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Chapter 8: Thanksgiving
 By Jim Caple |
Previously at 24 College Avenue: English major Josh Williams is in his final senior year at State College and determined to go out a champion by winning the national beer pong championship sponsored by Athena athletics. Kenan Hill, one of the best linebackers in the nation, recently suffered a concussion on a helmet-to-helmet play. Jenn Robbins has been suspended as the Red Devils mascot for ramming an opposing quarterback with the Bubby-Mobile. Sprinter Nicollette Mayle has returned to live in the house as part of her Athena-sponsored campaign to make the Olympic team. Steve Hamilton is a photographer for the student paper and intern for the local Journal-American. Paul Fairhaven is a film major who speaks only in movie quotes. Cheryl Bellamy is a former housemate in her third year of medical school. Danny Edmonds is a foul-mouthed semi-student with a serious gambling jones. . . .
Josh gestured with a carving knife toward the amazing Thanksgiving bounty spread on the table in front of the loved ones gathered around him. “Would anyone care to perform the honors?’’ No one spoke. “No? All right, then I guess I’ll do it.’’
He lifted the cardboard lid from one of the boxes and with an impressive flourish sliced the extra-large Triple-S (Starving Student Special) from Pizza Slut into eight relatively equal pieces.
“Sorry, they didn’t have any turkey toppings for the pizza but there’s cranberry sauce for the Psycho Bread if you want.’’
When still no one said anything or smiled, Josh grabbed a strand of cheese from the knife and flipped it into his mouth. “Anyway, the pizzas in these two boxes are Canadian bacon, pineapple and mushrooms and the other three have pepperoni, sausage and olives.’’
Josh grabbed two slices of the Triple-S pizza with a gloved hand and slapped them onto his paper plate. He smiled apologetically at his unhappy housemates who sat bundled up around the table in sweaters and coats. “Happy Thanksgiving,’’ he said, toasting them with a bottle of Six-Pack beer. “God bless us, everyone.’’
As the others sat frowning, Fairhaven bowed his head in mock prayer. “Dear Lord,’’ he said, “thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.’’ (1)
The housemates stared at Fairhaven, wondering yet again what movie he had quoted. Good God, Josh thought. His parents never said a grace like that at Thanksgiving.
This was the first Thanksgiving Josh had ever spent apart from his family. His parents had decided to fly to California for the weekend to visit his mother’s side of the family. Josh couldn’t go because he needed to be back at State College by Friday for the opening round of the Athena/Six-Pack Beer Pong national tournament. When his parents expressed considerable disappointment in his decision -- and were even more upset after learning what beer pong was -- Josh tried to win them over by first telling them the national champion won a $10,000 prize and that he stood a good chance of winning because he was so gifted in the sport. “I’m like a natural at beer pong. I never lose.’’
Oddly, this last bit of information did not reassure them regarding the money and years that had been invested in Josh’s college education.
Josh wasn’t alone, though. While Thanksgiving is the traditional return home for college students all over the country, many are also forced to spend a lonely holiday near campus due to a lack of funds or because of job requirements and other responsibilities.
Kenan, for instance, needed to stay at State College for football practice and the Red Devils annual Thanksgiving weekend game against hated City College. Coach Red Kodyak held an almost obscene Thanksgiving dinner in the evening for all the out of town players who couldn’t go home for the holiday and turned it into a competition. The tradition was for each player to weigh in before and after dinner to see who could gain the most pounds after cramming their bodies with as much turkey and cranberry sauce and stuffing and gravy and mashed sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie with whipped cream as possible. The meal was such a famous State College tradition that a cable TV food channel broadcast it live and donated a $10,000 scholarship to the school in the winning player’s name. The meal was one of Kenan’s favorite parts of playing at State College.
So what was he doing sitting around the kitchen table reaching for a slice of pizza? Dinner was a couple hours away and he was hungry now.
Likewise, Nicollette had to stay in town for mandatory drug and blood tests as part of her agreement in the Athena “Born Again’’ campaign to qualify for the Olympics without the use of performance enhancers. Steve had to shoot the Red Devils game, as well as a high school state tournament game on Friday. Fairhaven didn’t like either of his parents and was much more interested in seeing a showing of “Bad Santa’’ at the campus reparatory movie house. Cheryl had just enough time in between studying for medical school to return to the old house and catch up on what everyone was doing.
Jenn couldn’t go home because she faced the worst Friday of her life. She had to work the morning shift (beginning at 6 a.m.!) as a barista at the Java Monkey and then go to a lawyer’s office to give a deposition in the $100 million lawsuit quarterback Simeon Hearst had filed against State College for the Bubby-Mobile accident. And then she had to come back and work the evening shift. And after that was over, she had to work Saturday and Sunday and find time to finish a 10-page paper.
The one thing she had been looking to was Thanksgiving dinner at the house – boy, how Jenn loved turkey -- but Josh had to go and screw that up.
The plan had been for everyone to forget about their families, ignore their problems, push aside any homesickness and celebrate the holiday together with their own Thanksgiving meal. Nicollette and Steve volunteered to cook the turkey and spent an evening researching recipes and techniques on the internet. Fairhaven selected a set of holiday movies to watch. And Josh offered to do the shopping. He collected money from everyone and purchased a couple pumpkin pies, stuffing mix, sweet potatoes and a beautiful 18-pound butterball that would make a large and delicious meal.
It would have, that is, had Josh not again failed to pay the heating bill on time.
This was the third month in a row Josh had failed to pay the utility bill, though at least he gave it the old college try this time.
He had figured out what each housemate owed for the bill, hit them up for the money, written out a check, put it in an envelope and mailed it to the utility company with two days to spare. He had just returned from the grocery store with the Thanksgiving meal fixings when the lights and heat suddenly went off. He was on his way to check the circuit breaker when he noticed the mail had arrived with his utility bill returned for insufficient postage due to his having pasted an old 39-cent stamp on the envelope. Unfortunately, the utility company had closed for the day by then, leaving Josh and his housemates not only without electricity or heat but with a turkey frozen as cold and hard as an IRS agent’s heart.
Hence the traditional Thanksgiving meal of delivery pizza.
Pizza and beer in an unheated house away from all their families? It was the saddest Thanksgiving dinner any of them could remember.
The odd thing is, as the meal progressed, the housemates forgot about the frozen turkey and the lack of heat or electricity and started enjoying themselves. As the sun slipped toward the horizon and the glow of candlelight filled the dining room, they talked and shared stories and reconnected until their worries melted away like butter spread over warm corn on the cob.
Even Fairhaven drew a warm response with yet another of his often irritating movie quotes after a long, rambling story from a drunk Josh that never seemed to end.
“You know everything is not an anecdote,’’ Fairhaven said. “You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. But you’re a miracle! Your stories have NONE of that. They’re not even amusing ACCIDENTALLY! ‘Honey, I’d like you to meet Del Griffith, he’s got some amusing anecdotes for you. Oh and here's a gun so you can blow your brains out. You'll thank me for it.’” (2)
They all laughed and shared more beer and finished off the pizza.
“I hate to say it,’ Nicollette said, “but this has been a pretty good Thanksgiving.’’
“And at least we have a traditional dessert,’’ Jenn added. “Josh bought a couple pre-baked pumpkin pies and as cold as it is in this house they have to still be good.’’
A guilty look spread across Josh’s face.
“What?’’ Steve said suspiciously.
“Ummmm,’’ Josh began. “Kenan and I kind of got hungry last night and ate them.’’
“Both of them?’’
“Actually,’’ Kenan said. “All three.’’
“Disgusting.’’
“But it’s OK,’’ Josh said “I’ve got a backup.’’ He raced up to his room and returned with a big ziplock freezer bag filled with little brightly covered bits. He reached in and tossed a handful into his mouth. “Anyone want some gummi bears?’’
Pizza, beer and gummi bears. A true Thanksgiving feast, just what the Pilgrims had in mind those many years ago.
After finishing off the gummi bears, the housemates trooped outside for a touch football game in the front yard. Kenan served as the quarterback for both teams and brushed off would-be tacklers with a casual stiff-arm. Josh led both teams with six touchdown receptions and could have had more had he not been playing with a beer bottle in one hand. They all slipped in the mud and Josh, Steve and Danny took great delight in applying two-hand touches below the waist (though not that far below the waist) to Nicollette, Cheryl and Jenn even when they did not have the ball.
There was so much ass-grabbing, so much beer and so many wet and muddy t-shirts that it was like the old traditional Thanksgiving Day game at the Kennedy compound.
Fairhaven, meanwhile, videotaped the whole game for posterity, and when Kenan collapsed after being sacked at the end and pretended to be dead so that Cheryl would revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he zoomed in close and said: “Brian Piccolo died of cancer at the age of 26. He left a wife and three daughters. He also left a great many loving friends who miss and think of him often. But when they think of him, it’s not how he died that they remember - but how he lived. How he did live!’’ (3)
The housemates began humming the theme to “Brian’s Song,’’ then broke into the State College fight song as they tromped back into the house, soaking wet and coated in mud.
Which is when they realized there was no hot water for showers.
The funny thing is that they didn’t mind. The day had begun as one of the loneliest, coldest and most miserable Thanksgivings any of them had ever experienced. And yet they would surely come to cherish this Thanksgiving meal more and more with each passing year. For it wasn’t the food that was important, it was the friendship they shared. You might be separated from your parents and siblings by hundreds, if not thousands of miles, and you might eat cheap pizza from a place called Pizza Slut instead of a lovingly cooked turkey but as long as you surrounded yourself with people you cared about – and who cared about you – you could still feel like you were with your real family.
The legend of this day would grow even larger later that night when the first stirrings up food poisoning struck due to a Pizza Slut employee who had failed to wash his hands after going to the toilet. But the vomiting and the diarrhea and the lines to use the bathrooms all came later in the night, after Nicollette had received the urgent text message while they stood in the entryway of the house after the football game.
“It’s from Higgins,’’ Nicollette told them. “He says we need to get to a TV. There’s a news report from Mubai about Jill!’’
Next: Ladies Night
What movie lines did Paul Fairhaven quote this chapter? Here they are:
1) Wendy in “The Ice Storm’’
(2) Neal in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.’’
(3) George Halas in “Brian’s Song’’
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