Turkey's Understudy

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and Mother Nature had served up a typical late November storm, a storm that made up for what it lacked in force with sheer persistence. It'd kept up a steady rhythm on the roof of the tent all of yesterday and looked to be continuing through today. I'd finished today's newspaper hours ago, down to the crossword puzzle. The only stations we could get on the old radio were fading in and out of static, making listening an exercise in frustration, something neither of us needed more of. I was on my fourth game of solitaire, and strongly suspecting I wasn't going to be able to stomach a fifth.

At least it was dry. We'd had plenty of time to patch all the leaks in the army surplus tent. It was a big one, made to protect airplanes from the elements, halfway across the world. Now, as the headquarters of Wide and Far Deliveries it was host to a different kind of aircraft. 

"I wanna deflaaaaate!"

That was the aircraft herself whining. Jean, my business partner. Thinking back on it, I have to give her credit for not going stir crazier than she already had. I might have been getting tired of the scenery inside the tent, but at least I had half of it to wander around in. Jean's body just about took up all of the other half.

But she'd been singing the same tune since she woke up, and it was starting to wear on me. I gave her the same refrain I'd been repeating all day. "Can't afford it."

"Come on, Lynne, I've been like this for eleven days!"

By 'like this' she meant roughly the size of a cement truck. Not anywhere near the weight of one, though. In fact, I could have lifted her into the air if I'd had a mind to. The helium that had make her into a very round giantess wasn't quite enough to get her off the ground, but it was close.

She wasn't wearing anything but a war surplus blanket over her shoulders, or rather, two dozen war surplus blankets sloppily stitched together. It was both the only bedding she could use at her size, and the only thing like clothing she had. Not that it bothered her on either count. Weighing only a handful of pounds, she couldn't tell the difference between sleeping on a feather mattress and sleeping on rocks. As for clothing, well, most balloonists found that it wasn't worth the hassle to try to stay dressed when you could be one size one minute and twice as big the next, and when your laundry bill for one garment could pay to have anyone else's entire wardrobe washed twice over.

"And we haven't had a job for those same eleven days. Can't afford it," I repeated, not looking up from the cards in front of me.

Jean heaved a big sigh, solidifying her majority stake on the space inside the tent on the inhale and relinquishing it on the exhale with a gust that put the paperwork piled on top of the lone filing cabinet in even greater disarray than it had already been.

I knew I only a few precious minutes until she complained again. I had my stare fixed on the cards in front of me, no longer seeing their suits or values, just trying to make her stay silent by sheer force of will. Not that she didn't have every right to complain. Without the radio, the entertainment options for a human blimp are sharply limited. The largest of large type books was like the fine print on a mortgage agreement for her, and forget about trying to handle a deck of cards. Not that balloonists were exactly rare these days, but most could afford to go back to everyday size to take their entertainment. But she, as I had been so patiently repeating, could not afford it, and no amount of complaining was going to change the fact.

"I really wanna..."

I tossed down the deck of cards angrily and stood up. "Yes! I know! You want to deflate! Why are you telling me about it?! We're broke! You know very well if we deflate you we can't afford to fill you back up. We can't fill you back up, we can't make deliveries. We can't make deliveries, we're through!"

"I know, but..."

"The day after tomorrow everyone and their dog is going to have Christmas gifts and greetings for us to carry. I bet we'll do enough business on Friday alone that we can afford to let you deflate for the weekend. What's the big deal about waiting two more days?"

Jean gave a big sigh. "My parents aren't gonna be too happy when I show up for Thanksgiving dinner like this tomorrow."

That put a damper on my temper. "Six months later and they still don't like that you do this, huh?" I asked.

"Mom thinks it's a cute thing to do while I wait around to get married, just so long as I keep it hidden from the boys she keeps setting me up on dates with... and she invited one of them to dinner."

"Ouch," I said.

"And Dad says it's below my station and giving the family a bad name. And he thinks any day now I'm going to have to come running back and admit I wasn't cut out to make it on my own."

Well, I could hardly stay mad at her. I'd never liked her dad or the way he lorded his affluence and clout over the town.

"I'm sorry, Jean," I said. "But if we deflate you now, he's going to be right."

"Pardon me, ladies, are you open for business?"

I turned. The mayor had come through the tent flaps.

"Good to see you, mayor," I said, putting on my best one-hundred-percent genuine business-like smile. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"Nah, I won't be staying long. Lot to get done before the big parade tomorrow, you know!"

"I'd imagine so," I said politely.

"Well, I'm actually here about that. You know the giant turkey is the pride of our parade. Karen Green is usually the one in the turkey costume, but it happens this year she's come down with the flu."

This was starting to sound like a job. I could only hope the mayor wasn't expecting us to do it out of the goodness of our hearts. "So you'd like to hire Jean to take over?" I asked.

"That's right. Now, the city only pays Karen twenty dollars for the parade..."

"Twenty dollars!" I said. Fortunately, the mayor mistook my surprised greed for professional indignation.

"Well, I suppose since it's short notice I can make it thirty, but that's all! But I tell you what, normally we'd fill her up with helium from the city's supply for the parade, but since it looks as if Jean's already got that covered, I don't see any harm in letting her take her fill-up a day or two after the fact."

"Why can't someone else do it?" asked Jean. "You've got plenty of other balloonists lined up for the parade, right? Just have one of them be the turkey instead."

I turned to Jean so the mayor couldn't see and gave her my best 'are you nuts?' face.

The mayor shook his head. "There's no one else big enough for the costume. No one I can get on short notice."

"Well," said Jean, "it's a handsome offer and kind of you to bring it to us, but--"

I could hear the thirty dollars slipping away. I acted fast. "Let her wear our company banner and she's yours," I said.

"Deal!" said the mayor. "Make sure she's at the schoolyard at 5am sharp to get decorated, you hear?"

"No, wait," Jean was saying, but the Mayor was already on his way out.

"Go after him," said Jean, quickly shifting from her sitting position onto all fours. She was almost frantic.

"Cool it before you uproot the tent!" I said. "What's the problem?"

"The problem is I can't do it!"

"It's a cakewalk. Easy money. What do you mean, you can't do it?"

"I just can't, okay?"

"That's not good enough, you're going to have to spell it out for me. A sweet deal like that walks into our tent and you want to pass it up? All you have to do is let them dress you up as a turkey, then you take a nice leisurely walk down main street. Bam, they give us a cool thirty bucks and a free refill, which means you can show up for dinner as daddy's little girl instead of daddy's extra-extra-large girl. That's what's been eating you, right? Shouldn't you be jumping for joy?"

"I'm not really that big. I bet I could squeeze my head through the dining room window. That'd be nearly as good as being at the table, right?"

"Jean!"

"Okay, okay, I'll tell you." Jean settled back down into a sitting position. "But promise not to laugh."

I sat back down at my desk. "Shouldn't be hard, I'm not feeling too amused."

"It's just... when I think of all those people looking at me, watching me come down the street... it's terrifying. I don't think I could bring myself to take the first step."

"You're kidding." I said. "You're kidding! You spend your days naked as a jaybird and big as the water tower, and you're going to tell me you have stage fright?!"

"I told you not to laugh!"

"This isn't laughing, it's shouting! It's what people do when they can't believe what they're hearing!"

"It's just the way I am, okay?" 

I cradled my head in my hands. A large part of me wanted to throttle Jean, and was even willing to go to the not insubstantial trouble of scaling her body and getting my arms around her throat to do so. But the angel on my shoulder was reminding me that Jean being just the way she is was the reason I was sitting broke in this run-down tent instead of off in the city, working for one of the big outfits.

"All right." I said. "I guess we just have to chalk it up as another in the long streak of curveballs you've thrown me. And just when I was finally starting to understand how you can be a prude at five foot six, but be thirty feet tall, not wearing a stitch, and not have a care in the world. You're a strange one, no mistake."

Jean looked relieved. "So, can we call it off?"

"No. We need the money."

"Lyyynne, I told you I can't do it. They're not going to pay us if I freeze up or run away."

"Maybe you won't. I think I have an idea."

"What is it? If you're thinking of trying to get me drunk again, the property damage is going to be more than thirty dollars."

"No, nothing like that." I grinned at her. "I promised I'd stick with you as your pilot, and I don't see a reason to stop now."

-----

The giant turkey was the pride of the parade. If anyone noticed it wasn't the same girl inside all those ridiculous layers of nylon and chicken wire, no one found it worth commenting on. Jean walked the parade just as calmly and naturally as she'd walk down the street any other day.

But once the procession arrived back at the schoolyard, she lingered around in full costume until enough of the marching band and baton twirlers and the other balloonists had cleared out that she could get some privacy.

That's when I climbed out from the depths of her costume and up onto her shoulders, helped her take off the head of the costume... and then took off the blindfold she'd been wearing under it, and pulled the cotton out of her ears.

"How did it work?" she asked.

"Like a charm," I said. "You did great."

"It was kind of hard," she said. "I'm not used to having weight on my front."

"Oh? Seems to me like you'd be pretty used to a couple big weights on your front by now. Is that why you became a balloonist, so you wouldn't have to heft them around?"

"Lynne!" she was blushing.

But I'd done a good day's work and felt I was owed a little of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Lynne-teasing. "I'm just saying it was awwwfully cozy where I was sitting. Hey, maybe we should try it on deliveries from now on! Squeezing them to tell you which direction to go means I don't have to shout over the wind!"

She'd turned a shade of red to match the red nylon comb of the costume. She really is too easy a mark. But that's just one of many reasons I like her.