The snow started before we had even started to drive north and kept coming

down. But the light changed. After three or four hours we stopped for gas, and

when I looked up, between the front seats, big flakes were still drifting down,

onto a row of pine trees at the end of the gas station lot. The sky and the upper

branches had blue poking between them, but the bottom of the trees were dark,

and right in the middle the glarey sun was sinking down into the dark part.

Usually we spend Thanksgiving in our small city apartment, with mom’s Polish

friends in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, or with my dad’s family in Boston. But

this year an American had married my Polish-American mother’s college friend,

Elina, and they invited us to his cottage and club property (he called it his “fort”)

for Thanksgiving, five or so hours upstate.

I did not know Brett well, nobody did, he was this guy she met on a dating

website after a lot of dates. He and Elina and my family had met in Central Park

the last summer to go boating and then have a picnic on the lawn. Brett was

polite. He talked fast but really quietly, it was almost like his voice was a loud

whisper, and he knew a lot about things - the turtles our boats scared off the rocks, architecture - he is some kind of architect. He is older than Elina, I can’t say how much. He has horizontal creases on his forehead which makes his head look

funnily rectangular to me, like a cartoon. I was on my phone mostly on the drive,

but I guess I was thinking about Elina and Brett too for the last hour, when we

were driving between pine trees on either side under a darkening river of sky

winding over us towards some dark ending.

* * * * *

“Wow, thanks for coming! Yea, guns are beautiful, you’re from New York,

probably you don’t understand that,” Brett said. That was weird, I thought - he

lived in New York most of the time. We’d finally found our way without our GPS

or the internet which didn’t work in that part of New York, but we drove under a

gate with fake electric torch fires on the sides, and followed Elina’s directions to

the cottage, which Brett had designed. The whole house was glowing wood, and

as soon as you walked in you saw two hunting rifles inside a locked glass case in

the front hall, which Brett said he used to hunt rabbits and “varmints” that came

onto the club property. I’m more into computers than guns, except in some

movies. That was the first time I had seen real live guns. But I have to admit at

that moment I was fascinated by the actual reality of those glowing wood and

metal guns, not just as something in movies. I wondered if he’d unlock the case

so we could shoot some varmints sometime, though if I thought about it, I

wouldn’t want to shoot a rabbit myself.

Elina had described Brett’s politics as “patriotic” - not Democrat, not Republican,

but “patriotic.” I didn’t know what that meant - “patriotic” can mean a lot of

things. Whatever “patriotic” meant in Brett’s case, I sensed that his views were

different from my parents’ or Elina’s. I wasn’t too worried, though. It was

Thanksgiving - surely political stuff, of all things, wouldn’t become problematic

at a time like this. (Note: I do not like politics, even though I want to use my

science interests to get people on the side of doing things to stop global warming.)

For the first day of our visit, everything went on as could have been expected. We had meals together, visited a museum of local history, watched a movie in the basement, and did a little cross country skiing on nearby trails.  Despite the initial good signs, my hopes for a peaceful Thanksgiving turned out to be wrong.

The treacherous topics of politics and history came up the night of Thanksgiving, with Elina, my mother, and Brett sitting in front of his fireplace, after we all had dinner in the community house nearby with all the other hunters and longtime locals.  My father was already asleep in a bedroom upstairs.  I was sitting at a desk on the other side of the room, watching “The LEGO Movie” through a bad connection.  I wasn’t listening closely to the conversation, but I tuned in occasionally, and - through the snippets I could register in the back of my head, - I gathered that they were talking about the Second World War, Trump, neo-Nazism, and especially American foreign policy.  My mother and Brett had their views, which they unflinchingly defended, while Elina seemed to vacillate between their positions.

Suddenly, Brett jumped up from his chair by the fireplace and...erupted.  He started actually screaming.  ‘How my mother dared to come into his house that he had built and disrespect his country.’   Mom went quiet. I gripped my laptop tightly.  I was actually thinking of hitting him with it if he went at mom. Elina tried to interject but gave it up almost immediately.  Brett walked to the front hall, where the firelight reflected off a glass case, seeming to be possessed by some powerful force outside of himself.  A grown up man, normally quiet and dignified, he was hitting his feet against the ground and ranting.

Before the blow up, I had tried to ignore their more and more heated banter, hoping that it would go away, but instead it boiled up.  “You can’t disrespect this country!” Brett went on.  “No one should! Not me, not you, not anyone out there.”  He pointed out the picture window at the dark.  I wondered who “anyone” was - the club members, or unnamed beings beyond the fake fire lanterns facing the dark.  At the end, I could feel the floor shaking beneath my feet from Brett’s stamping, even at the distance I was from them.

“And you have the nerve to say that in my house, after I invite you in, after I take your son out to a party!?  Take your kid, get out!”

It was true, the night before, Brett walked me to a nearby house where a large group of people played games, including a few teenagers.  I had been dependent on him to guide me through the cold and dark and snow to the house where the party was, but he wasn’t just sitting around being bored once we got there.  He seemed to be having a good time, talking with a few other adults about ski mobile hunting and, later, joining in a chess game (he lost).

Brett’s explosion ended as abruptly as it started. He stood there, seemingly stunned by himself.  It was quiet for a second after he finished.  Until my mother - through sheer desire to prove her point, emotional investment in what she was talking about, or just to get the last word in - said, slowly: “My grandmother was sent to Germany as a slave laborer”. 

Brett did not shout this time. He kept apologizing meekly, under his breath.  “I’m sorry...for what I said...and did...Politics...shouldn’t get so heated...we all...should step back a little bit…” Eventually, he subsided into silence, and just washed dishes as my mother and Elina hurried upstairs, with me following as fast as I could so as not to be left alone with him.

I couldn't imagine just going to sleep, so I stayed up and made it almost to the end of the movie before nodding off in my bed.  My mother and Elina stayed in my 

bedroom too, sitting at the foot of the bed and later bringing in their bedding and sleeping between my bed and the locked bedroom door.

The morning after, me and my family ate breakfast as if everything was normal.  Brett offered to take me out to return a pair of snowshoes we had borrowed the day before Thanksgiving.  I said NO because I had work to do.  I also asked my parents whether we could leave now but they wanted to stay and eat breakfast, and then see some historical sites with Elina and Brett (why?!).  The whole morning, I avoided talking with anyone, or mentioning what had happened the night before.

There was one last, excruciating moment when we got out of the car to look at a long abandoned mill building.  I was relieved when I got into the car with my parents to begin the drive back to New York City.  Finally, after we got in, and said our (chilly) goodbyes, I stopped being afraid.

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