The Turkey 1.0

Part 1 - Andreas

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The Turkey

This story was selected as the First Prize winner of the First Edition of the Substack Writer’s Contest (Spanish edition).

It smells like wet earth. Maybe my oldest memory. After the rain, the ground still feels firm beneath my feet. But there’s something in my gaze, or in the way the world breathes, that makes everything feel far away. Blurred.

Fresh air folds into the smell of farm, mud, and newly picked mangoes. For a moment, time seems to stop. A soft voice, almost a whisper, names each hen, turkey, and duck in the coop. It’s Andreas’s voice, but I’m not sure whether I’m hearing it or imagining it, whether it’s real or just my memory playing tricks on me.

“Gael, come closer. Trust me.”

I wanted to answer, but the words stuck in my throat. I stepped forward without thinking.

Andreas wanted me to know the land by heart. He pointed at the animals and the tools with contained devotion, showing them as if to make sure I would remember, too.

I was just a child, maybe four. He was seven and wide awake, the place’s memory in his body. The birds followed him, scratching in the mud without hurry. He only had to open his arms for them to stop. He didn’t teach. He shared: steps, seeds, time.

I stayed close, trying to copy his gestures, repeating his pauses. Dust barely rose under the animals’ feet. The sun didn’t weigh on us yet. Nothing was in a hurry.

All at once, the ducks beat their wings like a warning. Then the radio came on. In the kitchen, Lisa, Andreas’s older sister, had turned on the old set. A soft melody filled the coop, weaving through the birds’ chirps.

“No puedo pensar, tendría que cuidarme más,” the voice carried from far away. The notes floated in the warm air and, when they touched me, a clear shiver climbed up my neck.

I tried to follow Andreas’s instructions and pointed at the turkeys with a trembling finger. One sharp beak cut my skin. Blood welled up at once. Pain and music fused into a strange rhythm.

“No!” Andreas shouted, lunging at the turkey, squaring up to it. “Your finger!”

The music didn’t stop. It was louder now. It slipped between the animals, oblivious to what had just happened. I froze, watching the wound bleed onto the ground.

“Como poco pierdo la vida, y luego me la das…,” the radio sang. I started crying like a newborn. Andreas bent over me.

“Gael, don’t cry. You’re going to be fine. It’s just a peck.”

The tears wouldn’t stop. My white shirt was already stained red. The cut had soaked through the fabric. He took my hand in both of his and put my finger in his mouth. He cleaned it gently, pressing just enough to stop the blood.

Suddenly my grandfather burst into the coop, his voice ringing out. The door slammed against the wall.

“What happened?” he shouted. “Damn it!”

His eyes locked on Andreas, already knowing. Before he could say anything, my grandfather slapped him. The sound cracked in the air. Dry. Brutal. The echo of hand on skin made me look away.

“I told you to watch him,” my grandfather said, quieter now. “Go with Juano. He’s cleaning the lamb.”

Andreas lowered his head and stepped back. He didn’t cry. He didn’t answer. Pain seemed routine to him, as if, no matter what he did, he carried that weight. Without a word, he left with Juano while I kept crying.

My grandfather came closer. He studied me, eyes tense, jaw set.

“Did he hit you?” he asked, not moving a muscle. “Because if he did, I’ll throw him out. I don’t know if he should stay here…”

I didn’t answer. The seriousness of his face pressed on my chest.

He took a small green stone from the drawer. He placed it gently on my forehead, then on my chest, then on the cut. When the stone touched my skin, I felt something… different. It wasn’t just the pain easing. It was like sinking into a brief sleep, losing weight, forgetting who I was.

He murmured under his breath. Words and breath were indistinguishable, yet that old murmur filled the air with a strange calm. The stone, cold and slightly rough, breathed against my skin.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. He no longer seemed angry—just distant, lost somewhere inside himself. He didn’t look tired. He looked… released. He lowered his hand slowly. His eyes, calmer now, settled on the ground. They were searching.

From the back came thuds and shouts. The song kept going: “…te acerca a Dios.” Juano was hitting Andreas, convinced he had hurt me. I wanted to speak. I wanted to yell. But my voice stayed trapped in my throat. Andreas didn’t defend himself. He only covered his head with his arms. He knew there was no point in explaining.

Then my grandfather stood. He walked with a firm step to where they were. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, but not soft.

“Stop, Juano. It’s fine. They were just playing.”

“Yes, Don Alejandro,” Juano said, without looking up.

The song ended, and no one else spoke.

*

Andreas was a strange name for someone living on a parcel of land in Peru. My grandfather called him “el serrano,” sometimes as praise and other times as a mere fact, a mix of scorn, affection, and resignation, as if he didn’t belong there, and yet there was no way to send him away. He said Andreas and his sister had come in from the countryside because no one wanted them, and they had no way to get by. They were the children of a German landowner and a housecleaner. No one said it openly, but in my family we assumed the two of them were the result of an affair.

His skin was fair and his hair so blond that, in the sun, it seemed to blend with the freshly harvested rice fields. The freckles on his face gave him a distracted, almost childlike look, which didn’t match the force of his gaze, especially when he thought no one was watching. Sometimes he got lost in his thoughts, withdrawn, as if he were listening to something coming from far away. But when he returned, he came back completely: quick, alert, present.

There was more than respect in the way he looked at my grandfather. He looked at him like a father. Deep down, he seemed to be waiting to be looked at with the same force. And even when my grandfather scolded him harshly, Andreas never pulled away. He nodded in silence and stayed by his side. It was the same with Rosario, my grandfather’s wife; with Juano, the foreman; and with Sori, his wife. Andreas did what needed to be done before anyone asked. I never saw him ask for anything for himself.

My grandfather also said he’d brought Andreas and his sister in to keep Juano and Sori company because Sori couldn’t have children. But in the end, my grandfather and Rosario raised them as their own. And underneath it all, that’s what they were.

I had always admired Andreas with a devotion I couldn’t explain. He was like a brother, and also something more. There was something in the way he looked, and in the way he met the work, a way of being I wanted to understand. I followed him everywhere, eager to learn from the way he lived and to mirror a little of his essence.

*

After my grandfather finished tending my wound, I went after Andreas to the granary. I couldn’t look him in the eye. Still, I watched him.

He was hopping on the rice sacks until he turned and flashed me a crooked smile that tightened one cheek. Maybe he already knew I was looking for him.

“Are we going to keep going or what?”

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Index | Next chapter → The Lamb

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