The autumn woods welcomed Thanksgiving with cold rain and a warm hearth. The colorful curtains on the tree house had long since been taken down, and Julie moved back into her little walk-in-closet of a room. The Rusty Bucket Freezer was frigid all the time, and no matter how much they tried to heat it, the air remained chill and moist. Marty wondered how Rabbit and Otter were doing down in their forest wikiup. During one of the breaks in the storm he sloshed through the puddles to check on them, and relay Marge’s invitation to sleep in the living room. The air between the trees had that electric smell it gets right after a fresh rain, and the drooping boughs of the redwoods were a deep olive green again, now that all the dust had been washed off. He found Rabbit reading in the teepee, with Freyja sleeping on her lap. Otter had walked down to the store for cigarettes and beer.
“Oh-ho-no, we’re okay here,” she boomed dramatically, “Look: it’s snug and warm!” She patted her down sleeping bag deliberately. “We like camping!” She crinkled her nose and eyes with an expression that made it hard to guess if she was being sincere or sarcastic. They had a gas lamp and a small grill for a fire, with a canvas flap that opened and closed at the top for ventilation. Otter had a couple of old buffalo hides on top of a blue tarp he used as a groundcover, with several other blankets for insulation. The whole thing was about 12 feet in diameter, but with all the stuff around the edges, it seemed awfully small.
“My mom said, ‘that’s an order,’” Marty reported truthfully. The entire conversation was probably unnecessary, as their rustic boarders had crashed many times in their main room already, and would probably do so again that night… especially with Thanksgiving the next day. “Besides, Otter will want to be there when the food is ready.” They were expecting other company too, but Marty didn’t know who it might be. The Rusty Bucket Soup Kitchen didn’t take reservations, and never paid much attention to its schedule. It always served up a potluck of leftovers, castoffs, and rejects; simmering everything long and slow until it mellowed.
Marge officially had a new boyfriend, and he was living with them… sort of. Jimbo had disappeared into the mountains again with his brother, up near Yosemite. The new beau, Michael, was a co-worker at Aquarium Beautiful, but he actually made a lot more money dealing drugs. He came and went often, because Marge wouldn’t let him conduct any business on her phone or property. The kids called him “Magical Michael” when he wasn’t around, because he was rumored to partake of those psilocybin mushrooms. He was a sad and gentle man with the long face of a poet, but the mellowness and melancholy were probably side effects of being heavily medicated most of the time. His pupils were dilated wider than the exhaust pipes on his Harley. He sold cocaine and weed through his cover at the pet store, which made him furtively paranoid, as if the narcs would swoop out of the sky and arrest him any second. He wore his hair and clothes in the style of a musician, but couldn’t carry a tune in a plastic baggie. He was a very nice guy, but Marty avoided him as much as possible because he obsessively chain-smoked, which made Marge smoke more, too. Whenever he came to visit, the kids felt like cockroaches getting fumigated, and they hid in the cracks of their bedrooms. He’d most likely be joining them for turkey dinner, so Marty decided he’d have to eat with a gas mask.
A raindrop fell down his neck, breaking the reverie. “Can I carry anything back for you that might get wet?” He shifted his feet, anxious to get back to the fire. Rabbit thanked him, and handed over a pillowcase full of laundry. Marty was also wanting to get back and finish the book he was reading, called Stranger in a Strange Land. It was a very interesting and well-written tale of a man completely unfamiliar with earth, and he couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. There was a lot of common sense in that book, even though it had a fantastic plot that could never happen. That was the neat thing about science fiction, he mused, the way it took an impossible idea and made it seem real. It took a considerable amount of talent for Robert Heinlein to synthesize so much truth about humanity in an allegory about a boy raised by Martians!
Thanksgiving was interesting, to say the least. They wound up with a very full house, where people came and went all day long. Michael stayed over the night before, and Otter and Rabbit spread a buffalo robe on the floor next to the fire. Marty was up late, reading his new favorite book under the covers with a flashlight. Early in the morning he saw Ron letting himself in the front door, and he suspected he’d spent the night in Julie’s room, climbed out the window, and came in as if he were just arriving. Marge was up early, too, getting the turkey stuffed and in the oven.
The kitchen had some significant improvements over the summer. Gorilla Joe salvaged a stove to go with the refrigerator, and he and a friend installed a white, enameled sink unit with metal drawers that appeared to be a relic from an old submarine. The walls were painted butter yellow in the narrow room, which now resembled a galley. Space was at a premium, and there was just enough room to stir a pot of chili without bumping your elbow. The painted wall behind the stove was decorated by the entire family, to cover some holes where rotted shelves used to be. They plastered it up with mud – or “joint compound,” as it said poignantly on the bucket – and they all had fun writing their names, setting handprints, and drawing pictures. Marty happily visualized the horrified looks on the faces of the squeaky-clean mothers back in the suburbs, if they could have seen their little Yellow Submarine kitchen. It may not be featured in Better Home and Gardens, but when all of them were working within its cheery confines, how could they not feel closer as a family?
Julie, Marty, and Susie helped with prepping the ingredients on an antique table Otter had picked up at a flea market for $5 because it only had three legs. It was perfect because that part of the kitchen was very cramped, and the formerly missing leg (replaced by a two-by-four prosthetic) was in a corner. Rabbit sat on the couch, stringing green beans with a cigarette between her fingers, because she couldn’t possibly fit in the kitchen. Michael and Otter were still sleeping off whatever had intoxicated them the night before, while Ron was outside talking to someone else who had arrived, and Marty recognized Gorilla Joe’s loud laugh. He could smell pot smoke coming in through the open windows, and did a mental count: there were six adults and three kids already, plus the dog who was eating under the table. There were only four chairs and a couch. Marty planned to use the chair in his room, but they couldn’t all fit at the white plastic table anyway, covered as it was in tools and houseplants. Their first country Thanksgiving was not going to look like a Norman Rockwell painting at all. More like Pieter Bruegel, or – if the men got to drinking – Hieronymus Bosch.
Frank and Frodo arrived around noon, looking hungry and very interested in the proceedings. Frank brought his mandolin, and lounged on the bay window just strumming quietly, and saying how good everything smelled. They didn’t bring any chairs. Frodo and Freyja became instant friends, and she wouldn’t leave his side the entire day. Krishna couldn’t handle the influx of strange people, and bolted outside when the door was opened. In came Gorilla Joe, bringing in a few chairs he had borrowed from the McAuliffes. He was accompanied by the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass, as Big Billy followed with a scotch in one hand and a barstool in the other. It was nice of him to help, and he declared loudly that this house had more people and smelled better than his own. Julie and Marty took the plants outside for a field trip, and cleared off the melamine table. Then he put on Tea for the Tillerman, and observed the festivities. Marty was always a spectator, not a player.
Otter busied himself poking at the fire, and ranting to no one in particular about the Indians getting a bum deal at Thanksgiving, while Ron and Gorilla Joe arm-wrestled for shots of tequila on the coffee table. The little submarine in the woods now had a full crew, but somehow, Marge, Rabbit, and Julie performed alchemy in that tiny galley. Serving dishes heaped high with food were spread out on the plastic table (by then tastefully covered in gingham and adorned with a centerpiece of fall leaves that Susie had made). Then it was every mouth for itself, with the frenzy of a T.V. game show, in which the challenge was to get a sample of everything on your paper plate without spilling any, and find a clear spot to sit (or stand) and wolf it down. The dog wound up eating as much as any of them, because she had no competition at floor level. It was all so delicious, and the company was in such good spirits, it may as well have been a Madrigal Feast!
The enormous task of cleaning up was funneled through the galley by many helping hands. Remnants of food were scattered all over the table, but people kept nibbling here and nibbling there, until they were so stuffed they could only lay around like comatose seals on a beach. Marty was profoundly thankful to celebrate such a congenial Thanksgiving for a change – not like the stressed-out, tension-filled ordeals he remembered growing up. For the first time, he understood that the meaning of gratitude was for people; not things.