Gratitude

by P. S. Power

  It would come down to how materialistic her brother really was. Her “anything for the cause-down with the man” brother. Allison decided to try it, smiling.

  “Well, honestly? You’re right. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love getting all the free stuff and seeing the pretty packages under the tree, but how much do we really need? We should appreciate what we have, and not constantly grab for more. Don’t you think so Lucas?”

  She actually held her breath, since this one could go either way. He was annoying, with all his causes and things, but he was also pretty mature for his age. For a boy. Allison waited, but not for long, given that he just shrugged.

  “Yeah. Consumerism is too rampant anyway. I don’t know about the turkey. Dad’s right, they do kind of suck. Still, we could make it ourselves. As a family. I don’t suppose anyone knows how to cook?” It was an old family joke, but not that far off from reality. Their mom worked so much that she almost never did it, and their father was good at opening cans and packages and heating things. It wasn’t really cooking. More like having a working microwave and opposable thumbs. It worked, most days, but they also ate out a lot.

  There was dead silence from the front of the vehicle for a long time however. It was enough that she started to feel edgy.

  Finally their mom spoke, her voice a little tense.

  “You two really don’t like the Thanksgiving tradition then?”

  Allison started to say that it wasn’t her favorite, but Lucas jumped in first, his voice sounding like he wasn’t wearing an insulting novelty Indian costume. That was good, because if he started trying to talk like an old movie Indian, she’d have to hit him, and violence was wrong.

  “Well, Allison doesn’t love going and being around the homeless. It really does scare her, so I guess that’s kind of fair. As for me, well, I think we should help out a few times the rest of the year. Everyone comes out for the big holiday season, but what about the other seasons?”

  “Who has time for that? I only get Thanksgiving off at all because I have seniority at work.” Their mom looked straight ahead, and put the visor up, so Allison didn’t see her expression at all. “Besides, who wants to waste their days off on something like that?”

  She was a brilliant woman, Allison knew. Her skills in the operating theater were sought after, and she did some kind of special surgery that almost no one else could manage. People actually came from other countries for her to work on them. That clearly didn’t mean she was incapable of putting her foot in her mouth.

  Allison was about to jump on it, when she continued.

  “I mean, I help people all the time. So it isn’t like I don’t deserve a life as well.”

  Which was probably true. It sounded selfish and self-centered, which wasn’t really in the spirit of the holiday, but it also rang of honesty.

  Again, it was annoying though, and not something that was easily left uncorrected.

  Their dad changed the subject for them. He was good about things like that.

  “So, no presents? Nice. Well, honey, it looks like I’ll finally be able to afford that boat I’ve always wanted. The down payment, I mean. You kids weren’t going to have that nice of a Christmas.” There was a jovial and pleased sound to it all, as if he really didn’t get that she meant it yet.

  Lucas pushed the back of the driver’s seat, “I was going to ask you to donate whatever you would have spent on me to charity. You wouldn’t even use a boat. For one thing, when would you go? You work sixty hour weeks most of the time, if not more. We live hundreds of miles from the ocean too. I suppose we could put it in the back yard, like some kind of a playhouse, but other than that, what are you going to do with it?”

  There was a mighty sigh from the front seat, as their father didn’t take his eyes off the road at all.

  “A real point. How about you Allison? Are you ready to back up your debate tactic with a charitable donation?” Now he was playing for real. It rang from his voice that he was smiling too. She was familiar with the tone that said he knew he’d won.

  After all, his little princess wouldn’t give up her toys like that, would she? For half a second she was tempted to start laughing and play the whole thing off, but Lucas actually had a point, and so did her father, even if it was a bit of reverse psychology that hadn’t worked on them.

  They already had enough. Worse, or maybe better, given the day, she really was kind of thankful for it. She just didn’t want to be around desperate and crazy people that smelled bad. It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t have showers and clean clothing, but it didn’t mean she was a bad person for not wanting to stand next to them, did it?

  Of course it did.

  “Yep. Let’s really do it. We can all just hang out on the day and watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. I’ll learn to cook some things for it. I have a month.” She let a soft smile come to her face, as the car drove down the road.

  Sure, she wasn’t perfect or anything, but she thought she finally had the idea. Well, an idea, at any rate. It probably wasn’t what her mother had been going on about or anything, but it had a feeling of being close to the original intent.

  Being thankful wasn’t just about eating a huge meal or having a huge Christmas, it was…

  About living consciously. About knowing what she had and being fine with it, and not greedily wanting more all the time. That was the natural extension of the idea, wasn’t it?

  Her parents laughed a bit as they kept driving. The car was nearly silent on the road, as they crossed the border from their town into Cooper, the next one over. Their destination.

  It wouldn’t take them long to get there now.

  Allison looked out the window at the houses they were passing, but they didn’t look that much different than the ones in her town. Maybe a little more run down? It was hard to tell. The streets were pretty quiet, and no one was braving the misty November afternoon. No, most of them were safe and warm inside, watching Santa Clause go down the street, ringing in the shopping season for Macy’s.

  Allison shook her head and kept thinking about her life. It wasn’t a bad thing at all, having her family. They were goofy and weird, and at times a little oblivious, but they tried.

  Really hard.

  If nothing else the rest of the day would be good for some comedy.

  She reached out, impulsively, and put her arm over the fake leather vested shoulder of her little brother, pulling him to her for a bit.

  He didn’t struggle away like he normally did, which kind of made the moment.

  They rode on in silence for the rest of the trip, thinking about what they were thankful for.

  Or at least she did.

  Chapter two

  Lucas

  The day was perfect. There was a hazy mist in the air outside the beat up and much used food pantry and soup kitchen. It was all done up in gray, with grit and grime being the accent colors. The place was so run down on the outside that he nearly mistook it for the closed down building next door. Lucas climbed out on the street side of things, to see half a dozen people already sitting by the front of the building, not going in for some reason. The meal wasn’t for another hour, but the doors didn’t seem to be locked.

  His dad, who had dressed himself in classic and incredibly inconsiderate fashion, put one buckle shoed pilgrim foot in front of another and jogged to the gray wooden door. It didn’t have glass in it anymore, that having been broken out at some point, and never replaced. That kind of thing was why Lucas was planning to take the operation down.

  From the inside.

  True, that might mean a few people didn’t get to eat that day, but in the end what he had planned would help them more than it hurt. As long as they caught it all on camera.

  The idea for it wasn’t really his, personally. It had come, as so many of his ideas really did, from a web-site. The particular one that he’d taken this idea from was an anarchist set-up. It was way too organized for people that didn’t believe in power structures at a
ll, but that particular group always seemed a bit like posers. They’d pretend to want something different, then organize to get things done, just like everyone else. That didn’t mean they couldn’t have the occasional idea, so he’d borrowed it. Or, more poetically, he’d liberated it. Those losers weren’t really going to do anything, and that was where he was different than they were. Lucas Kenders actually did things. It made him more relevant than they were.

  Better.

  In a humble, and not too egotistical way.

  A lot of people talked about problems, but very few ever tried to do anything about them. Not really. They whined in chat rooms and on message boards, griping and saying how someone should fix things. Then they went off to look at porn, or play video games or whatever it was that kind of person did when they weren’t trying to pretend they actually had a conscience.

  Lucas had decided that it was up to him, and yes, he was starting small. A place like this wasn’t really on anyone’s radar, and doing something here, like parading around dressed like a nineteen fifties stereotype of an Indian Chief, by itself, wasn’t going to cut it. He needed something big, and that meant other people had to step up too, or his little event might just be a bit embarrassing.

  It was Thanksgiving though, the most boring of all holidays, so a few people might just show up to help. What else were they going to do? Listen to their drunken Uncle imply that he’d be rich now, if only their father hadn’t stolen that homework assignment in grade school, thirty years before? In most families that would be the start of the fight. Not in his, since no one drank.

  His father held the door open, smiling politely at a poorly dressed woman that was trying to get in. She glared at him a bit, but that was only to be expected. When society had let you down that much, why should you be polite to anyone? His dad should be glad that she hadn’t spit on him, or slapped his face for presuming he had a right to hold her door. It was pretty sexist of him, after all.

  She didn’t do anything like that, just moving inside, leaving a sour scent behind her. It was… Lucas had to think about it for a second, but he knew that scent. Not urine, or desperation, but the smell of a person that was free. Well, that mixed with urine and B.O. She was someone that wasn’t a slave to the Corporate Machine. In his head he capitalized that, even if it would have gotten him marked down in English class. Mrs. Phips just didn’t understand how radical he was. How edgy and close he was to the pulse of the real world. The people.

  But she would soon. They all would.

  “Here we go. This seems like the right place.” His father waited for the rest of them to pass, and Lucas did too. He was a little chilly, not having a jacket on, or a shirt, just a fake leather vest, but that wouldn’t go with the plan, so he had to tough it out. His sister, Allison, walked ahead of him, dressed like a normal person.

  That part was a bit of a surprise.

  Honestly he’d expected her to either not come at all, or to dress-up with a scarlet letter A on the front of her black pilgrim dress. She wasn’t afraid to make a statement like that. Instead she’d worn t-shirt and jeans that had seen better days. Then she’d declared she didn’t need to go in for something as materialistic as Christmas. That part was kind of hard to believe, but she’d said it to back up what he was saying, and even if she panicked and took it back later, it was kind of nice of her. They didn’t always get along.

  It was mainly little stuff. Things that didn’t really matter. Whose turn it was to take out the trash, or who was supposed to walk the dog that day. Or if she wanted to eat meat for dinner on one of the designated vegetarian nights. That she’d backed him up, even a little, on something like this, was huge. If she kept it up she might even grow into a likable person some day.

  Probably not, but it could happen. In potential. It wouldn’t do to sell her out too quickly that way. After all, he had to put up with her as his sister for the rest of his life.

  Lucas let the headdress trail behind him, walking quickly past his dad, into the well lit, but stark looking, room. It wasn’t well decorated inside, though it was clean. It was the kind of thing that a lack of money bought you. Big, cheap looking, and depressing. But there was a scent of cooking food, and for the kind of place it was, that part wasn’t too bad. It smelled of spices and fresh ingredients, not the slightly cardboard scent the old soup kitchen always had. Cardboard, with a touch of salt. This was better.

  His mother and sister had stopped, standing next to a man that was about five-ten and had a great tan left over from summer. His dark hair was short and tidy looking from the side, and when he turned to look at Lucas and his father, the man… smiled.

  For his part, Lucas nearly lost bowel control. It wasn’t a proud moment for him, and he did manage to keep everything inside that belonged there, but it actually took a moment of work not to just spin in place and dash out the front door.

  The man, the same one that was in charge, if his greeting them indicated anything, was, without even a shred of doubt, a full blooded Native American. That meant it was time to blush, true, but the situation was so much worse than it seemed. A thousand times worse. Lucas tried to wrap his mind around what he’d set up, and honestly couldn’t. Not yet. He needed a few moments to start rationalizing everything properly, so that he could continue without worrying about hurt feelings. He didn’t want to insult anyone, he just wanted to help.

  The man moved in, a stern look on his face. Then slowly he held his hand out, which Lucas returned, wondering if the man was going to use the handshake to pull him into a well deserved punch to the face. Like in the movies. If so, he kind of deserved it.

  The man clasped forearms with him instead, still looking stern.

  “Ho, Young Chief.”

  Lucas sighed and looked away, even more embarrassed now than if the man had called him a racist.

  “Um, hi, I’m Lucas, and I’ll be your Native American pilgrim protestor today.” He was about to explain when the large man let go and nodded once, actually seeming to understand. That was something he wasn’t used to at all. His family let him do what he wanted and only made fun of him on alternate Tuesdays for it, but they didn’t really seem to take any of it to heart.

  “I’m Daniel. Daniel Potay. We probably won’t have to run them off our land here, but it’s good to know I have backup if it’s needed.” Then without cracking a smile he turned to the others. “Thanks for coming folks. We hadn’t thought about costumes. It will add a nice touch of color. I was told on the phone that you’ve all done this before?”

  The man waved them toward the back of the room, where real workers were already doing all the hard work, cooking and setting up the meal. They were just there to slop overcooked food onto trays or Styrofoam plates. It varied from place to place, but most used disposable things for things like this now. It was wasteful, but easier to handle, on the other side. Washing plates for fifty was a chore he certainly didn’t want to take on.

  Was that lazy?

  Most certainly. Just because he wanted the world to be a better place, that didn’t mean he had some strange desire to work himself half to death all the time. So he could both sneer at the plates used, and be secretly glad at the same time. He was in balance that way.

  His mother took charge then, as if that were her natural place. Lucas didn’t mind in the moment, but it made having any kind of real conversation with her harder than it might have been.

  “We’ve been doing this for about ten years now. Not here, of course. This facility is new? It was recommended to us by a colleague of mine from work. Doctor Neumann?” She said it like she thought Daniel and Dr. Neumann might just happen to be personal friends.

  The idea that a man that ran a soup kitchen for the needy would know that kind of person was a bit hard to swallow, and Lucas waited for the denial that had to come.

  Daniel looked the same as he had the whole time, but his eyes locked with the much smaller woman that stood in front of him with a curious gaze.

  “We had
our residency together in Boston. I’ve been pestering him for the last six months to get his behind in here and help out, but most of his spare time is going to the free clinic in Town here. What can you say? Sheldon always was all medicine, all the time.”

  Lucas nearly felt betrayed. The guy running the place was a Doctor? He hadn’t expected that. A social worker maybe, or a Firefighter. The whole thing would have looked better if he were a hard working mechanic or factory laborer. The only thing that would have shocked him more was if the man had been a lawyer. His dad was all right, in a slightly strained way, when it came to donating his own time, but most of the lawyers that Lucas had seen were from television and he didn’t have a very high opinion of them.

  Too many of them worked for the Corporate Machine.

  That didn’t really get him out of the trouble that was coming though, did it? It was three-ten right then, and in an hour and twenty minutes, an untold number of people were going to show up, dressed as Native American’s and perform a circle dance, silently. It would carry around the room, with him in the lead, trying to be as conscious of their Native brethren as possible. Then they were going to leave.

  It was like a flash mob, but he’d also set up people to bring cameras and upload it immediately to the net. Advertising generally didn’t hurt, and it had to be a slow news day, by definition. Now, looking at Daniel, it occurred to him that his little protest, as well meant as it really was, could possibly be taken the wrong way by some people.

  There had been words spoken in front of him, but his mind was too far away to really make them out. Allison saved him with a little push, so that he’d follow along to the back of the space, where the silver industrial kitchen was visible through an open door, with a matching metal counter between the dining room and where the magic happened.