The plan was two o’clock, as usual, but Dirk couldn’t remember a single instance of Thanksgiving dinner getting on the table before three. Which meant he’d have all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon to serve the community, to give those less fortunate than himself – and those even more less fortunate than a few others he could name – a good reason to be thankful. Not that they didn’t already have good reasons to be thankful, in most cases, but Dirk understood that when you’re less fortunate, those good reasons to be thankful don’t exactly spring to mind, sometimes. Sometimes they do the opposite. Sometimes they hide in the depths, they hide in dark, wet, and cold corners and they stay there, never springing to mind or anywhere else.

               “So instead of helping me get ready for our guests,” said Tara, Dirk’s wife, “you’re going to help strangers.” She was five years older than Dirk, firmly into her late fifties.

               “Yes,” said Dirk. “Needy strangers.” He stood in the doorway to the master bathroom and watched as his wife ruthlessly organized their shared medicine cabinet.

               “What are you going to do?” asked Tara. “Just drive around looking for poor people? And then give them money?”

               “No,” said Dirk. “I’ll volunteer somewhere. A shelter or something. A charitable organization.”

               “Which one?”

               “I don’t know yet,” said Dirk. “I have to do some research.”

               “It’s tomorrow,” said Tara. “Thanksgiving is tomorrow.” She was throwing away more medicine than she was keeping. The bottles rattled as she dropped them into the garbage can. Some of them sounded pretty full. Were the medications expired? Dirk knew that they were not.

               “I don’t think the research will take very long,” said Dirk.

 

               At half past seven on Thanksgiving morning, Dirk parked in a driveway belonging to a small house with dark-blue siding. Dirk had never before seen siding of that color. Two cement steps led up to a cement porch large enough to accommodate Dirk and nothing else. The screen door was closed, but the front door stood open. Dirk looked through the screen into a modest living room with no one in it. Had the door been left open for him? Was he expected to take the initiative to enter? He had only communicated with this Desmond Trif guy through email, but Desmond had not issued any “just come in when you get here” directives during the back-and-forth exchange that had ultimately resulted in Dirk joining Desmond’s Feed the Needy operation on a temporary one-day volunteer basis. But with the door open, ringing the doorbell seemed like overkill and Dirk knew from experience that knocking on a screen door was never satisfying.

               “Hello?” called Dirk. “I’m here to help out?”

               He heard a scuffling sound through the kitchen doorway on the far side of the living room, and then a short man in a heavy coat with the hood pulled up around his head came scuffling into view. “Are you Dirk?”

               “Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Desmond,” said the man. “Come in, come in.” He motioned to Dirk as if encouraging him to back a truck into a narrow parking spot.

               Dirk tried the screen door. It rattled, but wouldn’t open. “It’s locked.”

               Desmond turned to call back into the kitchen. “Farley? You locked the screen door?”

               A bass voice responded from out of sight. “I thought you’d want it locked. You always say people don’t utilize the locks on their screen doors enough.”

               Desmond sighed and crossed to the screen door, unlocking and pushing it outward, holding it open so that his body obstructed much of the doorway through which he now gestured for Dirk to pass. Dirk turned sideways and squeezed past his host, the fronts of their coats making a “zhoop” sound as they rubbed against each other. Desmond took the opportunity to whisper, “I’ve never spoken to Farley or anyone else about the underutilization of screen door locks in my life.” But Dirk noticed that Desmond re-locked the screen door after it swung closed. Then he closed the front door and locked it, too. “This way,” he said, and Dirk followed him into the kitchen where he found Farley standing at a circular table atop which were arranged four different laptop computers, their monitors pointed outward, each positioned perpendicular to the two laptops on either side of it. As Dirk watched, Farley side-stepped counter-clockwise around the table, pausing on occasion to type, to click, to read and nod and frown and say “hmm.” Like Desmond, he wore a coat, but Farley’s was unzipped and it flapped around him as he moved.

               “This is Farley,” said Desmond.

               “Hi,” said Dirk. “I’m Dirk.”

               Farley paused his activity to look up with his fingers poised over the keyboard of the laptop on the far side of the table. “Hello,” he said. “You’ve arrived at an ideal time. We’ve located a Target of Great Need and Desmond is about to go on his first run of the morning.” Standing in the same room as Farley made the depth and richness of his voice even more apparent. His unique voice was so noticeable that it made his physical resemblance to Desmond less noticeable, though not unnoticeable. The two men had the same small stature, the same jutting chins, the same defensive squints. But there were differences, too. Desmond’s voice didn’t hold a candle to Farley’s. That was the big one. Dirk didn’t think they were brothers.

               “Just excited to help,” said Dirk. “What is it that you guys need me to do, exactly? I wasn’t quite sure from the emails what my role would be.”

“You’ll ride with me in the truck when we go on the runs,” said Desmond. “While Farley stays here and identifies more Targets of Great Need or, if none of those are popping up, then Targets of Moderate Need. In a pinch, he’ll identify some Targets of Some Need.”

“And these are needy people?” asked Dirk. “And we’re taking food to them?”

“We’re taking turkeys to them,” said Desmond.

“For Thanksgiving,” said Dirk. He smiled.

“Right, for Thanksgiving,” said Desmond.

“So what do you need me to do, then?” asked Dirk.

“Well, we’ve already got the turkeys in a big refrigeration unit in the garage,” said Desmond. “Farley’s got target identification and location handled here, as you can see. I’ve got a small refrigeration unit in the back seat of my truck, so when he identifies a target, as he just did, then we’ll load a turkey into the refrigeration unit in my truck, and we’ll head to the address Farley gives us.”

“So I’m just…riding along with you?” asked Dirk.

“Yes,” said Desmond. “Helping to ensure that the drop-off goes smoothly.”

“Sounds easy,” said Dirk. “Sounds fun.”

               “It is,” said Desmond.

Dirk was not disappointed to have so little expected or required of him. In many ways, this was the exact sort of thing he’d been hoping to do, although he would not have admitted that to Tara or anyone else. It wasn’t like he’d typed “Multioak-area Thanksgiving charity very easy” into a search engine. He’d left the “very easy” part off, but had been rewarded with a very easy one anyway.

Farley gave the address of the Target of Great Need to Desmond, who typed it into the GPS on his phone. “Seven minutes away,” he announced. “And no car accidents currently showing between here and there, so that’s good.”

The refrigeration unit in the garage was indeed big. It was actually a long, white convertible chest freezer set to refrigeration mode. Desmond opened the top to reveal a heap of fresh turkeys of several different brands. He grabbed one and let the refrigeration unit lid slam shut. Then he opened the back door of his extended-cab pickup truck where a mini-fridge lay on its side on the back seat so that its door swung downward. The fridge was plugged into a blue portable power station crammed on the floor behind the passenger’s seat. Desmond stuffed the turkey into the mini-fridge and used a fresh strip of duct tape to fix the fridge door in place so it wouldn’t pop open in transit. Then he turned to Dirk and said, “All right, let’s roll out.”

When Dirk opened the front door of Desmond’s truck, he was greeted with an immense quantity of chewing gum wrappers filling the floor area on the passenger’s side and spilling up onto the seat.

“Just sit on them,” said Desmond from the driver’s seat. “On them and in them. They’re not dirty.”

Dirk hesitated. “You just want me to…”

“They aren’t dirty,” said Desmond again. “I open a stick of gum, I put the wrapper there. There’s nothing gross about them.”

Dirk climbed into the truck amid much rustling and crinkling. As he settled into his seat, the gum wrappers on the floor rose to his knees. He had to fish around in the wrappers by his hip to find the buckle for the seatbelt. When he closed the door, the rush of air transformed the cab of the truck into a shaken snow globe. Once the wrappers had settled, Desmond started the truck, which set the wrappers to vibrating.

“Just don’t open the window while we’re driving,” said Desmond as he pulled the truck out of the garage, then eased down the driveway and into the street.

“I won’t,” said Dirk. “Seems like that would be a, uh, disaster.”

“Yes,” said Desmond. They drove past the frosted yards of houses with frosted windows and frosted shingles.

“I know it’s not part of my official role,” said Dirk. “But I could help you clean all these wrappers out of here.”

“No,” said Desmond. “That would defeat the whole point. The whole purpose.”

“You want them in here?”

“Well, no, not really,” said Desmond. “But as long as they’re in here, they’re not in a landfill. I’d been feeling guilty about how much waste paper my gum-chewing was producing, but then I realized, if I never throw the wrappers out, if they’re contained in my truck, then they’re not really contributing to the waste problem. Even burning them, that’d be smoke, that’d be pollution, but in here, they don’t hurt anyone or anything. They’re only inconveniencing me.”

“And your passengers,” said Dirk.

“Right,” said Desmond. “Exactly.” He pulled the truck up to the curb in front of a shabby house and stopped. “All right, just come on up to the house with me and you’ll see how I do things.”

“And you just want me to observe?” asked Dirk. “You don’t want me to do anything?”

“Just help the drop-off go smoothly,” said Desmond. “If it seems like it’s going a little rough, see what you can do to smooth it out.”

“All right,” said Dirk.

“And get out of the truck very gently,” said Desmond. “Very carefully. I don’t want any of the wrappers to fall out or they’ll end up either in a landfill or incinerated.”

By the time Dirk had extricated himself from the wrapper-mass, Desmond was halfway up the sidewalk holding the turkey under one arm. As Dirk broke into a trot to catch up, he noted the sense of need that the house projected. It needed a new roof, new siding, a new garage door, new windows. A house that needed this much work surely belonged to a family with many needs.

The porch was creaky and saggy under Dirk and Desmond’s feet. The house needed a new porch, too. Desmond rang the doorbell to not audible effect. It seemed the house also needed a new doorbell. Desmond knocked on the door, then stepped back a few feet and indicated Dirk should do the same. “People get uncomfortable when they open the door and you’re right there crowding them. Especially needy people. They get worried that you need something from them.”

“Got it,” said Dirk. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Oh, I’d guess we’ve been here a couple minutes now,” said Desmond.

“No, I mean the whole operation,” said Dirk. “Your Feed the Needy operation. How long has it been, uh, operational?”

“A few years,” said Desmond. “We don’t just do it on Thanksgiving. Of course, we feed the needy different foods on other days. The turkey part is just for Thanksgiving. On other days, we might feed the needy chicken, goose, duck.”

“Always poultry?” asked Dirk.

“No,” said Desmond.

“It’s kind of taking these people a while to answer the door,” said Dirk. “Do you think we’re here too early?”

“Needers can’t be choosers,” said Desmond. “Now is when we’re here with the turkey. If they don’t feel like answering the door in their pajamas, then they’ll have to get fed some other way.” He stepped forward and knocked again, louder this time. “We’ll give them a few more minutes.”

“So,” said Dirk. “Do you ever give out sandwiches?”

“Yes,” said Desmond.

“Pizza?”

“Yes.”

Dirk tried to think of another food to ask about. Why was he struggling? Weren’t there hundreds of foods? Thousands?

The front door opened and a man in a ratty bathrobe and mismatched slippers said, “What’s wrong?” He needed a shave.

“Nothing’s wrong, sir,” said Desmond. “My name is Desmond, this is Dirk, and we’re here on behalf of Feed the Needy to present you with this turkey for Thanksgiving.”

“We don’t need a turkey,” said the man. “We’re going to my wife’s parents later today, and they already have a turkey. We’re supposed to bring dessert, so my wife made an angel food cake last night. We’re bringing that.”

“Well, you don’t have to eat this turkey today,” said Desmond. “Put it in the fridge. Put it in the freezer. Eat it whenever it’s convenient.”

               “We don’t have room for it in the fridge,” said the needy man. “And turkeys aren’t ever really convenient to eat. Not whole turkeys, anyway. They take so long to cook. And my wife and I don’t even like them that much. We really only eat them on Thanksgiving, and only because her parents insist. But I’ll probably only have a small piece. I usually fill up on mashed potatoes. Or bread. Everything else, basically. All the side dishes.”

               “You don’t have room in the fridge?” asked Dirk. He shot a look at Desmond. “What do you mean by that? Is your fridge too small? Has part of it collapsed?”

               “I mean there’s too much other food in it,” said the man. He shivered.

               “So you don’t need food,” said Dirk.

               “No,” said the man. “We go to the food bank. We get some government assistance with food. We’re good on food.”

               “So what do you need?” asked Dirk.

               “Whoa, whoa, hold on there,” said Desmond, grabbing Dirk by the sleeve of his coat. “We feed the needy. It’s in our name. It is our name: Feed the Needy.”

               “But he doesn’t need to be fed,” said Dirk. “Do you, sir? Need to be fed?”

               “No,” said the man. He shivered again. He needed a thicker bathrobe.

               “I didn’t say he needed to be fed,” said Desmond. “Did I ever say he needed to be fed? I said that he’s a Target of Great Need. In other words, he’s very needy. But I didn’t say what those needs are. I didn’t say they were food-related. Farley’s system identifies need in a general sense, but it can’t identify the specific needs of the needy. Sometimes needy people need food, sometimes they need other stuff, but whatever the case, Feed the Needy feeds them.”

               “I was under the impression that we’d be giving turkeys to people who need food,” said Dirk.

               “In some cases, I hope, we will be,” said Desmond. “Sir, do you want this turkey or not?”

               “No,” said the man.

               “All right, then,” said Desmond. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

 

               Back at Desmond’s house, Farley was still cycling between his laptops at the kitchen table, but he’d removed his coat. He was sweating, especially his neck. “How did it go?” he asked When Desmond and Dirk walked in.

               “The Target of Great Need didn’t want the turkey,” said Desmond.

               “Ah,” said Farley. “Well, there’s only so much we can do. And that makes a turkey available for another Target of Need that wouldn’t have gotten fed otherwise.”

               “True!” said Desmond. He turned to smile at Dirk. “Farley always has a way of putting things in perspective. Sometimes all our work can seem kind of futile, but he always knows how to encourage me to keep at it.”

               “And I’ve got more Targets ready for you,” said Farley. He scurried to the computer nearest Dirk, nudging him out of the way with his hip as he bent over it. “1290 Greenery Street,” he said. “Go!”

              

               As Dirk climbed back into Desmond’s truck in the garage, one of the gum wrappers escaped and wafted under the refrigeration unit full of turkeys. “Get it,” said Desmond. “We can’t go until you get it.”

               Dirk sighed and laid flat on the cold cement floor. He fished the gum wrapper out from under the refrigeration unit with his pinky finger and brought it into the truck with him, tossing it among the others as he sat down and buckled in.

               The house at 1290 Greenery Street was unquestionably nice. It did not appear to have any pressing needs. The roof, for example, looked to be less than a year old. Even the yard and flower beds were in nice shape, which was no mean feat in Multioak in late November. Desmond parked at the curb again even though there was ample space in the driveway. “Needy people prefer that you not park in their driveways,” he said. “I learned that the hard way. The very hard way.” He pulled a pack of gum from an interior coat pocket, extracted a stick, unwrapped it, added the wrapper to those covering Dirk’s shoes and lower legs, and popped the stick into his mouth. “Let’s go,” he said. “And do not…”

               “I won’t, I won’t,” said Dirk.

               Desmond didn’t hurry ahead of Dirk once he got the turkey out of the back-seat mini-fridge. Instead, he watched Dirk closely with his beady eyes, prepared to cry a warning at the sight of any gum wrappers breaking containment. But Dirk was vigilant, and he was getting better at moving into, moving through, and moving out of the wrappers with minimal disturbance. The men strode across the lawn to the broad front walk which they followed to the front door.

               “Go ahead,” said Desmond. “You can ring the doorbell this time. Pretty sure this one will work.”

               “I have to say,” said Dirk. “These people don’t seem very needy to me.”

               Desmond shook his head. “You have a lot to learn about need. A lot. You think all needs are material? All needs are physical?”

               “I guess not,” said Dirk. He rang the doorbell, and as its muffled chime sounded through the house, he felt a twinge of foreboding.

               The door opened. “Dirk?” The woman standing in the entryway with one hand holding the edge of the door at shoulder-level was Sybil, his boss. “What are you doing here?”

               “Step back,” said Desmond in a low voice. “You’re crowding the needy.”

               Dirk did not step back. “Uh,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t realize…”

               “How did you find my house?” asked Sybil. “How did you get my address?” She wore a different pair of glasses than the ones she usually wore at the office. They were less stylish. Perhaps embarrassingly so, although Dirk did not have strong style opinions, especially regarding glasses. Sybil’s round face evinced no pleasure at the sight of her subordinate at her door.

               “I didn’t know this was your house,” said Dirk. “I think there’s been a mistake.”

               “Actually,” said Desmond. “There’s been no mistake.”

               “And who are you?” asked Sybil, tilting her head to look around Dirk.

               “My name is Desmond, this is Dirk, and we’re here on behalf of Feed the Needy to present you with this turkey for Thanksgiving.”

               “Is this a joke?” asked Sybil. She addressed the question to Dirk.

               “No,” he said. “It’s just a mistake. We came to the wrong house.”

               “He said it wasn’t a mistake,” said Sybil, pointing at Desmond.

               “He’s mistaken about that, too,” said Dirk. “There have been several mistakes. A series of them.”

               “That’s not true,” said Desmond. “At Feed the Needy, our system never fails to accurately identify Targets of Need, and when it does, well, we feed them. Or, we try to! And since it’s Thanksgiving, we’re here to present you with this turkey.” He held the turkey out in Sybil’s direction, holding it with both hands as if it were a kitten in need of petting.

               “I do not need a turkey,” said Sybil. “We already have a turkey, much bigger than that one and a much, much better brand. I would never serve that turkey to my guests nor eat it myself. I’m Dirk’s boss. Did you know that? Do you know how much more money I make than he does? I’m not bragging. I’m not saying that makes me a better person. I’m just saying that it’s ridiculous that he would bring me a turkey for Thanksgiving. That you would even assume I need one, Dirk, is insulting. You think I can’t afford a turkey?”

               “No,” said Dirk. “I don’t think that. I didn’t know you lived here. He just said this was the address we were going to, and I just came along to, uh, to help out, to…”

               “Even if you didn’t know it was me,” said Sybil. “Look at this house. Does this look like the house of someone who needs you to give them a turkey?”

               Desmond tucked the turkey back under his arm and took a step forward. “Excuse me,” he said. “You seem to be under the wrong impression about our operation.”

               “It’s OK,” said Dirk. “It happens a lot. It’s kind of confusing.”

               “It’s not,” said Desmond. “Not if you just listen to the name. ‘Feed the Needy.’” He paused, allowing Sybil time to consider.

               “All right,” said Sybil. “And I don’t need you to feed me. I can feed myself anything I want. Me and my whole family. You know how many people I’m feeding here today? Twenty-three!”

               “Right, but in no way does the name of our operation imply that you need food,” said Desmond. “We’re not here because you need food. We’re here because you’re needy. You have great needs. And because you have great needs – whatever they are, I’d hate to speculate – we’re here to feed you.”

               “I,” said Sybil. “Do not need anything from you. From either of you.”

               “But you do have needs,” said Desmond. “You are needy. Perhaps your needs are emotional in nature. Perhaps they’re spiritual. Perhaps you require greater intellectual stimulation. I’d hate to speculate. Our system never tells us specifics. But it shows you as a Target of Great Need, ma’am. And as such…here’s a turkey.”

              

               With Desmond back in the truck’s driver’s seat, Dirk back in the truck’s passenger’s seat, and the turkey back in the truck’s mini-fridge, Desmond said, “You know, Dirk, you really haven’t been fulfilling your role at all.”

               “What do you mean?” asked Dirk.

               “You’re supposed to be helping these drop-offs go smoothly. But they aren’t going smoothly at all. We’ve only attempted two so far, and neither of them have gone smoothly. We haven’t successfully dropped off a single turkey yet, and I’d say that our exchanges with the needy have mostly been contentious. If I wanted contentious exchanges with the needy and a low rate of drop-off success, I would have just kept doing this by myself. At least there would have been less risk of gum wrappers getting out of the truck.”

               “I don’t understand why you don’t just find some homeless people and give them some food,” said Dirk. “They’re not that hard to find, and you know they need food.”

               Desmond sighed. “Do you know what happens if you give someone like that a turkey? They trade it for drugs.”

               “I don’t think that’s likely,” said Dirk. “Who would accept a turkey in exchange for drugs?”

               “I bet you would,” said Desmond. “Imagine you had a large amount of heroin at your house, and someone knocked on your door and offered you a turkey in exchange for some of that heroin. Wouldn’t you accept? Sure, you might negotiate for a while, and you might not give that person very much heroin, but in the end, you’d have the turkey and they’d have some of your heroin.”

               Dirk decided not to argue this particular point. “I just don’t understand your system.”

               “Neither do I,” said Desmond. “Only Farley does.”

               “But why keep using it if it doesn’t go smoothly?” asked Dirk. “Wouldn’t you rather give turkeys to people who could actually use them?”

               “Sure, sometimes,” said Desmond. “In my weaker moments. In my darker moments. Sure, in those moments, I’d love to do it the easy way. I’d love to get all that gratitude, get featured on the news, go to bed with a feeling of warm contentment, all pleased with myself.”

               “So why don’t you?”

               “Because we’re dedicated to the neediest people, Dirk. We’re committed to the Targets of Greatest Need. And your way – the easy way – does nothing for them.”

               “But you’re not doing anything for them now,” said Dirk.

               “Yes, we are,” said Desmond. “We’re feeding them.”

               “But you’re not meeting their needs,” said Dirk. “You’re not even bothering to find out what their needs are.”

               “Trust me,” said Desmond. “We’re not capable of meeting the needs of Targets of Great Need. Besides, they don’t even know what their own needs are. If they did, they’d be capable of taking steps to meet them, and then they wouldn’t be Targets of Great Need anymore. The very fact of being Targets of Great Need means that their needs are currently un-meetable, except by accident. So, no, we can’t meet their needs. But we can feed them.”

               “But they’re not accepting the turkeys,” said Dirk.

               “No one said it would be easy,” said Desmond.

               “You did,” said Dirk. “In your kitchen. I said, ‘Sounds easy,’ and you said, ‘It is.’”

               “No,” said Desmond. “You said, ‘Sounds easy,’ and then you said, ‘Sounds fun,’ and I said, ‘It is,’ but I was only saying it to the ‘sounds fun’ part, not to the ‘sounds easy’ part.”

               “Well, it hasn’t been fun either,” said Dirk. “Is it usually fun?”

               “I was trying to be positive,” said Desmond.

               “Let’s try it my way,” said Dirk. “Just one time. Let’s just forget the system. Let’s find someone who needs a turkey.”

               “Stop trying to test me,” said Desmond. “Stop trying to tempt me.” He gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands. He lowered his head until he was peering out at the road beyond his truck hood from between two sets of whitening knuckles.

               “Just on the way back to your house,” said Dirk. “We’re between Targets of Need right now anyway. You’re never going to get through all those turkeys at this rate.”

               “Fine,” said Desmond. “Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.”

               “Great,” said Dirk. “Turn left here.”

 

               Ten minutes later, Desmond’s truck came to a stop at a curb in front of a house not dissimilar to their first stop of the morning. “Why here?” asked Desmond.

               “The woman who lives here bought an old desk at our garage sale last summer,” said Dirk. “My wife and I agreed to follow her here to her house so I could help her carry the desk inside. Her husband was somewhere else with the kids at the time, but I could just…I felt like…anyway, I think there’s a good chance they could use a turkey. Do they need one? I don’t know and I don’t care. But I think they’d like one, but they probably can’t afford one, or even if they can, I think another one would be nice for them to have.”

               “Fine, OK, good,” said Desmond. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Farley’s going to be wondering where we are. And you cannot tell him about this, understand?”

               “I won’t,” said Dirk. Sensing Desmond’s agitation, Dirk was extra careful getting out of the truck. The gum wrappers whispered at his passing, but stirred only faintly.

               Desmond let Dirk carry the turkey and ring the doorbell, which was revealed to be functional, so these needy people had that going for them, at least. Dirk had scarcely had time to back up the requisite step when the door swung open to reveal a man with broad shoulders and a horizontal pencil-thin line for a mouth. His eyes were open to opportunity.

               Dirk looked at Desmond.

               “Go ahead,” said Desmond, his hands folded at his waist.

               “Hello,” said Dirk. “My name’s Dirk. I’ve actually been here before. My wife and I had a garage sale, and we sold a desk to your wife, I think, and we came over here to help her get it in the house.”

               “Oh, yeah,” said the man. “Did you bring another desk? You guys can bring it in through the front, here. Just put it anywhere.”

               “No, no desk,” said Dirk, allowing himself a light laugh. “We actually brought you this turkey. We’re just giving out turkeys today to people who might like to have them, and…”

               Before Dirk could finish his explanation, the man had lunged out of the house and snatched the turkey from his grasp. He then turned and stepped back through the doorway, pausing, it seemed, to embrace the turkey, tightening his arms around it, the muscles in his back tensing and bulging. When he turned to again face Dirk and Desmond, the turkey was gone. “Do you have more turkeys?” The man spoke as if nothing odd had taken place. “I ask because I don’t live here alone. I actually have a family, so we actually need another turkey. We need more than one, really.”

               “What…what happened to the first one?” asked Dirk. “The one we just gave you? Where did it go? Did you eat it?”

               “I needed it,” said the man.

               Desmond grabbed Dirk’s arm. “We have to go. We have to go, Dirk, come on. Come on!”

               “And I need more,” said the man. “Desk, turkey, whatever you have. Money would be great, actually. And I need human contact. A hug. A handshake.”

               Desmond’s desperate yanking toppled Dirk backward down the porch where he managed to twist and land on his side in the frozen grass, his right elbow taking the brunt of the impact.

               “Get up!” shouted Desmond, altering the direction of his yanking.

               Dirk struggled to his feet, his breath heaving in and out of his lungs with difficulty.

               The needy man advanced onto his porch, standing on the top step to look down on his visitors, registering no alarm or concern at Dirk’s tumble as he continued to speak. “I actually have a manuscript I’ve been working on. If you’d be willing to read it, that’d be great, ‘cause I need some feedback. And I need some guidance. I need some advice. Just general life advice. I need another kid like I need a hole in the head, which I do need. I do need a hole in the head.”

               Dirk heard Desmond fleeing. He turned and fled after him. Although Dirk was not cautious as he clambered into the truck, the door was opened and then closed again so quickly that no gum wrappers had time to flutter free. Desmond hesitated to drive off just long enough to peer back at the house and type something into his phone. Then he shifted violently, accelerated, and they were away.

 

               Heading back to the house, Desmond would not explain to Dirk what had just happened, but he was obviously rattled. When they walked into the kitchen, Farley sensed the disturbance in their souls. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

               “Where’s that list?” asked Desmond. He removed his coat for the first time since Dirk had met him and tossed it into the empty kitchen sink.

               “Which one?” asked Farley. He looked at Dirk as if he might find clues displayed there, but Dirk knew that he would not.

               “The Targets of Pure Need,” said Desmond. “Bring it up.”

               “Why?” asked Farley. “Neither Target of Great Need I’ve sent you to today is anywhere near them.”

               “We went off course,” said Desmond. “Dirk wanted to abandon the system. I only did it to show him why using the system is a good idea, but I didn’t know…I didn’t realize…”

               “Where’d you go?” asked Farley. He moved to the laptop facing the sliding glass door leading outside to a blank patio.

               Desmond pulled his phone out and tucked his chin into his neck as he looked down at it. “1161 Corson Avenue.”

               “Not on the list,” said Farley.

               “Well, add it to the list,” said Desmond.

               “But the system shows no Targets of Pure Need there,” said Farley. “The system is set up to automatically add any addresses with a Target of Pure Need to this list, and there’s only two addresses on the list, and neither of them is that one.”

               “We were just there,” said Desmond. “I saw the Target of Pure Need with my own eyes! He absorbed the turkey into his body like a black hole!”

               “I saw it too,” said Dirk. “Kind of. I don’t know what I saw. But he was…there was something wrong with him. He didn’t seem well.”

               “That’s because he’s no longer human,” said Desmond. “He’s a Target of Pure Need!”

               “But what does that mean?” asked Dirk.

               “It means,” said Farley, “assuming Desmond is correct and the system is not – which I highly doubt – that he is now nothing but need. He is only need. Every other aspect of his identity has been replaced with need. Need of everything, need of anything.”

               “That is kind of how he was acting,” said Dirk.

               “See?” said Desmond.

               “Why would I trust his observations any more than yours?” asked Farley. “He’s a total amateur. I just had to explain what Targets of Pure Need even are to him right now.”

               “But even his untrained eye recognized that something was amiss,” said Desmond. “Deeply amiss.”

               “Just out of curiosity,” said Dirk. “You mentioned that there are at least two other Targets of Pure Need in Multioak, right? You’ve got their addresses there? I mean, are they dangerous? I’d kind of like to know where they are so my wife and I can avoid them.”

               “They are dangerous,” said Farley. “Uh, let’s see here. 9002 Melody Court and 3803 Heron Street.”

               “Did you say ‘3803 Heron Street?’” asked Dirk.

               “Yes,” said Farley.

               “But,” said Dirk. “That’s my address.”

 

               At home, Tara was in the kitchen. The house smelled like a combination of the turkey in the oven and a powerful candle called “The Fallest Fall of All” burning on the coffee table in the living room.

               “You’re back early,” said Tara. “It’s not even noon.”

               “Feed the Needy was a waste of time,” said Dirk. He shrugged out of his coat and groaned his way into a chair at the kitchen table, the surface of which was crowded with dishes, cooking implements, ingredients, and recipe cards, but was mercifully devoid of laptop computers.

               “Well, I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” said Tara. “But that means you can help me get ready for our guests.”

               “Sure,” said Dirk. “What do you need?” He watched her closely. Her face, posture, gestures. How would she react to this question?

               “Oh, everything,” said Tara. “The morning has been a little rough. It hasn’t gone very smoothly.”

               “You need everything?” asked Dirk.

               Something in his voice made Tara stop and pay attention. “Anything you’re willing to do to help, I’ll take, Dirk.”

               “But will that satisfy you?” he asked. “Will you still need more?”

               Tara thought about it. “I suppose so,” she said. “I’ll always need more. If not today, then tomorrow. Doesn’t everybody?”

               “Doesn’t everybody what?” asked Dirk.

               “Always need more,” said Tara.

               “I don’t know,” said Dirk. “I don’t think so. Not in the sense that you mean.”

               Tara shrugged. “Well, you married me,” she said. “You’re stuck with me. At least until I need a better husband.”

The way she laughed sure made it seem like a joke.

Dirk pulled a smuggled gum wrapper from the pocket of his jeans, wadded it into a tiny ball, and tossed it into the kitchen garbage can. Step one on its journey to the landfill.