by Greg Winkler

Created on: January 10, 2009

"Now ladies, this here is how I was raised to cook Thanksgiving. That's not to say there ain't other ways. But this is my way. And in my kitchen, we do it my way. Besides, Curtis will tell you when he gets here, I'm the best cook in Northern Mississippi."

One of the young girls crowded around Mama Colquitt poked her cousin in the ribs.

"Why's she talk like that? Doesn't she know?"

"Shhh," whispered her cousin. "Don't say anything. We're not allowed."

The old woman moved fluidly around the kitchen, with no wasted motion, her mass made smaller by the pure deliberateness of her movements. Mama leaned over and lifted the large bulk of the bird out of the refrigerator, grunting as she heaved it onto the pine table in the middle of the room. It sprawled out across the table on its belly, the bare yellow wings spreading outward as if still trying for flight.

"When you're cooking turkey, it's all in how you get the bird ready. Now this here bird's been dry picked. That means I plucked all the big feathers off, so all that's left are the long, hairy ones."

Mama rolled the denuded turkey over on the table, pointing to the birdshot holes in its chest

"Lemme tell you something, ladies. When your man goes to kill the turkey, tell him to shoot it where it'll bleed-in the belly or the underside. If he can't shoot straight-and most of em can't-make him use his knife to cut it so it'll bleed. That way the meat'll be whiter, and the feather pickin' easier. Curtis is always careful to shoot em low."

She left the bird laying on its back, long wattle drooping over its neck, head cocked to one side, almost in a casual recline. Lighting the gas burner, she turned the flame up high, orange and blue tongues licking around the metal grate atop the burner. Mama picked up the bird, grasping the head with one hand, both legs together with the other.

"To get all this fine hair off the bird, all we have to do is just hold him over the flame and it just singes right off. No trouble at all."

As a thin wisps of smoke curled upward from the turkey, the four girls crowded around the table gasped. One of them turned and ran out of the room, pigtails flapping behind her. Mama Colquitt braced the bird against her chest and grasped it in different ways, rotating it above the flame to expose every surface, every hair, to the fire. The fine hairs caught in thin yellow bursts, and burned in black threads toward the pasty skin. A faint acrid odor drifted across the table. When she was done, she carried

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