Holy Cow (10 page)
Authors: David Duchovny
“I knew that was too good a deal to be true! Dammit! I shouldn’t have used Groupon!” He showed me the tickets. “I saw that I could get a deal on three tickets, a great deal, but I guess I got us three tickets all on the same flight. It’s my father’s fault—he had money issues.”
“What?” shouted Shalom. “How am I gonna get to Israel?”
“We can get you a connecting flight from Turkey, it’s not that far.”
“Don’t you travel agent me, you jive turkey! I gotta get to the Promised Land!”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “This was a mistake. A really stupid, really bad—”
“But frugal,” offered Tom. “A really bad, really stupid, but frugal mistake. Perhaps because of a dearth of love from my mother, I have a permanent sense of lack, of not being enough, and this extends to money and miserliness.”
“I thought you said your father was the problem,” I said.
“Father, mother—see how bad I had it?”
“Please, shut your gob,” said Shalom.
“But then again,” Tom gathered himself, “maybe it’s fate that we shouldn’t split up yet. Maybe we’re meant to stick together to the end. We all have tickets to Turkey, we all wanna get the hell out. I know I don’t wanna end up being dinner tonight and Shalom doesn’t wanna be some police dog’s bee-yotch—so let’s do it. Let’s go: Turkey!”
The pig reluctantly nodded his assent. What other option did we have? We headed to give the agent our boarding passes.
“I’d be on my way to Tel Aviv tonight,” Shalom grunted at Tom as we made our way down the tunnel to the plane, “if you weren’t such a schnorrer.”
This was the first time any of us had been on a plane, and while it’s true there’s not much leg room, especially for a large mammal, the miracle of flight is wonderful to behold. To see the patterns of the earth way below, to soar through white clouds as if they were the Spider God’s cobwebs, the bluer blue of the blue sky, the hot nuts—all firsts, and all amazing. When Shalom realized we were traveling on the Sabbath, he got upset for a while, then he claimed he was sure some of his relatives were being served in the ham-and-cheese sandwiches the flight attendants tossed to people like they were seals. At one point he dropped to his knees in front of the food-service cart, yelling, “Uncle Schlomo!” like a crazy person. He finally settled down to watching the in-flight movie,
Babe
, three times in a row, calling out all the inaccuracies.
“This movie is dreck, so unrealistic, a pig would never want to be a dog,” he scoffed.
None of the flight attendants gave us any trouble, ’cause everyone acts like an animal on a plane. We didn’t stick out at all. Actually, I think we were the most human-acting folk on this flight. The people were disgusting. You should’ve seen the bathroom.
My favorite part was watching Tom look out the window. He’d never flown. And even though he was flying in a metal tube, he was up in the air for the first time. Where a bird should be. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t an oxymoron. I could see him flex his wings with the banking and leaning of the plane, the ascending and descending, as if he were the one flying. I saw a tear run down his beak and that made me in turn have to stifle a sob. He saw me see him, and said, “
Marley and Me
, man, this movie always makes me cry. It’s got Thanatos, Eros, wish fulfillment, the whole nine.” I nodded and went back to watching
Breaking Bad
, season two.
I took a few cat naps en route. I very much enjoyed the hot towel. At one point, a woman leaned over her seat and complained about the service. “They treat us just like cattle up here, just like cows.” Like cows, I thought, you mean they’re gonna slaughter us and cut us up into unrecognizable segments and eat us? I think not. But because I can’t speak, I did the only thing I could do to let her know I heard her. I mooed. “Moooooooo,” I said. The lady laughed. “That’s right, like damn cows, moooo.” I kept mooing ’cause that’s all I could do, and she said, “Wow, that is a really good cow imitation.” I smiled and lowed, and gave her some of my other cow sound repertoire, and soon she was laughing, having forgotten how pissed she’d been, and, in a bit, she had the whole cabin in on the joke and mooing.
For much of the flight, Shalom studied his Torah and denounced anything he found unrealistic in
Babe
. At one point yelling out, “Bah, Ram, F-U!” Tom, the comfort turkey, strutted up and down the aisles as if he were the captain, making sure that everybody was having a good ride, was being attended to, and felt emotionally “connected.” The flight attendant was kind enough actually to let him up into the cockpit with the pilots, where he stayed for what seemed like hours. He came back using all the airline lingo, saying, “I could fly this baby.”
Right before final descent, Tom leaned over me ’cause I had the window seat, and we could start to make out the landscape beneath us, the land of Turkey coming into view. The blue of the Aegean, and then the beautiful seaside and dwellings. Tom just sighed and shook his head and said, “There she is. There she is. She is so beautiful. My country.” Then a melancholy seemed to fall upon him momentarily, and I thought it might be the sadness that lurks under the happiness of achieving your life’s goal—you know that feeling? A feeling like, okay, this has happened—now what? And Tom said, “You know, in France, they thought turkeys were from India so they called us ‘d’Inde.’ And in Turkey itself, they often call us ‘Hindi’ for the same reason, and I was thinking maybe things won’t be so bad for me if I wanna go to India with you if I’m named after their language after all, right?”
I didn’t say anything. I just smiled and nodded. I knew he was nervous about his new life and this was his way of saying he was going to miss me.
Tom’s reverie was interrupted by the purser, who came to us with a metallic pin, one of those cheap little captain’s bars they like to give little kids, and asked Tom if he would accept an honorary pilot designation and could she pin the little doodad on him. Tom shrugged like no big deal, said, “Sure, I mean, if you have to get rid of them.” As she pinned the bar on the bird, Tom could front no more. He wrapped his wings around her and started sobbing. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he cried, and then, “Do the guys up front need any help bringing this big bird down into the ’Bul?” The purser smiled even though of course she had no idea what the sounds were coming out of his goblet. “I’m just sayin’,” Tom added, “just in case things get wonky up there, I’m a bird, mama, I’m here. On the case.”
He saluted the purser with his wing, and she understood his body language enough to stand and give him a big salute back while she winked at me. Humans can be decent and understanding at times. Which makes me think there’s hope for them.
When the announcement came over the PA system to buckle up for our final descent, I saw that Shalom was sweating like a pig. I thought I knew why. I leaned over and whispered, “I know Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but we’re just gonna be in and out of there.”
“I’m cool,” Shalom mumbled, “it’s just I’m a really nervous flyer. You’ve heard the expression ‘When pigs fly’? Well, there’s a reason for that—we are not supposed to be up here. I took three Ambien when we took off, but now they’re wearing off and I’m out! This is unnatural. Oh geez…” He turned back to the rest of the passengers and yelled, “Anybody got an Ambien? Xanax? Oxycontin? A mimosa? I need drugs, goddammit, get me drugs!!”
There was some turbulence, and Shalom squealed, “We’re all gonna die! Animals should not attempt to be gods. We are flying too close to the sun, too close to the sun. We’re all gonna die!” Tom, the emotional-support turkey, sidled over, whispered to me, “Leave this to the professionals,” and took Shalom under his wing. He held Shalom’s hoof the whole way down, telling him that the myth of Daedalus and Icarus was not about actual flying, but rather a pre-Freudian Oedipal psychodrama about when man overreaches, and distracting him with aeronautical details and facts about flight.
At the moment our wheels touched down, Shalom finally fell asleep from all the pills he’d taken. Good timing. Tom and I had to prop him up between us as we left the plane. Tom hesitated at the open cockpit, looking longingly at the complicated controls and lights like he didn’t wanna leave. He kept spit-polishing those cheap little wings he’d been given.
We breezed through immigration (go figure), but it took us about twenty-five minutes just to walk through the concourse to get near the outside of the airport. It was daunting and strange to hear humans speaking human, but a different human from what I was used to. They were speaking Turkish, and it was exhilarating, but also a little scary. I couldn’t understand a word. I certainly didn’t know where to go. Tom had been silent the whole time, and Shalom had fallen asleep and was lying on the floor, snoring and drooling. We weren’t going anywhere until he came to and joined the living again.
I went off to see if I could find some coffee. I’d heard Turkish coffee was the best and strongest in the world. How do I take my coffee? Well, the milk looks tempting, but you people pasteurize it and that takes out all the flavor. And what’s with this low-fat and 2 percent crap? The fat in the milk is what we live for. You humans are funny, constantly thinking about eating and trying to look like you never eat at the same time.
The Turkish coffee was exactly as advertised. After a few laps with my tongue, I felt like I could sprint for miles and pee for hours. In fact, the call of the cow patty was being whispered to me in Turkish by the magic bean. I had to find somewhere to go. I was aware you humans just don’t poop anywhere, and when in Rome, poop as the Romans do, even if the Romans are Turkish, right? I got back to Tom and Shalom. Silent since we’d disembarked the plane, Tom was still staring off into space, head in the clouds. I opened up Shalom’s mouth and poured a full cup of Turkish java down his throat. His eyes opened and spun around in his head like a one-armed bandit, landing on triple cherries. He jumped off the floor and screamed, “We’re back!” I told Tom I had to get outdoors to relieve myself. He snapped out of his daydream, smiled, and said, “I know just the place.” He fluttered up, we followed.
Tom led us back through the concourse, and then through a door that I think said
DO NOT ENTER
. It was in Turkish so I couldn’t really tell, but it was bright red and had lots of warning-type lines through it. I asked Tom, “You sure we’re going to the right place?”
Tom opened this door right onto the runway. The sound of the planes was deafening. Tom took off in the lead, flapping away. He ran us up to this smaller-type jet, maybe it was a private plane, and he said, “Let’s go for a joyride!” That scared me so much that I gave up all ladylike pretense and dropped a patty right there on the tarmac. The Turkish coffee had the same effect on Shalom, because he quickly followed suit with an anxious deposit of his own.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked Tom, screaming over the noise of the planes landing and taking off everywhere nearby. “We just risked our lives to get you to Turkey and you haven’t even seen it yet and you wanna get back in a plane?”
“That’s just it,” answered Tom, his eyes clear, bright, and focused. “During that flight, I realized my home is up there in the sky. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly. The prehistoric ancestors of turkeys flew, it’s in my DNA, and when I was up there I felt it in my wishbone. Up there is where I belong. I am a man with no country but the wild blue yonder. The sky is my home.” And with that he bounded through the plane’s open door. Shalom and I had no choice but to follow him.
Tom bopped into the cockpit, strapped on a headset, and started flicking buttons and running down checklists.
“You sure you know how to do this?” Shalom asked.
“Birds fly. That’s what they do. What am I?”
“You’re kind of a bird, I guess,” answered Shalom.
“’Nuff said,” replied the bird, and slammed the cockpit door in our faces. The next we heard from Tom, it was over the PA system, and even though we were the only ones on the plane, he addressed the cabin as if it were a full boat.
“Uh, this is your captain speaking, looks like we are one or two on the runway here, so, ladies and gentlemen, please put up your tray tables and adjust your seats to the upright position. Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff.”
There were no flight attendants. As Shalom buckled in, he turned to me and only half-joked, “Nice knowin’ ya.”
“Birds fly. That’s what they do.”
The plane was taxiing down the runway, and I don’t think we’d been cleared for takeoff at all, because a couple of planes seemed to speed up to get out of our way. Seemed like we were on the ground so long that Tom was going to drive us to wherever he was taking us. As we gained speed, I noticed a fence beyond which I could see nothing but the blue Sea of Marmara and a watery grave beckoning. I closed my eyes and braced for impact. I had done all I could. I’d had a dream and I’d chased it and almost chased it down. I was pretty okay with this being the end. Shalom, not so much. He was lobbing every Yiddish curse he knew in the direction of the cockpit. “You meshuggener putz! You should get trichinosis and die! Of all the ferkakta birdbrained schemes, you lousy schmendrick—” And he stopped, but only because I think he ran out of Yiddish vocabulary.
