Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2009.

In my opinion, family reunions are best spent with just about anybody but the family. There’s a reason why we all live in different states from one another, and that reason is “outstanding warrants.” It’s also because when we all get together, certain issues that have long been buried rise to the surface, such as, “I really take issue with the fact that several decades ago, you were born.”

This past Thanksgiving, I was chosen to tell Grandpa Fred that he wouldn’t be allowed to carve the turkey because the way he did it reminded people too much of an axe murder.

It’s never really been explained to me how Grandpa Fred, a gnarly white knot of a man, is related to the extended family. I believe he’s the grandfather of someone who has since vanished into the Witness Protection Program. At any rate, the entirely untrue legend has sprung up among my relatives that I am the only person whom Fred doesn’t despise.

“Oh come on,” I protest, “Fred’s not like that at all. He despises everybody.”

I go into the family room to regard Fred, who looks like he was washed with too much bleach and then run through the dryer until everything about him shrank but his clothes.

“Cars today!” he says when he sees me, dispensing with the more traditional “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Good to see you, too, Grandpa Fred. Remember me?”

He gives me an I-just-bit-into-a-bug expression. “Feh,” he says. “Cars today, with their seatbelts and their air bladders. When I was your age, you hit something, you took the steering wheel in the chest like a man.”

“Well ...” I start to respond.

“You know this thing with the Toyotas, they accelerate without warning? Brilliant marketing. You drive to work, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. People line up around the block for a car like that — it’s like a carnival ride. I told Walt, I told him, what ya need at Disneyland is more fun, forget the stupid people dressed up in mouse costumes, make you want to punch ‘em in their fake stomachs.”

“You knew Walt Disney?” I ask, impressed.

“What? Are you some kinda idiot? I’m talking Walt Weaver, used to cut my hair, died in ‘89.”

From his appearance, it seems that upon Walt’s passing Grandpa Fred has resorted to cutting his hair with explosives. He runs a hand through the sparse tufts.

“You know whom I blame?”

“For ... ?” I answer, not sure what we’re talking about.

“The Spanish. If the Spanish hadn’t invaded Mexico, they’d all still speak English down there and we wouldn’t have these wack-jobs complaining about immigration and your bank wouldn’t say “for Espanola, presso el two.”

“I can honestly say I’ve never heard that theory before.”

“Spanish flu, 1918. Killed every man, woman and child on the planet. You think the Spanish didn’t know what they were doing?”

“This, too, is new information.”

“Nina, Pinta, Santa Marino. He said he was Italian, but where’d he sail from? Spain.”

“Who, Grandpa Fred?”

“Columbus, you moron! Isn’t that why you’re here, to eat turkey because some Italian came over from Spain?”

The mention of the word “turkey” reminds me of my mission, and I clear my throat, carefully eyeing Grandpa Fred for weapons. “Grandpa Fred, about the turkey, there’s the matter of who’s going to carve it.”

“The person who killed it is the one who carves it. You know who killed it?”

“Um ... Butterball?”

“You’re here because of a woman.”

This is, I suppose, biologically accurate, but I’m not sure what he means in this context.

“Every year it’s the same,” Fred continues. “I’m sittin’ here and some pantywaist comes up and begs me to cut the turkey. Do I look like some kinda dog?”

“You’re right, to make you carve the turkey like some dog, that would be so wrong.”

He peers at me. “Boy, you should crawl back into your mother’s womb and not come out until your brain’s fully baked. You ever see a dog carve a turkey? What an idiot.

“That’s the problem with these things,” he continues, more to himself than anyone, “I never wind up talking to somebody I like.”

(Bruce Cameron has a website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com.)

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