Bam! The ball crashed against the pie tin with the nail in it.
POP! The pie tin fell over and popped the balloon with an extra loud SPLOPP! and WHOOSH went the water, splashing them all.
The startled turkey rose several inches off the ground and dropped the shiny thing in its mouth, which wasn’t Grandma’s earring at all—just a shiny piece of foil from one of Matthew’s gum wrappers, just as . . .
BANG! went the ball as it hit the cake pan. The pan instantly fell off the edge of the file cabinet, hit the taut string tied to the trapdoor of the gum-ball machine, and almost immediately there came the rat-a-tat-a-tat of marbles cascading down into the tin bucket. Tailpipe whirled around in confusion.
But the turkey-blaster trouble-shooter hadn’t finished. Instead of rolling onto the ground beside the sewing machine stand, the ball went right between two of its legs and dropped onto the wide pedal beneath, right where Matthew was standing.
It balanced strangely on the low end of the treadle, and—faster than a pig could squeal—Matthew did what any nine-year-old boy would do in such a situation: he stomped down on the high side of the pedal, as though it were a seesaw, as hard as he could, and lobbed the croquet ball straight up in the air like a rocket.
BAM! it went as it hit a wood rafter beneath the roof. Tailpipe jumped again.
PONG! went the ball as it ricocheted against the tall metal ladder along one wall. Tailpipe flapped his wings in panic.
WHACK! went the ball as it dropped onto a wood railing, and then . . .
PLINK! as it bounced onto a shiny milk can, then rolled off to hit the dusty pegboard propped against the wall and knocked it over.
And there, right behind it, lay a little pile of glittery sparkles and spangles and silver and gold.
As Grandma gasped and bent down to stare, Tailpipe stopped his frantic gobbling, picked up the piece of foil he had been carrying, strutted over to his shiny collection, and dropped it on top of the heap.
Everyone stepped forward.
“My earring!” Grandma said, pointing.
“My gold bracelet!” said Josie’s mom, reaching down to pick it up.
And yes, there was Grandpa’s watch chain and all the other little trinkets that had been dropped accidentally from time to time in the yard and in the barn and in the clearing.
Grandpa gave a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be a cow’s moo!” he said. “I’ve heard of crows collecting shiny objects, but I never heard tell of a turkey.”
“That’s because there’s no other turkey like this one in the whole county—the whole state—the entire USA!” said Grandma. “And here I thought I’d lost my earring forever.”
“And I thought my daughter had lost my bracelet!” said Josie’s mom. “Now I remember that I wore it over here myself the week before it went missing. The clasp must have come loose as I crossed the yard.”
Tailpipe was upset that people were picking through his pile of treasures, but the minute he pecked Grandma, Grandpa chased the old Tom to the top of the haystack, and the turkey gobbled from his perch under the rafters.
But Emilene was staring at the rain gutter, the pie tin, and the gum-ball machine. “How did you get it to do all that?” she asked her brother. “Is this what you’ve been working on here at the farm?”
Zack grinned. “Yeah, all but the sewing machine pedal. I don’t think any of us knew that that was going to happen! Nice going, Matthew.”
“Well, if you boys hadn’t been building this contraption, no telling how long it would have taken any of us to find these things,” said Dad. “How did you think up something like this?”
“Amazing!” said Gramps.
They were interrupted by the sound of an engine out in the clearing, and Zack saw Adam’s truck pull up in front of the barn. Zack and Matthew nudged each other. How did Adam have the nerve to show up here?
“Hello, everyone!” Adam called, getting out. “Happy birthday, Grandma Harvey! I’ve got a little surprise for you.”
He leaned over the back of the pickup truck and lifted out a chest of polished wood with brass handles at each end.
“Oh, my goodness!” cried Grandma. “My blanket chest! Why, it looks brand-new!”
“That’s from Adam and me,” said Grandpa, beaming. “When one of those handles came off, I told you I’d fix it, and I carried it out to the barn. Then Adam said he’d come by some night when you were asleep and take it to his place to sand and refinish. I knew we couldn’t hide anything from you if we kept it here in the house.”
“Why, you two sneaks!” Grandma said delightedly, and she gave first Grandpa, then Adam, a big hug. She turned to Mr. and Mrs. Wells. “Aren’t you glad this young man’s home from the navy? Is there anything in the world he can’t do? I can’t count the times he’s helped me out.”
“I was thinking the same thing when he washed our windows a few weeks ago,” said Josie’s mom proudly. “Nothing like having a strong young man about the place, even if he is living in town.”
Well, Zack thought as he exchanged looks with Matthew. That was the last piece of the puzzle. Now they knew why Adam’s footprints were in the flower bed outside the Wellses’ window. Now he didn’t even have to tell Josie that her brother wasn’t a burglar, because she’d never suspected he was.
“Hey, what’s all this?” Adam said, looking around at the rain gutter, the cake pan, and the sewing machine. “This looks interesting!”
“Wait a minute, and we’ll show you!” Josie told her brother. She quickly replaced the water balloon, while Zack put the pie tin and the cake pan back in place, and Matthew poured all the marbles back into the trapdoor and made sure the string on the knob was stretched tight.
Everyone wanted to see it again.
“Adam, watch!” Josie said, as she climbed the ladder.
Once again the ball went down the rain gutter, and with a bam, a pop, a splat, a whoosh, a bang, and a rat-a-tat-tat, the croquet ball did what it was supposed to do, except that this time it rolled onto the floor instead of the sewing machine treadle.
“Neat!” said Adam. “I always wanted to make something like that when I was a kid. I’ve got a couple of springs from an old car seat I’ll bet we could fit in there somehow. I’ll bring them over the next time I come.”
“And there’s an old washboard in my cellar you children could use,” said Josie’s mom. “Marbles sliding down a washboard would make a terrible racket. I feel I owe you something for finding my gold bracelet.”
“And my earring!” said Grandma. “You don’t know how much I missed that.”
“Well, we didn’t find anything, old Tailpipe did,” said Zack, looking up at the turkey who was still gobbling his string of complaints from the top of the haystack. “And guess what, Adam, we have something for you,” he said.
Zack went over to the pile of glittering doodads—the tin-can lids and gum wrappers and buckles and soda bottle caps—and picked up a shiny key. “Is this the key to your apartment, maybe?”
“Heeeey!” said Adam. “What’s it doing here?”
“It’s our dad-gum turkey, Adam,” said Grandpa. “He’s apparently been picking up everything bright and shiny that he finds in the yard and dropping them behind the old Peg-Board here in the barn. I’d put him in solitary for a while, but I doubt if it would do any good.”
Zack’s mom was looking over the old sewing machine. “I’ve always wondered how people managed to sew on a machine with their feet going back and forth on a treadle,” she said. And then she looked over the whole turkey-blaster machine. “You kids have imaginations as big as the state of Iowa!”
She didn’t know the half of it, Zack thought, but he was glad he’d never told her their suspicions about a burglar.
Emilene was still being a pest. “Can I try out your machine, Zack?” she kept saying. “Show me what to do. Please? Please?”
“We’re out of balloons, but I have some more in my backpack,” he told her. “I’ll go get them if you hel
p Matthew fill the gum-ball machine again.”
As the family wandered back to the lawn chairs in the yard, Zack went up to the farmhouse and got another pack of balloons. He helped himself to one of the party sandwiches on a platter there in the kitchen and headed for the barn, almost too happy to chew.
And then, straight ahead, came Tailpipe.
He still had a few pieces of hay caught in his feathers, but he was walking erect, his two stately wings half spread on either side of him, his black and red and green feathers glinting in the afternoon sun. His two beady eyes looked right into Zack’s, and a low gobble, gobble came from behind the red wattle that wagged back and forth at his throat.
Zack stopped dead still, one sneaker in the air. Tailpipe stopped, one foot off the ground. Neither of them moved.
Then, slowly, Zack crumbled the last bite of sandwich in his hand and tossed it in front of the turkey. For one brief moment, the old gobbler waited, and then the gobble, gobble became a sort of cluckity-cluck as Tailpipe’s wings came down like the flaps on a plane, his tail feathers collapsed like the closing of a fan, and a few seconds later the turkey called to the hens to come join him for lunch.
Maybe he and his friends didn’t need to make a machine to scare a turkey, Zack was thinking as he walked on by and entered the barn. Maybe it wouldn’t be needed to scare a burglar, either. But they still had the sewing machine pedal to work into the action, and a washing-machine wringer, and what about the little propeller they’d found in Gramps’s machine shack? Adam was going to bring over some springs from a car seat, and Josie’s mom had an old washboard. . . . Who knew what else they would find for their absolutely amazing, one-of-a-kind contraption?
There was a lot to do yet, and the great thing about the turkey-blaster trouble-shooter was that they never had to say it was finished.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor has written more than 145 books, including the Newbery Medal—winning Shiloh, which led to three beloved movies; the recently concluded Alice series; and Roxie and the Hooligans. She has inspired generations of readers with her stories and characters— and this time with a big ol’ turkey. She lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Vivienne To
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The text for this book is set in Excelsior LT Std.
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ISBN 978-1-4814-3779-0
ISBN 978-1-4814-3781-3 (eBook)
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Zack and the Turkey Attack
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