Morgan Talty, a winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, where he grew up. He is the author of the debut story collection Night of the Living Rez, winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize, and the New England Book Award, among many others, and the novel Fire Exit (Tin House, 2024). Talty teaches at the University of Maine, Orono, and is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.

Turkey Day

A Story

by Morgan Talty

Some days or weeks or months or years before Mom died, I got her laughing about the Thanksgiving.

“It wasn’t that bad,” she said.

“That one guy had a bag of meth,” I told her.

“Well, he didn’t smoke it,” she responded. “He kept it in his pocket.”

True. He didn’t. But even if he did, I don’t think the night could have been any worse.

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