Thanksgiving at Stampy's

“The dog needs to go out.” Stampy Jr. said, shoving a cracker piled high with government cheese into his mouth, his thick lips coated with Chapstick, making loud, unsavory smacking sounds.

“Well take him out.” Lizzy, his mother, said. She’d been cooking all day and the last thing she needed was some other tedious bit of business to get in her way.

“It’s cold out there.” He complained, shoving another cheese-laden cracker into his maw and chewing with his mouth open.

“Then have your brother Dean do it, just get out of my way! The turkey has to come out in a few minutes or it will be dry.”

“Okay.”

Stampy was about six foot three and weighed over three hundred pounds at the age of fourteen. He had played football in eighth grade but he blew his right ACL and that ended it. He still liked to talk about it as if he had been bound for college glory, annoying everyone around him. He wasn’t that bright, but that was to be expected, judging by the rest of the family.

“Godamnit!” Ronald 'Stampy' Stampman Sr. bellowed as the TV’s picture got lost in a wave of static. “Lousy mother fucking piece of shit.” He tried to get out of his chair to adjust the rabbit ears on the top but after ten beers and half a bottle of Jack he found it hard to stand.

“Dooker!” He screamed and a pale, skinny boy appeared at the fringe of the room.

“Yeah dad?” He asked, his voice wavering tremulously, his eyes as wide as a doe’s.

“Make that picture come back in. The Packer’s are on for Christ’s sake!”

“Okay dad.” The little boy scurried over, his feet clad in large, furry slippers, wearing a pair of Superman Underoo’s. His hands trembled as he twisted and turned the foil-covered rabbit ears, the picture swirling with static snow, an image slowly evolving out of the chaos.

“One of these godamn days we need to get a new TV.” Stampy Sr. muttered, but even seven-year-old Dooker knew this was nothing but a whimsical fantasy. Stampy Sr. didn’t much like the notion of hard work and therefore it was hard enough securing food to eat, much less a new TV.

Meanwhile, Stampy Jr. had gone looking for his older brother Dean and found him in his room jerking off to a rumpled issue of Hustler magazine.

“Get the hell out of here ya little fairy!” The older boy demanded as Stampy Jr.’s huge frame hovered in the doorway. “What are tryin’ to do, watch?”

“Can I borrow that magazine when yer done?”

“Yeah, fine, I’ll leave it under my bed, now get the hell out of here! I’m losing my concentration!”

“Okay.” Stampy Jr. shut the door. Maybe Dooker would take out the dog.

Being as poor as they were, it was amazing that they weren’t eating the dog for Thanksgiving, much less that they even owned one. Stampy Sr. had found him on a job site and brought him home with him a few months back, a scrawny, ragged little mutt who cowered when you stood over him but barked and yipped at everything at a distance. They’d named him Rex and he fit right in. The old man thought the mutt might come in handy, would make noise if anyone ever tried to break in the house, but mostly the dog just pissed on the rug when nervous and awakened everyone at odd hours barking at nothing.

“Hey Dooker,” Stampy Jr. said, finding his younger brother seated on the floor about three feet from the TV, watching the blurry outlines of The Green Bay Packer’s as they played the Detroit Lions on a frigid Thanksgiving showdown. As drunk as the Sr. was, he probably thought the picture looked good.

“Get off yer ass and sack that fucker!” He screamed as the Packer’s defense blitzed. “That quarterback’s got all day back there! Look at him, he has time to make a sandwich!”

Dooker always thought it was funny when his dad said that, his screwy analogy of the quarterback’s time in the pocket. He got a mental image of the quarterback leisurely taking out a loaf of bread and cold cuts while the game surged on around him, making himself a double Dagwood sandwich and enjoying a snack before finally throwing the ball to a waiting receiver.

“Dooker, ya gotta take the dog out. He’s gotta pee.”

Looking up from the game at his big brother, the younger boy felt a twinge of embarrassment. How this semi-retarded waste of sperm and egg could be related to him was beyond his reckoning. Everything he said was a masterpiece of redundancy.

“At the commercial.”

“No, now.” Stampy Jr. said and hauled his little brother off the ground and to his feet. Little Dooker was so light that Jr. could effortlessly lift him even if he’d had two ACL tears.

“Fine.” Dooker went off to get his shoes and coat.

“Why don’t you take out the dog?” Stampy Sr. asked, cracking open another Pabst and draining half of the can, the warm beer fizzing out around his puckered mouth and running down his grizzled, unshaven face.

“I took him out this morning.” Jr. whined, flopping down on the couch dramatically and it felt as if the whole house shook. Sr. looked caustically at his middle son, wondered if maybe Lizzy had fucked his pal Geezer and got knocked up with his child. Geezer was such a surly old lump of fat that anything was possible, and besides, Lizzy used to be the bar slut before he’d taken her under his wing and beat her into submission. He hadn’t planned on having all these fucking kids but when ya gotta fuck, ya gotta fuck. Sometimes pulling out just wasn’t an option, even if you were playing sexual roulette. And what the hell. When they got older these little fuckers could take him on trips to Vegas or California and buy him steak dinners and drinks in thanks for raising them so well.

Dooker wandered out into the light snowfall of a cloudy, dreary day, the dog on a thin leash behind him.

“Come on ya damn little mutt.” He scolded, because Rex was the only one in the household that he had any power over. The proverbial chain of command had ended at Dooker, now it ended at Rex, and Dooker wanted the dog to know that. “Take yer piss before ya freeze yer pecker off.”

Surprisingly, the mutt did as he was told.

“Good boy.” Dooker said magnanimously and the two went back inside.

In the kitchen, Lizzy had taken out the turkey and was giving it another butter basting before she planned to serve it. Had it not been for her winning the church raffle, they would have been eating frozen waffles or something else equally un-holiday like. Somehow her winning number came up and she won a 15-pound turkey and all the fixings. This year, unlike many previous years, they would celebrate the holiday in style.

“Dinner’s ready!” She called at last, placing the turkey at the head of the table where Stampy Sr. sat. It would be his honor to carve it.

Slowly straggling in from the living room, the boys took their seats around the table, Dean making his first appearance of the day.

“Whatcha been doin’ boy, studyin’ for yer college finals?” Sr. said thickly, grunting as he eased his enormous belly below the edge of the table and belching raucously. “Get me another couple of beers ma.”

“Only if he’s studyin’ to be a porn star!” Jr. joked and Dean stood up quickly, his fists clenched, eyes blazing with an inspired rage.

“Fuck you homo!”

“Hey, I’m not the one sittin’ in my room playin’ with my dick all day!” Jr. retorted, standing as well, towering a good head over his elder brother. Dean’s eyes radiated an impotent anger that could never be satiated, not in this lifetime anyway. Dean was as scrawny as Stampy Jr. was fat, and his presence was like that of a scurrying rat. He didn’t actually walk around so much as skulk. He had a habit of walking on tiptoes wherever he went, as if he were sneaking. Could be he probably was.

“Sit down ya fucking buttmunchers!” Sr. ordered and the two took their seats. “We’re tryin’ to have a decent meal here!” He blinked rapidly a few times as if his vision wasn’t all that clear. “Where’s them beers I asked for ma?”

“Why don’t you carve the turkey first dear, before it gets cold?” Lizzy suggested and, just like that, the levee broke.

Now, Stampy Sr. wasn’t a man that was known for his calm demeanor or winning personality, no, he was more renown for his fabulous displays of impropriety. So, whenever he ‘lost his shit’-as the boys liked to call it-it was never over anything particularly important and it was nothing short of spectacular.

“Are you try’n to tell me I can’t have another beer, woman?”

“No Stampy, it’s just that the turkey will get cold-”

“Godamnit! I work so fucking hard to make sure we got enough food to eat around here and yer tryin’ to tell me I can’t have another fucking beer?!”

(Also, his tirades never made much sense. Everyone in the family knew they were on welfare and that food stamps paid for most of their meals. Stampy Sr. tried to avoid hard work at all costs and could mostly be found working hard on his sixteenth bottle of beer down at Mcgillicuddy’s Tavern.)

“Now Stampy, calm down-”

“Calm down? Calm down? What do you fuckers want from me, huh? Ya ball breakin’ bitch, yer tryin’ to take my manhood one pubic hair at a time and you little fuckin’ rugrats are drainin’ me of my strength, takin’ food out of my mouth and money out of my wallet! You’d probably be happy to see ME on this godamned cutting board, getting carved up as your Thanksgiving Day feast! Huh? Wouldn’t ya? How would ya like that, if I was the fuckin’ turkey?!” At this point he picked up the carving utensils, the knife and the three tined fork and began waving them around maniacally.

“Please don’t be upset honey-”

“Upset? Upset? You haven’t even begun to see upset! How juicy do ya think this man-bird is, huh? How well done do ya think I am? Yer breakin’ my heart as well as my balls, tearin’ out the only thing left that I have to give!”

“Please honey, your upsetting the kids-”

“Fuck the kids! All they want is something to eat, they don’t give a fuck what it is!” Now he was waving around the three tined fork, gripping it in his sweaty paw, the sharp, shiny tines pointed inward, toward his chest.

“Let’s just see how well done I am!” He screamed, then jabbed himself in the chest with the fork, the tines sinking into his tender flesh, ripping through his cheap rayon shirt.

“Uhhg!” He grunted and tried to pull it out, but it was stuck. His sweaty hands couldn’t find purchase and he leaned back in his chair and groaned. Blood splattered out from the wound and splashed the turkey.

“See…” He muttered thickly, licking his overly moist, thick lips. “See what ya made me do…”

Around the table his family was silent except for Stampy Jr., who couldn’t help but giggle.

“Can I carve the turkey ma?” He said and she shook her head, somewhat dazed, wondering if it was still good to eat. "Can I ma, huh? Can I? He persisted.

Dooker's stomach turned as he looked at the turkey, the last of the steam floating above it and away. He glanced at his father, the fat evil bastard leaning far back in his chair with the fork sticking out of his chest, mouth open and gasping, and suddenly he wasn't very hungry anymore.

Dean sneered at Stampy Jr.

"I'm next in line. I get to carve the bird."

"No you don't! Ma! The fat boy protested as the snow blew around outside, the last of the autumn leaves long gone as winter slowly clenched its tight fist around the upper states of the Midwest…