods behind the barn and buried every last one of them. Then, they went back up and slit a large hole in the side of the pen to make it look like someone had stolen the turkeys. Then, they high tailed it into the house and off to bed without saying a word about what they'd done to their sister.
Dad said that it was a good thing that they'd buried the turkeys because the next morning when his father realized that all of the turkeys were missing, he went ballistic. He grabbed his old rifle, loaded it with bullets and roamed up and down the Garfield Road all day long, looking for the turkeys and the bastid who'd stolen them. Finally, the neighbors, growing tired of being accused of stealing, called the sheriff to shut his father up. Dad said that if his father had ever found out what they'd done, they wouldn't be alive to talk about it and that was the very last time they ever played "Cowboys and Indians."
Copyright 2002 retained by the author, Martha Stevens-David. She can be reached at lmdmsd@megalink.net.
