As we continue to highlight the work of Russell Bittner, we are proud to present the short story In the Animal Kingdom (a Thanksgiving Story). This story is a powerful and moving family drama set around the Thanksgiving dinner table. At this time you can also purchase Bittner’s Stories in the Key of C. Minor. by clicking the icon below.
In the Animal Kingdom
(a Thanksgiving story)
“Mammalian life is social and relational. What defines the mammalian class, physiologically, is … the possession of a portion of the brain known as the limbic system, which allows us to do what other animals cannot: read the interior states of others of our kind. To survive, we need to know our own inner state and those of others, quickly, at a glance, deeply.” From “Programming the Post-human,” by Ellen Ullman.
I sit here now as I sat here then. He’s not here now; he wasn’t here then. The only difference between now and then—fifteen years ago—is that I know the difference.
Then? Then, I had a child’s imagination, a child’s belief that all things were possible—even the impossible—perhaps because I had no knowledge of im. Im is a prefix that comes with age, with experience, with rejection and failure. Slowly. More quickly if you have nothing worth rejecting. Then, im comes at you without mercy. And very quickly, you can no longer even see the word “possible” without its attendant im.
But that was fifteen years ago—when I was a mere child—with a child’s imagination, a child’s belief, and a child’s still imperfect vision. None of which could really distinguish between im and him. And him was what I’d been anticipating for almost a whole year.
Today, the greatest of all days on the American calendar, is Thanksgiving—now as then. No other holiday—he’d said it himself many times—can compare. It’s the day on which we all come home, wherever home may be. Sometimes, that home is just a heartbeat. But so long as a heart is beating, it yearns for home. And home is what we come to—on Thanksgiving.
“What time is Papa coming?” I shout from where I’m sitting next to the front window.
“Six o’clock,” my mother shouts back from the kitchen.
“And if he doesn’t?” I ask.
“He’ll be here. We agreed. And if there’s one thing your father is, it’s punctual.”
To myself, I think: I know. It’s the German in him. He can’t help himself or being punctual—whatever ‘punctual’ means.
“It’s the German in him,” my mother shouts, unprompted. “He can’t help himself.”
My sister looks at me. I look back at her. We’ve both heard the words many times before. At a quarter to six on a cold and wet November afternoon, there’s little comfort—dry or warm—in hearing this same old harangue about my father and his people.